Photos: Intel showcases new technology at IDF 2009

Sean Maloney, newly promoted and heir apparent to CEO Paul Otellini in the eyes of many, was the first to take the stage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday. The show is Intel's flagship event to announce new technology, tout its vision, and persuade computing partners to see things Intel's way.

Intel showed this first look at a transistor built with its 32-nanometer manufacturing process.

CEO Paul Otellini showed off Intel's first wafer of silicon chips made with a next-next-generation 22-nanometer manufacturing process. These chips were SRAM memory chips often used to get new manufacturing processes debugged. The 22nm chips aren't due to arrive until 2011.

Art Webb, a technical marketing manager at right, shows Otellini a tiny PC called a MID running Windows 7 on an Intel Atom processor.

Webb touted Atom's software compatibility with more powerful x86 processors such as its present Core line. The smaller chips run Adobe Flash games, Skype Internet calling software, and Netflix's streaming video service.

The press mobbed Intel's gadgets on display at IDF.

Intel's "Sandybridge" processor family is two generations out from today's Nehalem chips, but Intel showed this PC using the 32-nanometer chip that's due to arrive at the end of 2010.

Intel's Atom sales pitch shows Atom-based hardware getting ever smaller.

Intel technical marketing manager Adam Moran showed off its Arrandale technology that brings its newer Nehalem processor technology to laptops.

Claire Alexander, project manager for Moblin, touted new features of the Linux operating system for mobile devices that Intel has been supporting.

Otellini fielded questions from the press on Intel's antitrust case vs. AMD in the European Union, its competition with Qualcomm, and other matters after his speech.

During Sean Maloney's own speech, the executive showed the gargantuan size of a modern Intel processor if it had been built on an older manufacturing process.

Intel has shipped more than 200 million processors built with its present 45-nanometer manufacturing process.

Bill Baker, who leads Intel manufacturing, pulled out a second wafer of prototype chips built with its upcoming 22-nanometer process. Otellini's wafer showed SRAM memory chips designed for high density, with each memory cell taking up 0.092 square microns. Baker showed this wafer that showed the process adjusted for lower voltage and power consumption, with each cell taking up 0.108 square microns.

Intel announced "Jasper Forest," a variation of its Nehalem EP server processor designed specifically for storage devices. The chip has a built-in PCI Express interface to speed access to the storage and networking systems.

Maloney, taking the place of departed colleague Pat Gelsinger, showed off compact servers using the eight-core Nehalem EX processor and jammed with large quantities of memory. These systems are from IBM, Supermicro, SGI, and Intel itself.

Andy Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and more recently co-founder of Arista Networks, lent some big-iron credibility to Maloney's speech with an appearance on stage.

Intel on Tuesday debuted its Larrabee graphics chip, which uses many stripped-down x86 cores to process data. At left is Intel's senior research scientist Bill Mark in front of a demonstration of live ray-traced video. To watch the video, check the Larrabee graphics debut story.

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Intel festooned Moscone Center with marketing materials.