Mark Christiansen, VP of Intel and the man in charge of its IXA networking strategy, said today the firm has managed to shrink level two, three and four Fast Ethernet and Gigabit technology into a single chip.

At the same time, Intel announced a partnership with Motorola on switching technology.

Christiansen said that its IXA scheme, introduced this time last year, was going well.

"We have a few holes in IXA, but we're filling them," he said.

"We've made great progress on delivering on the promise on what we've set out to do."

Christiansen was followed by Ron Smith, who promised that Intel will deliver a new paradigm in wireless, a paradigm moreover, which seems to imply that we're all going to live in e-homes.

Or maybe e-holes, or e-huts, who knows?

Smith demonstrated an 800MHz new StrongArm variant, part of the Xscale family, which he said will deliver 1000 MIPS using only one watt. He showed that the family will deliver 1GHz. (Why doesn't Intel use this rather than them big clunky Pentiums for its mobile family?)

At .7 volts the family can deliver 200MHz and use fractions of watts, that is 50 milliwatts, amounting to 250 MIPS.

The scaleable core will allow Intel to market the family at practically any speed, depending on the voltage or power requirements. ®