Free Shot: Intel Atom Part of Commodore 64 Comeback

When one thinks of comebacks, a struggling athlete back on his game or a has-been celebrity returning to the spotlight often comes to mind. But a computer? This comeback won’t likely make the cover of Sports Illustrated or People, but among technology circles, the just-announced return of the Commodore 64 is a pretty big deal. The computer once called the "breadbox" and "bullnose" due to its shape and color is back. Due out this summer is a new version of what was originally an 8-bit home computer that sold about 15 million units between 1982 and 1994. The 2011 edition could be considered retro with its beige color and keyboard-dominated body – even the $595 price for the base unit harkens back to 1982 – but inside it’s an entirely different animal. For one of the five models, we’re talking an 1.8ghz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, Nvidia Ion 2 graphics chipset, 2 GB of DDR3 memory, HDMI outputs to connect to a HDTV and your choice of a DVD or Blu-ray drive. If you wind up buying one, enhance your unboxing experience by dusting off your Sony Walkman if you’ve got one and play "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. That song was No.1 when the C64 debuted.

Raising the IQ on Smartphones ....Lama Nachman

We expect a lot out of smartphones today, but some technology and human behavior scientists believe that mobile computing devices can do even more if only they knew more about their owners.

Tinkering with cameras, microphones, software and other features inside today's smartphones, a team of researchers inside Intel Labs is exploring ways to improve the Intelligence Quotient of future smartphones so they're not just more efficient, but more intuitive about their owner. This was the topic of a recent Future Labs podcast interview.

Lama Nachman, a senior researcher at Intel Labs, is finding ways to raise the IQ of future smartphones using context aware computing technologies.

"We're making systems much more aware of the user and what they're trying to do," said Lama Nachman, a senior researcher at Intel Labs in the podcast. "And then essentially facilitate, act on their behalf, and make recommendations. So devices become much more personalized to us and our needs."

The driving concept behind this context-aware research is to develop artificial intelligence by enabling mobile devices to grow wiser as they build and tap into a database of specific information about owner behavior, movement and even mood.

Researchers such as Nachman say that people would have to train their phone by capturing and identifying sound patterns and images in the owner's world. If a phone owner was at home riding a stationary bike, researchers say, the phone could discern that the rider was indoors, and screen calls accordingly. Simultaneously, it could track how long the user was on the bike and feed that information to an exercise application on the owner's phone.

Nachman said being able to track one's own activities like commuting, watching TV or chatting with work colleagues might help people better optimize the way they use their time in the same way that financial software lets us manage our personal finances. Applications could even use data to help the owner by reminding him or her to "take the stairs" or "there's time between meetings, take a 5-minute walk."

These background-sensing technologies raise questions about privacy. Today, commercially developed applications require people to accept terms and conditions before they can be used. Since wiretapping is illegal in the United States, cell phones can't automatically turn themselves on and start recording conversations.

Andrew Campbell, a professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, said users need to be kept in the loop in this area of "active computer learning," and developers must find ways to ensure that users keep control of their personal data.

"This issue of privacy is an Achilles heel when you're looking to advance science," said Campbell. "These sensors are an extraordinary opportunity and there has to be good solutions to preserve people's privacy. We must allow them [device owners] to own their data. It's a double-edged sword because we want to innovate at the same time."

Intel executive quits as smartphone biz falters

The Intel executive who led Intel's so-far-unsuccessful push into smartphones and tablets quit as that business comes under unrelenting competitive pressure from companies like Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia.

Anand Chandrasekher, who had been senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, announced today that he will be leaving Intel to "pursue other interests." Effective immediately, Mike Bell and Dave Whalen, both vice presidents of Intel Architecture Group (IAG), will co-manage the group, which is responsible for building Atom chips that go into smartphones and tablets.
This follows the departure last year of Eric Kim, who headed another team--Intel's Digital Home Group--that targeted the Atom processor for consumer products such as TVs.
"Intel remains committed to this business," said David Perlmutter, executive vice president and IAG general manager, in a statement, referring to smartphones. "We continue to make the investments needed to ensure that the best user experience on smartphones and handhelds runs on Intel architecture, and to ship a phone this year," he said.
Chandrasekher had become somewhat infamous for making regular appearances at Intel conferences over the last few years and invariably waving a prototype smartphone or handheld device for the cameras, then promising that an Intel-based smartphone was on the way. But none ever materialized.
"The industry has gone right past them," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw. "They're just another player [in the smartphone and tablet markets]. There's no first among equals," Kumar said, referring to the ARM processor business, which is dominated by an oligarchy of other big chip companies, including Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Apple, Marvell, and Nvidia.
Another analyst says that Intel's first chip designed specifically for tablets and smartphones, "Moorestown," was a failure. "Moorestown was a complete flop," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group, a chip consulting firm. "Intel is still struggling to get traction in tablets and particularly smartphones. Atom is in a few tablets that run Windows, but Windows tablets are not very popular, except in a few vertical applications," he said.
And what about Intel's next-generation Atom for smartphones? "It remains to be seen whether Medfield (the next Atom for smartphones) will do any better, since Intel has not disclosed any details on that product yet. In addition to finding customers, the new [Ultra Mobility Group] management has a big task in figuring out how to integrate Atom with the ex-Infineon baseband products," Gwennap said, referring to Infineon's wireless business, which Intel purchased this year.
"Legacy (Windows) compatibility doesn't matter in the post-PC era. All the blockbuster products that Apple has had are post-PC. Therein lies the conundrum for Microsoft and Intel," added Kumar.

Intel Smart Phone

Intel is getting ready to make a long-belated entry into the smartphone market with a new-and-improved chip. But the usual questions linger.

A much-ballyhooed Intel-based phone from LG never materialized. Will one this time around?

(Credit: LG)

The most obvious ones are: Will it appear in a phone that is groundbreaking enough to entice buyers? And will this finally usher the world's largest chipmaker into one of the world's largest chip markets?
The answers are hard to come by--Intel is saying little about the chip, due later this year, or about customers at this point--though the trends are clear. Market researcher IDC said in February that vendors shipped about 101 million smartphones during the fourth quarter of 2010, surpassing, for the first time, the 92 million PCs shipped during the same period.
But Intel's reticence is understandable: it doesn't want to announce the chip without real phones in tow. Its current version of a chip slated for smartphones ("Moorestown") never found any top-tier takers in the phone industry, despite promises in 2009 that devices were in the works.
An LG phone that was preannounced two years ago never appeared. And Nokia's new alliance with Microsoft means a previously-announced Intel-centric partnership is not a priority. Those are mistakes Intel doesn't want to repeat--which may also have been contributing factors to this week's departure of the executive who headed up Intel's smartphone chip business.
"They understand the boy-who-cried-wolf reputation [they've incurred], so they are really trying to coordinate chip announcements and [phone maker] announcements so they'll be taken seriously," said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a marketing research firm.
The description Intel currently provides of the chip is only about 30 words. "Medfield is Intel's smartphone chip manufactured on the company's leading-edge 32 [nanometer manufacturing] technology. It will deliver high performance and competitive low power."
That vague description could imply a lot, however. Though Intel has not yet succeeded in making the kind of ultra-power-efficient chips required for smartphones, the company is arguably the world's premier chip manufacturer and building a low-power but very powerful processor is certainly a feat it's capable of. Competitors like Nvidia--whose chips currently power high-end smartphones from LG and Motorola--and Qualcomm do not make their own silicon and must compete to get silicon from the same manufacturing source.
Important aspects of the silicon are the same, too. For example, the core of Nvidia's chip--based on a design from U.K.-based ARM--is essentially identical to ARM designs now being offered by rivals like Texas Instruments or Qualcomm.
While this provides standardization for Android phone makers, it provides little wiggle room for chip differentiation. That's not the case for Intel's chip, which uses a proprietary in-house design built with in-house manufacturing facilities.
"Moving the smartphone lineup to their leading-edge process plays a big role in making Medfield competitive," said Feibus.
But others have doubts about how serious Intel is about chip designs in this area and how willing it is to tap into the meat of its most cutting-edge manufacturing tech, which is allocated mostly to its much more lucrative laptop PC silicon--a market it comfortably dominates with little competition.
"In order to be competitive, Medfield should be 22 nanometer," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at chip consulting firm The Linley Group, referring to Intel's most advanced manufacturing tech, which is due later this year.
"Intel's going to be doing 22 nanometer PC products at the end of this year [but] they're not using their leading edge technology on the [Medfield] stuff," said Gwennap, who believes that Intel should abandon the standard practice of using lagging-edge technology for consumer silicon.
Another question is whether Intel will immediately crank out a dual-core processor--a specification that has become de rigeur for high-end smartphones from Motorola and is expected for upcoming Apple iPhones. "They're focusing on cutting power in this release (Medfield). So it's going to be hard for them to do anything that increases power," added Gwennap, who thinks it will be single core initially.
And Intel is still a long way from becoming a well-rounded phone chip supplier like Qualcomm, which supplies the entire gamut of phone chips, from the most pedestrian feature phones to the slickest smartphones and tablets. Though the wireless tech Intel acquired this year from Infineon should help it compete against cell phone chip stalwarts, it provides little more than parity.
Finally, let's not forget that Intel doesn't make the end product. Companies like LG--which is rumored to have a Medfield product in the works--do. And they are the final arbiters of the phone's design and interface, the two features that consumers key in on.
Medfield-based phones are expected midyear. Which means by the end of this year we should know whether Intel is in the running to be a major manufacturer of mobile phone chips or will remain for the foreseeable future what it has always been: PC processor supplier to the world.