Intel: New chips improve Web video quality

A new family of microprocessor chips will hasten the debut of high-definition video on the Internet, U.S. processing giant Intel said.

Sean Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer, said the chips' increased computing power would begin the transformation of herky-jerky video posted on YouTube and other streaming video sites into high-resolution, full-screen quality that could compete with HDTV, The New York Times reported.

"Its biggest impact is high-definition video," he said. "It will be highly addictive."

The company's new family, made up of 16 processors, first would be used in servers and high-end desktops that compress video, Maloney told the Times. The chips are based on a new manufacturing process that the Santa Clara, Calif., company said would give it a significant competitive advantage by increasing computing performance while reducing power consumption.

The first products based on the new manufacturing technology will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon microprocessors, the company said. Chips for notebook computers, marketed as the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, are scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2008.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International