Intel plays show and tell: Environment, visual computing (multi)core themes

Intel CTO Justin Rattner and his merry band of researchers played show and tell with projects from the chipmaker's lab focused on visual computing and how to leverage multiple cores.

Rattner outlined Intel's research projects Wednesday--roughly 70 of them--and noted that these experiments will turn into products in the next 5 years or so.

Among the broad themes:

Technology meets the environment: Intel researchers outlined new power management techniques. Intel describes:

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, to 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.

3-D computing: It's no secret that Intel is pitching multiple cores. By pitching visual computing--something that everyone from Microsoft to Apple has envisioned--Intel moves more chips. But the big hook is parallel computing and handling multiple data crunching processes and how it will enable visual computing. One of the big projects displayed was a future car where Intel and Neusoft developed cameras for eyes and multi-core processors for brains. The idea would be to prevent accidents. Programming languages remain the issue and the car used Intel's CT programming--an extension of C/C++.

Health IT: Intel outlined the Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre, an project with Intel and the Irish government. A technology called BioMOBIUS is a platform that can be used as a research tool to analyze gait to gauge the risk of falling.

Gadget aid: Intel demonstrated the first embedded balanced antenna for digital TV. The upshot: Intel's antenna can integrate digital TV reception into a laptop.