India, Oct. 28 -- The history of the PC chip can be told in simple stages. The 1990s were about clock speed. The 2000s focused on shrinking transistors. For most of the 2010s and 2020s, the goal was performance per watt. Gokul V. Subramaniam, Intel India president and vice president of Intel's Client Computing Group, said that while the definition is rapidly changing, those measures still matter, even if they are no longer enough.

"Raw speeds without the right kind of performance per watt are not good," he said, explaining there are priorities that define the next phase of Intel's silicon roadmap.

First, heterogeneous compute is a key foundation. "You want the right horse for the course," he explains. That means a CPU or central process...