Intel Offers Details on Medfield, LTE Acceleration, MeeGo Tablet, More

Intel (News - Alert) Corp. unleashed a flurry of news this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That included the fact that the company’s new 32nm Medfield phone chip and accelerated LTE (News - Alert) solution are now sampling, the introduction of the MeeGo tablet user experience, the acquisition of imaging company Silicon Hive, new RF radio technology that makes what used to take three chips available on a single chip, and the announcement that its low-power Atom technology will be used in Android (News - Alert) Gingerbread and Honeycomb devices later this year.

The first products based on Intel’s Atom silicon architecture came out in 2008. This year, tablets based on the architecture will be unveiled, and Atom silicon for smartphones will begin shipping, Anand Chandrasekher (News - Alert), senior vice president and general manager of Intel Ultra Mobility Group, revealed Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Chandrasekher talked about how this solution requires lower standby power and delivers higher performance than competing solutions. That means “you can get the job done fast and then go to sleep,” he said.

User devices are drained of power as individuals actively use those devices, said Chandrasekher, and Intel’s ability to manage device power requirements during this time is unparalleled. Intel also does idle power control, he said.

 He also discussed Intel’s Medfield phone chip, which he says is the fastest processor of this sort on the market with the longest use time. It also has super-fast computing time to support applications such as gaming, he said. And leveraging the Silicon Hive acquisition that Intel announced today, Chandrasekher said it will enable a phone to take a picture even in the dark.

Turning to the discussion of accelerated LTE, he said the company will be sampling that this year and have it in production in phones by Christmas 2012. He added that these will be the lowest power LTE chips on the market.

And at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) this week Intel launched a dual SIM card, which will allow end users to have separate SIMs for their business and personal lives.

Renee James, senior vice president and general manager of Intel Software & Services Group, talked about MeeGo, an open, unified computing environment that works between devices. She said MeeGo tablets will ship starting this year, with MeeGo smartphones coming out after that.