At a technology showcase in New York on Tuesday, Intel showed off a personal server that's roughly the size of a deck of playing cards and capable of at least as many tricks. Although the technology is still in development at Intel's labs, the company is hoping someday its personal server prototype will blossom into a mobile wireless device that can be used as a Web, file, and processing server.

Intel envisions the personal server as an important computing device for mobile professionals who can use it to connect PCs, PDAs, cell phones, and other mobile devices. The server wouldn't have to leave one's pocket or handbag, and the user wouldn't have to use a network to remotely access server data.

The personal server prototype runs on low-power Intel XScale processors and the Linux operating system. The XScale wireless microprocessor architecture, first introduced by Intel in 2000, is used in a variety of the company's processors. XScale-based processors can operate at 1.3 volts with a processing power of 400 MHz, which can cut power consumption by more than 30%, the company says.

"People have tended to say, I need to truncate my application and make it available via the network," says Vish Deshmane, director of Intel's enterprise solutions program. Using the XScale architecture in a personal server, companies would be able to run more extensive versions of their applications and carry those apps with them.

Intel continues to identify uses for the personal server. The company says the next step would be to find a manufacturing partner that could further shrink the device's size.