It will be used inside the mobile Internet devices

Apr 3, 2008 06:59 GMT  ·  By

Intel has unveiled yet another technological innovation during yesterday's Intel Developer Forum conference. Right after introducing the five new Atom processors, the chip manufacturer showed off the cornerstone for the upcoming mobile devices: a tiny motherboard, part of the Moorestown platform.

Intel plans to release the Moorestown mobile Internet platform at some time in 2009 or 2010, but the name pops up a little too often for a not-so-near-future product. However, Moorestown is an extremely important card for the company, and it could be its passport into a very crowded mobile phone market.

"Our engineers have been very hard at work on Moorestown," Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, said during the IDF keynote speech. "The platform design teams have been hard at work in figuring out what is the smallest form factor that they can actually fit a complete PC motherboard into so they can deliver a great mobile Internet experience," he continued.

The Moorestown platform is intel's first system-on-a-chip technology to pack the CPU, graphics, and memory controller, along with other silicon implementations into a single processor die.

"What I'm holding in my hand is what is possibly the world's smallest PC motherboard," Chandrasekher said. The Moorestown motherboard houses the processor, chipset (including graphics), and memory, along with silicon for 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, he said. "This is the heart of the new machine."

If Intel sends the Moorestown to the mobile phone market, this could bring us new devices with high-speed WiMax broadband wireless, as well as 10 times more energy-efficient units, so you could easily forget the "running low on battery" experiences.

The most important drawback for the company is the fact that, unlike AMD, Intel currently has no mobile phone processor business. Advanced micro Devices has unveiled earlier this year the Imageon line of chips, purchased along with the entire intellectual property of the former ATI.