Tag: Intel

Articles

TAG Heuer and Intel announce Swiss Smartwatch for 2015 | Smarterwatching

Watch Out Apple Watch, There’s a Swiss-Made Android Wear Watch Coming | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

Intel

Press Release

TAG Heuer

Press Release

Video Press Announcement

My Comments

Most smartwatches that were being released were pitched as “everyday wear” watches or sports watches which were something you wouldn’t really choose to wear if your goal was to impress someone special. That is unless they were someone who was impressed by the concept of the smartwatch and what it can do.

But when Apple put forward their Apple Watch, they put forward a few premium models that would go alongside or replace that Rolex Presidential as a status-symbol dress watch. Here, they set the cat amongst the pigeons when it came to providing a smartwatch of the calibre that you would wear in the Member’s Stand at Flemington during the Spring Racing Carnival (Melbourne Cup) or you, as the father of the bride, would have on your wrist as you walk the bride down the aisle at the start of the wedding.

TAG Heuer, along with Intel and Google, have worked on an Android Wear smartwatch that uses technology from the microelectronics name. Here, the idea is to create one of these watches that is pitched to the luxury-watch market rather than keeping Android Wear and the smartwatch scene for so-called “all-purpose” or “sports-class” wearables.

As well, TAG Heuer are even pushing to allow the qualification of a Swiss watch to expand to smartwatches that integrate electronics from other countries like Intel’s silicon but still have the watch assembled in Switzerland and have decorative and electromechanical parts coming from there. It can also be a good chance for Intel to investigate the idea of using Switzerland as a hub for activities associated with manufacturing, research and development for wearable technology.

What I see of this is the fact that companies are stepping forward to sell smartwatches fit for wearing at that exclusive club or in the boardroom of that Fortune 500 company in America. It also means that the smartwatch market can become like the traditional watch market with watches that suit different price ranges and different dress senses.

Article

Intel’s Broadwell Chips Will Make Full-Fledged PCs As Tiny As Tablets | Gizmodo

My Comments

Intel Broadwell chipset compared to current Haswell chipset

Intel is marching on with chipsets and processors that effectively put a pint in to a teapot when it comes to computing power.

They had done it with the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell chipsets based around the Core I series of CPUs and are increasing the power density and ability with the Broadwell Core M series of processors. The goal they are achieving now is to work on a 9mm-thick fanless portable computer design that has the lower power needs and the ability to run cool for a long time without needing a fan while also having improved battery runtime. This is without sacrificing real computing power. These goals have been satisfied using a new microarchitecture along with newer manufacturing processes and is although the fanless goal has been achieved with the Bay Trail and other tablet-specific processors.

9mm fanless tablet concept with regular computing power

This activity is shown up with the latest crop of mobile workstations and gaming laptops like the Dell Precision mobile workstations and the Lenovo ThinkPad W Series mobile workstations, or the Razer Blade and the Alienware gaming laptop that can handle intense graphics, multimedia and gaming tasks, that wouldn’t be traditionally associated with a laptop.

This could effectively mainstream the concept of the ultraportable such as the convertible or detachable tablet and have it as being fit for a lot more computing tasks. Even product classes like the larger Adaptive All-In-One tablets can also benefit from having effectively “more grunt” and those portable computers that are engineered from the outset for performance like mobile workstations or gaming laptops may become lighter or be able to run longer on their own batteries.

Introduction

By the end of Christmas and, in some cases, even through Advent, manufacturers are starting to run teaser press releases about what technologies and products they will release or exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

TV technology

A major part of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was TV and video technology.

4K ultra-high-definition TV

Every TV manufacturer ran with a flatscreen TV set capable of displaying images at the new 4K ultra-high-definition resolution. This yields an image of 3840×2160 pixels, equivalent to an image captured by an 8 megapixel digital camera.

Some of these were 84” or 110” sets which wouldn’t fit in to most peoples’ living rooms and would be out of most peoples’ price ranges. But manufacturers like Sony are launching 4K TV models at 55” and 65” screen sizes. These are exploiting the high-pixel-density trend which is encompassing display design, in a similar effect to what the Apple Retina display has brought about.

At the moment, these sets upscale standard definition and high-definition images from broadcast and other video sources. But Sony is working on a hard-disk-based media player to play content that has been turned out in this form. This is part of a 4K media distribution network that they expect to launch by the end of the Northern-Hemisphere summer.

It is also reckoned that it will take a few years for the 4K UHDTV technology to mature and manufacturers to release models at a price that most of us can afford. This is something that will typically happen with most technology.

OLED and Display technology

Another trend that LG, Samsung and Sony are working on is the OLED display for the large-screen TV set. This is something most of us would experience with an HTC or Samsung smartphone and yields a high contrast ration and very deep colours.

Sony is wanting to apply it to a 4K ultra-high-definition display, but LG and Samsung are advancing the OLED screens at the 55” HD formats. For that matter, Panasonic was also showing a 56” 4K OLED screen as a prototype. Samsung also advanced a curved 55” HD prototype along with a curved 5” prototype for handheld applications.

On the other hand, LG has demonstrated a laser projection TV setup called the HECTO. This unit can show a 100” 16:9 image with a 22” throw using a special screen and yield this as a very bright image. The projection unit has what is expected of a flat-screen TV, including an integrated TV tuner.

Smart TV technologies

The TV is now more sophisticated and smart than it ever was. This is where it is not just a display device or just to pick up broadcast content. Here, the set effectively works as a computer with an app-driven ecosystem.

Panasonic has also now become part of the Smart TV Alliance which was started off by LG and Philips. On the other hand, Google TV had gained some more traction as a platform with LG with the GA6400 and GA7900 “main viewing area” sets.

As for Samsung, they have improved their Smart Hub user-interface and shown the Evolution Kit which is an upgrade kit for most of their current-issue flat-screen TVs and the sets to be introduced over subsequent years. This will add on improved processor performance as well as access to the new user interface; and is an example of what they have done to satisfy the reality that TVs do perform many years of service even as they are “pushed down” to other viewing areas.

The software that is being driven with the Smart TV environment is primarily content searching, TV Everywhere and “second-screen” applications. It is also leading to various “virtual cable box” applications where the TV is its own cable box with the content delivered via the Internet using end-to-end content-protection / subscription-management technology.

Audio and Video Technology

NFC “Touch & Go” operation

A strong trend that is showing up this year is NFC-driven “Touch & Go” operation. Here, you touch your NFC-capable Android smartphone or tablet to the device to have it pair up and connect via Bluetooth or set up via Wi-Fi for music playback. This avoids many confusing processes to get that wireless speaker going. As far as music systems and similar products go, it would also have the unit select the “Bluetooth” or “Network Audio” source automatically.

Sony had made a “big thing” of this feature with their wireless speakers and headsets through their press conference. As well, most of the manufacturers who are running wireless speakers, music systems or home-theatre-in-box systems are integrating this function in their products.

LG has implemented this further with their newer Blu-Ray home theatre. Here, the Android device can be set to throw its display on to the connected TV screen which would come in handy for viewing videos or playing games held on this device. Similarly the Android device can be set up to work as an “earphone” for the home theatre so you can use it late at night without scrambling around for the headset jack on the TV or home theatre central unit.

AV receivers

So far, Harman have fielded two new network AV receivers for that main audio-video system. Here, they can pull in Internet radio or content from a DLNA media source and have content “thrown” to them via the home network from your computer or mobile device using DLNA or AirPlay. The AVR-2700 has 8 HDMI connections with 4K image scale-up and a 7.1 audio output with 100W per channel while the more expensive AVR-3700 adds integrated Wi-Fi wireless and has a 7.2 audio output with a more powerful 125W per channel.

Smart video peripherals

There is an increase in the number of Blu-Ray players, home-theatre units and network media players that provide smart-TV functionality without you needing a smart TV.

For example, HiSense, ASUS and TCL were intending to sell Google-TV-based network media devices while Roku was providing a small but highly-strung network media receiver. This was eve to be able to work as a full-bore cable box for one on f the cable-TV companies in the US. Netgear also launched a new range of NeoTV network media players including some that had SlingPlayer clients and one driven by the Google TV platform.

But Archos are also fielding an Android-based network media box which is also showing that the Android platform associated with a lot of the smartphones is also appearing on the TVs as a low-cost option.

4K technology

At the moment, most video peripherals that connect to the new 4K ultra-high-definition TVs will upscale the standard-definition and high-definition images to the very high resolutions  offered by these sets. This is because there isn’t a common broadcast, on-demand or packaged-media distribution platform for distributing the content that is in this resolution.

Sony are using a hard-disk-based network media player with integrated BD-ROM drive, along with the content passed around on BD-ROM (Blu-Ray data) discs as a way of distributing the content. But they are working on an improved distribution method to go live by the middle of the year. As well, they said that consumer 4K will take some time to mature as equipment becomes more affordable.

Of course, Sony outlined that the 4K ultra-high-definition technology will be used in the video-production workflow, telecine (film-to-video) and video mastering applications. It is in a similar vein to the early days of digital audio recording before the arrival of the CD. This was where audio recordings were produced using at least a digital master-recording and this recording was used to turn out the records and tapes that were for public sale.

This will also involve films having their master negatives transferred to 4K video using equipment that scans the master negative at this resolution, then a 1080p scaled-down copy of this 4K master would be used for Blu-Ray distribution or HDTV broadcast. Sony also stated that they would implement the 4K production workflow into short-form video work like TV drama and commercials.

Broadcast-LAN cable TV setups

The FCC has recently laid down a pro-competition pro-consumer requirement for pay-TV providers to implement a broadcast-LAN strategy to work with most DLNA-compliant smart TVs and video peripherals. This is to drop the need to equip every TV in the house with a set-top box as is commonly the case with providing pay-TV to each set.

Intel has shown a broadcast-LAN gateway with 6 tuners and support for the DLNA content-protection requirements. This device is being positioned as being for use with Comcast’s cable-TV setups; while there are similar devices including cable boxes with this function being provided for other cable-TV systems.

Speakers and soundbars

There has been an increase in the number of wireless speakers and soundbars that are to work with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi (AirPlay / DLNA) setups.

Samsung has furthered the hybrid valve (vacuum tube) / transistor design that they used in a few wireless speakers of theirs in to their latest TV soundbar. This unit uses an accelerometer to allow it to self-adjust for lying flat or standing on its edge in respect to how it sounds and where it displays its status.

Video gaming

The console gaming market has undergone a shakeup over this year with NVIDIA and Valve fielding their TV-based gaming systems – the Shield portable and the Steam Box TV-based unit . This is alongside the Ouya Android-based TV console and a Kickstarter-funded portable showing up as Android-powered alternatives.

Here, the Steam Box would have access to the Valve Steam game store while the Shield would have access to the NVIDIA TegraZone games store alongside the Google Play app store. This is showing up to be an “uh-oh” moment for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo who have thought of themselves in a position to “call the shots” for console gaming, especially when it comes to what titles can surface. I also suspect that this will also be a time for smaller independent studios to surface with some interesting games titles that are away from the norm.

Conclusion

Stay tuned for the next part of this series which will cover PC and home-network technology which will help in bringing the increasingly-connected home together from the CES.

Article

Intel’s Ivy Bridge chip packs understated goodies | Business Tech – CNET News

My Comments

Intel are working on the next-generation “Ivy Bridge” computing chipset which will be considered the technical successor to the successful Sandy Bridge chipset.

High-performance integrated graphics

One major benefit that this chipset will offer is graphics performance. Here, these chipsets will be tuned for better performance than Sandy Bridge’s “Intel HD” graphics. This will lead to more powerful Integrated graphics which can also improve on the power economy. Here, this may improve the laptop’s credentials as a gaming machine. This is also augmented by integrated DirectX 11 support for games and advanced graphics applications.

The obvious question is whether it will put AMD and NVIDIA “on notice” as far as their role in supplying discrete graphics chipsets is concerned? I would see this as allowing both these companies to focus their efforts on developing their graphics chipsets as the “performance chipsets”. This is in a similar vein to the likes of Creative Labs who provide highly-tuned sound subsystems for computers;.

Here, it could allow companies intending to offer high-performance computers for CAD and hardcore gaming to implement improved dual-chipset setups while giving mainstreams users including average game players access to improved performance graphics. AMD and NVIDIA could focus on making highly-tuned graphics subsystems that show their prowess in the LAN party or the design office.

USB 3.0

Another bonus that will come about of this would be an improved USB chipset. This will provide low-latency USB data transfer and streaming; as well as inherent support for USB 3.0 . This is compared to the current USB 3.0 implementation which has another chipset serving one or two USB 3.0 ports while another serves a few USB 2.0 ports.

Windows 8

This chipset is intended to be targeted with the impending arrival of Windows 8 and these functions will provide a direct tie-in with the new operating system. This is more so with the USB 3.0 and improved USB functionality which is supported by a new USB service stack in Windows 8.

Conclusion

I would see this new chipset improve all of the computing sectors and could put performance graphics into the reach of the average computer users who will be exposed to more intense graphics and multimedia. The improved data throughput will benefit laptop users who use external storage or USB audio / video peripherals frequently.

At least it is a step towards power-effective, cost-effective high-performance computing for the mainstream.

BBC News – Intel to launch chipsets with built-in graphics

My comments

With Intel now showing interest in supplying a processor chip with an integrated graphics processor, this will raise the stakes when it comes to supplying single-chip CPU / GPU solutions.

Why supply a single-chip CPU/GPU solution

There is the obvious benefit in design size that it would yield. This would of course allow for more compact applications and, of course, the bill-of-materials costs would be reduced thus allowing for cheaper devices. Another key benefit would be that the single-chip solution would have reduced power needs, which is important for battery-operated devices like laptops, tablet computers and, especially, smartphones.

There is also the reality that most consumer electronics devices like electronic picture frames, digital cameras, TVs / video peripherals and hi-fi equipment are being designed like the general-purpose computers and most of them will also benefit from these CPU/GPU chips. This has become evident with most of these devices offering network and Internet connectivity in a way to augment their primary function or beyond that primary function.  They will also yield the reduced “bill-of-materials” costs and the reduced power demands for this class of device which will become a market requirement.

Similarly, an increasing number of office equipment / computer peripherals, home appliances and “backbone” devices (HVAC / domestic-hot-water, building safety / security, etc) are becoming increasingly sophisticated and offering a huge plethora of functions. I had noticed this more so with the multifunction printers that I have reviewed on this site where most of them use a colour bitmap LCD display and a D-toggle control as part of their user interfaces.

Therefore manufacturers who design these devices can benefit from these single-chip CPU/graphics solutions in order to support these requirements through reduced supporting-power requirements or design costs. In the case of “backbone” devices which typically require the uses to operate them from remotely-located user-interface panels i.e. programmable thermostats or codepads, there isn’t the need to require too much power from the host device to support one or more of these panels even if the panel is to provide access to extended functions.

The market situation

The Intel Sandy Bridge which is just about to be launched at the time of publication, would provide improved graphics. This is in a market which AMD has just entered with their Zacate CPU / graphics chip and been dominated by ARM who have been involved in the smartphone scene. This firm’s design was infact used as part of the Apple A4 chip used in the iPhone 4 and iPad.

With three companies in the market, this could yield a highly-competitive environment with a run for high-quality quickly-drawn graphics, quick CPU response, power conservation / long battery runtime and small circuit size / reduced bill-of-materials. This may also yield a “run for the best” which also yields desirable functionality being available at prices that most people can afford.

The only limitation with this concept is that the single-chip design may make the market for discrete graphics chipsets and cards only for people who value extreme-performance graphics.

Conclusion

The reduced size of these new single-chip CPU/GPU setups could replicate the success of what has happened with the arrival of the 80486 processor with its integrated floating-point coprocessor. It could then make for a longer battery runtime for portable applications and lead to smaller cooler-running computers for most applications.

Wave of Intel dual-core Netbooks to break | Nanotech – The Circuits Blog – CNET News

My comments

The new Intel Atom dual-core processor could be more than raising the bar for netbooks. One class of computer that appealed to me as a threat to the iPad was the “netvertible” or the convertible netbook. This was to have the same abilities as a netbook but also had a touchscreen that swivelled and folded over the keyboard like on other convertible notebooks and laptops.

There are a few issues that may put the brakes on this idea of a netbook competing with the Apple iPad. One is the lack of an e-book publishing system for the Windows platform that is robust enough to threaten the Apple iOS platform and the other is that netbook users are more likely to use their computers for producing content rather than just consuming it, an activity which the iPad is only good at. In this case, a writer, journalist or blogger could use a netbook as a “portable typewriter” for preparing written work on the road.

This may then allow the Atom chipset to be taken further to create a highly-competitive answer to the iPad and could also provide for “step-up” netbook computers for manufacturers who want to provide real differentiation in their netbook product lines. The chipset may also help with dethroning the StrongARM processors from the embedded / dedicated computing market like smartphones, medical equipment, NAS, Internet routers and the like; and extend the Intel Architecture in this class of device.

Intel Demonstration video of vPro Anti-Theft technology in action

My comments in relation to small businesses and home setups

The Intel vPro anti-theft technology as presented in the above YouTube video is promoted for use by larger companies or schools who have a fleet of notebook computers and people in their regular hire who manage their IT needs. This is typically represented by the segment where the user is working at a software or Web-based “console” to administer the “poison pill”.

This kind of facility may not be available to households or small organisations who manage their own IT needs unless the remote management functionality is available as a cost-effective service. Such a service could be offered by security firms who sell their services to residential and small-business customers and these firms could integrate the “secure notebook” as part of their business-security packages or as a stand-alone service.