Intel's Otellini speaks mobile and Sandy Bridge at IDF

MICROCHIPS AT THE TINY scale of 22nm will be demonstrated by the second half of next year, according to Intel CEO Paul Otellini, whose Intel Developer Forum keynote speech at IDF 2010 has made much of a mobile computing future.

Bigging up the teeny tiny future talking about 22nm and the 32nm Sandy Bridge, which will be shipped next year, Otellini described Sandy Bridge as a complete computer on a chip, no doubt helpful for the teeny tiny mobile devices the CEO is looking ahead to.

In this mobile and connected future Otellini identified three key targets: energy efficiency, security and unsurprisingly, connectivity, for which his new buzz word is evidently "smart 3G".

Although for Otellini it is all about the connected devices, and he expects five billion mobile and smart devices to be knocking around by 2014, he only briefly plugged the fact that Orange and Telecom Italia are apparently standardising around Intel's Atom chip.

Take note everyone, Telecom Italia and "several other companies," are expected to launch Intel Atom processor CE4100-based devices soon. Ooh, we'll keep you to that timetable Mr Otellini.

But in the meantime telly is where it's at and he reminded us that Intel chips are powering Sony Internet TV and Google TV.

But who will win in this connected world? Unsurprisingly Otellini said, "Customers will choose the device that provides the best experience for any given intended use and that no one device will win." Well yes that is rather stating the obvious.

He also gave a little insight, and we mean little, into why Intel has planned to buy McAfee and Infineon's wireless business. Well all those connected devices needed to be, er, connected and protected from the nasty Internet viruses. Oh yeah the planned purchase of Texas Instruments' cable modem business means Intel can deliver Internet services to consumer electronics devices as well. Ah, we're back to the Internet tellies again.

And what common platform will enable this connected, wireless and wireline, secure world. That Intel and Nokia creation called Meego of course. What could possibly go wrong with this vision? µ

For more Intel Developer Forum coverage, visit our dedicated IDF blog, where you can see Sandy Bridge images and keep up with live second by second updates from the keynotes as they happen.