IDF 2014 Day 1 Keynote
Published on 9 Sep 2014 · Filed in Liveblog · 1254 words (estimated 6 minutes to read)This is a liveblog for the day 1 keynote at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2014. The keynote starts with an interesting musical piece that shows how technology can be used to allow a single performer to emulate the sound of a full band, and then kicks off with a “pocket avatar” presentation by Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel Corporation. Krzanich takes the stage in person a few minutes later.
Krzanich starts with a recap of some of the discussions from last year’s IDF, and he points out some of the results over the last year. Among the accomplishments Krzanich lists, he mentions that Intel was the #2 shipper of tablets last year. (One would assume that Apple is #1.) Krzanich clearly believes that Intel has a bright future; he points out that projections show as many as 50 billion x86-based devices by 2020 (just 6 years away). That’s pretty massive growth; there are only an estimated 2.2 billion x86-based devices today.
The line-up today includes talks from Diane Bryant (data center), Kirk Skaugen (clients), Doug Fisher (software and services), and a live Q&A by Krzanich.
Krzanich starts a discussion of wearables and related devices with a mention of the SMS Audio headphones that also provide heart rate monitoring and other fitness data while listening to music. Next up, Krzanich talks about a fashion bracelet that can retrieve textual information from your cell phone and display it. The bracelet was displayed at the opening ceremony of the NYC fashion show last week.
Greg McKelvey of Fossil takes the stage with Krzanich to discuss wearables and Fossil’s experience as a fashion brand and previous wearable technology efforts. McKelvey talks at length about Fossil, but there is very little discussion of specific technology or technology trends.
Krzanich now switches gears to discuss the Internet of Things (IoT), which he believes to be connected to wearables in some ways (“wearables for things”, he calls them). Krzanich believes that IoT will only be successful if you have full intelligence edge-to-edge. Krzanich points out a couple of IoT partnering efforts; one of which involves attaching sensors to HVAC systems to allow for more efficient servicing of the units and another that involves sensors to allow cities to monitor air quality. However, standards are needed, according to Krzanich; he points to two industry consortia involved in standards for IoT. Those consortia are the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). OIC is more consumer-focused; IIC is more industrial-focused (as you can guess by the name). The goal of these consortia is to drive standards and interoperability.
At this point Krzanich hands it off to Diane Bryant, SVP and GM of the Data Center Group at Intel. Bryant is here to talk about the data center side of things, and to help set the scale she talks about smartphones. There are 1.9 billion smartphones with an average of 26 apps. If each app does 20 transactions daily, that totals up to a trillion transactions. That scale is massive, but it will be eclipsed by wearables, which by 2020 will include 50 billion devices generation 35 zettabytes of data. Bryant seems to focus on “big data” as the key data center driver, from wearables to health records and health research. Bryant mentions work being done with the Michael J. Fox Foundation (for Parkinson’s research), the Broad Institute (for cancer genomics research), the Francis Crick Institute (for bioinformatics training targeting oncologists), and the Knight Cancer Institute (to help create a 1.2PB cloud for genomics research). Bryant lays out a very ambitious goal to target cancer treatment via genomics by 2020.
Bryant next announces an analytics program for developers called “A-wear” (Analytics for Wearables).
Bryant hands it off to Kirk Skaugen, who will talk about client devices and personal computing. Skaugen believes that wires will be eliminated, passwords will be replaced by bioinformatics, and the personal computing journey will be revolutionized. Skaugen reinforces that Intel is committed to all operating systems, all form factors, and all use cases. Skaugen announces that the Intel Core M, now running on 14nm process, is in full production and will be available on shelves very quickly. This translates into lighter and thinner tablets with greater processing power and lower power utilization. Skaugen shows off a few platforms built on Core M.
Next Skaugen announces Skylake, the code name for the next-generation processor architecture that is anticipated for arrival in the second half of next year. (Will we see it at next IDF?) He shows off a demo of Skylake as well as a hardware reference platform for Skylake playing full 4K video. The roadmap behind Skylake includes continued shrinking from 14nm to 10nm.
Skaugen announces that Samsung is shipping Intel LTE Advanded (Intel XMM 7260) in the Samsung Galaxy Alpha premium smartphone.
After discussion Intel’s work in communications, Skaugen shifts gears to talk about improving the user experience. This involves getting rid of wires, getting rid of passwords, and improving the natural user experiences. Intel has been talking about 3-D interfaces, touch, and voice for the last few years (check the live blogs from previous years), but we have yet to see this vision be realized. They show a demo of setting a laptop (2-in-1 convertible) on a desk and having it automatically connect to peripherals and displays. The demo also includes wireless charging.
Skaugen wraps up his portion of the session with a review of the announcements before handling the baton to Doug Fisher to talk about software and services. Fisher talks about how Intel is partnering with a number of other companies to help developers deliver software faster. Fisher announces a new reference platform for Android based on Intel technology.
Next Fisher shows off a demo of 3-D camera technology and the associated software that provide additional information and context about data captured in photos (like taking a photo of a crate, capturing the location and dimensions of the crate, and linking to shipping systems to ship the crate). Fisher reinforces Krzanich’s mention of OIC and Intel’s participation in creating open, royalty-free standards for compatibility and interoperability among the billions of devices in the IoT. Intel is, in fact, delivering open source code (under the Apache 2.0 license) and contributing relevant patents to the OIC.
Fisher now turns it back over to Krzanich, who shows off the first production model of Intel RealSense 3-D camera/imaging technology. This technology captures not only visual data, but also distance, depth, motion effects, etc. Krzanich shows a live demo of RealSense depth awareness and how that information can be used to enable new filtering effects in software (like removing the color from everything except the closest layer). Krzanich brings Michael Dell up on the stage to talk about the device he used during the demo, which is a Dell Venue 8 7000 series tablet—supposedly the world’s thinnest tablet at just 6mm. Dell shows off a few more examples of using Intel’s RealSense technology to measure distance and change focal points of photos.
Dell also makes mention of new PowerEdge servers, including the R720XD, a 2U box with 36 cores, up to 1.5TB of RAM, and up to 100TB of storage.
At this point Krzanich transitions to a Q&A session with Renee James, President of Intel. This is a live Q&A session, which is kind of nice (and not very common for a conference keynote like this). At this point I’m wrapping up the liveblog instead of trying to capture the live Q&A (which can be difficult at times).