Intel CEO Paul Otellini is betting big on Sandy Bridge architecture. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Intel officially introduced its second-generation Core processor family, and Otellini predicted the chips will generate $125 billion in revenue for the tech industry.
Sandy Bridge offers new features like Intel Quick Sync Video, Intel HD Graphics, Intel Wireless Display, and Intel Insider with collaborations with CinemaNow, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Bros., among others.
Intel said the new processors will be used in more than 500 desktop and laptop PCs from all major OEMs worldwide throughout the coming year. The chips offer faster computing performance and great battery life, and set the stage for the design of lighter and more innovative laptops.
Intel Answers Customers
For all the promises — and all the realities — Intel’s second-generation Core processors should be considered within the context of broader personal-computing issues and trends, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
Those trends, as he sees them, are ongoing robust sales of traditional PCs and notebooks; quickly ramping sales of portable devices like tablets; the continuing confluence of PCs, notebooks and tablets with smartphones; media phones and other handheld computing devices; the expanding use of PCs to stream media; the increasing ubiquity of Wi-Fi and high-speed mobile web access; and growing interest among premium content creators and distributors looking to leverage their products.
“Giving your best customers what they need and want is a smart move in virtually any business, but Intel’s second-gen Core arrives at an especially challenging time for the consumer electronics industry in general and microprocessor vendors in particular,” King said. “Some may consider this a ‘perfect storm’ of sorts for Intel, with myriad competitors battering the company and its traditional markets from every side. And it may well have been had the company not been driving…