Intel Envisions ‘User-Aware’ Platforms

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Intel Corp. on Thursday (August 25) outlined its research in "user-aware" chip and platform technologies that could intuitively respond to the environment.

User-aware platforms, according to Intel, will use a new level of intelligence to manage multiple tasks in an effort to simplify one’s life. "A user-aware platform will be any device that can take care of itself, knows who we are, where we are, and tries to anticipate what we want done," said Justin Rattner, Intel senior fellow and director of Intel's Corporate Technology Group, in a statement.

"They will need digital senses to be aware of their surroundings and what they are doing,” he said. “They will also need new levels of intelligence to understand our needs and collaborate with other electronics to take action on our behalf while doing no harm in the process."

Intel is already evolving its processor architectures toward multi-core products. To enable “user-aware” platforms, Intel envisions putting tens to even hundreds of energy-efficient computing cores inside a single processor.

“Each chip will be capable of dynamically assigning individual or clusters of processing cores along with the necessary memory and bandwidth to specific tasks such as seeing, listening, network security, gaming, and understanding commands,” according to Intel.

“These future platforms will use virtualization software to put protective walls around each task's dedicated slice of computing resources so they run better and don't interfere with other applications,” Intel said.