Industry Leaders Develop Superspeed USB Interconnect USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0

Intel Corporation and other industry leaders have formed the USB 3.0 Promoter Group to create a superspeed personal USB interconnect that can deliver over 10 times the speed of today's connection. The technology, also developed by HP, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments Incorporated, will target fast sync-and-go transfer applications in the PC, consumer and mobile segments that are necessary as digital media become ubiquitous and file sizes increase up to and beyond 25 Gigabytes.

USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0 will create a backward-compatible standard with the same ease-of-use and plug and play capabilities of previous USB technologies. Targeting over 10x performance increase, the technology will draw from the same architecture of wired USB. In addition, the USB 3.0 specification will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed to enable backward compatibility as well as future-proofing for optical capabilities.

"USB 3.0 is the next logical step for the PC's most popular wired connectivity," said Jeff Ravencraft, technology strategist with Intel and president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). "The digital era requires high-speed performance and reliable connectivity to move the enormous amounts of digital content now present in everyday life. USB 3.0 will meet this challenge while maintaining the ease-of-use experience that users have come to love and expect from any USB technology."

Intel formed the USB 3.0 Promoter Group with the understanding that the USB-IF would act as the trade association for the USB 3.0 specification. A completed USB 3.0 specification is expected by the first half of 2008. USB 3.0 implementations will initially be in the form of discrete silicon.

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group is committed to preserving the existing USB device class driver infrastructure and investment, look-and-feel and ease-of-use of USB while continuing to expand this great technology's capabilities.

About the USB-IF
The non-profit USB Implementers Forum, Inc. was formed to provide a support organization and forum for the advancement and adoption of USB technology. The USB-IF facilitates the development of high-quality compatible USB devices, through its logo and compliance program and promotes the benefits of USB and the quality of products that have passed compliance testing. Further information, including postings of the most recent product and technology announcements, is available by visiting the USB-IF Web site at www.usb.org.

Participating Company Press Quotes:
"HP's commitment to providing customers with a reliable method for connecting peripherals is evident through our support of both USB 2.0 and Wireless USB technologies," said Phil Schultz, vice president, Consumer Inkjet Solutions, HP. "Now, with USB 3.0, we're creating an even better experience for customers when connecting their printers, digital cameras or other peripheral devices to their PCs."

"Intel worked jointly with industry leaders in the development and adoption of two generations of USB, which has become the number one peripheral interface in computing and hand-held consumer electronic devices," said Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel Corporation. "As the market evolves to support customer demands for storing and moving larger amounts of digital content, we look forward to developing the third generation of USB technology that leverages the current USB interface and optimize it to meet these demands."

"NEC has been a supporter of USB technologies since the first installment of wired USB," said Katsuhiko Itagaki, general manager, SoC Systems Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. "Now it's time to evolve an already successful interface to meet market demands for moving large amounts of content at faster speeds to minimize users wait time."

" NXP is pleased to join other top-tier companies in advancing the number one interconnect technology in the world to meet the needs of next-generation peripherals," said Pierre-Yves Couteau, director of Strategy & Business Development, Business Line Connected Entertainment, NXP Semiconductors. "As a leading provider of USB semiconductor solutions, NXP is committed to drive the standardization and applications of Superspeed USB in the industry."

"With the proliferation of Hi-Speed USB in a wide number of market segments, including personal computing, consumer electronics, and mobility, we anticipate that USB 3.0 will rapidly become the de facto standard as the replacement of USB 2.0 ports in applications where higher bandwidth is valued," said Greg Hantak, vice president Worldwide ASIC at Texas Instruments Incorporated. "TI is excited about the new applications and improved user experience that will be enabled by the performance of USB 3.0."

Intel Introduces Worldwide Software Training Curriculum to Spur Multi-Core Computing Software Design

Intel Corporation unveiled today a global training curriculum for software developers to speed and expand software development for multi-core processors. The Intel® Software Training Program offers classroom courses and hands-on lab work to better train software developers in multi-threaded application design. Training is delivered by Intel-approved instructors and designed in a way to quickly reach worldwide developers with NIIT*, an information technology training company, and other authorized providers.

As the industry transitions from single-core processors to ones that have multiple cores and threads per processor, software developers need to hone their skills to create applications that take advantage of multi-core processors that can execute multiple instructions simultaneously. Software developers can no longer rely on increasing processor clock speed to gain improvements in application performance.

The Intel Software Training Program employs Intel expertise and offers basic and advanced software development training, including software parallelism, multithreaded programming and platform optimization.

"The power of multi-core processors to increase software performance is fantastic, but not automatic and not happening fast enough," said Elliot Garbus, general manager of Intel's Developer Relations Division. "With this new training program and a number of other programs, products and tools to help the developer community, Intel is empowering software designers with the knowledge and skills they need to usher in a new generation of software innovation."

The program is being deployed in the United States through Element K*, a subsidiary of NIIT. Other authorized providers around the world include Academy IT* and LANIT* in Russia, Aribil* and NETRON* in Turkey, NIIT Ltd.* in India, QA-IQ* in the United Kingdom, Samsung SDS* in Korea, Training Choice* in Australia and Singapore, and TRIA IT–training GmbH* in Germany.

Additional information about the Intel Software Training Program, including course schedules and registration, is available at www.intel.com/software/college.

In addition to this new program, Intel offers a full suite of development tools for multi-core processors, an online multi-core developer community via the Intel® Software Network and a higher education program that delivers multi-core curricula to thousands of students in more than 200 universities worldwide.

Intel® Software provides resources, technologies, products and services developers need to create innovative products and industry-leading software solutions with enhanced business value and are designed to run best on Intel platforms. For more information, visit www.intel.com/go/software.

About Intel
Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Marking the next step in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

Intel has more than 15 45nm Hi-k product designs in various stages of development, and will have two 45nm manufacturing fabs in production by the end of the year, with a total of four in production by the second half of 2008 that will deliver tens of millions of these processors. Below are many of the details of the Penryn processor family and a glimpse into some of the key features of Intel's future generation of processors, codenamed Nehalem.

PENRYN FAMILY MICROARCHITECTURE INNOVATIONS

• A Range of Products -- Six Penryn family processors, including dual and quad-core desktop processors and a dual core mobile processor are all under the Intel Core processor brand name as well as new dual and quad-core server processors under the Intel® Xeon® processor brand name. A processor for higher-end server multiprocessing systems is also under development. As previously noted, Intel already has a total of 15 45nm products scheduled.


• Technical Marvel -- 45nm next-generation Intel® Core™2 quad-core processors will have 820 million transistors. Thanks to our high-k metal transistor invention, think of 820 million more power efficient light bulbs going on and off at light-speeds. The dual-core version has a die size of 107mm2, which is 25 percent smaller than Intel's current 65nm products - and quarter of the size of the average U.S. postage stamp - and operate at the same or lower power than Intel's current dual core processors.


• Deep Power Down for Energy Savings, Improved Battery Life -- The mobile Penryn processor has a new advanced power management state called Deep Power Down Technology that significantly reduces the power of the processor during idle periods such that internal transistor power leakage is no longer a factor. This helps extend battery life in laptops. This is a major advancement over previous generation industry leading Intel mobile processors.


• Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology Enhanced Performance for Single Threaded Apps -- For the mobile Penryn processor, Intel has enhanced the Intel® Dynamic Acceleration Technology available in current Intel Core 2 processors. This feature uses the power headroom freed up when a core is made inactive to boost the performance of another still active core. Imagine a shower with two powerful water shower heads, when one shower head is turned off, the other has increased water pressure (performance).


• Speeding Up Video, Photo Imaging, and High Performance Software -- Penryn includes Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4) instructions, the largest unique instruction set addition since the original SSE Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This extends the Intel® 64 instruction set architecture to expand the performance and capabilities of the Intel® Architecture.


• Other Technical Features to Improve Performance
  
  
  
  
  • Microarchitecture Optimizations -- Increases the overall performance and energy efficiency of the already leading Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more instruction executions per clock cycle, which results in more performance and quicker PC responsiveness.
  
  
  • Enhanced Intel® Virtualization Technology -- Penryn speeds up virtual machine transition (entry/exit) times by an average of 25 to 75 percent. This is all done through microarchitecture improvements and requires no virtual machine software changes. Virtualization partitions or compartmentalizes a single computer so that it can run separate operating systems and software, which can better leverage multicore processing power, increase efficiency and cut costs by letting a single machine act as many virtual "mini" computers.
  
  
  • Higher Frequencies -- Penryn family of products will deliver higher overall clock frequencies within existing power and thermal envelopes to further increase performance. Desktop and server products will introduce speeds at greater than 3GHz.
  
  
  • Fast Division of Numbers – Penryn-based processors provide fast divider performance, roughly doubling the divider speed over previous generations for computations used in nearly all applications through the inclusion of a new, faster divide technique called Radix 16. The ability to divide instructions and commands faster increases a computer's performance.
  
  
  • Larger Caches -- Penryn processors include up to a 50 percent larger L2 cache with a higher degree of associativity to further improve the hit rate and maximize its utilization. Dual-core Penryn processors will feature up to a 6MB L2 cache and quad-core processors up to a 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. Larger and faster cache sizes speed a computer's performance and response time.
  
  
  • Unique Super Shuffle Engine -- By implementing a full-width, single-pass shuffle unit that is 128-bits wide, Penryn processors can perform full-width shuffles in a single cycle. This significantly improves performance for SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4 instructions that have shuffle-like operations such as pack, unpack and wider packed shifts. This feature will increase performance for content creation, imaging, video and high-performance computing.
  
  
  
  

NEHALEM MICROARCHITECTURE

After Penryn and the 45nm Hi-k silicon technology introduction comes Intel's next-generation microarchitecture (Nehalem) slated for initial production in 2008. By continuing to innovate at this rapid cadence, Intel will deliver enormous performance and energy efficiency gains in years to come, adding more performance features and capabilities for new and improved applications. Here are some new initial disclosures around our Nehalem microarchitecture:

• Dynamically scalable for leadership performance on demand with energy efficiency




• Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces and power


• Leverages leading 4 instruction issue Intel® Core microarchitecture technology


• Simultaneous multi-threading (similar to Intel® Hyper-threading technology) returns to enhance performance and energy efficiency


• Innovative new Intel® SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions


• Superior multi-level shared cache leverages Intel® Smart Cache technology


• Leadership system and memory bandwidth


• Performance enhanced dynamic power management




• Design scalable for optimal price/performance/energy efficiency in each market segment




• New system architecture for next-generation Intel processors and platforms


• Scalable performance: 1 to 16+ threads, 1 to 8+ cores, scalable cache sizes


• Scalable and configurable system interconnects and integrated memory controllers


• High performance integrated graphics engine for client

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