Mooly Eden gushes like a proud papa when he talks about Intel's Pentium M chip. And well he should. The Israeli engineer was one of the 'A-team' of chip designers from Haifa that helped kick off one of the most wrenching changes in the company's history. "It's a change from speeds and feeds to customer needs," Eden says.
Several years ago, a few of the Israeli engineers approached their bosses and now-CEO Paul S Otellini about the idea of a new chip designed specifically for notebook PCs.
The aim? To deliver good performance without sacrificing on battery life or suffering the heat issues that were beginning to plague the Pentium 4 line of desktop PCs and servers.
Pentium M-based products became such a hit with consumers and businesses that Intel plans to use the chip across all its products, beginning in late 2006.
But here's a secret that few outside the chip world know. While Intel execs have said the Pentium M was 'built from the ground up' to suit their needs, it actually is a heavily modified version of the Pentium III chip Intel jettisoned back in 2000 in favor of the Pentium 4. "How do you make the Pentium 4 better? Use the Pentium III," scoff execs at rival Advanced Micro Devices.
Playing catch-up
Adds former Intel chief chip architect Bob Colwell, who helped design the Pentium Pro, the original basis of the Pentium III: "We wrote a list of 20 to 30 items we would do to improve the PIII, but just left that list lying around. To their credit, the guys in Israel picked it up. But this is no radically new chip."
Intel has a workforce of around 6,000 in Israel, making it the country's second-largest employer. It has a long history in the country: The chipmaker established its first factory, or fab, outside the United States in Jerusalem. Now, the chip designers there are playing a leading role in guiding the company's product road map.
Pentium M remains the best current option for Intel to catch up to AMD in terms of performance, without the chip getting so hot it requires fans that sound
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