Intel R&D on slow boat to China
ntel may be plunging ahead with manufacturing plans in China, but its research-and-development arm isn’t moving at quite the same pace. Engineers at labs in Beijing and Shanghai are working on important research into areas such as parallel programming tools and Intel’s terascale research program. But no processors are in development over here as of yet, and it may be some time before that happens, said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at Intel and chief of the company’s labs.
This is something Intel is working on, said Tan Wee Theng, president of Intel China. The company is spending a lot of time and money working with the local university education system on science and technology education. When it announced plans to set up a plant in Dalian, it also set up an educational program with the local university to focus on electrical engineers and computer science, he said. Intel has been more aggressive with research and development in India. Much of the design work for its 80-core processor prototype was done in Bangalore, and Intel India actually came up with a processor design, called Whitefield that, while it never saw the light of day, was based on design principles that Intel plans to incorporate into its Nehalem generation of processors next year.
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