Intel Pushes Past the PC

Updated from 4:00 p.m. EDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- The PC may be Intel's(INTC) bread and butter. But the chipmaker is stepping up efforts to find new sources of growth.

Speaking at the company's twice-a-year developer forum here, Intel CEO Paul Otellini offered details on various internal projects designed to put Intel chips into a greater array of electronic products.

"We've matured," Otellini said of the PC industry. "But there's no shortage of opportunities that lie in front of us."

"These are markets that are very near to us and have the same characteristics," Otellini said, predicting that the consumer electronics industry would undergo as much change in the coming years as the PC industry has in the past decade.

The comments expanded upon existing company initiatives, with Otellini fleshing out the company's plan with product release dates and specifications for various chips under development.

Intel's plans to move beyond the PC are similar to recent efforts discussed by rival AMD(AMD), and they underscore the fierce competition between the two chipmakers in various markets.

Last week, AMD unveiled its quad-core Barcelona processor for servers, hoping to level the playing field with Intel. And the company has promised new desktop PC quad cores by the end of the year.

Intel, meanwhile, reiterated its plans to unleash its own barrage of technology on Tuesday, launching a chip with smaller circuitry, dubbed Penryn, in November, and a new microarchitecture known as Nehalem in the second half of 2008.

The company showed off a working prototype of the Nehalem processor, which Intel said has only been in production for the past three weeks.