14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the world's larges chip maker, Intel, has made up its mind to enter the smartphone market as well, after providing its solutions for desktop computers, notebooks and low-power laptops. At an investor meeting from the Ultra Mobility group, the company is reported to have discussed some of its plans for the Moorestown and Medfield processors, the latter being a very low-power chip intended to fit into future smartphones, which could land in 2011.
According to some presentation slides that came from said meeting, Intel's Medfield, a processor manufactured under the 32-nanometer process technology, will come to the market with a reduced board size, while also sporting low-power requirements, two features that will make it fit for use in handhelds. In addition, the company also targets the mobile phone area with Moorestown, as the chip's idle power requirements seem to be the same as those seen in today's smartphones.
The chip, which follows Intel's Menlow (targeted at ultra-mobile computers, netbooks and MIDs), as well as Moorestown (mainly targeted at MIDs), will also be able to work with future smartphones, as it will meet all the requirements for a processor in this segment, such as thermal limits, battery power drain, connectivity (it should feature both 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities), performance and compatibility.
In other words, Intel seems determined to provide the market with a solution that should be able to fulfill both consumers' needs for connectivity, full Internet, accessibility to rich media content, and requirements for lower power consumption, and manufacturers' needs for lower costs on packaging and production process. The Medfield processor is expected to become available on the market sometime in 2011, which means that we might not see smartphones that include it hitting the shelves anytime soon.
For what it's worth, the company was known to plan on moving to the smartphone market at a certain point in the future, and now we have at least a possible time frame for that. One thing that remains to be seen is whether Intel's solutions will be able to offer the same level of performance that already established chip makers in the mobile phone segment will offer at that time. The entire presentation on Intel's low-power processors can be seen here (PDF link).
