'Green' Chips of the Future

Intel's public intention is clearly to continue releasing more processors with the Itanium architecture. The entire Itanium processor family will be moving towards a higher level of performance at the same or a similar level of cost. Intel has also indicated that it will be producing a series of Itanium microprocessors with a lower power consumption, presumably at a correspondingly lower cost.

These chips will be more “green” than the others. That is, they will use less electricity to run. They won't draw as much power from the AC line, thus generating less heat and requiring fewer fans. The OEM systems vendors like HP will act as fast followers of these trends and build computers that either operate with tremendous speed, with moderate speed for moderate prices, or with energy efficiency in mind. See Figure 18-2 below for a graphic representation of Intel's public roadmap sorted by these two trends.

Whichever trend proves to be the dominant is, in a way, actually irrelevant. What is key is that the entire IT world will be shaken to its very core by the rise of a new microprocessor that these two technology giants, HP and Intel, have created. In the final analysis, the business economics will favor a powerful, yet open industry standard architecture which is widely adopted by the industry over other proprietary options.