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Video: Intel's Sean Maloney Talks Nehalem, And More

In the wake of last week's Nehalem server chip launch, I sat down with Intel chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney for a wide-ranging discussion. Maloney gave me -- and you -- some food for thought. A recession, he says, isn't the time to halt technology spending. OK, so there's a self-serving (server?) aspect to this observation -- Intel sells processors. But that doesn't mean Maloney's incorrect in pointing out that businesses need to position themselves for the recovery.

"Most industries are very dependent on competing in cyberspace," is how Maloney put it. "Unless you're prepared to invest in that, you're going to fall behind your competition. So holding off investing in a recession can be a dangerous strategy."

For their part, Intel is doing some significant spending of its own, taking the plunge and pouring $7 billion into its semiconductor factories to upgrade its fab lines so they can crank out the upcoming 32-nm generation of processors. (The current Nehalems are on 45-nm. The first 32-nm parts, code-named Westmere, are due in the fourth quarter)

That level of investment, and competing processors from AMD, ensure that the battle for processor performance primacy will heat up over the next 12 to 24 months. However, with high computational throughput a given, efficiency and energy consumption has become nearly as important a consideration among buyers. As in, how much is the electricity and cooling for your data center going to cost? (I'll be writing more on this in future posts, but I want to get back to the Maloney interview, rather than go off on a CPU tangent here.)

So we've got servers, where the new Nehalems (officially known as the Xeon 5500 family ) play, and desktops, where the release of Windows 7 is sure to launch a new PC upgrade cycle.

What about smartphones, which I believe are the next computer, in that they will one day soon become de facto laptop replacements. Intel doesn't see that happening. Instead, they're pushing netbooks, though not as full-blown replacements for laptops, but rather as downscale, "second devices," which users carry as accessories to do lightweight computing when they don't want to tote around the heavier notebook. To that end, Intel has ramped up its Atom netbook processor.

Being such a big believer in the smartphone-as-computer concept, I found it provocative that Maloney demurred when I asked him whether we'll one day see a true converged device. "I don't believe so," Maloney replied. "All devices get more capable, but if you try to come up with a device that does everything, the compromises implicit in that will make it impractical."

[Interesting aside: While this is indeed true today, Intel's own research is working to enable a future device that can morph from a handheld into a netbook. See my video, "Intel Envisions Shape-Shifting Smartphone."]

The building out of Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless networking is also a big item on Intel's radar. Maloney expressed some angst over a build out that's taking longer than Intel would like. "We're still frustrated with the pace of broadband development," he said. "The reality is that consumers need a lot of bandwidth. The limiting factor in the industry in the next 10 years is still going to be bandwidth. So we need to get these networks built out, and we need to get economies of scale so the cost of bandwidth comes down."

OK, so let me stop here otherwise they'll be no incentive left for you to watch the video. In many of the videos I do, I put in all sorts of fancy edits, since watching a guy talking isn't very Web 2.0. However, all good content wants to be what it wants to be, so this time I've pretty much let Sean do the talking. (There's a little bit of intercutting of Intel chip-fab b-roll, during the parts where I'm posing questions.)

We shot the interview on March 31 at New York City's NASDAQ stock exchange, during a launch event for the Xeon 5500 Nehalem. I humbly suggest it's worth nine minutes of your time, especially since you need to watch to see Sean's retro keychain. (Finally, in the we-have-an-announcement department, in the interest of balanced reporting, I will have an AMD video next week.)

See also, Nehalem Launch Emphasizes Upscale Drift Of Commodity Servers.

For a look at AMD's competing Shanghai quad-core server processor, check out my November interview with AMD server honcho Randy Allen, in Video: AMD 'Shanghai' Quad Core Makes Compelling Server Upgrade Argument.

What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below or e-mailing me directly at alex@alexwolfe.net.

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Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.

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