Intel To Make A Greener Microprocessor

crem_d_genes writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, Intel is planning microprocessors that have a reduced amount of lead in them (reportedly 95% lower). It's about time a company started this - good job - and let's hope other tech companies take the hint. While many places in the US have banned the disposal of computer parts, there have been unintended consequences of the eco-friendly laws. Many 'recycled' computers currently get shipped overseas where parts eventually make their ways into the hands of workers who usually 'burn' the parts to get rid of plastic and recover small amounts of valuable metals. In the process they are exposed to the toxic compounds that are released. In other cases, lead makes its way into drinking water."

Comments

Reduced lead?

[mkaiser]

Excellent idea.
Next step: reduce power consumption.

Re:Reduced lead?

[Specialist2k]

Next step: reduce power consumption

This is definitely a necessity as the major ecological impact of modern consumer and IT products occurs during the utilization phase and not during the production or disposal phase.

Anybody know how this is done?

[benchbri]

Quote from the article:

"The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker, the world's biggest, said it is working with the rest of the industry to remove the remaining amount of lead that's needed to connect the processor's core with its packaging."

I read this and think solder. Anyone know what else they would use?

/uses lead as a paperweight

hype

[frovingslosh]

If you think that even a 95% decrease in the lead in the microprocessor would have as much as 0.1% impact on the amount of lead in a desktop computer, think again! The lead in the solder on the boards and in the power supply is a far greater factor than the very small amount of lead in a CPU. Sure, you can say "any decrease is an improvement", and maybe it even really is (that depends an awful lot on what the lead is replaced with though), but don't let let yourself be fooled by someone pointing at the CPU and calling attention to it while the Intel chip is not the real problem.

How much lead is present in a microprocessor?

[unixwin]

Question:
Intel to Reduce Chips' Lead Content ?

Answer:
For environmental reasons, Intel Corp. plans to reduce the amount of lead in its microprocessors and chip sets by 95 percent starting this year.

Real Answer:
A European Union directive requires manufacturers to ban the use of six specified hazardous substances, including lead, after July 2006

My question:
So how much of lead is there actually in a microprocessor/flash? 95% reduction is great, but without an actual number a comparison is pointless.

Re:Green friendly?

[ciroknight]

Okay, I thought I'd sit back and moderate on this one, but I'm already tired of reading the garbage.

Ever wonder why Intel's not been cranking out Prescott cored processors that run even faster/hotter? Is it because they couldn't just bolt a jet engine and a copper block to the thing and ship it? No. It's because they're shifting their attention (once again).

AMD fanboys listen up: Yeah, you guys are winning the strongarm race right now. You've got the faster middle-class processor (upper end desktop/lower- to medium-end server) and Intel knows this quite well. They could scale Prescott very quickly up, but so would come heat, and therefore energy prices.

Now, lets look at other moves Intel's made lately. They've announced they're going to a PR-rating for selling processors. What sense does this make if they're just going to ramp up their processors even faster clockwise? Why do they need to compare anything except clocks? Well, because AMD is wiping the floor with them, that's why.

90nm technology has also been undergoing perfection with Prescott, meaning lower voltages, higher yields, less wasted silicion on the wafer.

Both of these things bring us to the sucecssor to Banias, Dothan. Extremely large cache, 90nm technology, extremely fast CPU. Not only will this be one of the most (energy effecient/clock effecient) chips ever made, it most likely will be the next desktop processor. But, here's the kicker, for them to be able to do this, they need to take a short pause from ramping up their current technology's speed, and moving Dothan over to a bigger mass production line. This is why we find Intel pretty silent right now, and most likely the same with AMD (anticipation; AMD's a very reactionary company).

So, I'm very sure that this is one of the top priorities sitting on the desks of Intel Engineers, I applaud them for taking every step towards a cleaner environment while making my newest tech gadgets.

where's the 8 lbs of lead??

[iamhassi]

on the site linked to in the article they claim "A typical computer processor and monitor contain five to eight pounds of lead..."

Now I've never cracked open a monitor so I don't know if they really contain 8 lbs of lead, but where is all this lead in a PC? The entire motherboard can't weigh more than a pound or two so that's not it. The case? No, that's sheet metal. Is it in the hard drive? Average mid-tower PC probably doesn't weigh much more than 8 lbs total so I can't imagine where all this lead is at.

Also monitors are rarely thrown out. I've gone through about half a dozen PCs but kept the same monitor. They're just too freaking useful, even old 14" monitors are great for a second PC and still easily sell on eBay. Are these broken monitors people are tossing out?

Re:Greener Chips?

[joe_bruin]

actually, they are required to do this if they intend to keep selling chips in europe and japan. a recent group of laws in the EU (or is it some individual EU countries, i'm not sure) and Japan require that consumer electronics be nearly lead-free, both in the final product and in the manufacturing process. this includes PCB's and integrated circuits. most manufacturing operations, and any electronics makers that want to do business outside of north america, have been transitioning to lead-free products recently.

intel is meeting its upcoming legal requirements. the real win here (for intel), is turning something they are legally obligated to do into an "environmentally friendly" pr victory. the news media seems to be eating it up.

What a Load of Twaddle

[nukenerd]

Ist This is Intel, so we are talking only about the processor and other chips, not the whole machine? Vast majority of lead is soldering to the motherboard and other printed circuits - outside Intel's control.

2nd You won't stop 3rd world countries trying to kill themselves. A colleague of mine once worked for a crane company who sold to India, among other places. He went out there to check the new installation of a new crane once and found they had removed all the hand rails around ladders and platforms etc and sold them for scrap! You cannot impose western standards on these places.

3rd Not just 3rd world countries. I work as a safety engineer and anyone, even supposedly "sensible" workers within my own industry (they have to pass various aptitude tests here), have limitless imagination in devising new ways to try to kill themselves. Only constant monitoring and supervision stops them from doing so. We can only leave 3rd world countries to regulate themselves.

4th Sounds like a publicity gesture by Intel to me. "Lead" is one of those trigger words which switches people into self-righteous mode. These gestures always seem to work - even among people of above average knowledge and intelligence. Just watch the posters here for example.

Now, where's that asbestos suit.

Banias and Dothan

[ciroknight]

Read the title for your reduced power consumption chips, which should be hitting the desktop within a few months or so. Banias is just wiping the floors with any competitors battery-life and speed wise, and their greatest competitor is actually themselves; those god awful Celeron notebooks with 30 minute battery lifes. But what's cheap usually outsells what's new.

I fully believe that Pentium V (Pentium 5, whichever they choose to call it), will be Dothan, introducing to the desktop for the first time a power-saving logic. Not only does this make sense for quieter, smaller computing (two of the biggest buzzfactors on the market right now; those micro cases and motherboards are selling like wildfire), it makes for cheaper, faster computing. I believe that the cluncky Pentium 4M will be dropped altogether, and the Pentium 4 technology (Tejas, the last NetBurst Archetecture chip I know of) will be integrated into the Xeon line to run head on verses the AMD64 chips (hince, the reason they're adding in the x86-64 extensions to that processor).

Long Live P6

Re:Banias and Dothan

[sfe_software]

I think power consumption has always been a large factor. You can't increase switching speed and transistor count without either utilizing a LOT more power, or making the process more efficient.

Now granted, the "need for speed" in recent years has caused the net effect to be higher power consumption, but if consumption were anywhere near the level of older processors, but with the transistor count and switching speed of current processors -- we'd need some very serious heat dissipation.

Right now, speeds are fast enough that raw clock speed isn't as much of a concern for consumers any more. Even I don't feel the need to upgrade at this point, as the gains would be minimal. Any machine you buy new today will be more than sufficiently fast for what most users do, and most of them will play current and near-future games with ease.

So the push is now back to power consumption, just like when all the "Enegery Star Compliant" stuff first started appearing. Notice that most PC companies are making much quiter PCs, giving them smaller and more stylish designs, etc -- rather than having the fastest available CPU, etc. Lower power consumption falls inline with this, especially with making PCs quieter (less power means less required cooling, smaller power supplies, and ultimately smaller and quieter PCs).

It's all a matter of what's going to sell at a given moment. If we required more CPU speed, power consumption be damned. While we don't really need more speed, focus can go to power consumption and efficiency.

Re:question

[sfe_software]

Actually, intel is moving away from measuring chip speed by GHZ. Wired just had this article about it.

Basically, Intel is a couple years behind AMD who is now using numbers like 2300+ to describe chip speed.

The difference here is this: AMD's numbers were intended for comparison with a P4; for example, an Athlon 2600+ is supposed to be roughly equal to a P4-2.6 GHz. And to AMD's credit, most benchmarks showed that they were quite generous to Intel.

Intel designed the P4 to do less work per clock, but at a much higher potential clock. Thus even a P-III would out-do a P4 for the same clock frequency. Whether this was a marketing decision or not, I don't know...

Point being, Intel is getting away from clock-speed ratings for different reasons. I personally think that it's because demand has gone down significantly. Computers are today more than fast enough for almost everything the average user wants to do. Even I don't really need a faster machine at this point, and I write software...

So the market isn't going to be driven by faster CPUs. Most of my family won't buy a new PC based solely on that. But if the new machine was smaller, quieter, and more power-efficient, that might be incentive to upgrade (again, even I would probably go for that if it were at least as fast as my current PC).

It's all about market demand. For the last few years, consumers demanded faster CPU speeds; this has changed, and the smarter companies in this industry are changing as well.