Intel Developer Forum - Wimax, HD laptop commitments

Paul Otellini has moved onto Wimax, which he says is an essential component of the next wave of ultramobile.

Year ago, trials moving from fixed wimax to mobile. Ten trials ging on in 06. Now 120. Year ago, two vendors were committed, Clearwire and Sprint. Now Intel is investing with KDDI to enable Wimax in Japan. Need all PCs and PDAs to talk to it. New module available next year, Echo Peak, will have Wimax and Wi-Fi. Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Panasonic, Toshiba, all committing to integrate Wimax with the Montevina 45 nanometre platform next year.

150 million people will be covered by Wimax in 2008, mostly in the in US, 250 million worldwide by 2010, 1.3billion by 2012.

“Hopefully the roaming will be seamlessly integrated”

No mention of 3G, of course.

Montevina will also have high definition support for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray built in, be 50 percent smaller than existing mobile chipsets, and there'll be a 25 watt version available at launch, May 2008. A working prototype is wheeled out - "the ugliest laptop ever", says Otellini, of the perspex box with a motherboard inside.