Web 2.0: Liveblogging Intel’s CEO
Paul Otellini is onstage at 8:30 am at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco today, in a conversation with host John Battelle.
The conversation is too fast for me to type along with, so I’m going to paraphrase him.
On the stimulus package: He’s not happy with where a lot of the money went. Swimming pools in Biloxi, etc. By contrast, he says, China’s government rolled out a stimulus package that he thinks was much better spent on economic growth opportunities.
On Intel’s investments in fab plants: They’re bringing four new fab plants into operation in the U.S. But they’ve not yet reached the decision point on which of those plants will go into the next generation of 20-nanometer chips.
Battelle asks what Intel has in its pocket that will be a big deal. Otellini says the “system on chip” products, which put memory, graphics processing, and other functions onto the same piece of silicon as the central processing unit, will enable smartphones that can do better video and real-time Internet processing.
“Moore’s Law is a law about human inventiveness.”
Intel’s future roadmap these days focuses not on faster CPU speed, but on bringing more capabilities onto the chip, so that software developers can use APIs creatively to concoct new functionality for the user.
On government: Unsurprisingly, he feels taxes on the company are too high, and that the U.S. patent system is outdated.
Health care is something Intel has been working on with GE. The goal is to make it possible for people to take care of themselves at home, rather than being committed to hospitals and institutions.
WiMax: It’s “alive and well” as a fourth-generation mobile technology. It works pretty well in Tokyo, he says. “When you walk around the streets of San Francisco with a 3G phone, you realize you need more bandwidth.”
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.