Intel | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Creating a Silicon Brain

Should we be rethinking how computers are designed? The co-founder and CEO of chip designer Nervana, Naveen Rao, believes we should look to the brain.

Should we be rethinking how computers are designed? The co-founder and CEO of chip designer Nervana, Naveen Rao, believes so as artificial intelligence applications change the way systems work.

“A brain only uses 20 watts of power to do far more than a laptop,” observes Naveen Rao at a breakfast following Intel’s Artificial Intelligence Day in San Francisco last week.

“Presumably the brain is doing more computation than your laptop,” he continues. “What are we missing? Why is there such a big difference between what a computer can do and a brain can do. Let’s try to understand that and maybe what we learn can change how we design computers.”

A lifetime passion

Rao, whose company was acquired by Intel for over four hundred million dollars last August, was discussing the quest to make computers operate more like brains and less like adding machines.

For Rao this has been a lifetime passion, having graduated as an electrical engineer and spending most of his career designing computer chips at Sun Microsystems and various startups he quit his job to do a PhD in neuroscience, “after ten years, I wanted to return to my passion of trying to use biology to better understand computers.”

From that combination of study and experience Nervana was founded in 2014 and raised twenty million dollars from investors before being acquired by Intel.

Replicating the bird, not the feathers

The key part in creating a computer that acts more like a brain is to get the individual CPUs to be working together in a network similar to the mind’s neural paths, “look at a bird compared to a plane.” Rao says,” we don’t replicate the feathers, but we do the function.”

Doing this meant rethinking how processors are designed, “there are tried are true methods of chip architecture that we basically questioned.”

“We don’t need high levels of generality. We don’t need this to work on energy or weather simulations. We removed some of that baggage.”

Paring back the processor

So the Nervana team stripped down the individual processor and removed many functions, such as a cache, that are built into today’s advanced CPUs. Those lighter weight, and less power hungry, units can then be combined into neural networks more suited to artificial intelligence functions than today’s computers.

“Nvidea, this sort of fell into their laps,” observes Rao of Intel’s key competitor in the AI, graphics and gaming space. “It just so happens the graphics functions on their chips are suited to Artificial Intelligence applications.”

Without the more complex functions of modern CPUs, Rao and the Nervana team see the opportunity to build more flexible computers better suited to artificial intelligence applications.

Intel focuses on AI

That focus on AI has seen Intel branding its AI initiatives under the Nervana brand name as the iconic Silicon Valley company tries to move ahead with more nimble competitors like Qualcomm and NVidea.

For the computer industry, artificial intelligence promises to be the next major advance, something necessary if we are ever going to make sense of the masses of data being collected by smart devices and the reason why Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook are all making massive investments in the field.

Regardless of whether Intel and Nervana are successful in the AI marketplace, Rao sees the entire field of neural computing as a great opportunity. “It’s exciting, there’s lots of chances to innovate.”

Paul travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Intel

How long can Intel continue to beat the street?

Chip maker Intel continues to struggle in the face of a transformed marketplace

Earlier today chip maker Intel beat analysts’ estimates with an earnings report showing the company’s income hadn’t fallen as much as expected in the previous quarter.

As Business Insider explained before the earnings call, Intel’s numbers aren’t look good ahead of the rollout of Windows 10.

In the past, a new version of Windows has been the time many customers upgraded their PCs with Intel and other computer component makers being the beneficiaries.

With this version of Windows Microsoft are giving it away free to users of Windows 7 and 8 which means the rush of upgrading customers is going to be subdued compared to previous occasions.

For Intel, the Internet of Things should be the big opportunity in the post PC world but smart devices require low powered chips rather than the more power hungry chips the company excelled in supplying for desktop computers.

At the moment Intel seems to be focusing on the data centre market that may well be a suitable market for power hungry CPUs but is still very much leaving the company isolated from the bulk of the industry which will increasingly demand ultra low powered chips.

For Intel, like Microsoft, the struggle for now is to keep relevant in a dramatically shifted marketplace.

Connecting motor bikes to the IoT

Intel and BMW’s connected bike helmet show what’s possible with smart vehicles

One of the obvious applications for smart devices is in motorbike helmets; an article in Intel’s Free Press website describes how they may work in a prototype setup on a BMW BMW R1200GS bike.

The smart helmet, which uses an Intel Edison system, is different from current add on systems in that it directly communicates with the bike’s internal electronics giving a rider a deeper level of control.

“If you need directions, say ‘take me home’ and it’ll queue up directions and give them over audio. But if there isn’t enough gas, then it will redirect you to a gas station first because it can read the bike’s remaining fuel range,” explains Moyerman. “It will also do smart navigation, so if a blind turn is approaching, it’ll give you warning to slow down.”

Creating the prototype isn’t simple as each manufacturer has its own control language, a common problem in retrofitting Internet of Things functions onto devices not designed to connect to a network.

“Putting together a system like that is much more complicated than plug and play. Every vehicle maker has its own data language, which means that there’s no universal standard to interpret the data. The team at Intel worked with BMW’s Bay Area group to translate a R1200GS adventure motorcycle’s own language from the CAN bus (controller area network) to Edison, which then sends it to the smartphone via Bluetooth.”

The same challenge faces car manufacturers as well which increases the risks of vehicle owners being locked into a certain manufacturer’s ecosystem – for instance, buy a BMW and be locked into the Apple HomeKit system.

Regardless of the compatibility problems, we’re increasingly going to see these technologies included with common household items. That many of them are voice activated should give those concerned about the privacy of Samsung smart TVs some pause for thought.

Privacy by design

How can businesses protect customers’ privacy, Intel Security’s Michelle Dennedy discusses how to bake privacy into your organisation

“Know your data” is the key tip for businesses concerned about privacy says Michelle Dennedy, Chief Privacy Officer for Intel Security, formerly McAfee.

“It’s really important to go back to basics,” says Michelle. “We’re trying to do bolt-on privacy, just like we did with security years ago. I think it’s time to take a good look at the policy side, which id called Privacy By Design, thinking about it at early states and being consumer-centric.”

“We at McAfee call it ‘Privacy Engineering’; looking at the tools. methodologies and standards from the past, adding current legislative requirements and business rules then turning them into functional requirement.”

Michelle, who is also co-author of the Privacy Engineering Manifesto, was speaking to Decoding The New Economy as part of Privacy Awareness Week.

A key part of the interview is how Michelle sees privacy evolving in a global environment, “if you’d asked me in 2000 where we’d be today I’d have told you it would be like the 1500s when we were dealing with shipping lanes. We would have treaties, it would harmonised and we’d understand that global trade is a hundred percent based upon sharing.”

“We have instead decided to become a set of Balkanized nations.”

For individual businesses “know thy data,” is Michelle’s main advice. “Know what brings you risk, know what brings you opportunity.”

In Michelle’s view, businesses need to balance the opportunities against the risks and treat customers data with respect as the monetisation policies of many online platforms don’t recognise users’ costs in time and data sold.

As businesses find themselves being flooded with data, protecting it and respecting the privacy of customers, users and staff is going become an increasing important responsibility for managers.

It’s worthwhile understanding the privacy laws as they apply to you and making sure your systems and staff comply with them.

Intel’s challenge to find a new message and market

Can Intel adapt to the post PC marketplace where the old Wintel dominance no longer matters

Twenty years ago people cared about the specifications of their computers and chip maker Intel led the industry with its marketing of 486, Pentiums, Pentium Duos and Pentium IIs.

As we come to the end of the PC era, the consumerisation of technology and the rise of cloud computing mean customers no longer care about what’s inside their systems and Intel is struggling to find a new message.

Over the last few months Intel have been showing off their latest range of Central Processing Units (CPUs) to enterprise and small to medium business (SMB) groups. Last week the company hosted an SMB event in Sydney that illustrated how Intel is struggling to cut through the market.

Speaking at the event was Steph Hinds – an evangelist for cloud computing – who told the story of how her Growthwise accounting practice was flooding out during storms.

Because her systems were on the cloud Steph and her staff were able to work from home and local cafes while the landlord fixed her offices. Had Growthwise been using a server based system the business would have been crippled while her IT people implemented a disaster recovery plan.

Steph’s story in itself illustrated the Clean, Well Lighted Place argument for cloud computing and also showed how Intel is struggling to sell its PC and server upgrade cycle message in an era where that business model is dead.

This didn’t stop some of the other speakers at the small business event trying to sell the idea that upgrading computer systems and retaining an IT support company were essential to small business success but it’s a message that was valid a decade ago.

For Intel the challenge is to find a new message – it may well be that the company’s future lies in supplying the powerful CPUs that run data centres, or maybe the low energy and maintenance chips required to control the billions of intelligent devices that will run the internet of everything.

The company’s launch of their Galileo board – a tiny computer designed to compete in the intelligent devices market with the likes of the Raspberry Pi – is a step in the latter direction and shows Intel is exploring the possibilities.

Wherever Intel’s future lies, it doesn’t lie in trying to sell a business model that is quickly going the way of the Brontosaurus.

During most of the PC era, it was the Wintel partnership that dominated the computer industry, now Microsoft have realised this fundamental market change and started their journey to become a devices and services company.

The challenge now lies with Intel to decide where their journey will take them in a post PC world.

Intel and the upgrade cycle

Can the upgrade cycle save Microsoft and Intel as the computer market moves against the once dominant duo?

Once dominant PC industry duo Microsoft and Intel have had their positions shaken with the rise of cloud computing and smartphones. Can the PC upgrade cycle help them reclaim their fortunes?

In the early days of the PC industry, chips mattered. Twenty years ago the release of the Intel 486 CPU was big news and careers rose or fell depending on whether an IT manager chose DX-33 or SX-66 chips for the company’s fleet of desktops.

Today few people care enough to get passionate about what’s driving their smartphone or tablet computer.

Intel, who are currently promoting their new range of Central Processing Units, and Microsoft are in an interesting position as their traditional dominance in server, desktop and laptop computers is being challenged by the rise of smartphones and tablet devices.

For most of the 1990s and 2000s the two companies dominated the PC market so completely that the generic term for the sector was ‘Wintel’ – the combination of Windows and Intel.

A core part of the old Wintel business model was the four year upgrade cycle, that most computers would be replaced every three to five years giving Microsoft, Intel and the rest of the IT industry a ready made market for new equipment.

That business model was broken by Microsoft’s disastrous Vista operating system and never recovered as non Wintel portable devices and cloud computing services took away the need to upgrade a server, desktop or laptop computer every four years.

For Intel, matters weren’t helped by their powerful but energy hungry chips not being suitable for tablet computers and smartphones which further eroded their sales as the market moved to portable devices.

Despite those changes to the marketplace, Intel continue to focus on that four year cycle, at their media lunch in Sydney yesterday they emphasised the costs of running older technology.

They do have a point with their claims that servers older than four years deliver four percent of the computing power but consume 65% of the energy, making those antiquated systems far less efficient than newer equipment.

Unfortunately for Intel many businesses will be looking at outsourcing their servers to the cloud when the next technology refresh comes along, so the energy and efficiency arguments are a different matter.

On the desktop, things are somewhat different as most workers still prefer to work at a PC and Intel do have a case for upgrading both business and home systems.

Probably the biggest opportunity will be Microsoft’s pending retirement of Windows XP which will see a wave of business and home users who’ve been content with decade old computers looking at moving off systems that are no longer supported.

Another feature going for Intel and Microsoft are newer computer technologies such as touchscreens and Intel’s own wireless display technology, branded as Wi-Di, which older systems can’t support.

Whether this is enough to entice technology addled consumers and businesses across to new systems remains to be seen, but it’s a challenge for both Microsoft and Intel to reclaim their once dominant market positions.

Was the netbook the Trabant or Model T of the computer world?

After only five years the netbook computer comes to an end having being killed by tablet computers and vendor hostility. We will remember these systems as the Model T or Trabant of the PC world?

Taiwanese technology website Digitimes reports Asustek have shipped their last eeePC netbooks, bringing to an end a product that promised to change the computing world when they were first released in 2007.

At the time the eeePC netbook picked up on a number of trends – cheap hardware, the maturity of the open source Linux operating system, affordable wireless access and, most importantly, the accessibility of cloud computing services.

There’d been a pent up demand for usable portable computers for years but Microsoft and their hardware partners consistently released clunky, overpriced tablet computers that simply didn’t deliver on their promises.

For users wanting a cheap, fairly robust portable computer then netbooks were a good choice, at the price you could even risk having one eaten by lions.

Unfortunately for netbook a few things went against the idea.

Customers don’t like Linux

An early blow to the eeePC was that retail users don’t like Linux. Most computer users are happy with Windows and MacOS and weaning them off what they know is a very hard sell.

Sadly on this topic I have first hand knowledge having suffered the pain of co-founding a business in the mid 2000s that tried to sell Linux to small businesses.

Asustek discovered this when they found customers preferred the more expensive Windows XP version over the original Linux equipped devices.

Unfortunately Microsoft’s licenses damaged the economics of the netbook and held the manufacturers hostage to Microsoft who, at the time, wasn’t particularly inclined to encourage customers to use cloud services.

Manufacturer resistance

Microsoft weren’t the only supplier unhappy with netbooks. Harry McCracken at Time Tech describes how chip supplier Intel worked against the products.

For manufacturers, the netbooks were bad news as they crushed margins in an industry already struggling with tiny profits. However all of them couldn’t ignore the sales volumes and released their own netbooks which cannabilised their own low end laptop and desktop ranges.

In turn this irritated the army of PC resellers who found their commissions and margins were falling due to the lower ticket prices of netbooks.

The rise of the tablet

The one computer manufacturer who stayed aloof from the rush into low margin netbooks was Apple who had no reason to rush down the commodity computing rabbit hole. It was Steve Jobs who launched the product that made netbooks irrelevant.

“Netbooks aren’t better at anything… they are just cheaper, they are just cheap laptops” Jobs said at the iPad launch in January 2010.

Immediately the iPad redefined the computer market; those who’d been waiting a decade for a decent tablet computer scooped the devices up.

Executives who wouldn’t have dreamt of replacing their Blackberries with an iPhone, let alone using an Apple computer proudly showed off their shiny iPads.

The arrival of the iPad in boardrooms and executive suites also had the side effect of kick starting the Bring Your Own Device movement as CIOs and IT managers found that their policy of Just Say No was a career limiting move when the Managing Director wanted to connect her iPad to the corporate network.

Rebuilding PC margins

Around the time of the iPad’s released the major PC manufacturers declared a detente over netbooks and joined Intel in developing the Ultrabook specification.

The aim of the Ultrabook was to de-commodify the PC laptop market by offering higher quality machines with better margins.

While the Ultrabook has worked to a point, competition from tablet computers and the demands of consumers who’ve been trained to look for sub $500 portables means the more expensive systems are gradually coming down to the netbook’s price points.

Today’s Ultrabook will be next month’s netbook.

For the PC manufacturers, the lesson is that computers have been a commodity item for nearly a decade and only savvy marketing and product development – both of which have been Apple’s strengths – is the only way for long term success in the marketplace.

Those US based manufacturers who haven’t figured this out are only go to find that Chinese manufacturers – led by companies like Taiwan’s Asustek – will increasingly take the bottom end of the market from them.

The car industry is a good comparison to personal computers in commoditisation – with the passing of the netbook, the question is whether we’ll remember the eeePC as a Trabant, Model T Ford or a Volkswagen Beatle.