Intel unveils the smallest processors, named ‘Quark’

SAN FRANCISCO: Would you like to eat some chips might be a banal enough query at a café or a restaurant. But what if you’re asked that at a computer store? Engineers at the Intel Corporation , who are planning their next big venture in the field of ingestible technology, believe this a likely future.

Brian Krzanich, the new Intel CEO, announced the company’s latest, and smallest ever, family of processors named ‘ Quark,’ which will be designed, among other things, to power biomedical devices that may be used for treatment or diagnostic purposes. The announcement was made at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), a three-day gathering of technologists and engineers held in San Francisco , California last month.

The event also marks the corporation’s foray, albeit a little delayed, into the burgeoning mobile market. “We plan to shape and lead in all areas of computing. The next wave of computing is still being defined. Wearable computers and sophisticated sensors and robotics are only some of the initial applications,” Krzanich said in his keynote address.

Small is good in the world of microchip manufacturing . Even though many predict that the Moore’s Law, which holds that processors will get smaller and faster roughly every two years, will soon be dead, and we'll reach an upper limit in processor technology, Intel’s outlook remains sanguine.

With the launch of three new ultra-small multicore processors for tablets, mobiles and laptops — earlier codenamed ‘Bay Trail,’ based on Intel’s 22 nanometre (nm) technology — the company’s main assertion at this year's IDF seems to have been that the ‘Moore’s Law is alive and well.’ Later this year, Intel will also start producing its new generation of ‘Broadwell’ chips, made on 14nm technology, which will be tinier , faster and more energy-efficient than its 22nm predecessor.

In layman’s terms, 1nm is a billionth of a metre. “If you don’t know how small that is, consider this,” said Renee James, Intel president , and another new arrival to the company, holding a marble between her two fingers. “A nanometre is to a yardstick, what this marble is to planet Earth.”

(The correspondent was in San Francisco at the invitation of Intel Corporation)