Intel plans major energy-efficient technology release for 2009

At its annual "Research Day" last week, Intel revealed several technologies focused on energy efficiency, including four breakthroughs slotted for release throughout 2009—platform power management, energy-efficient wireless, 32 nanometer (nm) chips and power clamping for data centers.

The company's 32nm chip is likely to be the first of its kind on the market and will result in an average 30 to 40 percent increase in efficiency according to the company.  Smaller in size, but packed with 2 billion transistors, the chips will also drive costs down and performance up, despite requiring a more expensive immersion lithography technique for production, according to Dr. Sanjay Natarajan, director of 32nm process technology at Intel. "Other companies have talked about a 32 nanometer chip, but we're the first to reach any definitive milestones," says Natarajan. "We are so confident that we will hit our 2009 production target we announced our work on the chip six months earlier than we initially planned."

Intel's platform power management technology takes the company's processors and divides them into narrow areas that can be controlled separately, enabling idle areas to power down when not in use. By essentially "turning off" certain unnecessary processes, the management system can achieve 30 to 50 percent power savings, virtually doubling battery life for notebooks, according to Intel. The platform power management systems will start appearing on laptops in 2009 and be widely available across all platforms by 2012.

To manage power in the data center, Intel took a similar approach, enabling administrators to set policies and power limits for individual servers within racks. The company's "node manager" enables the distribution of power to servers according to use; administrators can set low power limits for under-utilized servers and higher limits for more active servers, enabling users to add more servers to a rack with minimal performance impact. The so-called "power clamping" technology also enables continuous, if not optimal, use during a brown-out.

Intel is also aiming to make wireless communication more energy-efficient by taking a similar approach to firmware as it has taken with its processors. The company's researchers have updated firmware to actively monitor the traffic and demand of the wireless network and turn the wireless radio on or off depending on usage—without losing the connection. With Intel's energy-efficient wireless technology, test computers consume 4 to 6 times less energy than computers without traditional wireless technology, according to the company. Intel's energy-efficient wireless technology will hit the consumer market by mid-to-late 2009.

The chipmaker's stock rose 67 cents Thursday after a dip on Wednesday linked to an announcement from the Semiconductor Industry Association that lowered chip sales growth estimate for the year. Intel's stock is currently trading at $22.48 a share, while primary competitor AMD's stock is priced at $7.33 a share.