Intel Developer Forum Fall 2003 – Day 1: Otellini's Keynote

Enterprise: That's a lot of Itaniums

Our enterprise readers may be interested in the sgi Altix 3700 demo we saw. The Altix 3700 is a 128 way Itanium 2 computer running Linux. We were able to see a demo of Intel running some fluid dynamics simulations on F1 cars driving at 200 MPH. Apparently where “other” computers take a week to run the sim, the 3700 can do it in under a day.

Intel's commitment to Itanium technology was reiterated, and they spoke briefly about Montecito (dual core Itanium) and Tanglewood (multi core Itanium). The latter of which will be the first processor worked on by the design team Intel acquired from Alpha and will offer 7 times the performance of the current Madison cores.

Home: What up DHWG

Convergence and the digital home were touched on at the end of the keynote, and Intel revealed DHWG (digital home working group pronounced - dawg) that will be making sure the digital home is interoperable. The only really useful thing to mention from this section of the key note is DTCP/IP (digital transmission content protection over ip). DTCP/IP is a protocol that allows for secure wireless transmission within the home.

Details weren't really revealed, but we did see a demo that showed off the functionality via a wireless streaming of the Animatrix. Of course this was properly interrupted by time warner for a brief note that they support anything that helps stop piracy.

Final Words

With the first keynote of the day, the Fall 2003 Intel Developer Forum has begun. In order to drum up more interest and fewer complaints about the show, Intel has reduced its length to three days and introduced the concept of afternoon keynotes – one of which we will be attending later today.

For now, it's off to speak with Bill Siu, Intel's VP and GM of Desktop about Intel's plans for the computing world…