I have already covered the fact that Intel wants developers to make Atom the center of their developing universe for the time being. Now we move on to the other things that they have been doing. Intel has been engaged in a wide range of activities and it seems like they really want branch out from just making computer and they are trying harder than ever to do it. From working with LG on a smartphone to attempting to create a universal standard for computer connectors, Intel has been diversifying indeed.
Atom CE4100 To Make Beastly Cable Boxes and Blu-Ray players
Intel is going all out with its Atom chip. They have realized that Atom has given them an edge nothing else. So they have gone ahead and upgraded the CE3100 media chip (which carried a Pentium M core) to the Atom CE4100 that has an Atom core.
What this means for the end-user is sheer power in devices that we do not think of as very powerful in a computing sense. That includes cable boxes and blu-ray players. These will get capabilities like being able to render 3D graphics and decoding two simultaneous 1080p streams at once. Dual blu-ray players, here we come.
A Peek At Light Peak
Light Peak is an optical cable standard that is being developed by Intel in order to cut down on the myriad connectors that modern computers use. This way, they argue, portables like netbooks (Intel’s current favorite device class) can be a lot more compact.
The Light Peak cable can maintain a constant transfer rate of up to10 gigabits per second both ways (through lengths up to 100 feet). The demonstration showed a custom rig feeding a larger than 1080p display and saturating an SSD at the same time. Intel is planning to include copper wires in order to power connected devices.
Intel intends to use this to replace the standards like HDMI, DisplayPort, FireWire, etc. It will prove difficult, replacing all these standards. But Intel is already talking with various companies in order to push this forward. However there are similar competing standards vying for attention and one of them is actually wireless. May be Intel has the leverage required to push this ahead of them all.
Nehalem ‘Em All! Intel Core i7 Goes Mobile
Intel’s Nehalem architecture is finally available for portables. Core i7 quad-core processors are the only processors right now that use this architecture and now both Core i7 Extreme and Core i7 are available in mobile versions.
Alienware is fast on the heels of such development and true to form – they are the first to adopt this and release a laptop that uses the Core i7 processor. Of course, the only difference is that the company is now owned by Dell and hence the official credit goes to Dell. The new laptop is an Alienware gaming beast, as usual and it is called the M15x.
Moblin To Rival Android?
Moblin, an acronym that stands for Mobile Linux, is a Linux-core OS that was started by Intel for running on netbooks. Since then it has seen many adaptations with the recent one being an implementation on the Asus Eee Keyboard all-in-on portable.
Intel has hinted that Moblin may be the OS of choice for the smartphone-like mobile Internet device that they are working on in collaboration with LG. They demoed a Moblin 2.1 implementation that has been designed for handheld devices. It looks like a great OS for touchscreens. If this happens, it will be a direct competitor for Android – the only other Moblin equivalent OS in the market.
