Multi-core chips are the way forward: Intel

HYDERABAD: Betting big on its multi-core processors, Intel on Thursday said the era of single processors was almost coming to an end and that dual and multi-core processors were the way forward. “We see a huge opportunity for multi-core processors. They ensure high performance and consume less power,” said Narendra Bhandari, director (Asia Pacific - SSG Global Developer Relations Division), Intel Technology India.

The company is partnering with various engineering colleges and technological institutes worldwide to help develop a talent pool adept at multi-core processing and related software tools. “Globally, we have tied up with 300 institutes for training and developing talent pool on our platform.

In India, we are looking at extending the partnership to 40 institutes by this year-end. We are mainly targeting computer science graduates and post-graduates and we already have tie-ups in place with about five institutes including IIT-Kanpur,” he said.

Talking about opportunities, Mr Bhandari said the company had shipped one million, quad-core processors in the last six months.

Quad-core processors are one of Intel’s latest offerings. “With personal computing and mobile usage increasing, we see the demand for multi-core processors also going up. Laptop numbers, for example, are going up and we expect laptop sales to overtake desktops by 2011. Over 3 billion people use mobile phones worldwide, of which only 30 million accesses net on phone.

This is the kind of opportunity we are targeting. Besides, we see education as another field with great potential,” he added. According to him, by the end of this year, almost 100% of all systems shipped with Windows XP or Vista will have multi-core processors. The company is also working with about 100 organisations in India at various levels on its multi-core technology.

“We are expanding our partnership with various software developers. This year alone we trained over 3,000 people in the country, who are developing various applications based on multi-core technology,” he said.