‘Show And Tell’ Offers Glimpse Of Computing Future
Intel ‘Show And Tell’ Highlights 70 Projects, Offers Glimpse Of Computing Future
CTO: History Shows Research Investment Makes Big Impact on Future Innovation
RESEARCH@INTEL DAY, Mountain View, California,– At the Computer History Museum today, Intel Corporation unveiled more than 70 futuristic projects and concepts underway in its labs in the areas of the environment, healthcare, visual computing, wireless mobility and more, reflecting areas where the company is investing some of its annual US$6 billion in research.
Chief Technology Officer and Senior Fellow Justin Rattner outlined dramatic ways today’s research investments will impact technology coming in the next five years, reshaping how people interact with computers and improve the environment.
He also said the company’s priority of investing in research helps shape Intel’s products and the industry at-large. For example, the dawn of the Intel Atom processor stemmed from a small project inside Intel’s labs called ‘Snocone’ that explored the feasibility of designing an ultra-low-power processor based on Intel architecture. Several technologies inside the company’s Intel vPro business platform came from the labs as did 1990s research that helped create the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection to the PC for music players, keyboards, video cameras and more. “Hundreds of researchers inside Intel, and our close work with other technology companies, scientists, universities and governments will bring dramatic change over the next 5 years,” Rattner said. “The sampling of projects on display here, and the doubling of our R&D investment over the past 10 years, will speed scientific discovery, improve healthcare, better the environment, advance visual computing and bring a rich and wireless internet experience from the device of your choice, anywhere in the world.”
Visual Computing, Many Cores Will
Change Computers
As future Intel chips scale from a
few cores to many, the transition to mainstream parallel
computing in which multiple computer tasks are handled
simultaneously will result in an explosion of visual
computing capabilities including life-like 3-D environments,
immediate, real-world analysis of video feeds and more
natural ways for people to interact with their devices.
Intel, together with Neusoft, demonstrated a future car application with cameras as eyes and multi-core processor-based computers as the brain. Future cars will be able to much more accurately identify other vehicles and pedestrians that are getting too close and alert drivers or take its own safe actions to prevent accidents.
This type
of visual computing requires much more computing power, and
in turn poses parallel (multiple and simultaneous processor
requests) programming challenges. The car demonstration took
advantage of Intel’s Ct programming research, a C/C++
language extension created in Intel’s labs, which enabled
the program to seamlessly scale from 2 to 8 cores to conduct
its accident prevention work without writing additional
software code or compilers.
Technology
Advancing the Environment
Researchers are looking at
ways to significantly improve the environment and energy
efficiency of Intel-based products and systems with plans to
continue improving a computer’s performance but at
dramatically reduced levels of power consumption and
electricity needs. Intel researchers are exploring a new
power management technique that could redefine the behavior
and power management needs of future Intel-based
computers.
The technique’s technologies, collectively
called ‘Platform Power Management,’ operate by
continually monitoring changes in a computer’s operation
and intelligently reducing power, or turning off altogether,
portions of the system that are not in use such as the radio
or USB ports. Early demonstrations of this work have shown
power savings of more than 30 percent when a system is idle
or lightly active. In the next few years, Intel researchers
anticipate to extend these advancements and demonstrate
reductions in power consumption of 50 percent whether the
computer is idle or in heavy use. Platform power management
could someday benefit the full range of Intel products, from
mobile internet devices (MIDs) all the way to
high-performance servers.
Connecting
People, Heath and Health Care
For nearly 10 years,
Intel has focused on people-centered research that leads to
innovative technologies to improve the care of aging and
chronically ill individuals in the home. Personalised
technologies based on this research can help address the
rising costs of chronic disease and the aging population,
while also allowing people to become more actively engaged
in managing their health.
One example of Intel’s commitment to multidisciplinary research is its involvement in the Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre, a groundbreaking research collaboration jointly funded by Intel Corporation and the Irish government to explore technologies that will enable people of any age to live independent lives. One of the TRIL Centre’s recent innovations is BioMOBIUS™, a low-cost research computing platform that can be easily tailored to quickly build a research tool in a simple way by those with limited technical knowledge.
Another example of Intel’s research-driven solutions demonstrated today is a gait analysis system that reveals the key factors in people’s gait (the manner or rate of movement on foot) and determines their risk of falling. While currently a research project, concepts like this would improve quality of life and reduce the burden on healthcare systems.
Ultra-fast Yet
Shrinking Wireless World; Speech Recognition
While
Intel processors and mobile devices continue to shrink,
demand for continuing the performance and Internet
experience worthy of a fully-loaded, larger laptop or
desktop computer is ever increasing. Researchers at Intel
are looking at technologies that will allow small Mobile
Internet Devices to be aware of and interact with their
surroundings, so that the consumer’s experience is not
limited by the small size of the device.
Speech interfaces, for example, are particularly suitable for small mobile devices because of the limitation of the physical input and output channels. Intel researchers demonstrated a speech interface controlling the task of creating connections between two mobile devices and a wireless display with the goal of sharing resources and services. For example, consumers can speak commands in a natural manner to synch their mobile device with a large screen television to share recent photos of their children with grandparents.
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), the world
leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies,
products and initiatives to continually advance how people
work and live. Additional information about Intel is
available at www.intel.com/pressroom and http://blogs.intel.com.
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