New Intel microarchitecture in the works

Now here's something I wasn't expecting, but it makes perfect sense. Intel is no longer playing around with the low power thing by just tweaking their current CPU designs to run on less juice. Nope, they're cooking up an entirely new x86 chip design that's built specifically for the mobile market. This new core, codenamed Banias, will run x86 code on an entirely new microarchitecture. The new microarchitecture will be optimized for battery life, and not horsepower, and it'll be aimed directly at the space that Crusoe is intended to occupy. This is a great idea, and I have no doubt that the chip will be competitive in terms of power consumption and performance with whatever's out there. Just how competitive remains to be seen, but given what Intel has been able to do with the PIII architecture, I think some optimism is justified. Now I'm wondering if AMD will jump on the bandwagon. I'd be surprised if they did, though, since they're focusing their efforts on the high-end server market. I saw this link over at Ace's.