Centrino Saga Dept.

pt.: Microsoft, under pressure from the open-source folks, has come up with something called the Shared Source Initiative. This lets a vendor of a Windows CE appliance modify the source code, then ship the code to its customers, which has always been forbidden, if for no other reason than to force universal compatibility.
Centrino Saga Dept.: Wi-Fi analyst Glen Fleishman, whose site is a must-read for all things wireless, is the first to spot an Intel scheme he calls "Intel Everywhere." The brand name Centrino gives the strategy away, since it incorporates both center and neutrino. The neutrino is a ubiquitous subatomic particle that can pass through any substance. And Fleishman sees Intel using the brand to sneak into the cell-phone game.

An example might be a Nokia Centrino phone that can be used on 802.11x networks. We've heard talk of Wi-Fi impinging on 3G, but nobody took this seriously until it was clear that the 3G specifications were deteriorating. Fleishman foresees all sorts of Intel strategies unfolding with the Centrino brand. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Intel must be pleased with the latest version of Microsoft's yet-to-be-released 64-bit operating system, targeted for its stumbling Itanium. The new OS will be able to handle a system with up to 64 processors and 512GB of RAM. That should make Adobe Photoshop hum! Of course, this is for servers, not workstations.
The numbers should be interesting. According to EE Times, the multi-Itanium systems are beginning to emerge, with NEC and Unisys shipping 32-chip systems: "NEC's 32-way Express5800 system got top marks on the Transaction Processing Council's TPC-C benchmark, beating a system based on IBM's Power4 processor."

Who counted NEC out anyway? Not me. NEC has also been working on a parallel processor designed for image recognition. Clocked at over 50.2 billion operations per second, it is four times as fast as a 3-GHz Pentium processor but requires just one-tenth the power. NEC scientists believe that current approaches to image recognition need rethinking. This sounds like a start.

Of course, image recognition is important to Japan's goal of making workable robots. Much of the hot robotics trend in Japan is triggered by Honda's walking robot, ASIMO. Apparently, ASIMO recently appeared at the Tokyo department store Takashimaya as a clerk trainee. According to the Mainichi Daily News, "On a one-year loan contract, ASIMO started training in welcoming customers, guiding them to elevators, and providing information about store events." Can you imagine? This would be like interacting with a drunk, if you ask me.

It doesn't end there. Recently, the Robodex show in Yokohama revealed all sorts of unique, programmable robots. Many attendees claimed that the robot business will become the next PC business. Cheap robots will be everywhere, and everyone will want one.

Overlooked is the simple fact that when the PC business actually got started in 1975, the price of a typical personal computer was around $2,500, and it slowly went down from there. Here we're seeing the handy Sanyo utility robot called Banryu selling for $16,500 and the Fujitsu robot development kit selling for $40,000. Earth to Japan: Come in!

The Beginning of the End De
When you do this in the Linux world, the changes have to be released to the community to address compatibility concerns and to permit possible use by others. I don't see this happening with the Shared Source Initiative. What you'll have is an emergence of proprietary gotchas that will confuse the whole Win CE scene. You've been warned.

Here We Go Again Dept.: I had a meeting with DuPont Displays recently. The company has brought in real Silicon Valley executives to get OLED devices to market. After all, what do chemists know about the electronics business? In the process, the company branded its OLED technology Olight. To me, this sounds like margarine.

In a press release, DuPont says it wants people to think of Olight alongside other great DuPont trademarks, such as Teflon and Lycra. Apparently, mentioning Corfam or Qiana will get you thrown out of the meeting. Whatever the case, DuPont believes that the TV on the wall will eventually come from DuPont, not from the LCD folks. Those old-timers may have been right when they told us the future was in plastics.

Genuinely Interesting Hardware Dept.: Run, don't walk, to Gigabit Ethernet. I've been playing with the new Netgear gigabit switches and gigabit NICs. They are fantastic. The little Netgear four-port gigabit switch/hub sells for less than $250, and since most Windows machines can easily push data out of the NIC at 400 Kbps, you can get some fast file-transfer speeds.

Start thinking about gigabit. It's just going to get cheaper and cheaper, and it works on most Category 5 cable without rewiring. Hot stuff.

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