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26 Sep 2009
The exhibition halls are being packed up, delegates are checking out of their hotels and another Intel Developer Forum (IDF) has come to an end.
IDF is Intel's main forum for new releases and updates on the older products and, as such, is key to understanding the company's direction. It is also a chance for developers, manufacturers and academics to meet and exchange ideas that will shape the direction of computing in the next decade.
While we have lots of stories and video from the show, there is a lot to process in the three days. Visitors are bombarded with new information about what is coming down the line and strategy for the future.
So I have selected my top five highs and lows of the show, so you can get an idea of what is important and what is not.
HIGHS
5.
USB 3.0
USB is not tied to any one vendor, but Jeff Ravencraft, the president
of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), is an Intel technology strategist in the
Digital Enterprise Group and was on the show floor floor showing off the first
USB
3.0 products.
Rather confusingly, the USB-IF is calling the technology USB Superspeed (one wonders what USB 4.0 will be called) but whatever the marketing bods do to create confusion will not do too much harm, because the speed of the technology will ensure it is a huge seller.
The new system increases the speed of data transmission tenfold, to a cracking 4Gbit/s, although in the real world it will probably only give around 75 per cent of that. It is stunningly fast, and pretty much means game over for FireWire.
USB 3.0 requires a new USB hub, which NEC was displaying, along with a new cable and receiver, but crucially the rectangular form-factor of the ports remains exactly the same and it will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices.
By keeping ports the same, customers will not have to bin their old hardware, manufacturers won't have to redesign systems too much and everyone benefits. It is a textbook case of how to develop and implement a new standard.
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Do you agree?
Price of copper?
Hmmmm,lets wait and see
Posted by: davechilds 01 Oct 2009
Marketers Selling Ice to Eskimos
That's what marketers do. They have no other function nor do they have anything else to offer. They may be genius at selling & promoting but as for coming up with something useful to sell they have nothing on offer. A company needs a product that is based on progress & unless Intel decides to move to a higher plane, in other words die, they need to be developing, using engineers to develop something whether out there or focused, then have the marketeers promote the product & not the other way around.
Posted by: Rex Alfie Lee 01 Oct 2009
Engineering focus
If it really is lost, thats trouble. Remember what happened last time Intel let the marketroids design something? Netburst. Nuff said.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward 28 Sep 2009
Nothing Against Fibre but Copper is used for 10G ethernet and 1.3b HDMI
So while I like the idea of the bandwidth of fibre, copper still has a way to go before hitting the wall. And like the commenter before me Intel was also responsible for NetBurst and the P4. It was only after AMD was taking share did they revisit the PentiumPro on new silicon. The P4 was cycle for cycle slower than the PIII. Then there is RAMBUS, Intel was force feeding the first P4 buyers with RAMBUS Memory. And finally there was Intels stance on a 64bit x86 CPU, they said they were just not going to do it. Rather if you wanted to go 64bit then you had to purchase their Itanic platform. Until once again AMD started taking share away from them when they introduced the Athlon64. Intel has been doing more catching up and copying via their cross-license agreement with AMD so now we have the Core i5 and i7 and Intel finally got rid of that bottleneck Hub ICH of theirs.
Posted by: FD-Texas 28 Sep 2009