Intel plunks down $30 million on cloud centers investment
While cloud computing is a hot topic, it would be a mistake to call it a passing trend. (Tablets, however, appear to be up for debate.)
Intel is forging ahead with its own cloud computing initiatives with a major financial and resource-heavy investment.
Specifically, the Silicon Valley-based enterprise has pledged to fork over $30 million over the course of the next five years for two new Intel Science and Technology Centers hosted at Carnegie Mellon University. Each ISTC will focus on cloud and embedded computing research.
That $30 million allotment is just one part of an overall $100 million in funding designated for increasing university research and accelerate innovation.
Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, explained in a statement about some of the potential results we should be seeing in the next few years coming out of the ISTCs:
Imagine, for example, future cars equipped with embedded sensors and microprocessors to constantly collect and analyze traffic and weather data. That information could be shared and analyzed in the cloud so that drivers could be provided with suggestions for quicker and safer routes.
Perhaps Google could have already used some of that technology -- at least regarding traffic -- in its driverless cars this week.
Anyway, besides Intel's own researchers and developers, the ISTCs will also feed upon ideas from top academic researchers nationwide, specifically from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and (of course) Carnegie Mellon, among several others.
Intel is currently accepting applications and abstracts from researchers within the U.S. academic community to be considered in the process of defining more ISTC locations. At least one more center will be announced by the end of the year for a 2012 launch.
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