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Why Intel’s Otellini loves Moore’s Law

• By Rich Seeley
• October 1, 2004

While Intel experiences ups and downs in the stock market and the chip market, President and COO Paul Otellini exudes confidence in the future of the high-tech market. On stage at September’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Otellini told his audience of 5,000 developers, engineers and techno-fans to get ready for a “surge” in high tech that is coming because of two things business techies love to talk about: their own innovations and Moore’s Law.

While Intel experiences ups and downs in the stock market and the chip market, President and COO Paul Otellini exudes confidence in the future of the high-tech market.

On stage at September’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Otellini told his audience of 5,000 developers, engineers and techno-fans to get ready for a “surge” in high tech that is coming because of two things business techies love to talk about: their own innovations and Moore’s Law.

Otellini cites Moore’s Law for rapidly growing volumes of business data requiring more and more chips to store and process, and more and more PCs, notebooks, and handhelds to network and access. He points to Intel’s own corporate data, which he says grew from 500 terabytes in 2001 to 3,400 terabytes in 2004.

“The amount of data inside the company doubled every 18 months,” Otellini says. “It’s moving at the rate of Moore’s Law.” Pointing to a slide charting Internet growth, he adds: “The Internet is also moving at the rate of Moore’s Law in terms of a good surrogate for that, which is static HTML pages, also doubling every 18 months.”

This doubling of data is good news for makers of memory chips, and Otellini is quick to show off a wafer representing Intel’s newly announced line of 65 nanometer products.

“This is a collection of very high-capacity static RAMs, the world’s first -- these are Intel’s first fully integrated technology, fully functional product on 65 nanometers,” he notes.

As long as Moore’s Law is enforced in Silicon Valley, Otellini seems confident in Intel’s future.