雖說Intel(那斯達克交易代號：INTC)想大肆宣傳可穿戴產品與行動裝置等有待開發的新市場，但是公司的金雞母依然是桌上型電腦和伺服器。

在Intel科技論壇(IDF)中，Intel沒有針對桌上型電腦系列多所著墨，因為公司於今年稍早，就在舊金山舉辦的遊戲開發者大會(Game Developer Conference)，以及六月的台北國際電腦展(Computex)上，高調宣佈桌上型電腦的相關消息。Intel確實稍微提及接替Broadwell的Skylake，但並未透露任何重要的技術資訊(然而Skylake不算新鮮事，因為它的存在早就不是秘密了)。

既然桌上型電腦是Intel兩大支柱的其中一員，評估桌上型電腦的「局勢」就很重要了。Bright Side of News*的Sam Reynolds訪問到Intel桌上型客戶端平台事業群總經理暨副總裁Lisa Graff，以了解公司在桌上型電腦業務的進展，以及未來的走向。

Bright Side of News*：從今年稍早在深圳舉辦的IDF就能看出，Intel顯然正在深圳努力擴展業務，但是目前為止，公司似乎把大多精力投注在行動裝置，桌上型事業群的發展如何？

Lisa Graff：我們在深圳發展眾多裝置，之前發展過CD播放器、平板電腦等等。現在則發展以多合一為主的幾項桌上型電腦事務。許多規模較大的原廠設計製造(ODM)和原廠委託製造(OEM)都在當地發展多合一產品，這是他們主要的利益來源。

整體來說，我們的PC事業群也在當地提供他們方法，並且協助打造他們想建立的項目。

BSN*：目前Intel在熱門的CPU業務上遙遙領先。就技術層面而言，您認為Intel為什麼能夠大幅超越競爭對手？

LG：因為我們出手投資。我們在處理器的許多方面都進行投資，讓產品展現非常高的效能。我們把眾多焦點擺在處理器本身的設計，讓每個核心都具備高效能。有些軟體與多核心和執行緒搭配，能取得優異的擴展性，有些軟體則做不到。

所以即便是單執行緒軟體，也需要擁有高效能的核心。每個核心都必須展現非常好的效能。我們總能時時為晶片擴展效能並增加核數。從設計的角度來看，這是兩大要務。我們永遠都在探索提升這種效能的方式。你可以用一大堆不同的方法來做，而且許多方法都不容易。和競爭對手相比，我們每個核心的效能非常優異，一個四核和另一個四核並不一樣，這點你一定懂。

這是設計方面的情況，但是我們的另一項優勢在於處理技術。如你所知，Intel在處理技術上領先了好幾年，我們也重金投資，建立自己的超強陣容，緊密結合處理器設計和製造程序設計，而且在推出產品的幾年前就妥當處理，這樣才能微調所有細節，好讓晶片展現最佳效能。這一切最後都得到回報，要是你能擁有比較平價，而且速度較快的電晶體，就更能多加應用在晶片上了。

我們知道公司擁有願意出錢購買效能的客層，因此才會著手投資。

BSN*：接著我們來談談桌上型電腦採用的Broadwell。能不能請您說明PCI-Express的情況？有人說PCI-Express可能故意放慢速度，好助Intel的Iris顯示晶片一臂之力。

LG：我們針對桌上型電腦使用的Broadwell只講過一件事：就是我們將搭載Iris顯示晶片。之後我們還會公佈更多詳細資料，但也已經證實會在桌上型電腦搭配Iris Pro，也就是LGA。Intel認為這樣將能做出優良的小型迷你桌上型電腦，讓使用者能用這些較小的尺寸來節省電力、熱能、溫度和獨立圖形卡的成本。

BSN*：既然如此，這些小尺寸產品會在Intel桌上型電腦較廣泛的發展中扮演什麼角色？

LG：雖然小尺寸產品問世，還是有很多人繼續購買一般規格的桌上型電腦。所以我認為不會出現一體適用的產品，新的「夢幻逸品」不會取代一切，畢竟每個人的需求都不同。

就迷你型電腦來說，我抱持幾個看法：其一是桌上型電腦一定會被取代，而且使用方式會讓節省空間成為公司著手發展的一大要務，有人也許已經在用小尺寸電腦了。第二，迷你型電腦能具備新的用途，這包括嵌入軟體和硬體的使用案例，像收銀機就是其中一個例子。

BSN*：謝謝您抽空接受訪問。

The post LISA GRAFF暢談「桌上型電腦的局勢」 appeared first on VR World.

For all Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) wants to hype new unproven markets such as wearables and mobile, desktop along with servers, are still the company’s cash cow.

Intel didn’t share much in the line of desktops at IDF, as the company already made its big desktop related announcements earlier this year at the Game Developer Conference in San Fransisco as well as in June at Computex. The company did hint at Skylake, the successor to Broadwell, but didn’t reveal any important technical information (Skylake, however, was old news as its existence had been long leaked already).

But as desktop is one of the two main pillars of the company, getting a gauge on the desktop “state of the union” is important. Bright Side of News*’ Sam Reynolds sat down with Lisa Graff, Intel’s GM and VP of the Desktop Client Platform division, to see where the company has gone and where it is going in the desktop space.

Bright Side of News*: Intel is clearly pushing hard to expand its presence in Shenzhen, as was clear at IDF Shenzhen earlier this year. But so far this has been mostly for Intel’s mobile efforts. What about the Desktop Group?

Lisa Graff: Shenzhen has come from doing lots of different devices — CD players in the past, tablets, etc. So there’s a number of things going on there with desktops, primarily with all-in-ones. You’ve got a whole lot of the larger ODMs as well as OEMs there [doing all-in-ones]. Primarily, that’s where their interest lies.

Overall the PC group is there, enabling them, and helping them build what they want to build.

BSN*: Right now Intel has a commanding lead in the enthusiast CPU space. Technically speaking, why, in your opinion, is Intel leading by such a large margin against the competition?

LG: We’ve invested in it. We’ve invested in multiple aspects of our processors to make them very, very high performance. We put a lot of focus in the design of the processor itself to get each core high performance. Some software scales well with multiple cores and threading, while some software does not.

So, you need a core to be high-performance even if that software is single-threaded. The per-core performance needs to be very good. We can always scale and add more cores to the die. Those are the two aspects from the design standpoint. We’re always looking at how we could increase that performance. There’s a lot of different ways you could do that, and many of them are hard. Our per-core performance compared to the competition is very good; four-cores does not equal four-cores as I’m sure you know.

Those are the design aspects, but our other advantage is in process technology. Intel, as you know, is years ahead in process technology and we’ve put a huge amount of investment building our own fabs with a tight coupling between designing the processor and designing the manufacturing process. This is all done years ahead of when the product comes out so you can fine-tune everything to get the most performance out of the chip. All of that pays off in the end if you can have faster transistors that are less expensive, which you can put more of them on a die.

We know we have a customer base that will pay for performance so we’ve invested in it.

BSN*: Let’s shift to Broadwell on the desktop. Can you clarify the situation regarding PCI-Express? Some say that it may be intentionally slowed to give Intel’s Iris graphics a leg up.

LG: We’re only saying one thing about Broadwell on desktop: which is we are going to bring Iris graphics. We’ll come out with more details later, but we have confirmed that we will bring Iris Pro to desktop — meaning LGA. We think that’s going to enable us to have nice little mini-desktops — you can save the power, heat, thermals and cost of a discrete graphics card in these smaller form factors.

BSN*: As a follow-up, how do these small form factors play into Intel’s  broader vision for the desktop?

LG: Look, regardless of these small form factors, a lot of people still buy regular towers. So I don’t think there will be one size fits all, where this new “nirvanna” thing replaces everything. People have different needs.

For minis I think it’s [a few] things: one is there is absolutely a desktop replacement where the usage is such that the space saving is one of the big things we’re going after. This might be people who are already using small form factor. Second, there are new usages for minis. That’s the easy-embedded, standards-embedded use case. Point of sale is an example.

BSN*: Thanks for your time.

The post Lisa Graff on 'The State of The Desktop Union' appeared first on VR World.