So, I’ll confess, I’ve always liked the presentation style of Mooly Eden, our Corporate Vice President & General Manager of our PC Client Group – I have always found it to be very honest & straight forward. Personally, I’ve always liked folks that shoot from the hip & tell you like it is. So, with that said, I still think Mooly did a great job with his keynote.
If I have to be totally honest, I had not really gotten the whole “ultrabook” thing – at least not until I saw this keynote, so for that reason alone, I’m glad I came to IDF! But, before Mooly got to ultrabooks, he made a point of making something perfectly clear – the “PC” market is still a healthy, growing, vibrant market segment. I know personally, I’ve seen all kinds of stories of the “Post-PC” era & I’ve never put much stock in it because, while tablets & netbooks make great consumption vehicles – a very large portion of the population, especially the younger end of the population, don’t want to just consume content, they want to create it – whether that be a video, a song, or even a game. Today’s young people are far more likely to want to make a video then they want to make a diorama – like my generation did.
So, in support of this trend, Mooly talked a lot about not only Sandy Bridge, which is our current generation of mainstream client processors, but also Ivy Bridge, which is right around the corner. Not only does Ivy Bridge have 1.48 Billion Transistors in it, but there has also been a significant improvement over and above the graphics capabilities in Sandy Bridge so when this new platform comes out, it should truly amaze people by what it can do. And, of course, as previously announced, Ivy Bridge will be produced on our newest 22nm, Tri-Gate transistors, which will only further help improve its energy efficiencies.
And that can only help with our initiatives around Ultrabooks which really are just the next stage in the evolution of what people told us was important when we created the first Centrino Mobile platforms. Back in 2003, there were clearly for vectors people cared about:
- Great Performance
- Light Form Factors
- Long Battery Life
- And, easy connections to Wi-Fi
So, Ultrabooks just basically drive all of the above to the limits of what is possible with today’s technologies, and then tries to push it all just a little bit better. But this is not something Intel is taking lightly – we are investing $300 Million into an Ultrabook Ecosystem Fund so that we can help to accerate the rate at which the next advances in Ultrabook-related technologies not only become possible, but also, perhaps most importantly, cost effective.
And, while Mooly was able to show and demonstrate some Ultrabook systems based on Ivy Bridge, he was able to go 1 step farther and actually show some designs made by various ODMs of Ultrabooks based on Haswell, the next generation after Ivy Bridge, which I think is an amazing accomplishment! One of the emphasis of the new Haswell-based systems will be roughly a 20x reduction in standby power consumption when compared to the current generation of solutions.
On top of all of the above, Mooly also had some friends join him on stage, from the likes of McAfee & Microsoft, to highlight some collaborative work they’ve been doing with us in the area of Security & Windows 8, respectively.
So, in the end, it was a great keynote – loads of great product-related news, some cool demos of what is coming next, & nice collaborative efforts with some of the biggest names in the technology industries. But, obviously, one cannot squeeze a whole hour of a great keynote into a single blog post, so be sure to watch the Webcast of Mooly’s Keynote for yourself!


