China and the R+D Revolution

Is Big Brother going to be watching you?

Next up was Dr. Wen-Hann Wang - VP of Software Solution and General Manager of Intel (Asia Pacific) Research and Development

Expounding upon the relationship between Intel and China, the software division (R+D) was set up in December 1993 in Shanghai. Since then, however, Intel has further invested and launched a fully-functional R+D institution, in 2005, with advanced production development, and this centre is the focus point for all Intel R+D groups in the Asia area.

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The core strengths of the R+D for Intel China, Wang commented, lies with architecting compiler and tools, system software, middleware, mobility, performance and optimisation, and applications engineering. That's a bunch of expertise, right?

One of the Chinese group's main focuses is to liaise with local companies to develop area-specific technologies. One cited example was that of products based upon UEFI - the next-generation BIOS overhaul.

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John Du, General Manager of Intel China Research - founded in 1998 as the first such centre in the Asia Pacific region - indicated that his department currently employs 80 researchers chosen from leading Chinese universities. Current work centres around tera-scale computing and mobile broadband (WiFi). The latter references a wireless environment to enable a high-density mobile broadband environment for a more immersive experience.

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An example tera-scale (multi-core) computing, Du relayed, could be 'video mining' of a football match, whereby you could concurrently track the movements of all participants in a game, a la Sky player-cam, and then focus on a single player's movements, from start to finish or any point in between. Such mining, Du noted, required massive processing power if it was to be accomplished in real time.

We suppose a logical extention of this would be in the form of crowd control, whereby potential troublemaker's movements could be indexed if the source resolution and processing was high and fast enough, respectively.