Rupert Goodwin is excited now. The mainstream press is starting to focus on what’s going to happen at IDF this week.

When Rupert asked Mooley Eden (Intel Mobile) about whether x86 would have the same power/efficiency as ARM-based embedded hardware, Mooley said ‘Wait 24 hours’

This could be an extremely significant 48 hours for UMPCs. Intel will announce details about McCaslin, the platform that will support UMPCs in 2007. They will probably give more detail about the UMPC-specific chipset that is planned for 2008 (that’s probably the bit that Mooley is referring to) and will introduce a concept that could split the UMPC market in two. The MID. A consumer-focused, operating system optimised version of a UMPC that will run Linux.

I estimate that in terms of UMPC news, this could be the biggest 48 hours of the year.

• More hints about the Intel UMPC-specific CPU and McCaslin. Confusing.
• Dedicated Intel UMPC architecture in 2008.
• New UMPCs + Old Intel hardware = Customer warning.