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At new Austin quarters, Intel exec says, there are 'huge opportunities going forward'May 16, 2012 (Austin American-Statesman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Intel Corp. unveiled its new Austin development site Tuesday to company officials, dignitaries and the 1,100 workers who will start moving there beginning next week. With 200,000 square feet of office space and 70,000 square feet of common area, including a spacious cafeteria, the space will be a roomy, new home for the development team responsible for Intel's Atom family of low-power processors and more specialized systems-on-a-chip created for smartphones and other mobile devices. Company officials agreed that, over time, Intel will fill up the space with more workers. "Intel is a very cautious company, and if we don't need the space, we don't build it," said David "Dadi" Perlmutter, general manager of the Intel Architecture Group and chief product officer for the world's largest chip company. Intel demonstrated its Medfield smartphone hardware platform and has signed on customers including Lenovo Group in China and Motorola Mobility. Medfield is a good start, Perlmutter said, but hinted there will be more advances ahead, both in chip design and in advanced factory processes that can produce lower-power chips. "This is Intel," Perlmutter said. "We are never satisfied." Perlmutter had said he would speak to Intel workers at the site later Tuesday to encourage them and to challenge them. "The message is that there are huge opportunities going forward," he said. "These workers are at the center of Intel's business and strategy, and it is on their shoulders to make it happen. At Intel, the reward for success is more work." Perlmutter said he expects more new projects for the Austin team and more resources to work with. "These are engineers, and that is what they like, more challenging problems to go solve," he said. Atom fits well within the larger company, he said, because smartphones are computers. "At the end of the day, Intel is about computing and using semiconductor technology to do computing better," he said. "Everything we do, from the smallest smartphone to the biggest server, is all consistent from programming to applications to security features and services. It all fits extremely well. The Atom (processor family) will not be just for phones but for tablets and even for microservers," which are new kinds of low-power servers that are designed to do more routine work using far less power than conventional servers. The site includes a new design look by the company that features warmer interior colors, including green, yellow and orange, in addition to the company's standard blue and gray. It includes a 38,000-square-foot cafeteria and a community garden that employees can work in. It also has a 24-hour fitness center, a health clinic and many informal meeting rooms and spaces to encourage worker collaboration. Contact Kirk Ladendorf at 445-3622 ___ (c)2012 Austin American-Statesman, Texas Visit Austin American-Statesman, Texas at www.statesman.com/","http://www.statesman.com/ Distributed by MCT Information Services |