Welcome to the Intel Developer Forum 2010

With the opening of the IDF 2010 (Intel Developer Forum) imminent, Intel invited the international press to a pre-event presentation session outlining the firm's latest R&D developments, including could-based ray-tracing and some seriously clever cameras!

After last week's IFA in Berlin, a crack team of DigitalVersus journalists has now jetted over to San Francisco for the 2010 Intel Developers Forum (IDF).


This year, we're expecting Sandy Bridge to take the centre stage, and Intel's new processor architecture will have to seriously impress to keep us champing at the bit. Alongside that, we're expecting a series of announcements in the field of mobile technology, with Atom processors seeking to infiltrate a market that's already clearly dominated by ARM architecture. Finally, we're also hoping to find out more about Light Peak.

Head in the Clouds

However, before the main event opened its doors, Intel got us in the mood for some serious tech talk with a pre-IDF presentation on Sunday, showing off some of the new technology developed by Intel Labs. Although none of it was particularly surprising, we still managed to see an interesting demonstration of the game Wolfeinsten getting ray traced in real time on a laptop.


Here, graphics processing is actually carried out remotely by a cloud of four servers fitted with Knights Ferry boards (with a 32-core processor), as developed in the Larrabee project (abandoned in late 2009).

Rather than carrying out all the graphics processing locally, like with any computer currently on the market, in this demo, Intel uses cloud computing to carry out heavyweight processing remotely. This has clear advantages for gamers, as they won't have to keep investing in ever-more powerful hardware to run the latest games. That said, you'll need a reliable and high-speed Internet connection (minimum 5 Mbps) to use this system effectively. Companies like Onlive have already presented this type of technology, and we reckon it's likely to thrive in coming years.

Clever Cameras

Intel is also using cloud computing to speed up facial recognition in computers that lack processing power, as well as for analysing real-time images for augmented reality applications. We saw a presentation based on the recognition of geographical locations in a mobile phone.

Webcams weren't the only cameras used in Intel's presentation either. We were treated to another bout of Intel's Oasis (Object-Aware Situated Interactive System) technology, which uses a video camera to capture images and sense depth in a similar way to the Microsoft Kinect camera. The demonstrations showed the system set up in a kitchen, where it could detect the utensils and types of food placed on a work surface (which became a giant touch-screen tablet thanks to a projector), and then accordingly displayed shopping lists, recipes etc. 

User Experiences

Generally speaking, all of these innovations show that hardware is becoming much less important in the world of technology, as human-machine interfaces and interactions start to take precedence. Plus, these Intel presentations were only a small showcase of what could potentially be possible in the coming years.

We'll keep you posted with more news, innovations and surprises from the IDF as it happens, like this Luke Skywalker car (with Yoda in the passenger seat and R2-D2 built onto the back), currently parked outside our hotel in San Francisco.




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