“Intel’s strong 2009 results reflect our investment in industry-leading manufacturing and product innovation,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “This strategy has enabled us to generate unprecedented operating efficiencies while growing our traditional businesses and creating exciting new market opportunities, even in difficult economic times. Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world. Looking forward, we plan to deliver the benefits of computing to an expanding set of products, markets and customers.”

See also:

• Phoenix Firmware Supports New 45nm Intel Core2 Duo Processor T9400 (0)
• Intel, Samsung Electronics, TSMC Reach Agreement for 450mm Wafer Manufacturing Transition (0)
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Intel’s new hafnium-based 45nm Hi-k silicon process technology enables even more processor performance by doubling transistor density and increasing cache size by up to 50 percent. The Intel Core2 Duo processor T9400, validated with the Mobile Intel GM45 Express chipset, provides excellent processor and graphics performance, storage speed, system memory and reliability, making it ideal for a broad range of embedded applications.

Over the past year, Intel has utilized Phoenix’s BIOS software on its reference boards. Phoenix’s firmware solutions provide complete support for current industry standards and initiatives.

Phoenix SecureCore and AwardCore for embedded applications are available now for the Intel Core2 Duo Processor T9400 with both the Mobile Intel GM45 Express chipset and the Intel 5100 Memory Controller Hub (MCH) chipset.

See also:

• Intel Fourth-Quarter Net Income $2.3 Billion, Up 875% (0)
• Intel, Samsung Electronics, TSMC Reach Agreement for 450mm Wafer Manufacturing Transition (0)
• New Intel Software Connects Health Networks, Enabling Key Data Sharing in Clinical Settings (0)

The companies will cooperate with the semiconductor industry to help ensure that all of the required components, infrastructure and capability are developed and tested for a pilot line by this target date.

Historically, manufacturing with larger wafers helps increase the ability to produce semiconductors at a lower cost. The total silicon surface area of a 450mm wafer and the number of printed die (individual computer chips, for example) is more than twice that of a 300mm wafer. The bigger wafers help lower the production cost per chip. Additionally, through more efficient use of energy, water and other resources, bigger wafers can help diminish overall use of resources per chip. For example, the conversion from 200mm wafers to 300mm wafers helped reduce aggregate emissions per chip of air pollution, global warming gasses and water, and further reduction is expected with a transition to 450mm wafers.

“There is a long history of innovation and problem solving in our industry that has delivered wafer transitions resulting in lower costs per area of silicon processed and overall industry growth.” said Bob Bruck, vice president and general manager, Technology Manufacturing Engineering in Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group. “We, along with Samsung and TSMC, agree that the transition to 450mm wafers will follow the same pattern of delivering increased value to our customers.”

Intel, Samsung and TSMC indicate that the semiconductor industry can improve its return on investment and substantially reduce 450mm research and development costs by applying aligned standards, rationalizing changes from 300mm infrastructure and automation, and working toward a common timeline. The companies also agree that a cooperative approach will help minimize risk and transition costs.

“The transition to 450mm wafers will benefit the entire ecosystem of the IC industry, and Intel, Samsung, TSMC will work together with suppliers and other semiconductor manufacturers to actively develop 450mm capability,” said Cheong-Woo Byun, senior vice president, Memory Manufacturing Operation Center, Samsung Electronics.

In the past, migration to the next larger wafer size traditionally began every 10 years after the last transition. For example, the industry began the transition to 300mm wafers in 2001, a decade after the initial 200mm manufacturing facilities (also known as “fabs”) were introduced in 1991.

Keeping in line with the historical pace of growth, Intel, Samsung and TSMC agree that 2012 is an appropriate target to begin the 450mm transition. Given the complexity of integrating all of the components for a transition of this size, the companies recognize that consistent evaluation of the target timeline will be critical to ensure industry-wide readiness.

“Increasing cost due to the complexity of advanced technology is a concern for the future,” said Mark Liu, TSMC’s senior vice president of Advanced Technology Business. “Intel, Samsung, and TSMC believe the transition to 450mm wafers is a potential solution to maintain a reasonable cost structure for the industry.”

The three companies will continue to work with International Sematech (ISMI), as it plays a critical role in coordinating industry efforts on 450mm wafer supply, standards setting and developing equipment test bed capabilities.

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• Phoenix Firmware Supports New 45nm Intel Core2 Duo Processor T9400 (0)
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Until now, the sharing of patient information among healthcare network participants has been hindered by the steep costs and complexities of proprietary data and integration services. Based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare offers a cost-efficient solution to this problem by providing an efficient and scaleable way to translate, process and connect any data format across a healthcare network.

In addition, Intel has created a group of validated independent software vendors (ISVs) that provides best-of-breed capabilities to deploy a complete health network powered by the Intel SOA Expressway. Current validated ecosystem vendors include Apelon, Infotech Global (IGI), Initiate Systems, Oracle and Red Hat. Services provided by these vendors include controlled medical vocabulary translation, clinical patient portal applications, enterprise master patient index, clinical data repository and operating system support. The validated ecosystem helps complete next-generation SOA architecture for healthcare data interoperability.

The software solution has been successfully piloted with several healthcare providers, including at a hospital network in Shanghai. “Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare solved a very difficult hospital integration scenario for us,” said Shen Ping, general manager of Health Services Division at Wonders Information Co, the systems integrator deploying the Shanghai health network. “We were surprised to see that it was able to meet our performance requirements for daily synchronization of nearly a million hospital records in a short amount of time.”

Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare provides the performance of a hardware appliance in a software form factor that offers native message acceleration for rapid data exchange, workflow management and translation to enable data exchange to and from any original format. This advance in software is an example of how technology can help improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs by streamlining information flow.

“Intel has developed the SOA Expressway for Healthcare as a platform that can be used with a wide variety of existing IT environments to provide world-class integration regardless of the specific electronic medical records and other software platforms used at individual healthcare facilities,” said Renee James, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Software and Solutions Group. “We also leveraged the SOA architecture to drive down costs, which has enabled Intel to offer our solution at prices comparable or below other solutions in the market.”

In order to make Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare as versatile as possible, Intel designed it as a flexible product offering that can stand alone as the gateway to and from a community health information network or can be bundled as part of an ISV solution.

See also:

• Intel Fourth-Quarter Net Income $2.3 Billion, Up 875% (0)
• Philips updates markets on Healthcare sector in meeting with financial analysts (0)
• Phoenix Firmware Supports New 45nm Intel Core2 Duo Processor T9400 (0)
• Intel, Samsung Electronics, TSMC Reach Agreement for 450mm Wafer Manufacturing Transition (0)