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"How can we go beyond performance?" - Intel at IDF

How far away are we from a world in which every single Intel-produced processor includes a wireless - a complete wireless - on a tiny corner of every bit of silicon? Not very far, at all, says Pat Gelsinger.>

For once, Intel's keynote presentation at a major tech event wasn't on "how many megaherz can we drive the silicon up to?" Rather, Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer at Intel, was asking "where else can we take Moore's Law?"

Wireless was the key topic for Gelsinger and his colleague, Sean Maloney, exec VP in charge of Intel's communications group; and Gelsinger introduced "Radio Free Intel." That does definitely not mean an Intel free of radio! - it means ubiquitous radio.

Gelsinger reckons Intel is a very short step away from being able to produce the entire circuit of any wireless in a piece of silicon; active components, passive components, and all. And it would be multi-standard; it would send and receive on Bluetooth, on WiFi, and on GSM and UMTS phones too.

Gelsinger waved a silicon wafer which, he said, had all the components a radio needs, implemented in CMOS silicon."It has low-noise amps, power amps, antenna, all in silicon," he said - though he didn't offer a prediction of exactly when this would be seen in production. "But it will be shrunk, with Moore's Law, down to a tiny corner of every other chip we make."

He reckons the wireless challenge of the future is ultra-wide band, UWB, for cable replacement - not at the 500kilobit speeds of Bluetooth, but at 100 megabits in the lab this year, and 500 megabits "within five to ten years" in mainstream production.

This "extends, and expands Moore's Law," said Gelsinger.

He also demonstrated a 50-node self-configuring wireless "sensor network" of devices which he gave to the audience members during his keynote speech. The network could be seen automatically configuring itself as the sensors moved around the auditorium. "How many of you have tried to configure a network of 50 nodes?" he asked, triumphantly - before asking for a vote on the next IDF venue.

The Intel Developer Forum is being held in Munich this week.