Fall IDF 2006 - Day 1: 45/65nm, UMPC Update and Quad-Core

UMPC Update

Six months ago at Spring IDF everyone was talking about the Ultra Mobile PC, but with the UMPC launch long gone the world hasn't changed much at all. UMPCs, much like Tablet PCs after their introduction, are little more than toys with little function thanks to size, battery life and display constraints. Despite the lackluster market reception, Intel is still committed to developing processors for the UMPC market and firmly believes that at some point, the issues associated with these devices will be resolved.

The Core Solo/Pentium M processors used in current UMPCs use approximately 5W of power, and by the 1st half of 2007 Intel is expecting to cut the power of these chips in half. In another year, we'll be looking at 1/10th the power (0.5W) and 1/7th the size of today's UMPC processors, which will hopefully lead to longer battery life and smaller form factors. Intel gave a realistic sounding target of 7 hours of battery life for a UMPC by 2008, much better than the 3 hours of today's best UMPCs.

Anand Chandrasekhar demonstrated a prototype UMPC with WiMAX support during Otellini's opening keynote:

The UI was custom designed by a company called streetdeck, and appeared to be far easier to navigate than the current UMPCs that simply use the default Windows XP UI.

One of the biggest limitations of UMPCs is the fact that they have no custom UI, similar to what things would be like if Media Center didn't have a 10-ft UI. Windows Vista will address some of the issues associated with UMPCs that have small, high resolution displays, but ultimately a UI similar to what streetdeck has put together will be necessary for UMPCs to succeed.

Volkswagon came on stage with a demonstration of an in-car entertainment system that could wirelessly link up with the prototype UMPC:

The NAV system in the car could receive locations from the UMPC:

Of course streaming audio/video from the UMPC to the car's entertainment system was a part of the demonstration:

The front two seats featured the ever-popular "TVs in the headrests" feature, and the driver was able to stream a movie to one screen and a commercial to another screen so each rear passenger could have his/her own entertainment. Add in two pairs of IR headphones and you've got the perfect keep-the-kids-quiet entertainment system in a car.

Final Words

We'll have more IDF coverage later today, but for now it's off to another meeting...