Intel chief technology officer Pat Gelsinger started the company`s IDF Solutions Conference in Barcelona on Tuesday on a bright note, saying the dark days of the downturn are over for the foreseeable future.
"We have come through the irrational exuberance which normally follows innovation, and also through the turbulence and fallout that often follow that," he said. "The industry is poised for sustained growth."
New opportunities
Gelsinger added that Intel`s continued investment in research and development has created new opportunities, "even new fields of opportunity". He said silicon integration formed the basis of much of Intel`s contribution to the industry`s innovations.
"The challenge is to integrate more and more on a single chip - mobility, security, hyper-threading, scalability, software runtimes and more," he said.
And he said the innovation made possible in other areas through this has been manifold. "Some years ago we wouldn`t have dreamed of talking about the life sciences to the extent that we now do. New areas made possible by advances in silicon include genomics, digital animation, the digital home, mobility and nanotechnology."
Building blocks
Itanium 2, Intel`s 64-bit processor, has not had the best of uptakes. This has caused Intel to produce a version of its "work horse" 32-bit Xeon processor with 64-bit addressing extensions, allowing the CPU to handle greater amounts of memory without needing to recompile existing applications.
Intel is pushing wireless - especially Wi-Fi, for which the groundwork has been laid, and growth will now follow, Gelsinger said. He said metropolitan area broadband wireless, or WiMax, would follow.
Intel is also placing a lot of focus on digital home entertainment. Gelsinger said the Digital Home Working Group is working to create a set of standards allowing interoperability between PCs and consumer electronics. Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless and Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) are opportunities for growth in the home.
All my beautiful children
Referring to himself as the "father of IDF", he said IDF, previously a technology-focused developer forum, now has a business solution focus.
Gelsinger also ran a video of Stephen Hawking, the inspirational handicapped scientist, which endorsed the use of Intel hardware as being in use in both his research and personal wheelchair computer.
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