Microsoft unveils new mobile software platform

MS, Intel and Nokia team up in hope to give Apple and Google a run for their money, finds Ashlee Vance

The frenetic pace of the mobile phone industry has forced some of the technology world’s largest players to make a break with the past. Microsoft, Intel and Nokia—all leaders in their respective markets—have struggled to capitalise on the rise of a new class of smartphones that can tap into a vast pool of software. So these companies have come to the world’s largest mobile technology conference here with a message of change. They’re willing to abandon tradition if it means getting another shot at the fast-growing mobile device market and blunting the advance of companies like Apple and Google. On Monday at the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled a new version of its flagship smartphone software, which was called Windows Mobile but has now been dubbed Windows Phone. Steve A Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the stage for a few minutes before a demonstration of the new software began. “We debated a lot about how much we should position and talk about from whence we have come and what we will show you,” Ballmer said. “At the end of the day, we said, ‘Let’s get on with the show.’” Windows Phone 7 Series has a cleaner look than most of today’s phone software, with bright blue icons on a black background. One version of the initial screen has four large, square icons for Phone, People, E-Mail and Text functions that Microsoft calls Live Tiles. Underneath, a rectangular box pulls in calendar information. And below that Microsoft is highlighting its Zune music and video software and its Xbox Live gaming service. The product marks a rare moment when Microsoft scrapped previous versions of its software in favour of building something new from scratch. Microsoft has spent the past 18 months trying to add gloss and sophistication to a product that had suffered ridicule as being clunky and too wedded to the company’s personal computer roots. “We think there is a really big opportunity for a fresh start,” said Todd Peters, the vice president at Microsoft in charge of mobile product marketing. “Consumers have an amazing capacity for retrying things.” Intel and Nokia too have opted for a fresh start. The companies have decided to create a new software platform called MeeGo that they hope will make its way into cars, home phones, smartphones and computers. At its core, MeeGo stands as a broad attempt to outflank mobile phone software from Google, Apple and Microsoft by creating a product that can bring a similar interface to a wider range of computing devices. “The next evolution of mobile computing, which is way beyond smartphones, tablets and netbooks, will require a truly open platform,” said Kai Öistämö, Nokia’s head of devices. Historically, Microsoft and Intel have dominated the computing industry hand-in-hand, with Microsoft producing the most-used software and Intel building the most popular chips. But this Wintel duopoly, as it’s sometimes called, has failed to carry over to the mobile world. Instead, Microsoft finds itself taking yet another crack at building phone software and trying to play the role of the innovator rather than an also-ran mimicking Apple and Google. For its part, Intel has been forced into the software game so that it can ensure that enough solid applications exist for the company’s Atom chips, which sit in laptops today but have yet to make their way into mobile phones. So different is this new world order that Microsoft has thus far refused to offer a version of its mobile operating system for the Atom chips, focusing instead on building software for rival ARM chips. Nokia emerged as a natural partner for Intel given the company’s recent struggles in the smartphone arena. While its leads in overall smartphone market share, Nokia has watched interest in Apple’s iPhone and phones based on Google’s Android software skyrocket. The iPhone, in particular, also opened up the market for mobile applications through Apple’s App Store, which has served up more than 3 billion software downloads. Intel and Nokia look to team on attracting software developers to MeeGo, and Intel has even backed the idea of running MeeGo on rival chips if it helps the software gain broader interest. Analysts contend that the mobile market remains in a state of flux, leaving plenty of room for these companies to build momentum if they can create something that catches the consumers’ eye. Microsoft has intended to do just that by reorganising its mobile division and presenting people a phone interface quite unlike anything else on the market. More than two years ago, Microsoft started plucking top executives away from companies in a wide variety of industries, hoping they could revitalise its mobile software group. Mr. Peters brought some marketing muscle over from Staples, where he helped to create the popular “Easy Button” campaign. Other executives arrived from Procter & Gamble and Nike, as Microsoft sought to find a new way of talking to consumers, since about 86 percent of phones running Windows are sold through retail outlets. While studies show that consumers tend to react favourably to the Windows brand, they’ve been less enamoured with the way Microsoft’s phone software works. “We need to have a degree of humility as we go about our business,” Peters said. “It has been painful, but it’s getting better.” Microsoft has also pulled some of its top engineers from other divisions over to the phone group, hoping the workers could provide inspiration and structure around the processes needed to make a polished product on time. “We debated a lot about how much we should position and talk about from whence we have come and what we will show you,”

Futuristic Intel Chip Could Reshape How Computers are Built, Consumers Interact with Their PCs and Personal Devices

News Highlights

• Concept chip from Intel Labs is aimed at scaling on-chip performance, communication and power consumption for decades to come.
• Contains the most Intel Architecture (IA) computing engines integrated on a silicon CPU chip – 48 cores -- while consuming only as much electricity as two standard household light bulbs.
• Processors could become smart enough to let PCs use "vision" to interact with people.

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Researchers from Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or "single-chip cloud computer," that rethinks many of the approaches used in today's designs for laptops, PCs and servers. This futuristic chip boasts about 10 to 20 times the processing engines inside today's most popular Intel® Core™-branded processors.

The long-term research goal is to add incredible scaling features to future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces. The company plans to engage industry and academia next year by sharing 100 or more of these experimental chips for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.

While Intel will integrate key features in a new line of Core-branded chips early next year and introduce six- and eight-core processors later in 2010, this prototype contains 48 fully programmable Intel processing cores, the most ever on a single silicon chip. It also includes a high-speed on-chip network for sharing information along with newly invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate extremely energy efficiently at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance (about as much as today's Intel processors and just two standard household light bulbs).

Intel plans to gain a better understanding of how to schedule and coordinate the many cores of this experimental chip for its future mainstream chips. For example, future laptops with processing capability of this magnitude could have "vision" in the same way a human can see objects and motion as it happens and with high accuracy.

Imagine, for example, someday interacting with a computer for a virtual dance lesson or on-line shopping that uses a future laptop's 3-D camera and display to show you a "mirror" of yourself wearing the clothes you are interested in. Twirl and turn and watch how the fabric drapes and how the color complements your skin tone.

This kind of interaction could eliminate the need of keyboards, remote controls or joysticks for gaming. Some researchers believe computers may even be able to read brain waves, so simply thinking about a command, such as dictating words, would happen without speaking.

Intel Labs has nicknamed this test chip a "single-chip cloud computer" because it resembles the organization of datacenters used to create a "cloud" of computing resources over the Internet, a notion of delivering such services as online banking, social networking and online stores to millions of users.

Cloud datacenters are comprised of tens to thousands of computers connected by a physically cabled network, distributing large tasks and massive datasets in parallel. Intel's new experimental research chip uses a similar approach, yet all the computers and networks are integrated on a single piece of Intel 45nm, high-k metal-gate silicon about the size of a postage stamp, dramatically reducing the amount of physical computers needed to create a cloud datacenter.

"With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud datacenter of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists today, saving significant resources on space and power costs," said Justin Rattner, head of Intel Labs and Intel's Chief Technology Officer. "Over time, I expect these advanced concepts to find their way into mainstream devices, just as advanced automotive technology such as electronic engine control, air bags and anti-lock braking eventually found their way into all cars."

Cores Allow Software to Intelligently Direct Data for Efficiency 
The concept chip features a high-speed network between cores to efficiently share information and data. This technique gives significant improvement in communication performance and energy efficiency over today's datacenter model, since data packets only have to move millimeters on chip instead of tens of meters to another computer system.

Application software can use this network to quickly pass information directly between cooperating cores in a matter of a few microseconds, reducing the need to access data in slower

off-chip system memory. Applications can also dynamically manage exactly which cores are to be used for a given task at a given time, matching the performance and energy needs to the demands of each.

Related tasks can be executed on nearby cores, even passing results directly from one to the next as in an assembly line to maximize overall performance. In addition, this software control is extended with the ability to manage voltage and clock speed. Cores can be turned on and off or change their performance levels, continuously adapting to use the minimum energy needed at a given moment.

Overcoming Software Challenges 
Programming processors with multiple cores is a well-known challenge for the industry as computer and software makers move toward many-cores on a single silicon chip. The prototype allows popular and efficient parallel programming approaches used in cloud datacenter software to be applied on the chip. Researchers from Intel, HP and Yahoo's Open Cirrus collaboration have already begun porting cloud applications to this 48 IA core chip using Hadoop, a Java software framework supporting data-intensive, distributed applications as demonstrated by Rattner today.

Intel plans to build 100 or more experimental chips for use by dozens of industrial and academic research collaborators around the world with the goal of developing new software applications and programming models for future many-core processors.

"Microsoft is partnering with Intel to explore new hardware and software architectures supporting next-generation client plus cloud applications," said Dan Reed, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Extreme Computing. "Our early research with the single chip cloud computer prototype has already identified many opportunities in intelligent resource management, system software design, programming models and tools, and future application scenarios."

This milestone represents the latest achievement from Intel's Tera-scale Computing Research Program, aimed at breaking barriers to scaling future chips to 10s-100s of cores. It was co-created by Intel Labs at its Bangalore (India), Braunschweig (Germany) and Hillsboro, Ore. (U.S.) research centers. Details on the chip's architecture and circuits are scheduled to be published in a paper at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in February.

Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020

Researchers expect brain waves to operate computers, TVs and cell phones

Mind Trip Intel wants into your brain Warner Bros.

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as our precious iPhone's, Android smart phones and even Microsoft's wacky Surface Table.

Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of fMRI brain scans to match brain patterns with similar thoughts across many test subjects.

Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchaircontrolled with brainwaves, and University of Utah researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.

There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there's no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those brain waves. That's right -- we're seeing Matrix creep.