Mobile PCs, which can be subdivided into notebooks, UMPCs and smartphones, will be of prime importance for Intel over the next years. As the division between UMPCs and smartphones is a flowing one, it is difficult to judge today which of the platforms will establish itself as the dominant one in the mass market. Whatever the case may be, Apple’s iPhone is a prime candidate that could ensure widespread use of such devices. Interestingly, Intel did not mention its partner Apple at this IDF. Instead, battery life and runtime were the topics that received the most attention in the keynote speech held by Justin Rattner and Dadi Perlmutter. The chipmaker has steadily improved this area over the past years :

Compared to the Merom platform, notebooks based on “Santa Rosa” were able to increase the battery life by 40 percent – according to Intel. As of 2008, notebooks based on the Montevina platform will only use 25 watts. Unlike current notebook processors, the Penryn-based Core 2 Duos will be able to switch of the L2 cache completely, contributing to low power consumption. After the presentation, Intel showed early samples of Penryn notebooks based on the Cantiga chipset. Intel claims that new notebooks using the smaller Penryn Core 2 Duo CPUs will easily be able to play HD-DVD and Blu-ray content at full HD resolution without a problem. Nonetheless, desktop systems will still lead their portable counterparts when it comes to performance – especially where games are concerned.

For the past two years, Intel has also been trying to establish WiMax (IEEE 802.16), a new standard for wireless data transmission. This technology is especially interesting in countries where WLAN nets still do not offer widespread coverage or where range is a deciding factor.

Intel sees great potential for further development if the so called UMPCs whose size positions them somewhere between notebook and smartphones. Mobile Internet usage is one of the core topics. Alongside some less interesting specimens we also found a pre-production sample of the Asus R3, which will feature a 4.8” display and a 1024 x 600 resolution – clearly outdoing the iPhone (3.5 “ display, 480 x 320 pixels). In general, the R3 bears a striking resemblance to the iPhone.

Intel also announced a new UMPC platform for 2008. Called ”Moorestown”, this new platform will be a system on a chip (SOC). All of the components from the CPU and the memory to the graphics core, will be integrated using 45nm structures.