Intel Aligns its Wireless Tribes

Seeing a trend in consolidating wireless technologies, Intel is combining two of its communications businesses
under one roof.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip making giant has named its Intel
Communications Group (ICG) as the organization that will also manage the
company’s Wireless Communications and Computing Group (WCCG). Intel
executive vice president and ICG general manager Sean Maloney has been
tapped to spearhead the new group. Separately, Intel said senior vice
president and general manager of Intel’s WCCG unit, Ron Smith will retire
early next year.

The move is hardly surprising. During its mid-quarter financial update,
Intel said it would spend about $600 million to back out of the WCCG citing
drastically lower long-term growth expectations for the division.

ICG focuses on network processors, wireless LAN chipsets,
gigabit networking hardware and software, network cards and network
infrastructure technologies. WCCG products are based on Intel’s XScale
technology and cover chipsets, reference designs, software and other
technologies built around the Intel Personal Internet Client Architecture
(Intel PCA). The products also include Intel’s Flash memory
business and digital signal processing activities.

So what does this mean for customers? According to Intel CEO Craig
Barrett, it’s all about “computing and communications”.

“With this, we see wireless local area networking and wide area cellular
technologies coming together,” Barrett said in a statement. “Consolidation
gives us better product planning and customer focus in these strategically
critical areas going forward.”

Wireless is hotter than ever but separately, Intel’s ICG and WCCG groups
have financially been the company’s Achilles’ heel. In its last quarterly
statement, the company said sales of its Flash memory units were slightly
higher and Ethernet connectivity product unit sales were higher, but not
outstandingly so. At the time, company execs blamed the numbers on soft
demand for chips used in communications products as well as slack sales of
mobile products.

It’s not for lack of trying. In the last four months, the WCCG announced
the first single-chip cellular phone processor for use on EDGE (Enhanced
Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks. EDGE networks are expected to allow
users to send and receive data two to three times faster than possible using
today’s GSM/GPRS networks. The processor — identified as Intel PXA800EF —
is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2004.

Intel’s Wireless Group also has stewardship of its next-generation of
Intel XScale technology-based processors, code named “Bulverde.” The chips
are expected to include Intel Wireless MMX technology, Wireless Intel
SpeedStep Technology for better battery life, and Intel Quick Capture
Technology for high-quality digital images.

As for Intel’s Communications Group, the division partnered with the
Linksys division of Cisco Systems to launch a technology
and marketing program to improve the experience of setting up and operating
wireless networks using Intel Centrino mobile technology and Linksys
wireless routers and access points for home and small office applications.

In the last few months, ICG also helped debut some of the first chips
based on PCI Express technology and announced new programmable digital media
processors (MXP5400 and MXP5800) for printers, scanners, and copiers. The
group also unveiled new telecom products based on the Advanced Telecom
Computing Architecture and featuring Intel microprocessors and network
processors.

ICG’s other new products include an Intel XScale technology-based I/O
processor, an I/O processor chipset with support for SAN and NAS external
storage applications, a low-cost 10-Gbps multimode optical transceiver for
Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks, and a bridge component that simplifies
the transition from
PCI to the new PCI Express interconnect technology.

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