Barrett, Gates describe a
PC-centric future
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
(01/06/01, 10:27 p.m. EST)
LAS VEGAS — Rumors of the PC's demise in the
new era of mobile connectivity have been greatly
exaggerated, according to keynotes given at the
2001 International Consumer Electronics Show by
two of the high-tech industry's most visible
leaders, Intel Corp. president and chief executive
officer Craig Barrett and Microsoft Corp. president
and chief software architect Bill Gates.
At the official launch of the show on Friday (Jan.
5), Barrett painted a picture of the PC as a
central nervous system for a plethora of gadgets
within a home connected via a wireless network.
Then on Saturday (Jan. 6) morning, Gates
extended the canvas to include the latest version
of Windows 2000 operating system, code-named
Whistler, as the OS that would ensure smooth
interoperability and connectivity. Both Barrett
and Gates pointed to three of the most significant enablers of their
vision: the move to all things digital; broadband connections to the
home; and wireless networking.
In addition, Gates used his keynote an an opportunity to unveil
Xbox, Microsoft's official entry into the video gaming arena, where it
plans to compete head-to-head with Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and
Game Boys in a market Gates estimated as equal in size to the
motion picture industry.
Each speaker addressed a standing-room only auditorium at a
conference that contains over 110,000 attendees and exhibits
sprawled over 1.2 million square feet. With a roughly 10 percent
increase in size over last year's CES, this year's conference is the
largest in the show's history.
Product and technology demonstrations will be given by more than
1,800 exhibitors over the show's four-day run, which extends to
Tuesday, with such key technologies on display as digital audio and
video, wireless communications, home networking, broadband
access, mobile electronics, satellite radio, content delivery systems
and, of course, the Internet.
During his introductory summation of the consumer-electronics
industry, Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive officer of the
Consumer Electronics Association, valued the consumer electronics
industry at approximately $93 billion in 2000, or 10 percent larger
than in fiscal 1999. Shapiro also baptized this year's show as "The
Source for Workstyle and Lifestyle Technology."
Despite the abundance of alternative technologies present at the
show, Barrett said he sees "a bright future" for the PC, based on the
premise that a PC armed with an Intel Pentium 4 processor could
serve as the master controller, processor, and central storage point
for a wired or wirelessly connected home. From streaming audio
directly to mobile assistants, to tablet PCs that will function as
remote controls or as monitors for "tele-Webbing, a common thread
through Barrett's address portrayed the Pentium 4, with its highly
publicized extensions for multimedia processing, as an essential
enabler.
Barrett's extended PC would traffic and store data in the form of
video, photographs, audio or gaming, and would be the broadband
hub that connects all peripherals to the Internet. "The Pentium 4
was designed for this, and that's our goal," Barrett said.
For his part, Gates underlined concept of the PC at the center of a
tetherless, mobile communications environment. "Thanks to the
power of the PC and the advances in hardware, software is now
easier than ever to use," he said. "Text was the first
computer-[aided] explosion, but communications will be the next,"
he said.
Broadband access will be an essential underlying technology to fulfill
this vision, Gates said. "Dial-up is ok, but people want to share data,
whether it be photos, video, audio or gaming, and they want to do it
in real-time," Gates said.
If the PC to keep its place as the center of the networked home,
Gates said that a number of developments must occur, especially
with regard to the user interface. The interface "must be aware of
which user is connected and be able to adapt to that user's work
habits, whether it be in the home or in the office," he said.
Interface focus
The user interface is a major area of development within Microsoft,
Gates said, and other work is being done to simplify the addition of
peripherals by automatically downloading drivers and updates over
the Internet. Other areas being addressed include handwriting
recognition, readability, speech recognition, and such ease-of-use
obstacles as passwords and personal data entry.
The importance of speech recognition was hammered home by a
demonstration that used a Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC running WinCE.
The device fluidly and accurately translated and parsed — in near
real-time — a series of dictation examples by a demonstrator, much
to the audience's amazement.
Acknowledging that much has been done to date, Gates looked to
the future of the PC and cited areas of much-needed development.
"We need more active personal assistants that can give me the
information I need, and block the information I don't need — it has
to be a more personal experience," he said.
Game break
Along with connectivity and media portability, Gates emphasized the
importance of home gaming, and unveiled Xbox, Microsoft's official
entry into the home-gaming arena.
Though technical specifications were unavailable, Gates said the
Xbox "is driven by the results of many months spent with gamers
and developers to find out their needs." Based on Intel and Nvidia
processors, the Xbox features four gaming ports, USB connections,
central up-front controls, rumble capability, 100-Mbit/second
Ethernet connectivity, "and graphics-processing capability up to
three times that of current systems out there today," Gates said. |
