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Intel unveils 'Tolapai' system on a chip roadmap

Intel unveiled its system-on-a-chip plans with a chip code-named "Tolapai" at the Intel Developers Forum in Beijing. The chip giant described Tolapai as a family of enterprise system-on-a-chip products designed to combine several system components on one platform.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor

Intel unveiled its system-on-a-chip plans with a chip code-named "Tolapai" at the Intel Developers Forum in Beijing.

The chip giant described Tolapai as a family of enterprise system-on-a-chip products designed to combine several system components on one platform. Intel's strategy has been to release new processing platforms every two years or so.  Intel has recently been talking up its roadmap and benchmarks as it looks to distance itself from AMD.

Here's what Intel had to say:

The 2008 Tolapai product is expected to reduce the chip sizes by up to 45 percent and power consumption by approximately 20 percent compared to a standard four-chip design, while improving throughput performance and processor efficiency.

In addition to Tolapai, Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice president of  outlined "Caneland," a high-end multi-processor chip that will be used for blades. The chip will arrive in the third quart

er in 80- and 50-watt versions for blades.

Intel is using its powwow in Beijing to highlight its global footprint, including its research and development centers (gallery right). 

Among other key items, Intel...

Gave performance indicators for its Penryn family of processors. For desktop PCs, Penryn should show speed increases of 15 percent for image-related applications, 25 percent for 3-D rendering, 40 percent for gaming and Intel-based video encoding. Those stats were based on "pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel quad core processor running at 3.33 Gigahertz (GHz) with a 1333 Megahertz (MHz) front side bus (FSB) and 12MB cache versus an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 introduced last week at 2.93 GHz with 1066 FSB and 8MB cache."

As for high-performance computing and workstations, Intel said Penryn will result in speed gains of 45 percent for bandwidth intensive applications and 25 percent increase for servers using Java. These stats were based on a "pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors with 1600 MHz front side bus for workstation and HPC, and a 1333 MHz front side bus for servers versus today’s quad-core Intel Xeon X5355 processors."

Said it has begun planning products around a programmable interface architecture called "Larrabee." The general idea is that Larrabee will be programmable so it can speed up application development.

Noted an initiative to speed up server accelerators, dubbed Intel QuickAssist Technology. The idea is to increase the performance of a function while cutting power. Tolapai will include this technology.

Outlined its consumer plans. Specifically, Intel said it will update its Intel Viiv processor roadmap with a gaming platform codenamed "Skulltrail." (That has to win the codename of the day award.)

Intel also has plans to talk up power consumption. The company set a research and development goal of cutting power consumption for ultra mobile computing devices by a "factor of 10" by 2010.

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