I see that I didn't dig deep enough for my earlier post on changes that Intel is making in its chip line. I learn today that the "thermal wall" is the impetus behind Intel's changes.
The warning came first from a group of hobbyists that tests the speeds of computer chips. This year, the group discovered that the Intel Corp.'s newest microprocessor was running slower and hotter than its predecessor.
What they had stumbled upon was a major threat to Intel's long-standing approach to dominating the semiconductor industry -- relentlessly raising the clock speed of its chips.
The change to a dual-core chip is intended to help combat the heat problem that is rearing its ugly head. But this is a change that's going to slow Intel's momentum.
Last week, after the company said that it was making a fundamental break with its traditional chip-design approach, some analysts and former Intel designers said that Intel was coming to terms with escalating heat problems so severe they threatened to cause its chips to fracture at extreme temperatures.
They contend the company's delay in shifting its approach may have left it, in some ways, behind rivals who have been pursuing a cooler strategy.
In fact, there are some indicators that Intel has stumbled in the marketplace already.
Late last month, Current Analysis, a research firm in La Jolla, Calif., reported that for the week of April 24, the percent of personal computers sold using AMD chips had surpassed those using Intel chips, with Advanced Micro at 52 percent of PCs sold versus Intel at 47 percent. It was the first time in recent history that Intel had lost its lead.
Now, that's just for a single week, and in and of itself doesn't mean that AMD is ready to shoulder Intel to the side, but it's further evidence that Intel's lock on the world of the PC CPU is certainly broken.
Some industry experts consider this change at Intel to be potentially damaging to the company. But not everyone.
Others in the industry, however, are convinced that Intel's problems are no more severe than what its competitors, such as IBM, AMD, Sun Microsystems Inc. and others, eventually will face.
The problem, as they see it, is simply that Intel, as the industry leader, is the first one forced to struggle with the effects of pushing the envelope in advanced manufacturing processes, namely by moving to build chips with a minimum feature size -- the width of the smallest line or gap in a chip design -- as small as 90 nanometers from the industry standard of 130 nanometers. A typical human hair, by comparison, is 60,000 to 100,000 nanometers thick.
"The interesting sign here is that Intel is leading on the state of the art," said David Ditzel, vice chairman and chief technology officer of the Transmeta Corp., a maker of low-power-consuming processors in Santa Clara, Calif. "It will not be the only company to experience the shock and panic. It will happen to hundreds of other companies."
It's always interesting to watch these battles, both between the companies themselves as well as between the companies and the limits of technology. The good thing is, the users ultimately benefit from the improvements.
