Power, heat and leakage have become the bane of chipmakers looking to crank up the clock speed to improve performance.  So this year at the International Solid State Circuits Society (ISSCC) conference in San Francisco, Intel plans to release papers on technologies to crank back the clock.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker will reveal details of a handful of new advances to improve the power usage and heat dissipation of its chips, and offer information on the progress of its efforts at radio on a chip.

“The biggest challenge continues to be power in terms of delivery of power and dissipation of power,” said Shekhar Borkar, Intel Fellow and co-director of the Intel microprocessor technology lab, in a conference call with press and analysts ahead of the conference.  Borkar noted that Intel CTO Pat Gel singer stated in a 2001 keynote address that the days of delivering performance at any cost is history. Rather, moving forward, the industry must start looking at value performance.