Intel’s Fight Continues; New Chip Design; Consolidating Different Process Nodes For Cheaper, Faster, Improved Chip Development [VIDEO]
ByIntel is spreading its wings with a new chip design by obtaining a variety of chips to be used in a single package and following a new approach by designing a faster throughput inside it. The new design will mix and match different architecture and manufacturing process to make chip development more cost-efficient, faster and more performance-oriented.
Intel is not giving up easily despite a slump in demand for PC chips in the desktop market. The blue team is bracing itself for the future of computing that may extend to robotics, cars, smart devices, drones and an extensive list of electronics. Intel's new chip design is its response to the changing chip requirements with emerging new hardware and applications that include Artificial Intelligence and bleeding edge graphics.
Intel is now working with Altera FPGAs in automobiles and Movidius computer vision chips in drones. The company is also utilizing the Nervana deep-learning chips for servers and other developers. In line with Intel's new chip design, the blue team is also making chips for varying types of computers but this time with faster throughput inside its chips, PC World reported.
Intel is following a new design and approach to chip development following the demise of Moore's law, which was made famous by the company. Moore's law pertains to the concentration of transistors on a chip that is believed to double every 18 to 24 months while costs drop by half.
Chip development now is becoming more difficult especially for smaller chips and expensive with every new manufacturing node. Thus, Moore's law is no longer viable, which necessitates Intel to embrace a new heterogeneous chip design, in which different kinds of cores are placed in one package. This also involves mixing and matching different architecture and manufacturing process.
A key technology improvement in Intel's new chip design is the Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge or the EMIB. The new feature enables the integration of several chips in one package with a much higher bandwidth interconnect as compared to alternative technologies.
To illustrate, Intel could put a high-performing ARM CPU and X86 core in one package where communication between cores is faster. The underlying principle in Intel's adoption of a new chip design is to make chip development less costly, faster and packed with more power.
Incidentally, Intel is also branching out to new markets like in self-driving car technology with its $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye. It is also set to launch its much-delayed Octane SSDs in the second half of the year. However, observers say that Intel's efforts may not yield much since the company has been known for its inability to integrate new acquisitions like McAfee, Forbes reported.
In addition, Intel's primary revenues about 55 percent come from the PC chips market, which has been experiencing slow sales for the last five years. Add to that the stiff competition that AMD Ryzen brought to Intel's Core processors.