Intel Still Pushing MIDs in a Big Way, Demos Moorestown

We might have had some hesitations about Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) in the consumer electronics and computing ecosystem, but Intel is still pushing the category in a big way here at Computex 2009. Senior vice president and general manager of Intel Ultra Mobility’s group Anand Chandrasekher took stage today at Intel’s Ultra Mobility event to talk about the small handheld computing devices and the product road map. “It is  our goal to have continued performance leadership,” he declared on stage. Chandrasekher demoed the next generation of the Atom chip for MIDs called Moorestown. Compared to the current Menlow platform it will be more power efficient and reduce the idle power up to 50 times. On top of promising almost all day battery life he discussed the ability to always be connected on the next platform. However, there were no substantial plans announced to bring voice capabilities to MIDs. Software will also be improved with Moblin 2  capabilities for the new crop of MIDs. Intel also demoed how Android applications will be able to run on the Moblin 2 Linux kernel. The session ended with Intel bringing a few of its OEM partners on stage including Inventec, Quanta, EB MID and others to announce new Moorestown MIDs. While Moorestown isn’t quite ready yet, that didn’t stop Intel from talking about the next generation called Medfield, which is based on 32nm architecture and is a single chip solution.