Intel CEO: chip industry needs to help people move content easily between devices

Intel chief: content-shifting key for chip-makers

SAN FRANCISCO — The semiconductor industry hasn’t fully cracked the challenge of making chips that help people move content seamlessly between their devices, Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini said Monday.

That capability will be critical because there are 5 billion devices connected to the Internet, and that number will rise, Otellini said during a keynote at Intel’s annual developer conference.

Consumers increasingly demand technology that lets them start a movie or TV show on a smart phone and finish it on a home personal computer or TV, for example.

The industry is exploring those challenges as engineers develop chips for new Internet-connected devices. Otellini’s keynote focused on Intel’s efforts to get its processors into those devices.

Intel also showed features of Intel’s new line of chips, which will start appearing in computers next year.

One of those features: putting a graphics processor onto the same piece of silicon as the processor that handles general computing tasks. Previously, they had been separate chips. Putting the two processors together cuts the time it takes to produce images, as it removes bottlenecks between the graphics processor and memory.

The new chips had been code-named “Sandy Bridge” but will be sold under Intel’s Core branding.