I'll drop by Monday's episode of "The Screen Savers" to give Leo the scoop from this past weekend's
Intel Developer Forum. Much of the information we'll be talking about was gleaned from Intel vice president and CTO Patrick Gelsinger's
research and development presentation last Friday night. Get more information and links below.
'Radio Free Intel'
Gelsinger showed off a brand-new silicon wafer designed for Intel's latest wireless initiative, which it lovingly calls "Radio Free Intel." Intel's goal for the project is to build reconfigurable radios into every chip to provide automatic, always-on access to any wireless network.
The first step is to integrate several different radios into one module (four years out), then onto a single chip (seven years out), and finally into the corner of a dye, like a processor or a chipset (7 years plus).
In order to accomplish this, Intel needs to figure out how to manufacture radios using CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor, pronounced "see-moss"). Today, such radios are only made with other materials, like silicon germanium, which can operate at higher frequencies than silicon. Making chips with CMOS would allow Intel to use its standard manufacturing process, lowering the overall cost.
Learn more
'Xtreme' engine
Next, Gelsinger brought out Intel's new TCP offload engine (code-named "Xtreme" processor). This test chip has been clocked at 10 GHz in the lab at room temperature (25 degrees Celsius) and Intel is looking to scale this further.
Currently most of us use 10/100 networks (capable of transferring up to 100 megabits per second). The next move, supported by chipsets like Intel's Springdale (due soon), are capable of 1GbE (Gigabits per second). Future high-bandwidth networking is going to need much more headroom.
This is where the Xtreme processor comes in. It will offload communications functions from the CPU in the same way that 3D graphics cards assist graphics processing. Right now, the Xtreme chip is capable of 7GbE of small and large packets of data running at 10 GHz. 10BbE is the eventual target. That's 10 times what the next generation of chipsets is capable of handling.
Intel's Microprocessor Research Lab built this chip to show the performance of the design as well as the low power/performance of the 90nm process. The chip could potentially be made into a stand-alone product or integrated into another Intel chip.
Computer: read my lips
Incredibly enough, Intel's China Labs are developing software that could allow your PC to read your lips (mind to come). The program combines speech recognition algorithms with lip-reading through a camera connected to the computer. The combination of audio and visual clues significantly increases accuracy over either speech recognition or lip-reading alone.
This research began as a way to create a more natural interface for Chinese computer users because the traditional keyboard is ill-equipped for the Chinese language. (It takes several keystrokes to print one single Chinese character and good typists can only manage about 40 characters per minute.)
Joan Wood co-founded the extremely influential Sharky Extreme with Alex "Sharky" Ross in 1998. Wood now writes the "Forward Slash" column for Computer Power User magazine. Wood was kind enough to bring Leo an extremely hardy house plant called a Dracaena Janet Craig.
