Intel's Future Is Integrated - Page 2

At the same time it's tackling that problem, Intel wants to reduce interference by making designs quieter and cleaner -- so you don't get that annoying buzz from placing your mobile phone too close to computer speakers or a landline.

Intel is also working on bringing gigabit LAN technology to wireless. That requires a very fast analog-to-digital converter.

It also involves dealing with serious power consumption issues. As you go up in transmission speed, power consumption goes up almost on a one-to-one ration, if not worse, Krishnamurthy said. The leap from 802.11g wireless connectivity -- at 54 megabits per second (Mbps) -- to 300 Mbps with 802.11n doubled the amount of power consumed, which he said was the reason that it took so long to make the transition.

Continuing the trend by going to gigabit wireless would be hell on laptop batteries. As a result, Intel is looking at how to increase throughput while avoiding a concurrent rise in power consumption.

Intel also is turning its attention to the graphics front, particularly for mobile devices. As graphics processors are shrunk to fit into smaller devices, more has to be done with fewer transistors. At the same time, Intel is hoping to get power consumption down.

Part of the way it aims to achieve this is through a SIMD (short for "Single Instruction, Multiple Data") architecture, which is used to achieve parallel processing in graphics processing .

Intel researchers plan to describe the technology in another paper to be presented at ISSCC. The show runs Sunday through Thursday in San Francisco.