Although Intel made some waves yesterday with the announcement of the smartphone-capable Moblin 2.1 release, the reality here on the ground at IDF is pretty much status quo: phones and other connected devices based on the next-gen Moorestown mobile platform are nowhere to be found, and the actual products on the floor are the same chunky MIDs we’ve all come to know and ignore. But while the devices remain somewhat uninteresting, Moblin itself has some terrific potential from what we’ve seen — there’s deep location and social networking integration with a unified contacts list that works a lot like Palm’s Synergy, standard Linux apps can be easily ported over and run without any fuss, and manufacturers and developers can even ditch the standard UI and develop whatever they want on top. It’s definitely cool stuff — we just wish Intel had given us this demo on a compelling hardware instead of an older Menlow-based Compal MID, you know? Video after the break.
UMID’s got a couple prototype M2s lying around IDF, and while they don’t seem like the most stable or production-ready things in the world — one of them booted straight to an all-white screen, while another had its logo stuck on by a doting booth attendant — it’s clear that this revision of the M1 will correct a few glaring flaws. The major fix is that there’s now a regular USB port on the side, instead of the M1’s goofy dongle, but we’re also glad to see a 3.5mm headphone jack and a (tiny) trackpad with two mouse buttons flanking the screen. Yeah, it’s still a quirky little MID, but hey, maybe that does it for you. We’re not here to judge what you do with the gallery below.
Dell just announced the first shipping Moblin netbook, a developer-edition Mini 10v that runs Canonical’s Moblin Netbook Remix. No pricing info yet, but it’ll go on sale tomorrow, September 24, on Dell.com. We’re told they have units on the show floor for us to play with, we’ll be back with way more details soon.
Update: Dell tells us the Moblin Mini 10v will be $299 to start and available with the usual customization options, but that they’re not really aiming it at consumers just yet — the idea is to give Moblin developers best-of-class hardware to work on. That said, nothing’s stopping you from snagging one tomorrow, since they won’t be requiring proof that you’re actually a dev. You sneaky Linux-loving dog, you.
USB 3.0 might be one of the big stories here at IDF, but Intel just showed off a glimpse of the future: Light Peak, an optical interconnect for mobile devices that can run as fast as 10Gbps. That’s fast enough to do everything from storage to displays to networking, and it can maintain those speeds over 100-meter runs, which is pretty astounding. Intel says the idea is to drastically reduce the number of connectors on mobile devices, which should allow them to get even smaller — but the demo was on a huge Frankenrig, so don’t expect to see Light Peak devices shipping any time soon. Update: We just snapped a quick pic of the connector — it’s a connector, that’s for sure. Check it after the break.
As expected, Intel just announced its Clarksfield laptop chips, bringing Core i7 to the laptop form factor. There’ll be three chips, two regular quad-cores and a Core i7 Extreme that can run as fast as 3.2GHz in Turbo mode, which selectively shuts off cores and uses the extra power to speed up the remaining cores while preserving battery life. The parts were demoed working in shipping-ready form on stage, but pricing and availability weren’t mentioned — we’ll let you know what we can dig up.
Read – Intel’s Core i7 Mobile press release Read – HotHardware’s Core i7 Mobile review Read – LegitReviews’ Core i7 Mobile review Read – Laptop Mag’s Core i7 Mobile laptop review
The world better be ready for SuperSpeed USB 3.0, cause it’s coming, baby — and by the looks of things at IDF, it’s coming soon. Intel’s “USB Community” pavilion is filled with SuperSpeed tech from a variety of companies, and while some of the demos are happening on crazy Frankenstein rigs, there’s a bunch of stuff here that’s basically ready to ship, including controller chips from NEC and Fujitsu, which are the heart of the whole shebang. Of course, while lightning-fast SSD transfers are nice, the showiest product on the floor is Point Grey’s prototype HD camera here, which streams uncompressed 1080p video over USB 3.0 — it’s not a final product, but it’s apparently quite close. Yes, we know the gallery below is basically cable porn, but here are the facts: USB 3.0 is 10x faster than 2.0 while using less power, and it’s entirely backwards-compatible, since the five 3.0 pins in the connector have been cleverly engineered to sit above the four legacy 2.0 pins. If that doesn’t get you dreaming of hard drives for the holidays, well, we don’t know what will. Video after the break!
Well, here’s something you don’t see every day: Intel’s got a concept laptop here at IDF that features three OLED touchscreens below the 15-inch screen. In keeping with the hype of the moment, the primary idea is to run widgets and other passive apps on the little screens, but they’re actually integrated with the main screen, so you can flick content up to view it full-size, and even use the mouse to interact with the widgets instead of your fingers. It’s definitely cool, but it’s also definitely a little odd in practice — although Intel says they’re talking to OEMs, things will have to be significantly refined before this can hit production. More pics in the gallery, video after the break.
SAN FRANCISCO — Intel showed off a spiffy new version of Moblin, a Linux operating system designed for mobile gadgets. Initially targeted at netbooks, Intel has now hinted that it will extend the system’s reach to mobile phones.
Intel started the Moblin initiative last year in a bid to maximize the potential of netbooks and other devices that use the company’s Atom processor. But this is the first time that it has shown how the operating system, which is built on a Linux core, will appear to users.
“Moblin will be ready in time when Moorestown (the successor to the current Atom platform) ships next year,” Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel told developers at the Intel Developer Forum, an Intel-hosted conference, on Tuesday.
Although Intel did not explicitly say it was planning a smartphone version of Moblin, the company showed a screenshot of the Moblin user interface (above) with phonelike functionality such as notification for missed calls.
Moblin’s user interface is reminiscent of the recently launched Android phone from Motorola, the Cliq. Moblin brings together updates from social networking sites, the browser, news, calendar and phone call updates into a single screen called Myzone.
The social network aggregation idea is one that has become extremely popular among smartphone makers. With the Pre, Palm was the first handset manufacturer to meld contacts, e-mail and social networking information into a single interface. Since then, Motorola and the HTC Hero have adopted a similar approach.
Intel initially aimed Moblin at netbooks, which largely run Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system. But with Moblin potentially running on mobile phones, Intel is walking into an extremely competitive segment. Last year, Google launched Android, an open source mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Android is fast becoming a favorite among handset makers such as HTC and Motorola.
So far, Intel doesn’t have a processor for smartphones. But the company has ambitions to get into that fast-growing market. Earlier this year, Intel said it is working with LG to create a new line of smartphone-like internet devices based on the Moorestown platform and the Moblin operating system. The two companies plan to release the device next year.
Meanwhile, Intel’s Moblin developers have been moving forward with their new OS. In January, they released an alpha version of Moblin, with which interested users could test multiple levels of the core Linux operating system including the boot process, connectivity, networking manager and user interface development tools.
At its developer conference Tuesday, Intel showed a slick interface that seemed to be designed to work well with both touchscreen and standard displays. Moblin screens will have a top bar with access to seven broad categories including applications such as a calendar, e-mail, browser as well as online connectivity options and a world clock.
Moblin is designed for multitasking, says Intel. So if a call comes up during web browsing, the interface allows users to switch easily to another application, such as the camera or a map program.
The latest demo is the first sign that Moblin could become a rival to Android and even the iPhone. But with no devices in the market yet that use the operating system, Moblin remains a dream for Intel.
Intel’s making a big TV push here at IDF, and a lot of it centers around the CE 3100 Media Processor, which combines an 800MHz Pentium M core with a proprietary video processing core all on one chip. That’s about as much power as a 1.2GHz Atom, and it’s enabled some pretty cool demos, like this box that’s running a custom Flash Lite UI on top of Linux. The video silicon accelerates H.264 playback, so newer YouTube content looked fantastic — some of the best big-screen YouTube we’ve ever seen actually. That’s all the software was optimized for, however — older content that required software decoding looked much worse, and playback wasn’t stellar. That’s down to optimization, though, and we’re willing to forgive it, especially since the demo was put together in two weeks or so. Of course, the big question when you’re looking at an IA core running Flash is whether or not this rig can do Hulu on a big screen, and the answer was cautious but optimistic: it’s technically possible and even somewhat easy, but as usual it all comes down to Hulu allowing it. (What else did you expect?) Still, it’s interesting to see a set-top box with some actual processing power, and Intel’s got some more interesting demos for us coming up, including a three-tuner Tru2Way HTPC that can send video to a PS3. Video after the break!
SAN FRANCISCO — Moore’s Law coming to an end? Not if you ask Intel, which announced Tuesday that it plans to offer chips based on a 22 nanometer process technology in the second half of 2011.
The 22nm chip packs in more than 2.9 billion transistors into an area the size of a fingernail. That’s double the density of the 32nm chips that are currently the cutting edge; most of Intel’s CPUs today are still based on a 45nm process.
Generally, the smaller the circuits in a computer chip, the more complex features the chipmaker can integrate into that chip. Small circuits also have the potential to increase the computing speed, but the tradeoff is increased power consumption, heat production, and — with very small circuits — increasingly large challenges in keeping the circuits electrically isolated from one another.
At the company’s developer conference here Tuesday, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini (above) showed a silicon wafer containing the first working chips built on the technology. The 22nm test circuits include both SRAM memory as well as logic circuits that will be used in future Intel microprocessors.
“We are moving ahead with development of our 22nm manufacturing technology and have built working chips that will pave the way for production of still more powerful and more capable processors,” said Otellini.
Moore’s Law, first introduced by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, postulates that the number of transistors on a cost-effective integrated circuit will double every two years. One way to describe how well transistors are packed is the smallest geometric feature that can be produced on a chip, usually designated in nanometers (billionths of a meter).
In late 2007, Intel started mass production of chips based on the 45nm technology. The company has said it plans to introduce 32nm processors early next year. By comparison, the Intel 4004 microprocessor introduced in 1971 was based on 10,000nm process. A human hair is approximately 100,000 nanometers.
The 22nm wafer is made up of individual die containing 364 million bits of SRAM memory. SRAMs are used as test vehicles to demonstrate technology performance, yield and chip reliability. Once the technology works on SRAMs, Intel will move to utilize it in CPU production.
At 0.092 square microns, the 22nm process based chips contain the smallest SRAM cell used in working circuits ever reported, said Intel.
Photo: CEO Paul Otellini holds a silicon wafer containing the world’s first working chips built on 22nm manufacturing technology (top). Lower photo: Closeup of a 22nm SRAM die. Both photos courtesy Intel.
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