Don’t buy Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks, Intel says. Wait for next year

Intel will re-invent computing, senior executive Dadi Perlmutter said as he kicked off the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) at the Mosc One West (MOW) conference centre. Dadi is tipped as the next boss of Intel after Paul Otellini steps down in the HR (human resources) equivalent of shrinking the die. Perlmutter showed off a Medfield Atom and the Xeon 5 – teraflops; quite different birds of a feather. Intel spans the smallest to the greatest, said Perlmutter and continues to shrink the die with unparalleled process technology. To you and me that’s fabs and that and the engineers and architects and support staff in the multi-billion manufactories. This, claimed Perlmutter is the era of digital transformaton with stuff moving from analogue to digital. Digital data is all about analysis. The real tornadoes are datacentres and the internet of things. The datacentre is not one thing – it’s a broad set of stuff. Microservers are not the same thing as supercomputers. Intel’s challenge is to create a broad swathe of stuff that runs consistent software and applications. Intel has bought companies to complement its capabilities. The real big change is about mobile personal computing, said Perlmutter. The beige desktop was a real revolution at the time. They were heavy as heck though. It’s all about mobile computers at the nd of the day, he said. Innovation doesn’t stop with 22 nanometer process technology and in tandem with Microsoft will create a revolution. He showed off a number of “form factors” (sizes) running Windows 8. Sony’s slider is good stuff, he said. People want a variety of things. The size stuff is really great, he said. Everyone wants good battery life and performance. Size is just the basis of everything. Everyone loved the DOS and Unix interface. GUIs moved everything from one dimension to two dimensions. “Innovation contines to move,” he said, puzzlingly. Executives use hand gestures and finger gestures and in the future people would like to interface (copulate) with machines better. TIC (true interactive computing) includes touch and everything else including voice. Intel and Nuance will copulate (partner together) and people will talk to their machines and their machines will answer, according to a man demonstrating TIC. The demonstrator used TIC to search on buying sunglasses off Amazon. You can tweet stuff. He spoke very bad Hindi and Nuance recognised it. Dell and Nuance and Intel (DNI) have performed a threesome and will be out when Haswell arrives, as we have reported elsewhere. Intel has threesomed with Creative and Softkinetic to produce unique gesture technology, said Perlmutter. In the future, in a year or two, fingers will be everything and gestures will be everything. Dadi can rotate the world with his hands, he demonstrated usng the palm of his hands and fingers. This is the beginning of innovation, he said. People confuse user experience with user interface, said Perlmutter. Perlmutter introduced Gary Flood – not the British journalist, but a senior suit from Mastercard. Flood said he was overdressed in his suit and tie because he didn’t get a memo from Perlmutter. Mastercard will announce new servers soon and has already introduced Pay Pass, said Gary. Mastercard wants ubiquitous acceptance. NFC isn’t everything. Intel is providing identity protection technology. NFC built into your laptop will make buying stuff easier, said Intel. Intel will build tablet designs for the healthcare market. If Perlmutter was Perlmutter MD he could see babies using ultrascan. His demo went slightly awry but recovered quickly as only future CEOs can do. To be fair, the IDF2012 wireless connection is rather weak. Microsoft Metro is a good interface, Intel said. Haswell next year will be really great, said Perlmutter. It will be 22 nanometres but was designed with mobility in mind. Intel has designed the architecture extremely seriously. He showed off Haswell against Ivy Bridge, so you may as well wait for Haswell rather than buying Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks now. Haswell will develop twice the performance than Ivy Bridge. He showed a thin Haswell prototype. More people will adopt Intel’s smartphone chip, said Perlmutter.