Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset 'to revolutionise PC market'

London, Sep 14 (ANI): The world's biggest chipmaker, Intel, is set to shake up the PC market with its new chipset, code-named Sandy Bridge.

Sandy Bridge is Intel's first architecture to merge a microprocessor and graphics processor onto a single silicon chipIntel is banking its immediate future on the product, which has been designed to cut the time it takes to produce images.

The company is betting the new technology will win over both PC vendors and consumers.

It recently cut sales forecasts because of weaker than expected PC demand.

"Sandy Bridge will revolutionise PCs again," the BBC quoted Paul Otellini, Intel's chief executive as telling its annual developer forum being held in San Francisco.

"On one single chip, we've put in place all the critical capabilities for computing. This is a very important chip for Intel," he added.

The chip will target low-end desktop computers and laptops and is expected to be ready to go to customers early next year.

Putting the two processors together will cut the time it takes to produce images as it removes bottlenecks between the graphics processor and memory.

It will also improve battery life and power consumption.

"This is a big deal and we are all interested to see how the chip performs when it gets out into the real world next year," said Martin Reynolds, managing vice president of research firm Gartner.

"I don't however think it will revolutionise the industry but it does force that continued change that is part of the history of the PC industry. Intel has to keep new technologies coming to the market that keeps its growing so it is a big bet for the next couple of years," he added.

Sandy Bridge is expected to cause headaches for Intel rival Nvidia, the maker of stand-alone graphics chips.

Technology blog VentureBeat has called Sandy Bridge an "Nvidia killer".

Advanced Micro Devices is also expected to feel the heat from Sandy Bridge. It has been working on its own hybrid chip for a while, but many analysts feel it has lost ground by not staying ahead of Intel. (ANI)