MARAVEDIS

Intel Champions Emerging Wireless Broadband

For Intel, WiMAX mobile (WiMAXm) is the road map to the future. The company continues to be the world’s largest semiconductor company, enjoying sales of over $35 billion and among the highest margins of any large cap company. Intel has leading semiconductor design and manufacturing process capabilities and capacity that make it the force to be reckoned with in IT/networking and communications industries. However, the fabled dictum of “Moore’s Law”, in which semiconductor capabilities double about every 12 to18 months while costs are driven down, has shown signs of having reached the limits of physics. Device geometries are approaching molecular and atomic scale limitations. In practical terms this has led Intel to reduce goals for achieving higher and higher clock speeds as a way to maintain the trend in performance increases. Instead, the company has embarked on multi-processor, system bus and system scale design and process advances to keep long term trends on track. To achieve increased clock rates and enable on-chip analog circuits and power components, Intel is resorting to the use of novel device structures, and the use of higher isolation processes including silicon on insulator or SoI. These advanced semiconductor processes are currently being used in the latest versions of Pentium 32 and 64 bit processors.