Intel readies new chipsets
Intel is set to take the wraps off its latest chipsets and a new low-cost laptop. — Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group, plans to unveil the chipsets during his keynote address on Tuesday at Computex Taipei trade show in Taiwan.
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel is using this week's Computex Taipei show to close out a platform cycle it previewed in March, when DigiTimes reported its Bearlake chipsets for desktops ahead of CeBIT 2007. Executive vice president Sean Maloney gets the keynote slot to put those chipsets formally on stage.
The second half of the announcement is the surprise: alongside silicon, Intel and Asus confirmed a joint development effort for a low-cost notebook, with PC Magazine pegging the machine — the Eee PC — at $199. It follows months of Intel pushing design-forward hardware concepts, including the ultra-thin Mobile Metro demoed at IDF and hands-on reviewed by AeroXperience in late May.
First-order effects
- Desktop OEMs and Taiwan's motherboard ecosystem get a fresh Bearlake-based platform to build summer product lines around, with Maloney's keynote setting the launch cadence.
- Asus gains an entirely new price tier — a $199 co-developed notebook — that sits far below conventional laptop pricing and gives Intel a vehicle to push its silicon into first-time buyers.
Second-order effects
- Rival notebook makers face pressure to answer the $199 Eee PC or concede the entry segment to Asus and Intel before the back-to-school cycle.
- AMD, already competing against Bearlake on the desktop, must now counter Intel on two fronts simultaneously: platform refresh above and a new low-cost tier below.
Third-order effects
- If the $199 notebook finds buyers, it forces the industry to define a segment between handhelds and full laptops, shifting volume toward cheap, purpose-limited machines built on Intel reference designs.
- Intel's parallel push on thin, style-driven concepts like the Mobile Metro points to industrial design becoming a differentiator in notebooks rather than just clock speeds — a direction its own compiler updates for multicore parallelism quietly reinforce.
The trend: Intel is turning Computex into its global stage for pairing platform silicon launches with category-defining hardware experiments, from $199 notebooks to razor-thin concepts.