COMMENTARY--For years Intel's been selling processors based on a simple metric; more speed is better. Now it seems as though it's undergoing something of a backflip.
Intel recently used its Fall Intel Developer Forum in San Jose to show off and hype its upcoming mobile processor line, the not-quite-snappily named Banias platform. It's unlikely to remain Banias when it comes to market; expect to see "SuperOptimaPentium-Mobile" processors or something like that. (Full disclosure bit: I travelled to San Jose as a guest of Intel. If they wanted to bribe journalists, however, they'd probably pick somewhere flashier than San Jose, which seems to have a daytime population of around 15 people, and only one good bar).
If you wanted more proof, Intel doesn't own Banias.com; that's the property of the Institute for the Study of Archaeology and Religion. Just throwing that in there for the trivia freaks.
Banias, Intel was keen to point out, is an entirely new mobile processor platform built from the ground up as a mobile solution. That marks it out from the existing Celeron lines, which hit the budget sector, and the Pentium III and Pentium 4-M lines which aim more towards the performance end of the market, with associated higher unit costs. Intel's playing an interesting game of talking up the battery performance of Banias alongside the performance and wireless connectivity factors.
It should be noted here that Intel's still keeping most of its Banias 'cards' close to its chest; as such what is known about the platform is quite simply what Intel wants to be known. So what do we know? Intel's stated that Banias CPUs will ship with around 77 million transistors in the CPU core. Intel representatives wouldn't confirm what processor speeds they'll be offering with the new systems, but a quick bit of illicit button pushing on the samples they had onstage at IDF showed units reporting a processor speed of 1.4GHz.
1.4GHz isn't to be sneezed at, but based on Intel's historical marketing push towards bigger and better megahertz numbers, it also must be presenting something of a quandary to Intel's marketing people. After all, they're the same people who scoff at Apple's insistence that its slower processor systems can't possibly compete with faster Intel-based systems, even if they do have a completely different base architecture.
Flogging a processor on architectural differences will be a tricky prospect, although Intel's in a better position to do it than most. If you go to buy a desktop system, you've got geniune choice; AMD or Intel. Intel's still the 800 pound gorilla in the desktop equation, but in the notebook sphere it's more like a twelve ton gorilla. There are other mobile processors out there, but finding a notebook not running an Intel processor, especially in the Australian market, is somewhat akin to finding sharp pointy objects in farmyard collections of dried grass-type products.
Intel's almost obsessively keen to point out that Banias' architecture means that it will outperform what we might expect from just the processor speed. When I put a Banias question to Anand Chandrasekher, Vice President of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group that looked only at the power and wireless connectivity side of the platform, his first response (before actually answering any question) was to repeat the mantra of performance, performance, performance. That sounds awfully like the Intel of old, but without the megahertz numbers to back it up -- at least yet.
One thing Intel will have to deliver on with the Banias platform is battery performance. Chandrasekher said that the eventual aim is to deliver eight hours of battery life, although the exact timetable for that remains unclear. Nobody's going to spend the big money that the first Banias platforms will undoubtedly command if the battery life/power combination can't be acceptably met. The samples that Chandrasekher demonstrated with used less than one watt in sleep state and around seven watts in performance modes, which is less than their current offerings. Demonstrations, are, of course, chosen rather carefully to put forward the best possible case; I'll reserve my opinion on that once Banias systems are actually shipping.
The other area that Intel's keen to push with the Banias platform is integrated wireless. Its chipset of choice for this is the oddly named Calexico, which sounds strangely like a petrol station. It's a dual band 802.11a/b solution with one rather unusual feature. In demonstrations, Intel representatives claimed it will automatically connect to the strongest nearby wireless connection point. Sounds like a wardriver's dream package, and one fraught with illicit and or immoral possibilities in terms of intruding on the network space of other users. Intel was remaining mum on the exact specifications of how this would work, naturally.
According to Chandrasekher the entire notebook world will one day revolve around Banias architectures; while Intel plans to keep chugging out P4-M units in the short term, in the long term it sees Banias as its sole notebook platform. That's presuming, of course, that it can perform the kind of marketing gymnastics required to move from a "Megahertz until it hurtz" philosophy to a "hey, our stuff is just better, OK?" stance.
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