10.01.2007

Intel's WiMAX Push

Intel demonstrated during its recent Developer Forum a WiMAX enabled laptop. The laptop based on the Montevina platform which is scheduled to be released next year contains within it "Echo Peak", a WiFi and a WiMAX compliant chipset. These next generation Centrino notebooks will enable seamless Internet connection - assuming of course that there is a WiMAX Internet service provider close by. The problem at this point in time there's not so many of them around.

Being the founding member of the WiMAX Forum, Intel is trying to accelerate implementation of this open, IP based standard by driving end user availability by integrating WiMax with Centrino. 2007 is coming to a close and while the list of spectrum licenses and infrastructure deployment are growing, still it may not be enough to guarantee universal adoption. The struggles and the financial burden inflicted by 3G are all too fresh to make anyone less skeptical with new communication standards. Especially ones that promises the all-too-familiar "increased bandwidth for media rich content".

None the less, Intel is forging ahead and will do its part to ensure that end-to-end implementation goes according to plan (i.e., Nokia). 2008 should be the year the WiMAX user base starts to trickle, increase and hopefully create enough demand for telecoms to take notice. Intel understands that it won't be its Network & Communications Group that will ultimately benefit from the initial SoC sales (comms silicon on an open standard = low gross margins). Instead it believes that an anywhere, anytime Internet connectivity will ignite more demand for mobile computing. Intel's roadmap for mobile and UMPC products clearly align with its WiMAX strategy and along with it its predicted market growth - a clear emphasis on its pro-active business approach.

In contrast, if anyone wishes to know what AMD is doing to promote ubiquitous Internet connection, they created this brochure to make perfectly clear what their products are. So far all they have is this brochure! Naturally AMD will be benefiting from the increased mobile demand, but Intel once again will be associating Centrino with WiMAX in the coming years like what it did with WiFi. Intel's marketing approach appeals to end user needs and again this will be very successful. AMD's brochure talks about AMD Connect (TM) but I need someone to explain to me what exactly is AMD selling.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe AMD has bigger problems at hand. If this is the beginning of an industry trend, I fear all we’ve been saying will come to fruition. That said, Cray Computers, who was severely hurt by a failing Barcelona, has been very quiet. I’d wager they’re in the process of making a transition to a faster, more easily available alternative. This is not good for AMD.


http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3380&Itemid=1


Sparks

Chuckula said...

I REALLY hope this WiMax stuff works out. 802.11 is great when it works, but there are far too many situations were it is either non-existent, or they want to charge you a fortune to use it. The "3G" stuff is a joke too, I challenge you to show me where I can actually get 2 Mbits of bandwidth to a cellphone anywhere in the US in any semi-reliable way that is not cost prohibitive. Wimax is promising to deliver what 3G should have delivered 5 years ago.


Sparks:
I think that Cray is "all in" with Barcelona due to the extremely proprietary & expensive interconnect fabric that Cray uses to get performance out of the CPUs. That type of interconnect is nice from a performance standpoint, but unlike more generic fabrics like Infiniband or Myrinet, there is also much less flexibility in changing the actual CPU architecture running on an individual node. Cray appears to have bet the company on AMD.. for better or most likely worse.

Anonymous said...

even WiFi had a silent but steady roll out. all of a sudden every broadband home wants one.

WiMAX will change the way we connect the internet. I'm looking further ahead at 2012 when 4G rolls out with WiMAX as a compliant element. 4G too will be IP based (IPv6 possibly). Intel on the forefrunt of this technology can make it big with silicon for mobile logic and communications.

Anonymous said...

Whats up with this?? Could the yields be THAT bad?


http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/
news/2007/10/02/phenom-launch-2007-whoops

Sparks

Ho Ho said...

At the moment almost entire Estonia is already covered with WiMax. Sure, it is a tiny country, just around 45km^2. Internet subscription costs around €20 a month IIRC. Rather cheap considering that building a landline for ADSL to some places can cost hundreds of thousands of euros.

http://www.levira.ee/fl259est.html

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