Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media

Intel hosted an open house this afternoon at its Intel Labs Berkeley. The lab has been in existence since November 2001.

Some of the projects revealed:

Intel Mash Maker

This is a browser extension that tries to understand the content on a web page and suggest additional pages. You can download it here: mashmaker.intel.com

[I remember Autonomy having a similar experimental product about ten years ago. It also worked with documents that you were working on. A small window at the bottom of your screen would find and display relevant information from the Internet.]

Common Sense

This is a project that uses inexpensive sensors that would be carried by people as they go about their day. It would measure and collect environmental data such as air pollution. www.communitysensing.org

[I was recently in Paris and saw a presentation that used a watch equipped with sensors that measured, pollution, and noise levels as people carried the watch around town. The information was collated on a public website.]

Confrontational Computing

This project tries to understand why people argue on the Internet and also to find information that is disputed. One current example is the information about the toxicity of vaccines. disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu

[This is interesting because there is a tremendous amount of pseudoscience around serious medical issues. Vaccines, for example, can be a life and death decision yet there is lots of provenly bad information around.]

RouterBricks

A project that seeks to use generally available computing components to build routers rather than requiring specialized components. This would allow more flexibility in building networks, including the networks that serve the Internet. Intel says, "what the PC did for computing could be extended to network infrastructure and programming." www.routerbricks.org

[It's not surprising that Intel would be keen to see this project succeed :)]

Power Aware Perception

Intel says that in the future our mobile phones will know our social networks, our favorite places, what we do, etc. It will even teach us how to do things. It will become "your best friend and personal factotum."

It is working on developing 'perception algorithms.' But these are sophisticated computing problems and Intel's power management systems have been developed to adjust application performance on-the-fly, so that mobile phones can handle the compute intensive tasks related to 'perception.'

[I would think that a lot of the computer intensive tasks would be better run in the cloud. And that would be the same for any other computer intensive tasks. There's not much sense in running those applications on your mobile phone. But maybe I'm missing something here.]

Yada

This is a project that seeks to ease the development of software that runs in parallel. Today's microprocessors have multiple processor cores. To take advantage of this architecture, software applications need to be written so that they can be executed in parallel.

Yada is a programming language that looks like a sequential programming language but it detects which parts of the program can be executed in parallel.

[This is very important. It's very difficult to program for parallel execution, and tools such as Yada, are necessary so that the advances in multi-processor core multiprocessors can be used to their full capacity. Just because the latest microprocessor has multiple cores doesn't mean that your applications can take advantage of it. It's one of the dirty little secrets of multi-core multiprocessors.]

Data Mining for Anomaly Detection

Malicious software and botnets operated by hackers, are a big threat to the security of the Internet and to individual companies. The recent attack on Google, and about 100 other large companies, was achieved through the use of botnets.

This project analyzes the behavior of individual computing devices on the network and also servers. It looks for anomalies in their behavior that could signal that they have become recruited into a botnet. The project also looks for "data poisoning" where data has been deliberately inserted into company databases for nefarious purposes.

[Botnets and malicious software are a huge problem. It's further compounded by the fact that there are lots of legitimate software applications, such as cookies, that can be mistaken for malware. This is an area where there is a war of epic proportions going on between the malware authors, and the companies that create defensive software. It's a problem that won't be solved anytime soon.]

You can see some of the other research projects here:

Intel Labs Berkeley - Projects

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[Please note: I am a member of the Intel Insiders - a small group of advisors to Intel.]

Sean Maloney, an Intel senior executive, tipped by most Intel observers as the eventual successor to Paul Otellini, CEO, suffered a stroke over the weekend and will take a medical leave of absence.

Intel said:

Maloney's prognosis for a full recovery is excellent and he is expected to resume all of his business responsibilities after a period of recuperation which is thought to be several months, the company said. His duties in the interim will be assumed by Dadi Perlmutter, also executive vice president and general manager (with Maloney) of the Intel Architecture Group.

"I visited with Sean and his sense of humor and determination to return to work fill the room" said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.

Intel's Sean Maloney to Take Medical Leave

The British executive is known for his intensity and hard driving approach to his job. He used to be Technical Assistant to Andy Grove, former CEO and chairman of Intel and one of its earliest employees.

Mr Maloney has earned a reputation within Intel for fixing troubled business groups. He currently co-manages the Intel Architecture Group.

Several large computer companies have tried to headhunt Mr Maloney over the past ten years, including Hewlett-Packard. He is considered one of the top executives in the global tech industry.

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[I am a member of "Intel Insiders" a small advisory group working with Intel.]

A year ago, Intel, the world's top semiconductor maker, announced an alliance with TSMC, the world's largest chipmaker.

TSMC, headquartered in Taiwan, makes chips for other companies. It invented the "fabless" chip industry, which is now the largest sector of the global chip market.

In the first deal of its kind, Intel licensed its Atom microprocessor design to TSMC, so that third parties could design custom chips combining Atom, with technologies from many sources. The goal was to provide something similar to the UK's ARM microprocessor design, which is used in many custom chips, such as the A4 found in Apple's iPad.

But this hasn't worked out. Ashlee Vance reports in the New York Times: A Tie-Up Between Intel and TSMC Fizzles

Intel confirmed this week that a lack of customer demand has put the partnership on hiatus for the short term. Which is to say, there will be no jointly developed Atoms arriving anytime soon, although Intel continues to hope for the best down the road.

Foremski's Take: This shows that Atom has a long way to go in being able to challenge ARM, which has an advantage in that there is a huge library of chip designs available for use with ARM.

Atom doesn't have a library of compatible designs that can be easily used to create custom chips.

Also, Atom's design is influenced by Intel's manufacturing processes. In order to design custom Atom chips, the chip design software has to be closely tied to TSMC's manufacturing process -- each fab has its own differences.

Intel is very secretive about its chip manufacturing processes but that's what allows it to produce high performance chips in very advanced semiconductor technologies, such as 32 nanometer. Transferring a design from one fab to another is not easy and the performance of the chip can be very different. This could be one of the reasons that no one has yet made an Atom based custom chip.

Intel says it will continue working with TSMC.

“I think we had a lot of key learnings from the partnership so far,” Robert Crooke, Intel’s Atom chief, said in an interview. “We haven’t given up. These things never happen super-fast.”

But this is a setback for Intel because it is trying to break into the market for smartphones and larger consumer electronics products such as the iPad. ARM based chips dominate this market.

Interestingly, Intel used to make ARM based chips. It acquired StrongARM from Digital Equipment, and later renamed it XScale. However, it sold XScale to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006, so that it could concentrate on producing a version of its X86 microprocessor architecture for consumer products -- which became Atom.

Atom is a powerful chip but it is challenging to produce a version that matches ARM's low power consumption.

From Datarespons.com:

Gilad Mizrahi, hardware development manager for Data Respons Denmark. “An ARM-based system typically uses as little as 2 watts, whereas a fully optimised Intel Atom solution uses 5 or 6 watts. This is incredibly significant for the battery lifetime in small mobile devices."

"... [ARM also] allows us to reduce the solution’s total size considerably."

ARM is moving into larger products than smartphones, such as Apple's iPad, and also netbooks. It is encroaching into Intel territory while Intel is making little headway into ARM territory.

Intel certainly has the talent and resources to make future Atom designs that are competitive with ARM in terms of power consumption and size. But the longer this takes, the more design wins for ARM.

Once a company is committed to an architecture, it is very expensive to switch to a different one.

Interestingly, Intel still holds an ARM license.

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[Please note: I am an "Intel Insider" a member of a small group that consults with Intel on various topics.]

Please see:

The Mysterious Apple A4 Chip - Where's MSFT's and GOOG's Chip?

Global Foundries to start pumping out 28 nm ARM Cortex A9 processors in 2H 2010

ARM vs. Atom: The battle for the next digital frontier | The Standard

Analysis: The real scoop on Atom-ARM rivalry

Intel [INTC] has reorganized its operations moving Sean Maloney from his position as chief marketing officer to co-head a new division: Intel Architecture Group (IAG) that consolidates all of its product divisions.

Mr Maloney is responsible for business and operations at IAG while co-head Dadi Perlmutter oversees product development and architecture

Additionally, Andy Bryant, chief administration officer, becomes head of the Technology and Manufacturing Group, responsible for its global manufacturing and investment of billions of dollars in new facilities.

Tom Kilroy takes over Mr Maloney's former job as head of the Sales and Marketing group.

Intel also said that Pat Gelsinger, a senior VP has left to join EMC. And Bruce Sewell, general counsel, has also departed.

Foremski's Take: The reorganization takes advantage of Sean Maloney's considerable skills in running large businesses within Intel. The chief marketing officer role is not as challenging as it once was because Intel has won the microprocessor wars.

Intel's domination of microprocessor markets reached a new 4-year high in the second quarter.

The executive changes and the departure of Pat Gelsinger are related to a succession strategy for the top job at Intel. The most recent moves place Mr Maloney into the best position to eventually replace CEO Paull Otellini.

But Mr Maloney will have to prove himself. He'll have to make sure that Intel will be able to hold onto its lead and preserve its high profit margins in the face of considerable challenges in the client computing sector.

The evolution of the PC into the notebook and now into the netbook and mobile devices, brings the danger that cheap, powerful chips will undermine Intel's high margin microprocessors.

Intel's renewed partnership with Microsoft and its operating systems offers a way to keep competitors at bay.

High performance graphics processors combined with high speed broadband connections to cloud based applications could route around the need for X86 architectures in many types of client computing systems -- not just netbooks or mobile devices. For example, there are several smart phone operating systems with ever larger numbers of applications that are not X86 based. These could move up into larger client systems.

Intel's Atom is designed to extend the X86 architecture into netbooks and smart phone apps. But there is no guarantee Intel will be able to establish the same dominance in future cloud-based client computing systems.

It was unsuccessful once before when it tried to establish its StrongARM architecture in the mobile phone industry.

That's because the Telecom companies hold a strong position in determining the applications, operating systems, and features that run on mobile phones -- as Apple has found out. They have no desire to become commoditized in the same way that Intel and Microsoft commoditized the PC industry and managed to consolidate the majority of that industry's profit margins.

The Telcos control the broadband networks which is why Intel is such as strong supporter of WiMAX. This technology could potentially vault over the walled markets controlled by the Telco and cable companies. That's why WiMAX is being built into Intel chipsets even though there is yet little WiMAX infrastructure.

Mr Maloney used to head up Intel's comms chip group -- he knows all about the challenge the Telcos pose to Intel.

Mr Maloney has always been given the toughest jobs at Intel. And this is going to be one of the toughest yet.

Intel [INTC] this morning held a mid-year update looking at its major business groups and initiatives. The first session was with Sean Maloney, Intel's most important executive next to Paul Otellini, CEO.

Mr Maloney is executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. The short video above consists of highlights of his presentation. Mr Maloney said that while other sectors such as consumer have continued to buy, business IT spending has not recovered from last September. The question is will it come back by the fourth quarter?

http://www.blip.tv/file/2392693

I'm sure you've seen those ubiquitous Intel "rock star" ads that are part of its "sponsors of tomorrow" campaign. I was at the recent Intel Research Day at the Computer History Museum and Intel introduced the real rock stars -- everyone in the TV ads is an actor (and in China all the rock stars are Chinese.)

The real rock stars are Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of USB, and Joshua Smith, a pioneer in wireless power and robotics.

Intel Labs also showed off about 40 projects in its science fair. One of the projects was a wireless electric power project. It will enable you to recharge your gizmos and gadgets without needing to plug them in -- they will get their power through the air. More info here: Research@Intel 2009 - Intel 'Rockstars' Show off Future Research Concepts, Projects