Exciting Internet applications and new technologies

Exciting Internet applications and new technologies

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): We all know Intel Corporation, the company that
has brought us the 8086, 8088, 80286, 80386, 80486, Pentium and
Pentium processor chips. The history of the PC is the history of
Intel itself, although this Silicon Valley-based company also
makes other microprocessors such as the i960 processors used in
Lexmark's Optra N 240 and N 245 printers.

If the fact that your new PC is already obsolete just a few
weeks after it was first placed on your desktop gives you a
headache, blame it on Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, co-founder of
Intel, pointed out in 1965 that the performance of microprocessor
chips -- with the prices held constant -- doubles every 18
months. Intel has lived on this axiom, and its strategies have
consistently followed this principle. You may curse the law for
driving you back to Glodok Plaza and compelling you to spend
money on upgrades, but I still believe that the consumer
community as a whole greatly benefits from it.

Here's one aspect of Intel that many of us may not be aware
of: Although the July 8, 1996, issue of Fortune calls Andy Grove
Mr. Hardware and Bill Gates Mr. Software, Intel is not only a
hardware but also a software maker. The difference between Intel
and Microsoft is that the former only invents the technologies
but doesn't really develop them commercially. That's easy for us
to understand, as the latter would not be very happy if the
former ever started invading its turf. The truth is, according to
the July 10, 1995, issue of the same magazine, out of the 32,000
employees that Intel had last year, 2,000 were programmers.

What I personally like about Intel is the fact that this
giant company doesn't indulge itself in acquisition sprees. In
the face of fierce competition from Cyrix and AMD, for example,
Intel seems to choose to run faster rather than to concentrate on
killing the competitors. Another thing that I like about this
giant is its consistent concern for standards that will allow
application developers to make creative products. The company,
for instance, has been sponsoring a number of task forces whose
job is mainly to create these standards.

One of the standards that Intel has helped create, as
explained by Christanto Suryadarma, Intel's Country Architecture
Manager for Indonesia, is the Desktop Management Interface
(DMI). To understand what its advantages are, just imagine the
typical situation in a typical corporate computing environment,
where the information system manager has been pulling out his
hair trying to track the exact number of PCs of which he is in
charge. He may have no records of their configuration, not to
mention the application software that their users are using. In
such a situation, the technical support that he could provide
would be nightmarish, at best. With the DMI, which includes
facilities for assets management, electronic software
distribution, LAN management and monitoring, remote boot and
control, as well as remote hardware and software diagnostics, the
IS manager will have more control of the situation and the
corporation will be able to enjoy tremendous savings.

During a recent outing to the beautiful Lido, Sukabumi, I had
the opportunity to get an update of what Intel has been up to
lately. Supplemented with materials found in computer magazines,
here are some of the most interesting byproducts of this
microprocessor maker.

Chip

More than a year ago, my close Singaporean friend, Shin, told
me that selling add-on cards would get harder and harder in the
future as Intel was incorporating all of the features that you
could think of into its chips. When the Digital Signal Processing
(DSP) chips came out, for example, everybody was upbeat. DSPs
suddenly made multimedia capabilities much more affordable, as
people could buy off-the-shelf add-on cards and peripherals and
put them in their own PCs. Now Intel is coming out with its MMX
technology that will render these DSPs unnecessary, leaving sound
card and other add-on makers scrambling for new types of products
to make and market.

What this friend said was better explained by the Cannibal
Principle that was also coined by Moore. The principle itself is
not as savage as it sounds, though. As quoted in Fortune, Moore
said, "The whole point of integrated circuits is to absorb the
functions of what previously were discrete electronic components,
to incorporate them in a single new chip, and then to give them
back for free, or at least for a lot less money than what they
cost as individual parts." Thus, for example, all -- or at least
most of -- the functions of your sound card will be incorporated
into the upcoming processor chips so that you may no longer have
to have the SoundBlaster card on your PC.

And improving on the multimedia and communication
capabilities is basically what this MMX is all about. The MMX
technology will be built into the next generation of Pentium and
Pentium Pro chips. Once you have it on, your PC communication
using the Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data (DSVD) modems will
be enhanced, your 3-D games will be more eye-popping, and video
playback will become smoother and richer in color.

Internet phone

Here's what may be bad news for our international carrier, PT
Indosat (although I'm convinced they are already anticipating
it). Technologies on the Internet have progressed so rapidly that
you can even now make a phone call through Cyberspace. If you
have Internet access and your PC has both a sound card and a
modem, you can use Intel Internet Phone and talk with someone
across the globe and you only have to pay local call charges and
an Internet subscription. I've seen the Internet Phone myself,
and it really has potential.

Although the sound that you'll hear is not yet CD-ROM quality,
you will have no difficulty communicating with the guy on the
other end. By the way, as I mentioned in my recent article, you
will need a full-duplex sound card in order to use the Internet
Phone like your ordinary phone. Just for your information, there
are at least two full-duplex sound cards that you can buy in
Glodok, Zoltric (Rp 125,000) and Yamaha 701 (Rp 85,000). Both are
Plug 'n Play, so that you can install them without any hassle.

Intel is not the only company that makes Internet Phone
available. Two other companies that do are NetSpeak with its
WebPhone and VocalTec with its similarly named Internet Phone.
What the three of them bring to us has a significant impact.
Already I have talked to a number of people who claim that they
can now chat with their children, relatives or friends in the
U.S. as well as the other parts of the world without having to
worry about IDD phone charges.

The Beta version of the Intel Internet Phone is still free,
and you can download it from www.intel.com/iaweb/cpc. Now, don't
you agree with me that, in general, the dizzying pace of
technology actually benefits consumers?

Serial bus

Here's the buzzword that you'll be hearing more and more in
the near future: Universal Serial Bus, or USB. It's not a
brainchild of Intel, but the company sponsors the standard.
Basically, the USB is a peripheral connection that resembles the
SCSI interface. In a typical SCSI subsystem, you can daisy-chain
up to seven SCSI devices such as hard disk, CD-ROM and scanner.
In a USB, you can connect up to 127 peripheral devices, such as
printers, modem, and tape backup, to only one single PC port. New
motherboards on the market have already incorporated USB
capability, and the latest IBM Aptivas are even USB-ready.

The benefits of USB include plug and play operation, automatic
configuration so that you don't have to worry about IRQs or DMAs,
and the use of a standard connector.

Other technologies

Other technologies for which Intel has been responsible
include the DSVD itself, which I talked about in one of my past
articles. ProShare, which brings video-conferencing to the
desktop, is another creation of Intel. Intercast technology,
which Intel is developing together with Intercast Industry Group
that involves Time Warner, CNN and others, will embed Internet
information into TV signals so that you can 'watch' Internet on
your TV. Intel Streaming Media Viewer, another Internet
application from Intel, allows web-site visitors to play audio
and video files in real time as they are being downloaded into
their PCs. These are mostly software, not hardware.

As always, a lot of exciting advances in technology are around
the corner. However, as I've said many times before, you don't
have to own all them if you don't need them. Buying a PC is like
buying a car; you cannot expect to buy a PC and use it for the
rest of your life. If you still can accomplish your tasks with
the PC that you have today, that's fine. Just be patient and wait
until your requirements really make it necessary to buy a new
one. When the time comes to buy a new PC, you should buy the best
that your budget can allow. That's it. Just remind yourself that,
although the fast pace of technological development is exciting,
you don't have to jump on the latest technology bandwagon.