Intel outlines future chip technologies, integrated functions at Developer Forum. (Top Technology Showcase).

At its San Jose Developer Forum (IDF) in September, chip maker Intel Corp. indicated that it will soon begin integrating wireless communications functions into is microprocessors. Company officials also outlined several new technologies that, Intel believes, will enable Moore's Law to continue for the foreseeable future.

"We believe that integrated silicon will deliver innovative, ubiquitous, and low-cost technologies to enable a world in which all computers will communicate and all communication devices will compute," Intel chief technology officer Patrick Gelsinger said at the IDF. Company officials indicated that Intel has been pursuing the development of "silicon radios" based on the company's low-power CMOS manufacturing process. Over the next several years, the company indicated, such radios will be integrated into Intel chips, enabling any device powered by one of those chips to have wireless radio communication capabilities.

Gelsinger also demonstrated a tunable laser using "silicon photonics" and indicated that Intel is on track to apply Moore's Law toward "building highly integrated components that marry digital functionality and silicon-based opto-electronic devices on a single chip." The goal of this research, according to the company, is to dramtically lower the cost of optical networks by integrating component technologies into low-cost silicon building blocks.

Intel senior Vice President Sunlin Chou said that one of Intel's research projects on terahertz transistors (which the company will move into production in the second part of the decade) focuses on experimental high-performance, non-planar triple-gate CMOS transistors, or "Tri-Gate transistors." Intel said that the Tri-Gate transistor moves away from the current "planar" (flat) design, and instead is designed using a three-dimensional architecture, which increases the surface area of the transistor gate, thus increasing performance and enabling higher speed processors. (Such transistors would require further improvement before going into production in the second half of the decade, Chou said.)

Intel is also spending heavily on nanotechnology research, including carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires, though the practical use of such technology is still at least a decade away.

While Intel's Developer Forum is usually as much cheerleading session as technical discussion, this year's announcements offer some potentially telling clues about the company's technological intentions. Intel already sees the writing on the wall for its plain-Jane CPUs: They will continue to get faster and cheaper, or course, but the slow-down in the PC upgrade cycle has played havoc with the company's bottom line (CPUs account for 80% of Intel's revenues.) To eliminate (or ameliorate) this problem, the company is going full-bore into wireless networking via integrated chips, using its vast R&D and manufacturing resources to become a one-stop shop for communications and networking chips.

"Intel has decided that it needs mobile computing to succeed and for that it wants wireless LAN in every Starbucks outlet and airport lounge," Joe Osha, a Merrill Lynch analyst, said in a research note. Larger wireless LAN chip makers such Intersil and Agere, smaller companies like Atheros, as well as chip set rival VIA, are firmly in Intel's sights. While the company's success in these new markets is in no way assured, its plans should have rivals worried. With Microsoft about to enter the wireless home networking market (see this month's wireless feature) and already in the mobile phone sector, an Intel-Microsoft pairing in WLANs could alter the balance of power significantly.

www.intel.com