Intel hires wearable computing talent, but it's late to the game

Intel said Friday that it has hired a pair of high-level engineers from Nike and Oakley to assist the company with building wearable computing devices.

Intel said that it had hired Hans Moritz, described as the man who led development of the Oakley AirWave heads-up goggles, to work at the “new devices” team being formed within Intel. Moritz has spent his entire 16-year career at Oakley, where he most recently led the integration of the Oakley Airwave smart ski goggles pictured above.

At Intel, Moritz will join Steven Holmes, most recently of Nike, where he was responsible for the end-to-end development of the Nike GPS Sportswatch as well as the Fuelband fitness tracker accessory. Holmes was hired by Intel a year ago. The Moritz hire was reported by the Intel Free Press, described as a news organization within Intel run by former members of its communications team.

Both will work for Michael Bell, a former vice president at Apple and former senior vice president for product development at Palm, who leads the “new devices” outfit. So far, Intel has said only that it plans a Roku-like set-top box to stream video to TVs.

At the time of his hire in 2010, Bell’s mission was to “lead a team with the charter to build breakthrough smartphone reference designs with the explicit intent of accelerating Intel Architecture into the market.” Since then, however, his role has apparently broadened into the taking Intel’s chips into new product areas, regardless of which products they fall into.

Intel has struggled somewhat in the embedded and mobile space, as low-power RISC designs from ARM and other embedded architectures have moved into phones and other devices. To answer, Intel has developed a series of low-power Atom processors to bring full X86 compatibility to the embedded market. Next week, at the Intel Developer Forum, the company has scheduled press briefings on Bay Trail, a next-generation Atom processor designed for phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

So far, however, Intel has said nothing about whether or not the Atom can play inside smartwatches or eyewear like Google Glass, which have even more demanding space and power requirements than even miniature tablets. Intel, for its part, has been a heavy promoter of failed devices like Mobile Internet Devices, and, most recently, ultrabooks. Intel’s existing Clover Trail+ processor for phones has scored design wins in Asia, but not within the United States—in part because of a lack of integrated LTE connectivity.

“Intel has a history of trying to dictate to the market; we just enable people to do stuff,” said James Bruce, a director of mobile strategy for ARM, in an interview this week.

It’s not clear whether or not Intel will adopt the same strategy in wearable computing. Moritz didn’t design the heads-up display within the AirWave; that was done by Recon Instruments, which has its own line of HUD modules that project information onto glasses through a series of connected microprojectors. But the knowledge of Holmes and Moritz will at point Intel in the right direction. Whether it or not can catch up is another question.

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MIT develops 110-core processor for more power-efficient computing

A 110-core chip has been developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology as it looks for power-efficient ways to boost performance in mobile devices, PCs and servers.

The processor, called the Execution Migration Machine, tries to determine ways to reduce traffic inside chips, which enables faster and more power-efficient computing, said Mieszko Lis, a postgraduate student and Ph.D. candidate at MIT, during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference in California.

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The chip is a general purpose processor and not an accelerator like a graphics processor, Lis said, adding that it was an experimental chip.

"It's not the kind of thing you buy for Christmas," Lis said.

Typically a lot of data migration takes place between cores and cache, and the 110-core chip has replaced the cache with a shared memory pool, which reduces the data transfer channels. The chip is also able to predict data movement trends, which reduces the number of cycles required to transfer and process data.

The benefits of power-efficient data transfers could apply to mobile devices and databases, Lis said on the sidelines of the conference.

For example, data-traffic reduction will help mobile devices efficiently process applications like video, while saving power. It could also help reduce the amount of data sent by a mobile device over a network.

Fewer threads and predictive data behavior could help speed up databases. It could also free up shared resources for other tasks, Lis said.

The researchers have seen up to 14 times the reduction in on-chip traffic, which significantly reduces power dissipation. According to internal benchmarks, the performance was 25 percent better compared to other processors, Lis said. Lis did not specify the competitive processors used for benchmarks.

The chip has a mesh architecture with the 110 cores interconnected in a square design. It is based on custom architecture designed to deal with large data sets and to make data migration easier, Lis said. The code was also written specially to work with the processor.

Top chip makers have moved away from adding cores, topping out at between 12 and 16 cores in processors. But the MIT researchers crammed 110 cores in the 10 millimeter by 10 millimeter size of the chip, Lis said. The chip was made using the 45-nanometer process.

The mesh architecture is also used in chips from Tilera, which can scale up to 100 cores. But Lis said the 110-core chip is not based on Tilera's architecture, nor is it a successor.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com.

Correction: This story as originally posted misnamed the processor. The article has been amended.

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MIT develops 110-core processor for more power-efficient computing

A 110-core chip has been developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology as it looks for power-efficient ways to boost performance in mobile devices, PCs and servers.

The processor, called the Execution Migraine Machine, tries to determine ways to reduce traffic inside chips, which enables faster and more power-efficient computing, said Mieszko Lis, a postgraduate student and Ph.D. candidate at MIT, during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference in California.

The chip is a general purpose processor and not an accelerator like a graphics processor, Lis said, adding that it was an experimental chip.

"It's not the kind of thing you buy for Christmas," Lis said.

Typically a lot of data migration takes place between cores and cache, and the 110-core chip has replaced the cache with a shared memory pool, which reduces the data transfer channels. The chip is also able to predict data movement trends, which reduces the number of cycles required to transfer and process data.

The benefits of power-efficient data transfers could apply to mobile devices and databases, Lis said on the sidelines of the conference.

For example, data-traffic reduction will help mobile devices efficiently process applications like video, while saving power. It could also help reduce the amount of data sent by a mobile device over a network.

Fewer threads and predictive data behavior could help speed up databases. It could also free up shared resources for other tasks, Lis said.

The researchers have seen up to 14 times the reduction in on-chip traffic, which significantly reduces power dissipation. According to internal benchmarks, the performance was 25 percent better compared to other processors, Lis said. Lis did not specify the competitive processors used for benchmarks.

The chip has a mesh architecture with the 110 cores interconnected in a square design. It is based on custom architecture designed to deal with large data sets and to make data migration easier, Lis said. The code was also written specially to work with the processor.

Top chip makers have moved away from adding cores, topping out at between 12 and 16 cores in processors. But the MIT researchers crammed 110 cores in the 10 millimeter by 10 millimeter size of the chip, Lis said. The chip was made using the 45-nanometer process.

The mesh architecture is also used in chips from Tilera, which can scale up to 100 cores. But Lis said the 110-core chip is not based on Tilera's architecture, nor is it a successor.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Agam Shah is a reporter for the IDG News Service in New York. He covers hardware including PCs, servers, tablets, chips, semiconductors, consumer electronics and peripherals.
More by Agam Shah, IDG News Service

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Why you're going to love wearable computing

Most of the criticism about wearable computing technology is about social acceptability. "Nobody wears a watch anymore." "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing Google Glass."

The rest is about utility. "Smartwatches and Google Glass can't do anything that a smartphone can't do."

These arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what the wearable computing revolution is all about.

It's not about devices. And it's not about the convenience of leaving your phone in your pocket.

Wearable computing is nothing less than a fundamental shift in our relationship to computers and the Internet.

A "personal area network," or PAN, is a network centered around an individual person. And, of course, a wireless PAN, or "WPAN" is such a network that uses Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or NFC (near-field communication).

In the past, the PAN concept involved a central connected laptop. It was portable (movable from place to place) as opposed to mobile (usable while moving). The wireless computing revolution will give every user his or her own mobile WPAN.

The WPAN model is comparable to a LAN, or local area network, which emerged as a normal way to connect in the '80s and '90s. Under the simplest version of that model, devices were connected to a nearby server via Ethernet, mostly -- PCs, printers -- and that server was connected to the Internet.

The future of personal computing, if you will, can be compared to the LAN. The smartphone is the Internet-connected server. Wearable devices are the primary user devices where most input and output occurs.

Just as the adoption of LAN was driven in part by the evolution and standards formation around Ethernet technologies, the wearable movement's WPAN adoption will be driven by the new Bluetooth Low Energy standard (the wireless specification formerly known as Bluetooth 4.0). The new Bluetooth, first adopted by iOS and recently integrated into Android, will enable power-sipping devices with very small batteries to function, wake each other up and exchange rich data.

That means wearable devices will be able to receive not only words, pictures and sound, but video.

Prognosticating pundits say the wearables market will get huge fast. The UK research company Visiongain says wearables are a $4.6 billion market this year with " explosive growth and high adoption rates" over the next five years.

Juniper Research predicts that nearly 70 million wearable devices will ship in the year 2017 (up from 15 million this year).

ABI Research disagrees, and projects that the sports and health wearables market alone will see 170 million devices in 2017.

The wearable movement will be dominated in early days by health, fitness and " quantified self" applications. The reason is simple: It's less complicated.

Health monitoring involves measuring things like heart rate and activity level from a wristwatch or chest strap and uploading that data to a central place where changes can be tracked over time. Fitness fans, doctors and patients are all highly motivated to embrace this kind of self-monitoring, and are therefore already willing to spend big for new devices.

Over time, however, fitness and health will take a backseat to personal information management and interaction with everything on the Internet through a voice-based virtual assistant.

Right now, people associate wearable computing with smartwatches, fitness bands and Google Glass. But wearable devices will be worn all over.

We'll see a wide variety of wearable devices that clip onto clothing. Sony, as an early example, will soon ship its Sony Smart Bluetooth Handset SBH52, a clip-on device that relays audio to and from any Bluetooth device. You can use it like a phone (as in hold it up to your ear and talk). It also has an FM radio. Think of this device as a halfway technology between a Bluetooth headset and a clip-on wearable device.

Some wearable devices will be built into clothing, including shirts, shoes, socks and hats. Under Armour even has a vision video showing what it looks like when clothes are wearable touch computers.

The Misfit Shine fitness disk is about the size of a quarter and can be worn like a necklace.

Some wearable devices will wrap around various body parts, including the neck, arm or chest. One leading chest-wrapping fitness wearable is called the Armour39 from Under Armour. The device measures athletic performance, which you can view and use in the product's mobile app.

The Misfit Shine wearable fitness gadget is interesting because the device itself is a quarter-size disk. You pick the accessory that enables you to wear it on your wrist, around your neck or clipped to your clothing.

We'll also see "facetop" devices beyond Google Glass. Already glass-type wearables have been announced or shipped by Epiphany Eyewear, GlassUp, Oakley, and Recon Instruments.

Of course, there will be wristwatches galore from companies large and small, including Acer, AGENT, Androidly, Apple, Cookoo, Dell, EmoPulse, Foxconn, GEAK, Google, Hyetis, I'm Watch, Intel, Kreyos, LG, Martian Metawatch, Microsoft, Pebble, PHTL Qualcomm Rearden Technology, Samsung, Sonostar, Sony, Toshiba, Vachen and others.

One of the biggest trends driving wearable computing is the rise of voice, and the age of interactive artificial intelligence virtual assistants. Siri and Google Now are early examples of what's possible.

Crunched on remote, Internet-connected computers, and passing through your smartphone to Google Glass or your Apple iWatch, or whispering into your ear through some kind of tiny in-ear Bluetooth headset, your virtual assistant will gently but constantly interrupt you to let you know what's going on. When you have a question about anything, just ask and the answer will be spoken to you. This will increasingly work not just for objective, Wikipedia type information ("What's the population of Los Angeles?"), but also personal information ("When is Steve's birthday?") and combinations of the two ("Where should I take Steve for his birthday?").

This virtual assistant feature will also enable combination queries combined with agency ("Buy Steve that shirt I saw today in his size, gift-wrap it and send it to his house to arrive on his birthday"). In this scenario, you won't have to know offhand the birthday, the shirt size, the mailing address or the credit card information. Your virtual assistant will take care of all that.

This will be great for wearable computers because it will enable them to be very light and small and ubiquitous.

The biggest challenge yet to be solved before we reach wearable WPAN nirvana is the management of functions, features and data.

Your smartphone will have to act as an air traffic control tower for all the apps and messages and notifications flying around. For example, you say a Google Now command—who's going to take that? The Google Glasses on your face, the wristwatch on your arm or the smartphone itself? And where does the result come in—on the watch screen or as a voice answer?

Thousands of apps will each want to take over as the main interface and will demand to be given priority. You don't want to be interrupted 10 times a minute, so your phone will have to decide which notifications are green-lighted and which are stopped.

Ultimately, phone operating systems will have to learn how to learn—watch what you do, how you respond to notifications—and figure out how to manage the various devices, multiple apps and notifications coming from every direction.

The arguments against wearable computing will fade away over the next year or two, as wearables become socially acceptable and their utility apparent. One big reason is that, unlike now when wearable devices seem like some kind of sci-fi fantasy or geek delusion, wearable computers will be showing up outside the general consumer market in vast numbers.

Google Glass

First, they will be heavily embraced by various professions. Police will wear head-mounted cams. Doctors will embrace Google Glass. Industry will put Google Glass on workers who need Internet connectivity while they use both hands.

Second, they will become instantly widespread among the blind, deaf and disabled.

Third, they will be heavily embraced by pro athletes.

And fourth, technology fans, geeks and others will embrace them fully.

Within a year or two, ordinary consumers will be used to seeing wearable devices everywhere. They'll quickly become status symbols and viewed as tools for personal self-improvement and professional advantage.

The age of wearable computing is upon us. It's going to be very cool to have a smartphone-directed symphony of devices all over us that answer our questions, do things for us, keep track of our bodies and give us powerful abilities to be connected without the need to be sitting at a desk and staring at a screen.

No, it's not about buying more gadgets. And it's not about smartphone features for people too lazy to use a smartphone.

Wearable computing is about augmenting your whole life and taking advantage of fast-improving Internet services without being glued to a screen all day.

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