Intel's chips taking on new roles

Intel has new chips in the works that it hopes will power the next generation of consumer electronics devices and telecommunications servers.

Company executives are expected to unveil the plans this morning in Beijing, where Intel followers are gathered for the Intel Developer Forum. The chips will use the x86 instruction set architecture and are dubbed 'system on a chip' products, meaning they have a lot of crucial components integrated directly on to the processor.

The consumer electronics chips will be aimed at devices like set-top boxes and televisions. Intel already makes chips for this segment, but those chips are basically scaled-down versions of laptop processors. The new chips, scheduled to arrive in 2008, will supposedly be designed specifically for this category.

Intel also used its XScale handheld chips -- now the property of Marvell -- in these consumer electronics applications, but now thinks it can succeed by using x86 chips in those spots. Rival AMD has been touting a similar strategy called 'x86 everywhere' for several years, but the instruction set that runs most of the world's PCs hasn't been as much of a hit in the consumer electronics world.

But the x86 instruction set has tonnes of software available that was written for that platform, something Intel thinks will help it gain a foothold in consumer electronics as well as telecommunications, which is where 'Tolopai' comes in. Tolopai is a project to develop chips that have communications devices in mind, primarily at the carrier level.

Both strategies involve taking Intel's regular processor designs, integrating an I/O (input/output) controller that connects those processors to external storage, and adding specific hardware for that particular application. For instance, the consumer electronics chips will have dedicated hardware units for video acceleration, among other things.

Executives also plan to talk about the performance of Intel's upcoming line of Penryn processors, due out later this year. Additionally, plans for new quad-core and dual-core server chips used in servers with four or more processors will be announced, according to materials distributed ahead of the keynote speeches.