Intel Sets Sights on WiMAX, Digital Home Initiatives

Intel's corporate strategy will increasingly focus on the convergence of computing, communications, and content technologies, said Paul S. Otellini, company president and COO, speaking at the Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco. We will soon be approaching two new inflection points for the industry, predicted Otellini: pervasive broadband through WiMAX and pervasive parallelism at the processor level. Both of these trends ride onto top of Moore's Law, which continues to move the industry forward. By next year, Intel expects that greater than 90% of notebook computers will ship with Wi-Fi built-in. Intel is looking for the same viral effect with WiMAX, beginning in 2006. Otellini predicts that WiMAX could become to DSL and Cable what cellular is to wireline voice service -- a cheaper alternative that brings about pervasive utilization.



For Intel, another interesting industry barometer is the "Digital Effect", whereby the total amount of digitized content (music, photos, videos) on home and office PC is accelerating at rate significantly exceeding Moore's Law. Otellini said Intel's next platform will be centered around the "Digital Home." On this front, he highlighted several developments. The Digital Living Network Alliance Specification (1.0) was passed in June and the first products are due out in Q4. The first entertainment PCs are starting to ship now. And the issue of digital content protection inside the home is also being addressed with the new DTCP/IP specification. Products, such as a media adapter from Netgear, will use DTCP/IP to stream protected content from a home media server to various devices throughout the home. Intel has been working with Sony, Real Networks, Netgear, Movielink and others to enable the distribution of downloadable, premium content over home networks. Significantly, Microsoft has also agreed to support DTCP-IP as an important enabling technology in future Windows Media products. http://www.intel.com