IDF: Intel Dives Into Wearables, IoT

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel is here once again to regale the world with its ambitious plans to install its computer chips in devices and systems of every shape and size, from the mightiest servers to the humblest connected switches in smart homes and wearables.

'We'll keep taking billions of transistors and placing them on processors. ... It's Intel end-to-end, going from the data center to the Internet of Things,' CEO Brian Krzanich said Tuesday to kick off the Intel Developer Forum at Moscone West. 'With our diverse product portfolio and developer tools that span key growth segments, operating systems, and form factors, Intel offers hardware and software developers new ways to grow, as well as design flexibility. If it's smart and connected, it's best with Intel.'

And the chip giant certainly has a lot of balls in the air these days, the result of a multi-year strategy to salt computing systems up and down the stack with its x86 processor architecture. Intel chips now dominate the data center—new server chips codenamed Grantley were released earlier this week—as well as the PC market. Meanwhile, the company's belated efforts to challenge ARM in mobile devices appears to be picking up steam, especially with the release of its first 14-nanometer, 4.5-watt chips in the new Core M line, which enable fanless tablet and 2-in-1 PC designs.

We've already seen a handful of new ultra-thin 2-in-1s powered by Core M chips from the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Dell. Here at IDF, Michael Dell joined Intel to unveil a new Atom Z3500-based tablet line, the Dell Venue 8 7000 Series, pictured at right. These new 22nm 'Moorfield' slates feature Intel's RealSense 3D photography technology and will be the 'world's thinnest tablets' when they're released later this year, according to the two companies.

Intel also launched a new reference design program for makers of Android tablets using Intel chips, which will 'help scale the deployment process of Android for tablet manufacturers by providing software engineering work [and] streamlined access to Google Mobile Services, as well as support for updates and upgrades to future Android releases,' the company said.

Sticking with the theme of an expanding mobile portfolio, Intel announced that its second-generation LTE platform, the XMM 7260 modem is now commercially available and shipping in Samsung's Galaxy Alpha smartphones sold in Europe and elsewhere. Building on its acquisition of Infineon Technologies, Intel has been pouring significant resources into RF in an attempt to take on ARM licensees like Qualcomm for positioning in smartphones and tablets.

The Next Big Thing But in a sense, all of that PC and mobile device stuff is already old hat for Intel. Krzanich and his colleagues clearly have their eyes trained on another burgeoning market with tremendous opportunities for growth—namely, the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables.

There are currently about 2.2 billion x86-based devices out in the wild in 2014, according to the Intel chief, but there could be 50 billion by 2020. That's how explosive the growth of demand may be for connected computing systems in our homes, our cars, and even in the clothes and jewelry we wear.

Krzanich spoke of what he called the 'maker's world,' Intel's burgeoning ecosystem of developers building creative new IoT devices and wearables. About a year ago, the company released a tiny, very low power, single-core, 32-bit x86 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) called Quark to address this market. The first Quark board for Krzanich's makers was dubbed Galileo, offering developers a platform for building simple, connected IoT devices.

On Tuesday, Intel announced that the follow-up to Galileo, Edison, is now available. Edison, pictured below, features a dual-core SoC, Wi-Fi and other comms capabilities, memory, support for expansion boards to bring in USB and more, in a package 'only slightly larger than a postage stamp,' the company said.

Edison is priced at $50, down from Galileo's $70, Krzanich noted.

Of course, Intel already has some goodies to show in the wearables department, namely the MICA smart bracelet it unveiled at Fashion Week in New York.

Short for 'My Intelligent Communication Accessory,' MICA is both bejeweled and digitally enhanced, the product of a 'landmark' collaboration between Intel and fashion house Opening Ceremony, the company said.

'This is something you want to wear independent of the technology inside and when you realize what the technology inside is, you've got to have one,' Krzanich said.

Intel hasn't revealed a ton of information about the technological functionality of the smart bracelet, but the company has said it will allow wearers 'to stay connected via SMS messages, meeting alerts, and general notifications delivered directly to the wrist, with additional features and functionalities to be revealed at a later date.'

MICA, which features a curved sapphire glass touchscreen display, per Intel, will come in two versions—one with a strap of black watersnake skin and adorned with Chinese freshwater pearls and Malagasy lapis, while the other sports a band made of white watersnake skin and is accented by tiger's eye gems sourced from South Africa and Russian obsidian.

Starting later this year, MICA will be sold in the United States exclusively through AT&T, Intel said.

The chip giant demoed a number of wearable reference designs at CES earlier this year. Krzanich highlighted some of the real-life products that have emerged in the nine months since that Las Vegas showcase, including MICA and SMS Audio's battery-free BioSport heart rate-tracking, smartphone-syncing earbuds.

And as it is doing for Android tablet makers, Intel is throwing some cash and expertise at makers of wearables with its new Analytics for Wearables (A-Wear) developer program. The A-Wear program, which is free to access for all developers of Intel-based wearables, 'will accelerate development and deployment of new wearable applications with data-driven intelligence' leveraging Cloudera CDH software and Intel's cloud infrastructure, the company said.