Reports of Moore’s Law’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In its opening Developers Forum keynote presentation at San Francisco’s Moscone West Center today, Intel unveiled its newest class of minuscule Quark processors. And the Quark could very well make almost any device smarter at 14nm.
As Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich, and President, Renee James, explained to the packed auditorium, the pace of processor innovation today exceeds every effort in the past four decades. Specifically, as mobile devices have become commonplace, the need for smaller, lighter, faster, and better performing components has driven the industry away from conventional CPUs to more balanced System on a Chip (SoC) architecture.
It’s also leading to, what Krzanich describes as, “the Internet of Things”: truly ubiquitous computing platforms integrated into our daily lives. And he expects the new line of Quark SoCs to play a major role in that development.
The Quark line of SoC, such such as the x1000 model he demo’d on stage is reportedly a fifth the size of the current Intel Atom and consumes just 10 per cent of the power while boosting performance by over 30 per cent. “It’s the smallest thing we’ve ever built,” said James. The Quarks are expected to begin shipping next year.
In addition, Krzanich also hinted at 10nm SoC’s becoming available by 2015 and single digit lengths by 2017, although there’s no guarantee we will. What we can expect to see, according to the Intel CEO, is more than 60 models of sub-$US100 tablets and 2-in-1’s powered by Intel processors on store shelves by this Christmas. This lineup will include Android and Windows platforms running Atom and Core processors alike. It’s looking a lot like Christmas already.