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Communications IT Technology

Intel Sees Communications As Company's Next Frontier 45

Posted by Zonk from the stepping-it-up dept.
WSJdpatton writes "Intel is mounting a long-term campaign to turn personal computers into more reliable tools for calling and conferencing. Intel business-client architecture director Steve Grobman argues that instead of exploiting the Internet to lower communications costs, the next phase is about adding new features. Among the benefits for business: broader access to online meetings with advanced features such as TiVo-style playback, instant captioning of conversations — or even translation into multiple languages. 'That technology could be a foundation for companies to add improvements such as the ability to identify the current speaker during a conference call ... He eventually expects advanced features -- such as automatic transcription or translation of conferences. Intel has used deals to advance its plans. A February 2006 partnership with Skype included joint development to tailor the service for Intel's dual-core chips, and free PC-based conferencing for as many as 10 participants.'"
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Intel Sees Communications As Company's Next Frontier More

Intel Sees Communications As Company's Next Frontier

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  • So, if the newfangled teleconferencing cost $10,000 a minute, people would be all over it, right?

    Perhaps it about *both* the features *and* the cost of communications, hmmm?

    • I will freely admit that I don't use Skype at all. But the internet radio stations I have heard that have interviewed celebrities over the Internet convince me that this way of communicating is not even ready for voice only, much less voice and video. At times it was nigh impossible to understand what the interviewee was saying. And this was people who are supposed to know how Internet communication works (and who had technicians on both ends of the conversation).

      Also, considering that the best speech reco

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Retric ( 704075 )


        I will freely admit that I don't use Skype at all. But the internet radio stations I have heard that have interviewed celebrities tree the Internet convince me that this way of communicating is not even ready for voice only, much less voice and video. At times day was nigh impossible to understand what the interviewee was saying. And this was people who are supposed to know how Internet beach works (and who had technicians on both ends of the conversation).

        Also, considering that the best speech recognition

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by kantier ( 993472 )

        I will freely admit that I don't use Skype at all. But the internet radio stations I have heard that have interviewed celebrities over the Internet convince me that this way of communicating is not even ready for voice only, much less voice and video. At times it was nigh impossible to understand what the interviewee was saying. And this was people who are supposed to know how Internet communication works (and who had technicians on both ends of the conversation).

        Also, considering that the best speech re

  • I dont understand why it is a new idea - The whole internet is about information exchange - read "Communication". Of course people have been looking at means to improve the way in which we communicate and make it easier to communicate between different people from different regions of the earth and also to make it easer to communicate with larger number of people. People have been trying to do it from the point Internet was started.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Apart from cranking out Pentiums, Intel don't know what they want. They have made various attempts at diversification but always end up selling things off.

      They bought Dialogic (a communications company), then sold it off. They bought StoringARM (a communications/mobile chiop), extended that to the PXAxxx XScale architecture, then sold that off.

      What Intel needs is a bit of long term thinking.

  • This is a pretty good move on Intel's part. VoIP is really coming into its own, with Asterisk and Skype and others proving it's a truly viable alternative to the traditional telco. You just have to ensure you have an infrastructure in place that can guarantee availability. And it seems Intel want to make creating that infrastructure a whole lot easier. We recently moved to an Asterisk based phone system at work, and true, there were a few teething problems, but it was definitely worth it. We get all th
    • They already blew 10 billion dollars trying to get into the comms business.

      how much are they going to spend this time.

      Intel is a very focused company that really can't do more than one thing at a time. They should stick to processors, and add features to processors to support comms. They can't afford to go competing with their customers again, if they didn't learn the first time.

  • Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:58AM (#19222649) Homepage
    The 'videophone' has a part of the future since 1927 (Metropolis) and has come up in countless visions of the future (ATT exhibit at 1964 World Fair) but for one problem: mass customers just don't seem to want or need it. We had videoconferencing at my last workplace - so you get to see a funky image of the big boss as he speaks, big deal. Might as well let us tele-smell his cologne for all it added to the conference.
    • Yeah, it doesn't make any difference if you can or can't see the CEO's face during the big teleconference but let me tell you one example were it would make a world of difference:

      One month ago my father-in-law died leaving his wife to live alone for the first time in her life. She lives in a somewhat rural part of Japan North of Tokyo in an area with few neighbours. My wife is her only daughter and we live in Canada, her only son is an engineer for Fujitsu and spends many days on the road. We know she mi
  • moutains and mountains of data to retain. Accessing, querying, storing and getting this data will be the real challenge. Bandwidth is the issue, but will the long pole be transfering bit accross the 'net (or whatever is next) or getting bits two and from the massive data stores that TiVo like capabilities would demand?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Vo1t ( 1079521 )
      Actually, I think they're looking for yet another application of their processors' increasing performance. Since real-time radiosity is still beyond reach, Intel looks at multiplexing communication features.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tilde_e ( 943106 )
      Why mountains? If people really needed this feature, couldn't they start with black&white/greyscale rather than color images? Many other technologies came into the world this way: the television, the gameboy, network terminals, etc.
      • That is an interesting idea, however I just do not see people going to black and white teleconferencing when even most webcams are in color.
  • It's always been a huge pain to find Intel drivers, you are about 10,000 times more likely to find the specs for the hardware you're looking for on the site, rather than the drivers. I just hope that their communications isn't the same way, trying to find the manual or some kind of support and all you find is what your hardware (or software) has in it.

  • Computing Networks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:04AM (#19222733) Journal
    The purpose of a network, in whatever form, is simply communication. Anything more detailed than that is losing sight of the purposes of networks and networking.

    The purpose of Computers is data manipulation. Anything more detailed than that is losing sight of the purposes of Computers and Computing.

    I'm reminded of the failure of the Railroad companies in the dawn of motor vehicles 120 years ago, and again during the dawn of Aircraft 80 years ago, to realize what business they were in. The long running idea of "we're in the railroad business" was extremely short sighted, because they became focused upon the niche of the greater business; transportation.

    When Computers connected to the Network, it created a hybrid business, that of Computing Networks. I believe that INTEL has forgotten what business they are in (Computing) because they've lost sight because of the Hybridization of the Computing Network.

    In order to accomplish what they have outlined, which is quite admirable, the computing power driving their visiion has to be greatly increased. The Network side is easily expanded, but the computing side is suffering from the constraints of current technology. Intel (and AMD) ought to pay attention and know what market they are really in; computing.

    • The Network side is easily expanded, but the computing side is suffering from the constraints of current technology.

      The problem isn't one of a lack of CPU power OR a lack of the ability to provide adequate bandwidth.

      We've got more than enough CPU to do videoconferencing and the like. What we lack is enough last-mile bandwidth to permit people with ordinary connections to use it.

      • Vid conferencing is affordable enough for people who "need" it. Maybe it isn't affordable nor feasible for every household, yet. It will be very soon.

        You should realize that we already do "video conferencing" with programs such as Paltalk. This is doable already today. The items that need much greater processing are the things like automatic captioning and translation, which still suck given all the computing power we have today.

        It is going to take a revolution in processor design to get that kind of power

  • Voice recognition AND translation?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:07AM (#19222787) Homepage Journal
    This aught to be good:

    CEO: Sales are up, things are looking good!
    Caption: Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
    Computerized Russian Voice: , let's delete
    Russian repeats back message.
    English computerized voice: The dear aunt, us the duel assassin of to erase has left therefore establishes chooses everything

    The Cold War 2.0 breaks out.

    -Rick

  • VoIP? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by el_flynn ( 1279 )
    With VoIP, a lot of resources are dedicated to make two or more endpoints (usually VoIP phones) talk to each other, especially when each device is talking a different codec. A lot of codecs exist - G.729, G.726, GSM, WAV, Speex et al. And so there's stuff in the middle that's required to translate from one codec to another (this is called transcoding), and at the same time take care of other audio quality issues such as echo cancellation, comfort noise generation, DTMF etc. Usually some sort of PABX takes c
  • Steve Grobman argues that instead of exploiting the Internet to lower communications costs, the next phase is about adding new features. No... I would rather lower communications costs. It sounds like exploiting consumers instead of "exploiting the internet."
  • Looking back at things like Intel NICs, webcams, and codecs like Indeo, Intel has been fiddling with this stuff for ages now. If they had to fall back on something not based on making fast high-tech chips, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing they would naturally have on the backburner. Back in the day I loved Indeo - it was the only codec that could play a very clear video at 800x600 on my PIII 450.
  • .. in gaming with Ventrillo and Teamspeak. It boggles the mind that companies are still using horribly painful teleconferencing services and phones to do teleconferencing. If companies just setup well organized and managed Ventrillo services, with an associated chat channel like guild chat in WOW, it would probably revolutionize business communication with almost no new R&D. About the only thing you need is a virtual white board that works integrated with ventrillo or teamspeak for engineering disc
    • I think one of the main reasons this isnt happening is because of the wacky licensing for Ventrilo for example....they only sell 1000 slot servers or you have to use an outside vendor for that. What's more, the terms say they can pull your contract at pretty much any time if you arent using more and more slots over time. Ventrilo is totally missing boat on this one. Teamspeak does have commercial use terms which arent too bad...~$1 per user per year.
  • What is old is new again.

    They bought dialogic for USD $750 million in 1999. http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/06/01/intel_buys _dialogic/ [theregister.co.uk]

    Then they sold in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. The simple fact they sold it suggests they couldn't make it work for them. Otherwise, they would spin it off differently so the operation shows up on Intel's balance sheet: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/greg-galitzine/voip/in tel-sells-dialogic-to-eicon.html [tmcnet.com]

    The DSP is still where the action is if you are doing infrastructure.
    • Yes, but don't you remember? They're also the ones whose MMX technology made it possible to have multimedia stuff on the Web!
  • When a hardware company preaches to me how my future involves me spending money on their hardware to bring me yet more 'features' I don't want and no one asked me. And the 'features' I do want, specifically, lower power consumption, lower cost are not in their plans at all.

    Guess what? I don't want streaming video/TV on my phone. I don't want a massive hard drive to store a directly replacement of my MP3 player. And I REALLY don't want Intel or anyone else 'partnering' with carriers to nickel and dime me to

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