Intel is pushing a number of new technologies that will help realise the idea of the personal Internet, where the Internet is constantly accessible wherever we go.
For an increasing number of people the Internet is an essential part of business and social life, and so delivering the Internet in a form that is as fully-fledged and personalised as possible is on the agenda for its next-generation products.
Implementing this requires processing power, mobility and connectivity. Let's start with processing power.
Intel keep talking about their Core micro-architecture, and by extension so do we. Sorry, but there's more Core here. Core will be in the next generation of dual-core chips for Centrino. There are some other nifty features too. Robson, a flash based technology that allows extremely rapid system booting, will finally make an appearance. Also, Kedron, an 802.11n wireless adapter, will be appearing.
Improvements to Centrino increase laptop mobility and performance, which is good, but Intel is also looking at how the Internet works with smaller devices. On mobile and handheld devices, video decoding is becoming important, and so the third-generation of Intel's XScale (yup, no Core here) chips will feature a number of performance enhancing and power-saving features, all with very nice jazzy names, like Wireless SpeedStep and Wireless MMX2. There's talk of these chips running at over 1GHz, which, when you think about it, isn't that far behind what we have in our PCs now. All this should allow for a richer multimedia Internet through handhelds.
Also coming into light is a new category of PC, the Ultra Mobile. Coming this quarter are Ultra Mobile PCs, and we think it's no coincidence that Microsoft is floating around its mystical Origami marketing. Source code comments on the Origami website give us reason to believe it's about Windows XP on a UMPC, so Microsoft's announcement this week should fit in nicely with IDF.
Finally, all of this would be no use without broadband access, and so there's the idea of personal broadband to go with the personal Internet. That includes WiMAX, but more exciting, at IDF a single–chip multi–band Wi–Fi/WiMAX radio, codenamed Ofer, was shown off. This will give a device multiple connectivity vectors through a single chip, making it easier to get connected no matter how many types of network you have to contend with.
If you fancy it, read Intel's press release for more info on their mobile tech.
