After being at the IDF for five days listening to Intel keynotes, speaking with Intel PR, conversing with other journalists and taking a few labs, I have a good picture on what Intel has planned for the future of the PC industry. The Internet angle that Intel has taken for the future of their products was the major focal point of all their products. From the IA-64 to the new USB 2.0, everything had its place in Intel's big picture to thrust homes and businesses into the Internet scheme of things.

Merced/Coppermine

The first big announcements came when I attended Craig Barrett's keynote speech. He talked about Intel's predictions for the future of PC's stating that there would be huge growth in the home, businesses and Internet infrastructure. He went on to give a demo of Merced running a 64-bit Windows OS that just happened to expire when he started the system! After a few laughs and Mr. Barrett saying he could afford to renew the license, the demo went on to show a few simple demos. After this a prototype of IA-64 Linux was demonstrated. It was stated that engineering samples have already began shipping to Intel customers. Most of the information that was disclosed here wasn't really anything too new besides proving that the Merced is alive and kicking with proof. We were told that Merced was still on track to be released sometime in mid-2000. Next was a showcase of the Coppermine based CPUs that were running at 800MHz air-cooled. Mr. Barrett made a quick joke by stating that the machine didn't need any special type of cooling devices to reach the 800MHz speed (obvious kick at AMD). He stated that we would see Intel CPUs with the "7" in the beginning sometime in October and told Pat Gelsinger (VP and General Manager of Intel Corps Desktop Products Group) to make it happen in a joking way.

The developers interface guide (DIG64) for Merced was launched at IDF (Developer's Interface Guide for IA-64 Servers ) that details system building blocks (processor, memory, chipset, I/O bus) and software interface. The idea is to build requirements that would utilize the power of the 64-bit processor and to be able to keep the platform scalable for future IA-64 servers. The founding members of DIG64 are Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Siemens and NEC. With standards being developed for Merced, we should see a much smoother introduction of IA-64 products.

USB 2.0/RDRAM

It was announced that USB 2.0 speeds would target speeds between 360-480 Mbs. I was very impressed at the throughput of USB 2.0 and it was apparent that for home networking that Intel was pushing USB to connect all the PCs in the home. The increased bandwidth should make things a bit more interesting for USB devices. However, one of my new friends at IDF mentioned something VERY interesting that we sometimes overlook with USB. The big drawback is that USB actually uses CPU horsepower and some people are just not happy with that. This is why people push IEEE 1394 (Firewire) so much. It has high bandwidth but doesn't eat up the processing power that USB does. When we see USB 2.0 then we can test to see how much the throughput will cost us in CPU horsepower.

In the push to have RDRAM, founders Hyundai Electronics, Infineon Tehcnologies, Micron, NEC, Samsung and Toshiba announced an Implementers Forum. The Forum was created to give the industry a way to work in unison on creating cost effective methods to ramp RDRAM upon release of the i820 chipset. This group will also be responsible for the future of RDRAM by approving any future proposed changes to the RDRAM specifications.

Intel Internet Exchange Architecture

A while back when Intel picked up StrongARM technology I thought that they would start pressing into the home appliance area or maybe into the PDA area but the announcement of Intel Internet Exchange (IX) Architecture has shown me the light. Intel has created an open standard on implementing network functionality into systems through cost effective means. They even announced that they would invest $200 million in communications funding to support anyone developing IX Architecture-based systems or software. With Intel introducing this into the market the typical ASIC will be replaced with a StrongARM processor core and six programmable RISC packet processing micro controllers. Intel is removing the high costs, development time and risks found in ASIC designs by offering this standard hardware and open interface. The routers/switches would be highly programmable, which would increase the lifespan of products. Through updates created by OEMs, the products can be given added functionality where this normally wouldn't be possible or cost-effective to do.

Mobile Coppermine/Bluetooth

Although there wasn't anything huge to report on the Geyserville, I did hear a couple of interesting things. We will see a new feature called "dynamic voltage." This new feature will allow laptops to reach near the performance of a desktop system. I highly agree with the "near" part of that idea because the laptops will always have heat/cost efficiency in mind. This will always eat into the performance area. Anyhow, what "dynamic voltage" will do for us is allow the CPU to run at higher clock speeds when plugged into an AC outlet. So a theoretical setup might be running at 400MHz on mobile power but when it docks, it pushes the clock speed to 500MHz. Pretty cool huh? We should see this technology appear sometime Q1 in 2000. The only other thing that I heard was that the mobile PIII 500 would be out this fall and that they do admit to having some problems.

My favorite thing at IDF by far was actually the Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth is a mobile radio wireless connection technology. It has been in the making for a year already and is half way in the making. We can expect to see something within a year's time that will use Bluetooth. Intel would like to standardize this standard so that we can have connectivity between laptops, PDAs, phones, PCs and even public Internet links! Several of the big cellular companies have been working with Intel on this project (Nokia/Erikson etc.). Overall there are 100 companies working with Intel on this Bluetooth Technology that is way more support than they expected. So why am I so excited when IrDA already exists? Well there are several reasons:

Indirect connections (no need to be aligned) Security (short range radio/frequency hopping/pre-existing software encryption) Peer can have stronger radio to make up for a weaker peer 1Mbit connection (700k effective file transfer speed)

A demo was shown with Bluetooth running on a local PC connecting and synching with a mobile phone. The phone was on the floor while the PC was high up and away from the phone. The PC contact information was synched with the phone and a contact manager came up (you can see the same stuff with current IR but not without direct. They explained that you could use the phone to connect to the Internet. Keep in mind that cellular technology is moving ahead and with future technology we should have much better connections over the mobile phones. I can see so many interesting things coming from Bluetooth in the future.

David And Goliath - A Few Thoughts On The Battle

First things first, what is Intel doing to stomp AMD out of the picture or at least keep them from gaining too much ground? With the launch of the Athlon processor at high speeds and excellent performance, I figured that Intel would be a bit more worried than they seemed to be. After speaking with the folks at Intel and hearing an official answer in a press QA session, the same answer was relayed that made a bit of sense as to why Intel isn't that worried by the AMD threat. I was told that they are relying on a good track record with the industry when bringing new platform technologies to the market. They just don't bring a new CPU to market but a platform as a whole. Now with the exception of the i820 chipset being delayed, I agree that they have been pretty good at releasing their product lines on time with everything lined up pretty well with the major OEM's, hardware developers, and software developers. This makes it easy for everyone to push forward in the market and people aren't typically left in a rut. This is what we're seeing with Athlon today. The motherboard's are difficult to come by which in turn makes it difficult for OEM's to produce PC's. At the same time there are very few video cards that can show the true power of the Athlon (with the exception of the GEFORCE which was just announced).

So what is Intel bringing us now? The Internet. Where? To everyone's home and workplace. They are making a massive push to have PCs everywhere, networked and connected to the Internet through broadband connections. They are pushing for wide spread broadband Internet connections/communication by helping push forward (with $200 million to key Intel program supporters) Cable modems, DSL and Satellite technologies. They have network solutions to speed up everything from the Internet routers to the USB networking in homes. Why are we seeing all of this change? Well for Intel it means they can sell more products :). Pretty simple but I think we'll end up winners through all of this as long as they continue to work with other companies using open standards.

GeForce 256

On Tuesday afternoon I attended NVIDIA's luncheon where the GeForce 256 was officially introduced for the first time. NVIDIA gave a background introduction as well as explaining the complexity of graphics cards (at least their own) is surpassing that of PC CPUs. A roadmap was introduced to show their plans for product positioning. An unnamed product (based on GeForce) will cover the workstation area while the "GeForce" that was introduced was geared for the enthusiasts. The TNT2 would be positioned for the performance market while TNT2 Vanta will be for the mainstream. Lastly we have core logic solutions that we'll see on motherboards for the value market. Anyhow, the demonstration went on to give several graphical examples of what the GeForce could do. We were shown models of a tree, fire truck, sports car, bubble of water, boat on a lake and a cyber woman. Most of the models had a with high poly count sample and toggled into an insane poly count version. Each time the changes were so dramatic that it blew my mind. The detail that high poly counts offer is beautiful. The scenes were all gorgeous with fine details on just about everything. However, they claim to be able to sustain a 60 FPS average while using these high poly count scenes and I did NOT see that. I assume that this might be due to several possible reasons (it was being projected, early drivers, overly poly intensive demos) but you can be sure that Tom's Hardware will have the scoop very soon. The reason NVIDIA is able to bring us this insane performance is due to the integrated T+L engine. This makes lighting and transformation VERY fast and allows the graphics card to put mind-boggling amounts of polygons on our screen. The power of a SIMD processor running at 500 MHz might do something like 2 GFLOPs for example while NVIDIA claims that a Cray super computer would do around 38 GFLOPs. The GEFORCE 256 does a whopping 50 GFLOPs.