Intel mantra- Convergence is key

BANGALORE: At the Intel Developer Forum held in Bangalore, covergence was the key term. Exactly, a year ago Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger spoke to Indian developers about it.

This year Frank E Spindler, VP, Corporate Technology Group continued with the subject and spoke extensively on related research topics. He also updated the developers on the status of some of Intel research activities that Gelsinger had spoken about last year.

While Gelsinger had spoken about expanding Moore"s law, Spindler talked about how Metcalfe"s Law will be at the heart of the convergence of devices that is yet to happen.

Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet had said that the usefulness or utility of a network equals that of the square of the number of nodes in it. As of now, the number of microprcessors shipping may be very high, but the fact remains that only a tiny percentage of them is connected to each other.

Once we find ways of connecting them effectively, we would bring in a macro convergence in the industry, said Spindler. This convergence will not be limited to extending utilities by combining devices, but will be a shift that will usher in new models of usage; new infrastructure to support new businesses and business models; and new norms and social behavior.

While convergence at the micro level will be driven by silicon, the macro-level changes have to brought in by the developers, he said. The vision of a radio-free Intel had emerged a year ago, a vision that talks of a radio on every chip so that wireless becomes a default technology, and not something that has to be built in for specific applications.

One achievement in the direction, according to Spindler, is the development of the CMOS radio that he demonstrated to the developer community. Gelsinger had introduced ad-hoc networks to developers last year. This year Spindler spoke about making computing proactive, of which ad hoc networks are a part.

Intel is working at making distributed intelligence happen through sensors--a platform for development for this is also in place. The thrust is on computing that goes beyond being just location aware and be context aware too, so that devices around you can come up with services that sense your needs and respond with options for that.

Intel"s Proactive Health Research is working on solutions for the elderly population, which will sense medical changes and be able to provide services to respond to the situation.

Spindler also spoke about the research happening on driving natural interactions with computing devices--speech recognition in particular. Intel has come up with a microphone array technology that will take in sound from several mics and be able to filter out noise, pick up directional quality and improve accuracy.

Also aiding in the speech processing will be cameras that will help the system to learn from the way a user is speaking to the device. All this will contribute to significantly improve the accuracy of speech recognition.