Inside Intel: What's Brewing

Ryaz Patel, Intel Malaysia's Country Manager recently hosted several journalists at his office over lunch, just to brief them on what's been happening lately. Simon Tan was among those present and here’s what he walked away with, apart from a very full tummy...

There had been quite a lot of buzz coming from Intel at Computex 2010 in Taipei, which was held earlier in June. One of the more interesting designs Intel unveiled was its Canoe Lake prototype, which is an ultra-thin platform that will feature either single or dual-core processors. This 14mm thick netbook serves as a reference design on which vendors can explore to build even slimmer products.


Another announcement coming out from Computex was the Oak Trail platform, which will finally see dual core Atom processors for Netbooks and support for DDR3 RAM as well. With dual core CPUs finally moving over to the mobile segment (it has been available on desktop Atom CPUs for a while now) users will get a much needed performance boost from their ultra-portables. More importantly, these new CPUs will narrow the performance gap between Netbooks and their more powerful siblings powered by Intel’s Core family of processors.

Intel also recently announced the Smart TV initiative which is an open platform that utilises the Intel Atom CE4100 processor. Google TV will be bringing the web into the living room and more precisely, onto the (no longer) idiot box. Together with Sony and Logitech, these hardware guys are looking to bring Internet-powered content onto the large screen and in the process, redefine home entertainment. TV will no longer be a static experience, as users will be able to access cloud-based information and applications, including rich Adobe Flash content.

Another triumph of the Atom processor is the announcement that it will soon be used in In-Car Entertainment systems (ICE); Haw Tai, a Chinese manufacturer of such systems will soon be putting Atom processors into their products and thereby cars all over the world. BMW’s announcement that they will also be utilising the Atom processor in their vehicles prove the power and flexibility of the Atom processor.

According to Ryaz, “the Atom processor is no longer a processor for low-cost Netbooks which we are now so familiar with. It is a powerful platform for new applications and usage models”. To demonstrate its capability and flexibility, Ryaz showed those present an Intel Reader, a device designed to help those with Dyslexia, a learning disability. The Intel Reader is equipped with a camera which allows the user to snap a picture of any document which is then converted to text via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and then read out aloud (in a natural human voice) back to the user.



Of course, as a hardware and platform vendor, Intel needs software developers. Its Moblin initiative has been combined with that of Nokia’s Maemo and the resulting Meego platform offers developers an open ecosystem, powered by Linux which will enable applications to be ported across a wide range of hardware ranging from Netbooks and Tablets to mobile phones and In-Vehicle Entertainment systems. The roughly 800,000 Meego developers worldwide will spur the adoption of the Atom processor by introducing applications into various segments of the market.

Finally, WiMAX was also on the agenda as Ryaz reminded the journalists on the impending launch of WiMAX-embedded computing devices. The Intel Centrino Advanced N + WiMAX 6250 mini-card was announced recently and this allows mobile devices to connect both to WiFi (A/B/G/N) as well as all three WiMAX frequencies (2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz). For travellers, this means that they no longer have to switch dongles or use different devices to connect to any wireless network, anywhere in the world.