After making its chips a standard in the desktop computer industry, Intel is moving to put its stamp on the wireless communications market with processors that run a wide range of Internet-enabled hand-held devices.
The semiconductor giant expects strong support from Asian manufacturers and application developers will see the next generation of cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) standardised on XScale-based processors.
However, the move casts doubt over the future of Intel's StrongArm processors that are used on many mobile phones and most PDAs, including those based on Microsoft's PocketPC platform.
Asia-Pacific director at Intel's communications sales organisation Joseph LaValle said the new chips would complement and not replace Intel's StrongArm processors, even though the company expected strong demand for XScale chips.
'There are no plans to phase-out StrongArm, but we don't know what will happen within the next 18 months,' he said.
Intel said StrongArm's microarchitecture did not possess the same computing power of the new processors based on XScale technology. Intel produces StrongArm processors under licence from British microprocessor designer Arm, which was also involved in the development of XScale.
