Wireless MMX is a recycled version of the multimedia extensions technology Intel developed years ago for its Pentium processors. Wireless MMX improves video decoding performance 40 percent to 60 percent, Smith said. The company will also come out with improved software-developer kits to make it easier to port applications to the Pentium family, to XScale and to the IXA family of network processors, Intel president Paul Otellini said. Wireless has become the "killer app" that many PC manufacturers, software developers and others are hoping will revive the PC market. The explosive growth in mobile phones, the continuing strength in the notebook market, and consumer interest in products such as personal video recorders and home networking have made it clear an opportunity exists. While a successful push on wireless will help Intel sell more processors, it could also help the company jump-start its moribund Communications Group because Intel will promote its own Wi-Fi chips for these new PCs. In fact, the company will only qualify, or pretest, Banias with its own 802.11 a and b chips, said Chandrasekher, making Intel's communications chips the de facto choice for notebook manufacturers. Aside from wireless, Intel disclosed still more details on Banias. The chip will come with 77 million transistors, more than the 54 million found on the current Pentium 4, but the chip will consume low amounts of energy. It will run on less than a watt of power while idling, less than current Intel chips. Banias notebooks will also be thinner and lighter; Intel has managed to shrink some of the insulating components, which draw hot air out of the notebook. Internally, Banias will contain a number of power-saving features. Micro Ops Fusion, for instance, will combine routine instructions and tasks together and thereby save time and energy. Chandrasekher likened the process to a bunch of people at the airport sharing a cab, rather than taking separate taxis. Advanced Branch Prediction will let the processor better schedule tasks, and different parts of the chip, such as the system bus and even the Wi-Fi chips, will also shut down when not in use to conserve power. "Expect to see at least an hour more of battery life," Chandrasekher said. To improve security, the company is working with VeriSign, Checkpoint and iPass, among other security-software makers, to tune various firewalls and virtual private networks for Banias, Chandrasekher said. In the future, Banias will adopt technologies invented for the desktop family, such as LaGrande, announced on Monday, which shields data on a PC from viruses and hackers, Chandrasekher added. Chandrasekher declined to provide speeds for Banias but said it would be more powerful than existing Pentium chips for the category of notebooks -- the small and light variety -- it will be incorporated into. Sources say Banias will run at 1.4GHz, 1.5GHz, 1.6GHz and possibly also 1.3GHz at launch. News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.
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