This article originally appeared on Hardware Central.

Transmeta Corp., unable to match the marketing might of Intel Corp.'s Centrino campaign, has quit the mobile-processor business for a low-key role as an intellectual-property licensor. But Transmeta execs could take ironic pride in the message from Intel's biannual Developer Forum in San Francisco last week: Speech after speech proclaimed a CPU metric that not long ago Transmeta touted and Intel ignored -- performance per watt.

The silicon giant has spiked its old emphasis on ever more megahertz in favor of lower-power, cooler-running chips that boost performance by adding a second -- and starting in 2007, third and fourth -- CPU core instead of cranking up clock speed.

By late this year or early next, a dual-core version of today's 32-bit Pentium M, codenamed "Yonah," will carry the Centrino laptop banner, just as dual-core, 64-bit-capable Pentium 4 variants -- the Pentium D and forthcoming "Paxville" Xeon chips -- fill the desktop and server segments, respectively. And just as today's 90-nanometer process succeeded 0.13-micron manufacturing, these chips will be smaller and cheaper to produce thanks to 65-nanometer-process engineering.

And in the second half of 2006, Intel will replace both the Pentium 4's NetBurst and the Pentium M's microarchitecture with a new 64-bit x86 design that the company says will combine the best of both in terms of performance and power savings. By the end of this decade, Intel president and chief executive officer Paul Otellini said in his keynote address, some Intel CPUs will deliver ten times their 0.13-micron predecessors' performance, while others offer one-tenth the energy consumption.

Doing More With Less

Next year's changeover to what Otellini calls "a next-generation, power-optimized microarchitecture" features three dual-core, 65-nanometer-process, 64-bit-enabled processor families -- codenamed "Merom" for notebooks, "Conroe" for desktops, and "Woodcrest" for servers.

Intel Developer Forum (IDF) attendees were tantalized by mention of the first few technical details, including a 14-stage integer pipeline -- less than half as long as the Pentium 4's pipeline, albeit two stages longer than that of AMD's Athlon 64 -- and a higher-performance, four-issue engine for executing out-of-order instructions.

Improved memory prefetch will join an enhanced cache system, with the two cores sharing a Level 2 cache and dynamically allocating cache space between applications or threads running together. SSE multimedia-instruction performance and memory-bandwidth utilization will surpass anything seen from either the Pentium 4 or Pentium M today.

These dual-core CPUs almost certainly won't have Hyper-Threading Technology, as Intel abandons simulated and partial for actual and full-speed multiprocessing capability. But they will feature the VT or virtualization technology that Intel has talked about in conjunction with Microsoft Windows Vista ("Longhorn"), as well as Linux, for safely running multiple applications or operating systems in separate spaces, so a maintenance reboot or even a system crash in one won't interrupt the others.

And they'll bring lower electric bills, with server and desktop CPUs drawing about 80 and 65 watts respectively (today's Pentium 4 takes as many as 115 watts). High-performance notebook processors will match today's under-1GHz, ultra-low-voltage Pentium M chips at around 5 watts. By the end of the decade, Intel anticipates handheld or one-pound palmtop PC processors running on just 0.5 watt.

(We should make clear that the abovementioned 80 watts is what Intel sees as a ceiling for server-CPU power consumption. In the near future, IT managers content to stick with 32 bits will see a Xeon-branded "Yonah" spinoff codenamed "Sossaman," which will target blade and 1U rackmount servers with a thrifty 30 watts. Further ahead, Otellini said, the deployment of 100 million of Intel's new-generation platforms will save a billion dollars per year in energy costs, not counting savings from systems' reduced cooling demands.)

It's a Platformized World

Marketing-wise, Intel will spend millions to bring the desktop and server markets the same emphasis on a platform or bundled silicon solution -- not only an Intel CPU but an Intel chipset and network adapter -- that defines the Centrino sales message.

Today's Centrino "Sonoma" platform -- the 533MHz-bus, PCI Express/DDR-2/Serial ATA successor to the 400MHz-bus first generation -- will give way early in 2006 to a platform dubbed "Napa," which will support both the 32-bit "Yonah" and later 64-bit "Merom" processors. In addition to supporting the dual-core CPUs, the "Napa" solution -- think 667MHz-bus, mobile version of today's 945G Express desktop chipset -- promises better power management and WiFi radio performance, faster integrated graphics, and a suitable-for-subnotebooks 20-percent reduction in chip size.

The dual-core, 65-nanometer "Conroe" desktop processor will appear in two similar but differently marketed platforms, codenamed "Averill" for the corporate office client and "Bridge Creek" for the digital home and entertainment station. "Glidewell" workstation and "Bensley" server platforms will host the "Woodcrest" members of the Xeon CPU family, with a quad-core "Whitefield" processor in the wings for 2007.

The biggest platform-branding news at IDF was Intel's 2006 push for powerful digital-home and entertainment PCs. These will range from conventional minitowers to stereo-equipment-style slimlines and beyond (before 2005 ends, the Centrino/Pentium M "Yonah" notebook hardware will likely appear in small-form-factor desktops a la Apple's Mac Mini).

Intel vice president and general manager of the Digital Home Group, Don MacDonald, unveiled the brand name linked to the "premium entertainment experience": Next year's elite consumer desktops will wear Centrino-style stickers that say Viiv.

Viiv rhymes with five, and if it's an acronym akin to Sony's Vaio (Video Audio Integrated Operation), Intel's not saying. It'll premiere early in '06 using Pentium D and "Yonah" processors, then segue into the new-architecture "Conroe."

The brand specifies a dual-core CPU; a remote control for Windows XP Media Center Edition; near-instant on and off (actually suspend and resume) operation; Intel's high-definition audio; and Intel media-server software that lets the Viiv PC serve as a home-network hub, automatically transcoding various digital media files into Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) content for playback on different devices, so users don't need to worry about file formats.

(In addition to 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth wireless, Intel also sees a role for wired home networks; the company is rejoining the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, whose latest spec delivers roughly 70MB/sec to different devices in the home through AC wall outlets.)

So what's the take-home message from Intel's latest facts-and-roadmaps exhibition? Dual-core dominates, and third-party chipset vendors are getting the same treatment Transmeta got.