Jim McGregor
Director, Semiconductors & Enabling Technologies
In-Stat

Q. Do you see increasing demand for performance per watt in embedded and telecommunications applications?

With the growth of the Internet and rich data types, the demand for performance is scaling exponentially. Within 10 years we can project that 99 percent of all Internet traffic will be rich data, voice, and video. And it will not be one-way traffic. Gaming, social networking and interactive IPTV services will require two-way traffic, and this will impact performance demand even more.

The demand for performance is not limited to growth in consumer IP services. It is also being driven by medical applications, financial data processing and security applications. In medical, we are seeing performance demand driven by applications such as 3D imaging and PET scanning that drive the flow of rich content. Since 9/11 we have seen a big increase in the demand for high-performance solutions. In financial applications, we are seeing a big jump in data processing requirements due to Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. In security, biometric technology is driving a similar increase in data processing requirements.

Intel’s latest platforms will play in all of these areas.

Q. Intel has recently announced platforms based on the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5400 series and validated chipsets, including a platform that delivers up to a 67 percent gain in performance per watt compared to Intel’s previous platform. What is the importance of these new products?

Actually, the performance per watt improvement is higher. Since the server lifecycle can be five or more years, most people are actually upgrading equipment that may be three, four or even five generations old. So the real performance per watt improvement may be in the order of three-times, four-times, or even twelve-times what they are seeing now. The demand for performance is driving the growing adoption of Intel architecture in the data center. Intel has provided data center operators an upgradable platform they can live with for an extended period of time. Intel now supports its embedded products for 7 years, and have actually extended some to as long as 20 years.

As impressive as it is, the latest Intel product introduction is about more than the processor alone. Intel comes at the power efficiency problem with a suite of solutions, including processors, chipsets, tools and software suites that preserve backward compatibility with earlier applications. Intel doesn’t just drop solutions into the market, but supports them with reference designs. New platforms based on low-power processors and dual-processor chipsets that support DDR2 memory, together with software and reference designs, provide embedded developers with quick time-tomarket solutions based on simplicity and consistency of the platform.

The hardest part was to bring Intel architecture down in power consumption. Intel’s new products represent a huge benefit for embedded and communications applications – and their very strong roadmap provide something we have never had before.

Upgrading to a new platform that gives users Intel architecture and a huge performance per watt increase provides a much more efficient solution. Now you can take entire racks of servers and compact them into one server that provides the same level of performance, with an equally large delta in your environmental control and power distribution system.

Q. Power availability is becoming a big issue for data center operators. What are the implications for embedded and communications developers?

Data centers need to be located near power sources. They can require even more power infrastructure, and once you put that in, it is not easily upgraded. In addition, we are talking about the real backbone of the Internet, which requires high availability and multiple layers of redundancy.

Architectural consistency, or the ability to upgrade between generations of processors and platforms, is very critical. And you cannot afford to draw more power than the previous generation. Using consistent Intel architecture for control plane applications minimizes implementation time for upgrades. And, looking at the Intel roadmap, you see major jumps in power efficiency.

Intel’s low power Intel architecture will feed the requirements of a host of solutions, depending on the application. When you can focus on a single architecture with the highest level of industry standards behind it, you see a tremendous benefit.

Q. Intel platforms support virtualization. How important is this?

Virtualization is quite important, especially in the data centers that must meet growing demand for services. Instead of dedicating resources to a certain function, you can partition your servers to do it in a truly virtualized environment. In the data center this means you can support new and different applications as time goes on using the same servers to perform a variety of different functions.

Beyond performance per watt, this can give you huge leaps in efficiency, on the order of two-times and above. With demand for performance going up exponentially, you have the potential to keep up with changes, without adding new multi-billion dollar facilities every two years.

Q. Intel has announced SSE4, a new and expanded instruction set for its latest generation of processors. What are the implications?

With rich multimedia content, the vectorized instructions in SSE4 will improve processing performance by allowing you to do more in less time. The new instructions will also enable the software development community to become more effective in how they write code. Interactive gaming is an excellent example of a type of application that will benefit from these new instructions on the PC, as well as at the server level.

Q. We hear a lot about green technology. How important is semiconductor power efficiency?

If there has been a single change impacting the way we do business, it is the rise in the importance of energy conservation. Power issues are here to stay. And it is fair to say that power is a driving force in every aspect of embedded computing and communications. We must get more efficient. When you look at the size of data centers and the power they consume combined with the rising demands placed on those resources, it just makes sense. The more low power solutions we have, the better, from processor and chipsets on up.

Q. Will Intel become known not only for high performance, but also for powerefficient platforms?

Intel has not traditionally been known as a power-efficient architecture, because in the past, they pushed performance at all costs. However, Intel has now changed its design paradigm to focus on efficiency first.

When you look at Intel’s roadmap, you see industry-leading manufacturing and industryleading semiconductor design that is now pushing the industry in the direction of powerefficiency. Intel was first to metal gate. Intel was first to 45 nanometer technology. And so far, they have exceeded expectations in driving energy-efficiency forward.

In many ways, I think Intel’s highest core competency is manufacturing. Every time we think Moore’s Law is going to end, what appears to be a brick wall turns out to be just another stumbling block. Intel continues to drive the industry with innovations for lower power, smaller geometries and more efficient design solutions.

Q. Do Intel’s technology improvements create new opportunities for embedded developers?

When you bring these performance per watt solutions to embedded, they can impact everything we do, including communications, medical, security and consumer products. In all of these areas we are going to see new classes of devices.

If I were to pick just one trend, it would be the acceleration of the rate of change in technology. When you use proprietary architectures, you must start every new project from scratch, and moreover, you must do the work yourself. Using consistent platform architecture enables designers to create new devices, from ultra mobile PCs to servers. IP services and business models are the real wild card. There is a whole new set of business models emerging, such as hosted applications. We are going to see huge changes enabled by these new platforms.

Jim McGregor brings over 20 years of semiconductor and electronics industry experience to In-Stat, including experience in semiconductor and software engineering, system architecture, product marketing, strategic marketing, marketing communications, mergers & acquisitions, and sales. Jim has worked for some of the leading semiconductor, embedded systems, and military and aerospace companies, including General Dynamics, Intel, Motorola, ON Semiconductor, and STMicroelectronics. In addition, Jim has a Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering Technology from DeVry Institute of Technology and a Masters of Business Administration from Arizona State University.