The lot for portable devices, which will be worth between £1.6m and £3.4m, will include (but not exclusively) netbooks, laptops and tablets.
Unfortunately, the most miserly Intel processors (the Atom range used in Windows-based netbooks) still consume between two and ten times more power than a typical ARM processor.
The Tri-Gate design is to be used throughout Intel's processor range from powerful gaming and server chips to humble devices used in netbooks.
Three out of five tablets now hitting the stores use similar ARM-based processors.Intel would love to have a bigger slice of the handheld pie, especially now the Apple iPad and other tablets have begun to eat into sales of Intel-powered netbooks and even laptops.
At the same time, the PC is being pushed aside by a host of smaller, often wireless devices, such as smart-phones, netbooks (small laptops) and, perhaps soon, tablets (touch-screen computers the size of books).Although Windows still runs 90% of PCs, the fading importance of the PC means that Microsoft is no longer an all-powerful monopolist.
Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008.
Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year.
This will put further pressure on prices, since mobile operators have more bargaining power than individual consumers, although it also opens a huge new distribution channel for computer-makers.More important, netbooks and similar devices could weaken Microsoft and Intel, which have so far dominated the PC industry and extracted most of the profits.
To keep Linux off most netbooks, Microsoft has had to discount Windows XP from $40-45 40-45operto $10-15.
It's an ill wind... Unbound Africa calling Reprints Related items AMD v Intel: Oil money and hafniumNov 22nd 2007To avoid getting stuck in a maturing market, Intel has branched out by developing Atom, a new family of low-power chips for "mobile internet devices" (MIDs, bigger than smartphones), "netbooks" (very small laptops) and "nettops" (cheap, stripped-down desktop PCs).
The slimmed down Linux shell, along with its nifty new user-interface called Unity, will reside in a second partition on the hard drives of computers that use Windows as their main operating system.Mr Shuttleworth is adamant that Ubuntu Light with its rapid start-up and touch-screen capabilities is not only for netbooks, tablets and other portable small fry.
