C Chitti Pantulu, Bangalore
DNA
Justin R Rattner wears four titles and leads a pack of 1,000 brainy men and women who more or less shape the future of the $40 billion Intel Corporation. But the Senior Fellow, vice-president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Intel and director of Intel Labs, wears these tags lightly. However, Intel's chief technologist is being forced to think markets and competition while pursuing research. DNA caught up with the 59-year-old on the sidelines of the Research @ Intel Day exposition in Santa Clara, California, to find out the future course of research at Intel and its latest preoccupation with software.
Excerpts:
After many years, Intel seems to have competition on the horizon as you enter the extreme mobility space. How do you see it playing out?
You know it is interesting. The architecture wars as you may call them, rack your brain. But the latest one between Intel and ARM for the soul of the smartphone is a big one. The opportunity is very big. There is speculation about our ability. We are in a steep learning curve when it comes to driving down power consumption to the levels traditionally occupied by ARM almost exclusively. It is the sub-100 milliwatt Intel processor that is required to get down to the basic phone market. Though we are vertically integrated, we are not limited in solutions to put together the silicon for it. We have got some stuff in the handhelds to be on the top.
When do you think we will see it in the market?
I think if we can overcome the manufacturing challenges, perhaps, we will see in the next couple of years. As I mentioned, we have actually organised our research around integrated platforms for small form factor devices. The 200-strong team is a crucial component in this drive. There has been collaboration, but when you put them together, you have a big team. It is critical for Intel's future and I think, we have the best talent in the world. Though we may not have traditionally been strong on packaging silicon for this, our business guys are realigning silicon r search.
Going forward, will we see Intel foraying into the device market also? Are you planning to scale up your offerings?
In the notebook space, we are at a point where we offer the complete reference design. It wouldn't surprise me if we do it on the handheld side at some point of time. The notebook line is pretty much a turnkey. Some of the service providers have shown interest in packaging 3G solutions on to netbooks and we are able to deal with that currently. In the handhelds, we will get there in good time. But when it comes to branding, it is very tough in traditional markets as the ecosystem is well established. In the 1997-98, we tried to do it in the network appliances segment and the customers gave us a tough time. It is difficult to be a supplier and a competitor at the same time. But in new areas, it may be possible.
And in those areas, it need not necessarily be just Intel Inside. It can also be Intel outside?
Sure why not. In fact, some of the things we are working on like providing advanced user interfaces are close to that. But new branding is really tough in an established market. So, we may have to find a totally new market where we don't have customers. We will come right up to the point where it is easy to take something that is basically ready to suppliers. Maybe, something like health services, where we can establish a branded product with partners.
Continuing with the question on branding, Intel is getting around to doing software for the end customer. Do you see it being branded as standalone offerings?
Intel does a lot of software, but it is lost in other peoples' products -- for instance, platform software and hardware and service solutions. But we are beginning to do some end user projects like the one by our Digital Health Group with GE Health and the Digital Home Group, which is working with Yahoo! to create a widget library to provide set top boxes with widget channels.
And there is Moblin, our operating system for netbooks. You will see a lot of graphics software later this year on it. It is less likely software will be our core business, but as you see us going further from the core, there will be more Intel software. And further away from the traditional PC, you could see an Intel logo on the software. I am referring to embedded processors, which over the next 5-7 years will be one of the bastions of computing.
Our acquisition of Wind River Systems is consistent with the demand we were seeing from these embedded applications, customers and suppliers.
What are your plans for your Bangalore centre? How do you rate it?
We have a major commitment to Bangalore. As a site, they are finally hitting the stride after a few bumps earlier.
They have done the six core Dunnington successfully and they have worked on the research for the 80 core research processors and the new silicon which looks very exciting. They are just kind of coming into their own.
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