Pre-IDF report: Intel focuses on energy efficiency for IDF Fall 2006

 

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Posted on 25 Sep 2006 at 19:56

San Francisco's Moscone Center West, the venue for Intel Developer Forum Fall 2006 which kicks off tomorrow, is still in the throes of setting up; flight cases are strewn across the entrance lobby of the massive convention centre.

Every IDF has a major theme, and the official IDF guide book listing tech sessions and keynotes - which stretches to 200 pages despite the event lasting only three full days - says it all. 'Energy-Efficient Performance. Leap Ahead,' is the slogan on the front of the guide. Flip it open to get a look at what Intel President Paul Ottelini's keynote tomorrow has in store: 'Paul S. Ottelini's opening keynote provides you with an overview of Intel corporate strategy, including our focus on energy-efficient performance.'

Turn to the preview of Wednesday's speeches and it's now practically been turned into a trademark: 'Intel Energy Efficient Performance does more than evolve the digital enterprise. It revolutionizes it.'

Banners are going up across the center: 'Breakaway performance. Energy efficient,' says one enormous one. 'Unleashed performance united with energy smarts,' says another.

So it's pretty clear what the gist is going to be this September. The focus on energy appears to have ousted even the coming of quad-core processors, although a sizable demo stand plastered with 'Quad-core is here!' slogans is taking shape on the first floor.

What the breathless posters don't address is AMD's claim that its total platform power efficiency is better, with Athlon 64 and Opteron integrated memory controllers doing away with the need for a north bridge chip. The north bridge accounts for up to 23W of power consumption on a Core 2-based system - almost 50% as much as the processor itself.

Intel has probably pre-empted awkward questions along those lines though. Notice that the phrase 'power consumption' hasn't been mentioned thus far, only 'energy efficiency'. This brings the possibility of neatly fudging the issue of total power consumption by addressing things in terms of performance per Watt. Depending on which benchmark you pick, Core 2-based systems will tend to give a better figure when you divide the number of operations per second by the total power consumption of a system. This is the message Intel will likely be hammering home over the next few days.

If you want to read our take on exactly what's going on, then keep on checking pcpro.co.uk for the latest updates over the next three days.

Author: David Fearon, San Francisco