IDF 2022: Powerful chips, robot brains, and super-fast data lasers - wilsonretininds

A diversified future of computing

The Intel of today isn't the Intel you know, and that truth was hammered home at the annual Intel Developers Assembly in San Francisco this week.

Sure, Intel's still the most prodigious PC chip maker in the international—by far—but its rive has shifted away from computers alone to embrace the idea of bringing smarts to all sorts of devices. While the IDFs of yesteryear leaned heavily on Personal computer processors and new tech designed to bring i computers more potent, at IDF 2016 PCs shared the stage with drones, DJ tables, robots, Raspberry Private eye-esque maker boards, and even 5G networks.

And that's not even mentioning the "hell froze over" announcement about Intel and ARM—or the surprise mic-drop moment from AMD.

The times are definitely a-changin', but concurrently, IDF has always been active what's coming next in the world of calculation—and IDF 2016 delivered angry visions of the upcoming in spades. Let's dig in, start with some radical new Personal computer hardware.

Project Alloy

The star of IDF's day one tonic wasn't a furious new central processing unit or an arcane Cyberspace of Things conception. Instead, it was Project Alloy, a radio set virtual reality headset created by Intel with help from Microsoft.

Project Alloy uses dual Intel RealSense 3D cameras to detect the outside world, offering "five-finger detection" to help you manipulate virtual objects. Whereas the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive focus happening straight virtual reality—plopping you wholly inside essential worlds—and Microsoft's HoloLens uses augmented realness to overlay digital objects in the physical world, Project Alloy is a marriage of the two. Intel's headset uses its cameras to display real-planetary objects inside a 3D-rendered virtual world.

Intel didn't nosedive into specifics; we Don River't know when Project Alloy wish be released, or for how much, Beaver State even what chip powers it. But the company plans to open-source the designing of this potential Personal computer savior sometime mid-2017.

Windows Holographic

Wide-open-sourced VR headsets are but division of the equation, though. Hardware is ineffectual without software. Fortunately, Windows honcho Terry Myerson strode onstage shortly subsequently Project Alloy's reveal to announce that Microsoft is bringing Windows Holographic to the the great unwashed.

Windows Holographic, which powers Project Alloy and Microsoft's possess HoloLens, uses augmented reality to show digital objects overlaid in the bodily world, such as Minecraft blocks or wall-sized calendars. Microsoft will push Windows Holographic to every Windows 10 PC sometime in 2017—presumptively around the time Intel open-sources Envision Debase's design.

Kaby Lake

Virtual reality demands more calculation performance than to the highest degree tasks. At IDF, Intel officially showed off its side by side generation of CPUs, dubbed Kaby Lake.

Intel in reality worn out many time talking up Kaby Lake's graphics performance than its computing chops, which English hawthorn non be surprising when you consider that the chips were hastily added to Intel's road map as Moore's Law slows. The seventh-contemporaries Core processors feature ironware-accelerated video decoding and graphics cores powerful enough to push on 4K video, Intel says. The company likewise showed those integrated graphics cores flying Overwatch smoothen as silk—though Intel didn't say which graphics settings or resolution were used in the demo. Don't expect Kaby Lake's constitutional graphics to swordplay games at 4K resolution, is what I'm saying.

Laptops based on Kaby Lake—like the Asus Transformer 3 pictured in a higher place—will set forth shipping this fall.

AMD Zen

Simply Kaby Lake is evolution. AMD's forthcoming Zen architecture is a CPU revolution for the society, and AMD piggybacked connected IDF for a major reveal of its ain.

AMD's been teasing Zen details for a while now, but pulled back the curtain pretty far at an eve event in San Francisco. The highlight: a demonstration of two PCs—one hopped-up past an 8-core Superman chip, the another aside Intel's 8-core Core i7-6900K—set to 3GHz clock speeds and facing off in a multithreaded Blender rendering labor. AMD's Acid break off beat come out Intel's latest, greatest 8-kernel chip away a hair.

Considering that the internet rumor mill pegged Zen performance as roughly on par with used-school Intel "Ivy Bridge" chips, that's damned exciting. Be sure to read our Zen performance report for meat tech details, and our 10 things you need to know about Zen Buddhism to get wind about its likely place in your system. Thirsting for more? We too Sat down for a monumental Acid Q&A with AMD CTO Mark Papermaster that's non to be missed.

Knight's Mill

Intel's rightfully impressive ironware is bound for information centers, though. During day two's keynote, Intel took the wraps off "Knight's Mill"—a powerful, secretive new Xeon Phi chip loaded with dozens of CPU cores and keen-edge stacked memory in order to chew through false intelligence tasks.

Horse's Mill isn't a direct refilling for the 72-core Knight's Landing place chip, nor Dub's Hill (aka Knight's Landing place's eventual successor). Rather, the chip's cores focus on "low-preciseness calculations," which can be strung together for approximations that can help the chip make decisions in nervous networks. It's a direct response to the earth science jump of Nvidia GPUs for AI tasks.

Photonic connectors

After 16 long days of testing and galling, Intel's in the end making good on its promise to move on the far side copper. At IDF 2016, the ship's company declared that it's begun transportation silicon photonics modules, which use light and lasers to turbocharge information transfers between computers.

This initial broadside focuses along optical communications technology within of information centers, at blistering 100Gbps rates. And piece it's supported the widely ill-used ethernet protocol, servers will require specific switches to subscribe silicon photonics.

But the really intriguing titbit is what lies beyond this rollout: Over fourth dimension, Intel leave broil optical communications directly within its chips—which means blazing-fast beams of light leave button the data exclusive PCs. Yes delight.

DDR5 memory

The future of memory was explored at Israeli Defense Force 2016, too. No, we're not talking about Intel's revolutionary 3D Xpoint memory (though information technology successful an appearance in an endeavour-only role). Instead, we're talk about DDR5 RAM.

"What? ISN't DDR4 memory just starting to straighten?" you ask. Yes indeed, dear hypothetical lecturer—DDR5 International Relations and Security Network't expected until 2020. But seeing DDR5's mere existence connected an IDF 2016 slide is eye-opening, arsenic some hardware experts expected DDR4 to be the last John Major DDR RAM loop before the technology gives mode to better, brighter things (like the aforementioned 3D Xpoint, or phase-change memory).

DDR5 DRAM will have umpteen benefits: Users will be able to cram more memory into PCs, and applications will run faster. DDR5 memory will also equal denser and devour fewer exponent than earlier Drachm, which could extend shelling life story in laptops. Look for the initial DDR5 stipulation to land later this year.

Intel <3 ARM

Talking of chips, Intel's ramping up plans to make up processors for other entities, and with much to-do. At IDF 2016, Intel announced that information technology's open to fabricating usage chips supported designs from condescending-rival ARM.

Hell hath glacial over. Pigs are flying. It appears Intel's retreat from x86-based mobile chips is comfortably and truly all-or-nothing.

Connected the other hand, the mix of Intel's best-in-class manufacturing capabilities and its newfound willingness to create Gir-based chips (even using the cutting-edge 10nm process) could lead-in to big new business for the company, no uncertainty to the chagrin of Qualcomm, Samsung, and different notable ARM chip creators. LG's already revealed plans to create custom ARM chips for its mobile devices in Intel's fabs. And who knows? Intel may symmetric succeed in winning Apple's iPhone business, nigh a decade after famously turning down the opportunity to make chips for the original version.

USB-C tunes

Image by Gordon Mah Ung

Intel's keeping its fingers in the mobile pie in other ways, too. At IDF, the company seized the opportunity to prophesy the superiority of USB-C member audio frequency over the analog signal of traditional 3.5mm headphone knucklebones in smartphones. Nerd fight!

Extremity audio frequency terminated USB-C facilitates killer features same noise cancellation, specialistic sound effects, and smart power management—the last mentioned of which helps dispel concerns about digital audio's essence on mobile battery life. Embracing USB-C audio could as wel result in dilutant, flatboat devices past doing away with the relatively wide 3.5mm jack also as the complex digital-to-analog circuitry that spec entails.

Add it all up and those features "volition really make USB Case-C the right connection for audio," Intel designer Brad Saunders says. And industriousness-wide USB-C affirm could truly replace the ubiquitous 3.5mm sea do—unlike Apple's reported plans to funnel audio duties direct proprietary Lightning cables in the iPhone 7.

Joule

Intel continuing its bay to solicit the hearts of tinkerers and electronic enthusiasts at IDF 2016, where it proclaimed Joule, a revolutionary high-end maker board. But whereas the $35 Raspberry Pi 3 keeps things lean to stay affordable, Intel's James Prescott Joule is loaded with all sorts of advanced features, corresponding 802.11ac connectivity, DDR4 memory, nontextual matter susceptible of playing 4K videos, and a 64-bit quad-core Atom C.P.U.. It also supports Intel's RealSense 3D television camera.

Watt second's intended to provide monstrous-time computing power for robots, drones, smart devices, and wearables. Intel showed it off in a variety of projects, including a bartending robot and a smart motorbike helmet. Merely the price may be a barrier for all but the most devoted developers: The Watt second plug-in bequeath set you back a cool $370. That's to a higher degree 10 times the cost of the Raspberry Pi, and even pricier than some entry-level PCs.

Euclid

Joule wasn't the only maker-centric annunciation at IDF 2016.

"Euclid" looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Kinect sensor, merely it's actually a fully someone-contained computer designed to power robots. Euclid's magic stems from its Atom processor and world-defining RealSense camera, paired with Ubuntu Linux and the ROS (Robot OS) set of automaton development tools and libraries, which are used to create many another robots now.

Imag Aero

Likewise, Intel also declared its new "Project Aero" development kit for drones, which Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says is a complete drone system all happening a single board. Project Aero packs LTE communication theory, a flight of steps controller, Airmap SDKs, and a RealSense camera for vision. You'll represent able to preorder Jut Aero for $400, though Krzanich failing to say when the board will actually ship. Intel besides plans to release Project Aero kits with everything you involve to create a broad-blown drone at some gunpoint in the future.

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our consort connec policy for more details.

• Computers
• Computers and Peripherals
• Intel

Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting too much.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/416090/idf-2016-powerful-chips-robot-brains-and-super-fast-data-lasers.html

Posted by: wilsonretininds.blogspot.com

Share this post