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.