The chipmaker presented its argument in several ways on Tuesday. For one, Intel said it has seen a benefit in marketing several chips together, as it has done with Centrino, its bundle of technology for wireless notebook PCs.
Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum here, Intel President Paul Otellini said the next target for such a bundle will be the home PC, which is being transformed from a productivity machine into a home entertainment centre that demands both speed and new features, such as content protection.
Intel also believes that its future lies in dual-core chips, a single piece of silicon with two multiprocessor cores. The company scrapped plans for a faster traditional Pentium 4 in favor of the "two is better than one" approach.
In 2005, Intel will relaase dual-core chips for servers, desktops and laptops, Otellini said. By 2006, the company expects about half of its chips to have such a design, with all future products being designed around multiple cores. As expected, Otellini discussed some of Intel's dual-core plans during his presentation.
The various moves are aimed at giving Intel a prime position in the digital home and to help the company protect its traditional stronghold in the business market.
The plan for the long term comes as Intel is warning that the near-term PC market may not be all that strong. The company on Thursday cut its financial outlook for the current quarter, sending shivers down the spines of some of its Wall Street watchers.
Otellini said the chip industry has recovered from the dot-com bust, with 2004 likely to set a new record for communications chip sales and possibly for microprocessors.
"We are seeing the surge after the bubble," he said.
"A better way"
But there's lots of work to do still. As part of its overall effort, Intel is increasingly working to shift the focus -- that of its own designers and also of its customers -- from raw clock speed to improvements by way of adding new features, including releasing so-called dual-core processors and technology like Vanderpool, which will work to allow PCs to run multiple independent operating systems at the same time.
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