Intel will likely tempt Apple with high performing 45nm Moorestown

TG Daily’s Wolfgang Gruener managed to catch up with Anand Chandrasekher, Senior VP for Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, during a recent trip to Silicon Valley. There he saw Intel’s next-gen 45nm Moorestown CPU/GPU hybrid operating in demo devices, along with its 65nm I/O chips (down from 130nm I/O on Atom’s mainboard). While Intel would not give performance or power data, the products are real and, according to Gruener, quite impressive and iPhone-like.

Intel’s goal of a 50x reduction in idle power consumption was also realized with the process shrink, and new power saving abilities introduced into the design. In addition, the architecture is robust, supporting 1080p video playback as well as advanced 3D graphics abilities suitable for higher-end games, beyond those of the iPhone today.

Thanks to the process shrink, Moorestown’s form factor is now small enough to rival that of iPhone’s existing design. And when faced with the obvious fact that the demo devices look very much like iPhone products, even with an aluminum outer edge, Gruener asked Chandrasekher if “Apple is still on Intel’s customer wish list?” to which Chandrasekher replied, “I would love to have Apple as a customer”.

Intel also gave a little more information about the 32nm Moorestown follow-on, codenamed Metfield. In addition, the integrated design of Moorestown is not quite as tight as was originally thought. This was a design decision by Intel to limit its risk, should any one single part fail then only that one aspect would have to be redesigned. It doesn’t integrate SATA/PATA ports, for example, nor audio and security features.