Incremental Blogger

Om Malik points to this video from Intel that explores various ways that UMPCs might be used in the future. The video shows how voice recognition, on the go connectivity between devices, machines and people, touch gestures, and graphics can all work together to assist in our daily lives.

Will UMPCs have a future like this? We’ll have to see. I expect we’ll see more. Lots more, particularly as the form factor shrinks and the capabilities increase.

I also hope the future holds more sunshine

The other day Rob Bushway pointed to a series of press releases from Intel and Motion Computing announcing their work on a new “Mobile Clinical Assistant.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Intel’s efforts in this area, you may want to check out the Digital Health-focused keynote at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) that was given this past week. You can watch the video here (Click on the “Digital Health” keynote by Louis Burns). The discussion of the Mobile Clinical Assistant starts about the 10 minute mark.

During the presentation, Intel shows off a running unit as well as discusses the results of a pilot they just completed at El Camino hospital. Nurse Monica Hite was invited on stage to demo the unit and give discuss some of her impressions. Here’s a run down of what she said:

* A stethascope is located at the top-left, but eventhough it was a good idea it didn’t work so they didn’t use it.
* Portability “awesome”
* Handle and weight were “great”
* Ability to log in quick was great “when it worked. Sometimes it didn’t work. And we need things to be fast.”
* Average age of nurses is 49 so need glasses–”screen is a little small.”
* She took quick notes in Journal. (Surprisingly not OneNote!)

Intel also mentioned that they needed to work on the latency of various operations. Launch time of applications, booting up, etc must be fast.

The EMR software used in the pilot was provided by Eclipsys.

Interestingly, in the keynote speech the “Mobile Clinical Assistant” wasn’t once referred to as a Tablet PC. In fact, at one point it almost sound like one of the Intel representatives on stage was going to say “Tablet” and then she interrupted herself and said “Mobile Clinical Assistant.”

Intel often demonstrates cool prototypes at its semi-annual Intel Developer’s Forum (IDF). This fall is no different.

Here’s a bullet list of Paul Otellini’s presentation:

* Perfromance is back (Google Desktop, Adobe, new OSes, etc need more power)
* Hi-definition video is arriving and needs more performance
* Moving mobile
* Intel has shipped 5 million Core 2 Duo in first 60 days. Fastest ramp up ever.
* Quad Core Q4 coming November 2006. Core 2 Extreme is the brand name. Marketing will be focused at the enthusiast. Q1 of 2007 Intel will expand product line into Core 2 Quad and price point will be brought down and capacit increased.
* Quad Core Xeon in Nov 2006 and Low Voltage Quad Xeon Q1 2007
* Markus Maki from game developer Remedy is showing a quad core system rending an impressive 3D game.
* 45nm fabrication expected to go into production in 2H 2007
* Showing a prototype Teraflop chip (wafer only, not functioning)….with 80 cores (only simple instruction set, not x86 based)! Expected to go into production in five years. Each processor has 256K static RAM. The processors are stacked ontop of the memory to provide memory bandwidth.
* Talking about Viiv and set top boxes
* Running through various online/downloadable movie vendors
* Otellini: Announcing $1 M Intel Core 2 Challenge to design more stylish multimedia PCs. Sorry OEMs/ODMs only.
* Next iteration of Centrino: Santa Rosa code name. Sometime early 2007. Will have flash built in which should give 2X faster boot time. Faster wireless: 802.11n. 300Mbps. Should allow multiple hi-def video streams.
* “Next inflection point for notebooks: Broadband 2 Go”: WiMAX. 802.16e is mobile standard for WiMAX and has been accepted as IEEE standard. Clearwire and Sprint committed for US coverage by 2008. Mobile WiMAX cards should be available as PC cards in 2006/2007. In 2008 Mobile WiMAX will be integrated into platform.
* 1H07 processor 1/2 the power and 1/4 th size (Steely is the name). 2008 will release 10x lower power and 1/7 size (accelerated time frame). Battery life tripples by 2008.
* Showing a prototype running the next generation ultra-mobile processor (Steely). Swivel out keyboard. Very cool. Screen is smaller than typical UMPCs today. Five inches. Has WiMAX. Display is hard to see in the glare of the stage lighting.
* World Ahead Program: Launched in 30 countries. Trained 500,000 teachers about integrating technology into classroom. Showing Classmate PC. Flash hard drive. Says it’s low cost. Will be out in Q1 2007. 36 students in Nigeria are part of a test deployment. Includes WiMAX network.

CNet has a brief video here of the Intel UMPC prototype that you can view here. It shows how the handheld might work with a car-based computer.

[James Kendrick has some photos from the CNet video]

If you want to watch Paul Otellini’s whole keynote presentation, you can view the webcasts here.