IDF Spring 2003: on the prospects of Intel mobile platforms. The Digital Home concept
As you can see this IDF is boiling with announcements and solution releases. I’m afraid the flow of information will be too strong, so we´ll have to mess with it until the next important industry event — CeBIT 2003 in Hannover. And now we continue to mix official press releases with information obtained from the Forum participants.
Today Anand Chandrasekher, Vice President and General Manager of the Intel Mobile Platforms Group, officially announced that Intel Centrino, new company’s mobile platform, will be released on March, 12, at CeBIT 2003.
Intel Centrino mobile design includes Intel Pentium M processor, Intel 855 chipset and Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 network interface. Pentium M (former Banias) features the improved Pentium III core, 1Mb L2 cache, 400MHz FSB. This lets me think that a Pentium M with a Pentium 4 FSB can work on the chipsets for the latter. According to Anandtech, there’s a Pentium M operating on Intel 7501 presented at IDF!
In his speech Anand Chandrasekher also informed that Intel Communications Fund had already invested $25 million into over 15 companies, working in wireless networking segment, to speed up the deployment of such solutions worldwide. Intel also collaborates with hotel networks, telecom providers and retail traders, and goes on with the program of public Wi-Fi access points for using with Intel Centrino technology. About several thousand of these are to be tested by the end of 2003.
Intel also announced the 6-quarter Granite Peak program for providing compatibility between Intel’s new chipsets and desktop/mobile processors. This will help IT departments to support standardized hardware and software for longer periods of time.
Besides, Intel presented components for its Digital Home concept. These include a new reference platform codenamed Statesboro that features Linksys digital multimedia adapter based on Intel’s reference design that provides digital content distribution via wireless home-wide channels.
Statesboro is a demo-platform addressed to developers to illustrate the Digital Home concept of 2003. It includes all the key parts for supporting digital home models described in the Desktop Platform Vision Guide 2003. These include 3.06GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HyperThreading, Springdale chipset, 802.11 dual-band WLAN controller, Serial ATA hard drive, DDR memory and an optical DVD/CD-RW recorder.
More on this: Intel also presented a new concept for 2004 codenamed Powersville that features digital home/office functionality.
Another desktop concept expected in 2004 — Marble Falls – bases on Small Form Factor (SFF). It’s a dual-display PC with a built-in digital camera that features HT-enabled Pentium 4, i865 (Springdale) chipset, Gigabit Ethernet port, IEEE 802.11a, Bluetooth wireless interfaces, ATi Radeon 9000 Mobility graphics and Serial ATA hard drive. Marble Falls will support PCI Express (NewCard socket).
Finally, Intel Newport concept is a Centrino-based mobile tablet solution with IEEE 802.11a/b, GPRS, Bluetooth interfaces and detachable keyboard.
To speed up the development of digital multimedia adapters and digital home PC platforms Intel has already been producing a number of UPnP tools: Device Spy, Device Sniffer, Service Author, Device Validator, Device Relay, Network Light, AV Media Controller, AV Wizard, AV Media Server and AV Renderer.
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