In the face of dramatic employment changes and significant cost cutting, Intel still holds a strong foothold in the market reveals a recent In-Stat study.
Since the beginning of 2006, Intel made drastic changes that included hiring a new CEO in Paul Otellini, and making significant cost cuts resulting from increased competition in microprocessors from AMD, a completely new product line-up, and new product strategies to enable expansion of the x86 architecture into new market segments such as discrete graphics, consumer electronics, and ultra mobile devices (UMDs), the high-tech market research firm said.
"Despite the challenges, Intel remains in a good position to transition with the market and remain a driver in the direction of technology, if it can remain competitive in these new markets," says Jim McGregor, In-Stat analyst.
The study, “A New Intel: A Review of Intel's Key Strategies” also found that:
- Intel's LPIA microprocessors are the keys to both Intel's future microprocessors and consumer SoC solutions.
- The first product in the Larrabee product family, which is targeting graphics, will bring together a new high-speed on-chip interconnect, LPIA processor core(s), graphics cores(s) and die stacking for cache memory, a first from Intel.
- Although Intel has changed its memory strategy to focus on NAND, In-Stat believes that Intel will likely exit the discrete Flash market within a few years because of difficultly making a positive ROI.
In separate news, Intel announced today that it has joined more than 40 server technology providers in support of the new Server Systems Infrastructure (SSI) industry specification for modular server platforms.
The Modular Server Specifications simplify and lower the cost of product development by providing design guidance that enables server builders to develop compliant and interoperable building blocks at the blade, chassis and manageability software level.
The Modular Server Specifications are designed by the SSI organization, an industry initiative with more than 185 members. This announcement includes design specifications for compute blades, mezzanine cards and system management interfaces. The latest specifications build on previous successes of SSI, which include energy-efficient power supplies and optimized server board form factors for pedestal and rack-mount server platforms. All design specifications from SSI are made openly available to the broad market.
“Intel is proud of our history of more than nine years of contributions and association with SSI,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel.
“As part of our commitment to leading energy-efficient computing, Intel is an active participant in the specification that will drive new cost-effective, flexible, industry standards-based platforms based on the Intel® Xeon® processor into the server market.”
Companies supporting the Modular Server Specifications include such industry leading I/O, board and system vendors as Acer, AMAX, AMI, Appro, Aquarius, Aragorn Computers and Asus amongst others. |
