In an interview with PC World, Renduchintala, president of the Client and Internet of Things (IoT) Businesses and Systems Architecture Group at Intel, strongly hinted that Intel might indeed have plans for the mobile chip market. For those who do not know Venkata Renduchintal, he used to work for the rival company Qualcomm. He joined Intel in late 2015.
This could possibly be realized in the near feature. Just to bring you up to date, back in April Intel had come out clear that it was cancelling its previous plans to release two processors that were targeted solely for smartphones. These were the SoFIA and Broxton chips SOC processors.
The following is what Renduchintala had to say in what were Intel’s reasons for cutting mobile processor development in the first place:
“First of all, we rationalized what we were spending our R&D on. We had a couple of mobile SoC products that I don’t think were worthy to continue to conclusion. That doesn’t mean to say we’re no longer doing mobile platforms. On the mobile platform side, my commitment is to talk less and do more. When we have something to say we’ll talk about it.”
During the same interview with PC World, Renduchintala went ahead to discuss Intel’s virtual reality hardware development with the Project Alloy headset design. This is what he had to say about the program and what it might mean for the PC industry as a whole:
“I think it’s another very interesting growth opportunity for the PC. I think it can generate a specific class of products in its own right. It will generate different segmentation points and probably a custom piece of silicon built on the PC platform that amplify the use case. So we’re very excited about the whole VR space.”
Intel is now more than just a PC company. At industry events, the company’s keynotes feature drones flying around, robots walking on stage and musicians creating tunes from wearables. The chip maker is helping BMW build an autonomous car, will sell modems to Apple, and is leading the development of next-generation 5G cellular networks. For all these new markets, it will provide chip and data-center technologies.
