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Intel Developing Cellular Internet Chip
yoey writes "Brief article at The Marker states, "The chip will enable laptop users to connect directly to cellular networks without the need of a modem in the same way that PCs in a local network connect with each other. [The] solution will enable laptop users to use cellular communication networks as if they were a local communications network. Intel will thus be able to realize an old company dream - the development of a computer enabling users to be connected, any time and any place, to the Internet."
Will this come with an Cat5-10bT ethernet adapter, or a usb connection, or what? Depending on your laptop you might have trouble hooking up.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Always-on cellular connection at slow bandwidth, vs. always-on 802.11 connection, provided we have thousands of free nodes so we can roam city to city, always having an internet connection (and not having to pay by the minute). Hmm...
Sounds like some cellular company feels threatened by the thought of small wireless networks springing up all over the place. It seems to me that there is no real advantage to having cellular capability built into the processor than having the card except that it would cause people to choose it over wireless networking. Having it in a card provides the same functionality.
If the service is cheap, though, why not?
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
Intel will thus be able to realize an old * company dream ** - the development of a computer enabling users to be connected, any time and any place, to the Internet. ***
*by "old," we mean last quarter.
**by "dream," we mean product.
***by "Internet," we mean AOL/TW Extra-Fun Super-Happy content network.
--saint
Although I guess the open-air environment of cell phones would make air circulation a breeze (pun intended)
(ok, one more) Would dropping my cell phone into a toilet be counted as "water-cooling"?
So Intel is trying to give me the same functionality I get when I plug my cell phone into my laptop, but for the price of two cellular accounts instead of just one? I'll pass, thanks.
THe one thats being built into cellphones? I ALWAYS want the athorities to know where i and my laptop are.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I know this is a technolgy implementation from a chip side. That said can you imagin what fun screwing with people would be at this level of connectivity, gives a whole new meaning to Ghost in the machine. Everyone connected everwhere.....I will change my Job Occupation to farmer and wait for the 50 megaton nuke in the atmosphere to create and EMP thatll take everyone offline. Can you Imagine how many more posers at Starbucks this'll create, if impleneted on a wide scale ?
....Just Imagine you could have a Beowulf cluster in your pocket,...lol
Not to mention all the Geniuses in Govt, thinking they have the most important job in the free world and insisting they need to be connected all the time, this is the Armageddon , I can see it now.
This is pretty nifty , but until they integrate it directly to a proccesor an memory in the same package,
*Note, If you take me seriously you need more of some alkaloid, nicotene, caffiene, etc.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Intel will thus be able to realize an old * company dream ** - the development of a computer enabling users to be connected, any time and any place, to the Internet.
Great!!! and now my company will realize an old dream of having me available 24X7. There is such a thing as being too connected. Even though it is a pretty cool and useful concept.
When I see shine on language like that, I know that M$ or some other huckester is behind what's being talked about and it won't live up the hype. The word Enable is usually the biggest tip. What's wrong with direct language and specs? You know something along the lines of, "Intel designed the new chip to provide NetBios over WhateverRadioThingy with a 3 mile radius of communications. Several companies are planning to build a grid comunications network in several major cities, BLAH BLAH." That would be informative, and then people would know what to expect rather than excited and ready to spend more money.
Buzzzz, how hateful it is. It brings back memories -twitch- of VB endoctrination videos I was encouraged to watch for a job once. It dronned on about, "Totally new approaches to programing." and "Iteractive methods rather than proceedural methods." while building a dinky little database front end Mr. Potatoe Head style.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
this is the biggest load of B** I have seen
you can archive this now just 3G using an up to date ARM processor like XScale and connecting it to a 3G network
you can pull down broadcast quality video in real time and get you emails SMS chat rooms and all the rest its NOT exactly NEW
wake up AMD building a MIPS chip is news !!!
regards
john jones
2002-02-06 10:57:47 AMD now a makes a MIPS processor (articles,amd) (rejected)
The chip will enable laptop users to connect directly to cellular networks without the need of a modem in the same way that PCs in a local network connect with each other
Give me a break. If it is wireless, I guarantee that there is modulation and demodulation involved. That means MODEM! The news here is that it is supposedly a monolithic solution and so it does in a chip what before was done on a board.
This reminds me of an argument I had once with an "expert" who tried to explain to me that a cable modem wasn't really a modem. Sheesh.
By far the most complex part of a cell phone is the RF design. Saying you have a CPU which allows cell phone connections is meaningless marketing drivel. Intel will NOT be putting the RF into their CPU in our lifetimes.
Look at how small cell phones are right now. It's completely conceivable that you could simply put everything you need in a PCMCIA card or a USB attachment widget. Especially for laptops what's so un-portable about that ?
The problem with internet cellular connections is that the DSP's and operating firmware in cell phones are competely dedicated to moving voice-data. They expect voice-data at both ends. If you take an oldish cell phone (still digital) it is simply not aware, and cannot be made aware, that you just want to pass pure data.
Wait it gets worse. The cell-site expects everything to be voice data too. You have to go in and replace the firmware in the DSP's and controllers in the phones AND the cell sites to make this all work.
Now that we've had some hindsight on this issue, the correct design decision is to move data with QOS. Then you see how much BW you have available for voice data and design your codec appropriately.
Basically that's why there is now something called 3G.
This is the silliest press release I've seen in a long time.
Absolute statements are never true
This seems to be a modem chip that will, though probably have an external option, will mainly be installed inside notebooks.
I can't wait to see the look on the other drivers faces as I try and drive while talking on my LapTop.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Now everytime I switch cell phone providers I'll have to buy a new laptop to work with the providers network! :)
Some states have a hands free cell phone policy. I can see a bunch of techno-wannabees out there DRIVING and trying to IM each other. Can you say crash? And not just the blue screen kind...
:(
:(
leet_loser_1: dude, hold up, I just got into an
accident
leet_loser_2: bummer
One benefit I can see would be if people actually pulled over when they are lost, looking for a place to eat, etc. Other than that, I don't see much.
Sent from your iPad.
...you can get on a cellular network almost anywhere, while 802.11 is still occasional at best. The idea isn't to deploy the best product, but the most useful one.
no no, the whole system will be analog, really. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, there's modulation and demodulation involved. And it's already built into your cell phone. Why should you have to add another layer on top of it?
The second generation of cellular phone networking is already in place, and is already digital and packetized. Layering protocols on that would be much more efficient that turning bits into sound, sound back into bits, and then into waves, and back.
Yes, but with your typical modem you must modulate onto audible frequencies, there is a big difference. Audible frequencies can't carry as much data as higher ones. Although current cell phones already modulate data directly onto the higher frequncies they use - for internet access too, ask your provider - but for some reason they still say the speed limit is 19200bps. Presumably because so many other users are sharing that high bandwidth.
You know, with GSM this might not be such a bad idea.. But as it is, I'd need a laptop for Sprint, another for Verizon, another still for Cingular... Boy! This is sure to be good for the economy..
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Guess that sums up the technological advances of our age.. an "old company dream" such as this can't be more than 6-8 years old, can it?
As the tech train keeps accelerating, the time delta between the introduction of a technology to public adoption (not just geek adoption) will get smaller and smaller.
Hmmm... Location specific SPAM and popup windows.
'Hello consumer! we noticed you are near McDonalds on 7th and main. Here is a 25 cents off of a Big Mac and Coke coupon!'
-eddy
I would imagine it will be charged like GPRS, on a per-packet basis, since it looks like it will work exactly the same way. Obviously, though, you wouldn't be stuck having to run WAP micro-browsers on tiny screens: you'd be running a "real" computer, so you could run the real IE6 or whatever. Or, better still, Opera or Mozilla - cos if you think unrequested pop-ups are annoying now, wait until you're being charged per byte you receive!
As for the actual rates, there's obviously no way of predicting, but I imagine they'll be very high at first, because businesses will be willing to pay serious money for this. Just imagine - the whole sales force out on the road being constantly connected (via VPN I imagine) to the company network. No more waiting until a sales rep can come into the office to pick up the latest 40Mb chunk of sales data; his computer could just suck it up in real time as he drives up the M6.
Yeah, it's kind of weird, but I doubt seeing the true usefulness of a intergrated cell unit in a CPU. I mean, is the chip going to support all the network or just one? so are yout tell me that instead of using those space for better performance or leaving it out to save power and cost, my laptop's cell would only work in NA.
But they might ultimately intergrate 802.11 into the CPU that would really make this community WLAN thing fly, imagine every device has 802.11, oh yeah.
kawai
Because we all know how gosh durned reliable cell phones are for simple voice, now we're goign to trust the same technology with our data.
Not to mention the hell this will cause with cellular service. Just imagine, thousands of kiddies downloading porn in the mean time, some poor soul in an accident is trying to call for help and he's getting "Thank you for using the Verizon/AOL cell service, all our lines are busy right now but you will be notified as sonn as one opens up.
No, the reason cell phones and the cell laptop connections work currently is because the actual numbr of people on the system at any given time is relatively low compared to the number of users. THis will kill our systems the same way 9/11 killed the cell service when everyone was calling everyone else to find out who was hurt.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Here's an idea... Ok, what if we just put the equiv. of wireless hubs in all cell phones. The internet would be where the phones are. That's where the people would be. Clouds of internet access would float around with the population. Such a kool idea!
CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) (look it up on google) is a protocol for doing exatcly what the article says: sending data over the cellular network which was constructed largely for voice communications. No modem is really involved, in the sense that you talk digital to the cell tower, no analog signal which is GSM compressed, etc etc. This is supposedly the way many wireless networks work NOW!
This article seems like largely a cheerleading piece for Intel's Israel division, and I get the feeling the reporter doesn't exactly understand what the product in question is.
Does anybody know what "third generation cellular products" are? This is apparently what Intel Israel sells best.
Xylantiel (can't find my password)
While Bluetooth is a much cooler alternative, I've been waiting for the longest time for cellphones to get RJ45 ethernet jacks, complete with IP connectivity that "just works" and DHCP servers built-in to the phones.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Well this chip apparently works with any cellular network - which surely implies that it must be some sort of "modem". Assuming that they factor out analogue nets (which i thought died out in the early 90s until i reached the usa) then the only technology that will work will be creating an ISDN connection to an ISP - hardly revolutionary.
It's more likely some 2.5G or 3G packet based system but again it's not revolutionary. Nokia and Motorola have both demo'd phones that support these things and if they can fit them in a tiny handset then surely intel fitting them into laptop is hardly noteworthy.
However if they actually have a chip that in itself communicates with a base station without the need for an external antenna then they really have got something cool - but i doubt that.
I connect to the Internet from my laptop using the infrared port on my Nokia 8290 phone. The phone acts as a modem. With Voicestream, you can use your plan minutes with this feature. Unfortunately I'm with Cingular, so I pay $5 extra per month and $.15/minute when I use the service (it also comes with a fax number). Thats for a blazing 9600 baud. Other networks offer similar functionality, some with more bandwidth (AT&T offers 19Kb and SprintPCS offers 14Kb if i remember correctly).
That may seem expensive, but when you're trapped somewhere with no Internet connection and need to SSH to a box NOW, the price becomes worth it. It has allowed me to go camping and the like when normally I wouldn't have been able to.
I could see where it could get complicated with billing issues for the product Intel is going to offer, unless they have service agreements with all the cellular service providers and you pay Intel for the service. I wish Intel luck on this one, as data services range such a great deal in price from one cellular provider to another.
I guess it will be nice for some people to have it integrated into their laptops (and it will make for a nice opportunity for laptop makers to have another area to profit), but again I don't see it as a huge leap like they seem to be making it out to be - I'm essentially doing the same thing right now.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
It's strange that Intel's PR department has any credibility when they make these kinds of claims.
There are a number of problems with this recent claim:
1) CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) is well deployed and delivers all the functions Intel is touting in their new design line.
2) The division of Intel that used to be the company DSPC produces a series of TDMA single chip solutions which are pretty cool but largely irrelevant as all USA TDMA providers are now moving to GSM and CDMA due to TDMA's poor voice quality and data hostility.
3) DSPC's questionably meritable claim to fame was the integration of an Intel ARM core with TDMA and handset related functions. www.dspc.com Since these are both low power cores, they make a fairly good fit. A laptop CPU core on the other hand is power hungry, noise producing, and is subject to high levels of design churn which make it uniqely unfit for this kind of core integration.
Added to all of this is the quote by the DCPC staffer pointing out that they are largely a P4 fab which points to Intel buying them for obscured reasons and putting their fabs to use.
This sounds like a classic case of an Intel PR monkey being told to say something about how darned important DSCP's technology is and how wise Intel was for making this purchase. They clearly failed to understand the core value of DSPC and gathered quotes by confused Intel executives to create a compelling story that like most things out of Intel's PR department, fail to make any sense when examined.
Agreed. Certainly you can put a cellular radio network interface into a laptop. After all, you can get them in handhelds already.
That link appears dead, try this one. It's only available in major metropolitan areas it seems - that's too bad, something like this will need wide availability before it really begins to take off. 20mbps sounds high too, that's 2 megabytes/sec. No one offers that kind of service to my knowledge. Verizon's site posts about an express service at 144 Kbps, but nothing faster is mentioned.
How is this any different from this, other than the fact that it won't use up a slot?
The bad gramar was intentional, and when you corrected it, you reversed the meaning of my acronym.
If someone breaks the code, that doesn't mean free service, it means theft of service, and theft in this case means actual loss of revenue (as opposed to piracy losses or "free cable" which doesnt actually cost the company anything) since we are bandwidth limited currently (the freeloaders would be taking up space that would be used by paying customers) This means actual criminal charges, and big money law suits.
Well, the ITU Telecommunication Terminology Database defines "modulation" as A process by which a quantity which characterizes an oscillation or wave follows the variations of a signal or of another oscillation or wave.", which sounds like a signal being imposed on a carrier wave.
BRI ISDN lines, however, use no carrier signal; instead, the voltage on the line, as I remember, directly indicates one of 00, 01, 10, and 11, so it's not a "modem" in the sense of something that modulates a carrier wave with a digital signal and demodulates the carrier wave to extract a digital signal.
DSL modems, however, do send signals over a carrier wave and extract signals from a carrier wave, as I remember. I don't know what scheme cable modems use, but they may also modulate a carrier signal.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with whether the digital signal is modulated atop a carrier wave or not.
A single users bandwidth, of course, they wouldnt miss that. Your whole town leaching? That will get noticed :)
I could probably steal a penny from your house every day too. Does that make it okay?