Intel prepares ultra-small chips for Dick Tracy-style wearable gadgets

Intel prepares ultra-small chips for Dick Tracy-style gadgets

3:51pm EDT

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel is working on a new line of ultra-small and ultra-low-power microchips for wearable devices like smartwatches and bracelets, a bid by the company to make sure it will be at the crest of the next big technology wave after arriving late to the smartphone and tablet revolution. The new line of chips, called Intel Quark, will ship next year and include an ingestible version aimed at biomedical uses, Intel’s president, Renee James, told reporters late on Monday. The Quark chips will be five times smaller and 10 times more power efficient than Intel’s Atom chips for tablets and smartphones, she said. “We’re very committed to not missing the next big thing,” James said.Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich and James spoke on Tuesday at the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, their first major public appearance since their promotion in May, when Paul Otellini stepped aside as chief executive.

Krzanich said tablets made with Intel chips and priced at less than $100 would be on store shelves in time for this year’s holiday season.

He was flanked by rows of Android and Windows 8 tablets, many of them with attachable keyboards – an effort by Intel to show conference attendees it has made progress in mobile.

Intel said the first chips made on its cutting-edge 14 nanometer technology would start production late this year and be available in 2014, helping it extend its competitive lead in manufacturing.

Intel’s most advanced chips are currently made with 22 nanometer production technology, which is already more advanced than production lines at Intel rivals like Samsung and TSMC.

The world’s biggest chipmaker, Intel dominates the PC industry, but it was slow to adapt its chips to be suitable for smartphones and tablets.

CLUNKY BRACELET

Intel’s focus on wearable computing – a trend that for many Americans evokes images of Dick Tracy, the comic strip detective who sported a two-way wrist radio – comes as Silicon Valley eyes sophisticated computerized watches with touch-screens and other high-tech features.

Technology companies see wearables as a growth opportunity amid signs that explosive expansion in smartphones shipments since Apple launched its first iPhone in 2007 is receding.

Last week, Samsung Electronics launched the Galaxy Gear watch, and Qualcomm, an Intel rival, launched the Toq smartwatch in a bid to showcase its technology to potential manufacturers.

Krzanich showed off a prototype watch and clunky bracelet made with the Quark chips.

“The idea is not to bring these to market but to come up with devices that our partners can use to develop their own products in this open ecosystem, he said.

A three-decade Intel veteran seen as the company’s manufacturing guru, Krzanich has said that under his leadership Intel will give much more priority to its Atom line of mobile chips. In the past, Intel’s most cutting-edge manufacturing resources were reserved for making powerful PC chips, with Atom chips made on older production lines.

Processors based on technology from ARM and made by Qualcomm and Samsung account for most of the mobile market.

Intel has shown some recent signs of improvement in mobile, progress Krzanich is keen to build on. The company has promised major performance improvements in its new Bay Trail chip for tablets.

The Bay Trail chip is based on Intel’s new Silvermont architecture, which is the most extensive overhaul of its mobile processors to date, with improved performance and lower power consumption.

Also on Tuesday, Intel launched a new line of its brawny Xeon chips for servers, a market it almost completely dominates. The new server chips have up to 50 percent better performance than previous versions and 45 percent more energy efficiency, Intel said.

Intel recently began shipping a low-power line of data center chips based on the Silvermont architecture, part of its strategy to defend its territory from smaller chipmakers hoping to use ARM technology widely used in smartphones to push into the servers.

Updated September 10, 2013, 9:09 p.m. ET

Intel Unveils Tiny Quark Chips for Wearable Devices

Processor Is One-Fifth the Size of Its Low-End Atom Chip

DON CLARK

Intel Corp.’s INTC +0.33% new leaders have vowed to take the company into new markets, and Tuesday they are revealing a key vehicle: a line of ultrasmall chips called Quark that can be used in wearable devices, skin patches or even swallowed to gather medical data.

The Silicon Valley company, often criticized for failing to penetrate smartphones quickly enough, says Quark will be used to jump on emerging wearable, industrial and medical applications that could require billions of tiny calculating engines in coming years.

“It’s the smallest thing we’ve ever built,” said Renee James, who was appointed in May as Intel’s president along with Chief Executive Brian Krzanich.

Both executives are making a series of announcements in their first appearance in their new positions at Intel’s annual developer conference here. Quark is the most surprising, giving Intel a new entry into a race to bring computing and communications capability to everything from light switches to transportation control systems.

The field is sometimes called “the Internet of Things,” or “embedded” computing, though Ms. James prefers the phrase “integrated” computing.

One downside of the opportunity is that such applications often require chips that may cost less than a dollar. Intel is best known for chips for personal computers and server systems that sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars each.

Ms. James, who spoke in an interview before the Intel Developer Forum, isn’t disclosing expected pricing for Quark. But she said it is one-fifth the size and one-tenth the power consumption of its low-end Atom chip line, whose least-expensive model for portable PCs lists for $42.

Intel is betting it can still reap good profit margins on Quark because of advances in its production processes, which reduce the size and cost of transistors on chips. The company in 2011 beat rivals in reducing its circuit dimensions to 22 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and on Tuesday Mr. Krzanich showed off the first working chips based on a 14-nanometer manufacturing recipe due out in hardware next year.

“Our strategy is to lead in every segment of computing,” Mr. Krzanich told developers.

Intel, which also showed off a bracelet-style gadget prototype at the event, will have plenty of company. A number of chip makers already sell low-priced products called microcontrollers for industrial and medical applications, and other players are stepping up embedded efforts. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., AMD +4.88% Intel’s longtime rival in PC chips, this week announced further plans for products in the market.

An even more potent rival is Qualcomm Inc., the No. 1 seller of smartphone chips. The San Diego-based company used its own event last week to discuss wearable technology and other developments related to the Internet of Things, including a smartwatch called Toq. Qualcomm has been particularly vocal about medical applications, such as sensors that could warn of heart attacks.

The concept of ingestible medical devices has been pioneered by companies such as Proteus Biomedical Inc., a startup that has been developing a tiny sensor powered by digestive fluid that can be embedded in medicine to confirm whether patients are taking prescribed pills. It sends data to a sensing device worn on the skin, which in turn communicates to a smartphone to send information to doctors.

Ms. James acknowledged that medical applications come with government regulation, which can slow entry into the market. But she said Intel is working with potential customers in the field that know such processes well.

And she has little doubt Quark can fit the requirements. “It is literally disposable silicon technology,” she said.

September 10, 2013 6:12 pm

Intel intends to leapfrog smartphone era with Quark chips

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Intel on Tuesday laid out plans to leapfrog the smartphone era with a new family of tiny chips for devices designed to be worn, embedded in everyday objects or ingested.

The decision marks an attempt by new chief executive Brian Krzanich to galvanise the world’s biggest chipmaker after seeing it lose the race in smartphones and tablets to processors based on designs from the UK’sArm Holdings

“It’s very much the next frontier,” said Renée James, Intel’s president. “It takes us down to a level we haven’t been at before.” After reacting late to the touchscreen mobile device markets, “we are very committed to not missing the next one,” she added.

The new range of chips, called Quark after the subatomic particle of the same name, are intended for what many in the tech world hope will represent the industry’s next big opportunities: “wearable” computers like smartwatches and the spread of intelligence to everyday objects, forming what is known as the internet of things.

Among the most promising uses of the new chips are medical applications, such as smartbandages that monitor vital signs and disposable sensors designed to be swallowed or injected, Ms James said.

Unveiling Quark at Intel’s annual developer event in San Francisco, Mr Krzanich also showed off devices running chips that the company claims will finally make it fully competitive in smartphones and tablets. They included the first tablet processor from Intel designed specifically for Google’s Android operating system.

Emphasising the break with traditional software ally Microsoft, Ms James said that Intel now employed as many engineers working on chip platforms for Android as for Windows. Intel is also poised this week to demonstrate its processors for the first time powering Chromebooks, Google-designed laptops that have won backing by some traditional PC makers.

In another attempt to reach deeper into the mobile world, Intel also demonstrated an ultra-low power PC chip producing so little heat that it doesn’t require a fan to cool. The processor would further blur the line between tablets and PCs, Ms James said.

The increasing overlap between Intel’s Core family of PC chips – its most profitable product line – and the cheaper Atom chips intended for low-power mobile devices, has put Wall Street on edge. Much of the focus at this year’s developer forum is upon the latest generation of Atom chips, dubbed Bay Trail, scheduled to appear this year in a wide range of new devices in the $299-399 price range.

“Investors are concerned that at $25-50, [Bay Trail] will be so good it will outsell the $100 [PC] products,” said Doug Freedman, a chip analyst at RBC Capital. He added, however, that the cheaper chips were likely to be seen for the most part in highly portable gadgets such as 7 inch tablets, leaving room for Core processors in higher-performance devices.

Intel did not announce pricing for the new Quark line of chips, but suggested that it believed the massive volume of the devices would enable it to maintain its typical high gross margins.

“We think there are hundreds of millions of units – and we’re the highest volume manufacturer,” Intel’s president said.