Intel Processor Could Be In Next-Gen Google Glass

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Intel Processor Could Be In Next-Gen Google Glass

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 1, 2014 @02:28AM from the behind-the-glass dept.

An anonymous reader points out this story that Intel could be in charge of creating the chips for the new Google Glass. Intel is expected to supply the chips for a new version of Google's Glass device in 2015, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources. The Intel processor will replace one from Texas Instruments, which is used in the current version of Glass, which is a device that allows people to view the Internet or take pictures while wearing it on their heads. Intel hasn't commented yet. The Wall Street Journal said that Intel plans to promote Glass to hospital networks and manufacturers. Google watched the web-connected eyewear in 2012, but it carried a hefty price and was regarded as something that only nerds would wear.

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Good job Intel by i+kan+reed · 2014-12-01 02:36 · Score: 3, Funny

You're now getting your hardware in cutting edge technology people are already tired of.
1. Re:Good job Intel by i+kan+reed · 2014-12-01 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  People got bored of wearing the damn things everywhere. Also: those stories tended to be overblown, and were actively hunted for because we weren't all tired of it already.
2. Re:Good job Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  And with Intel CPUs it'll get a whopping 10 minutes of battery life.
3. Re:Good job Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  Problem with Google Glass is that it isn't the technology, it is the fact that people are on CCTV most everywhere and have to deal with it as a course of doing business. However, someone coming into a bar recording everything (both visually and via audio) that should be private, be it someone's intimate conversation, some businessmen talking about next quarter, or just random chitchat... being constantly recorded in a place where privacy is expected steps over a line, and it is no wonder why there is serious pushback.
  I live in a place where a local chain of movie theaters got tired of glassholes camming their flicks that they banned the devices wholesale. Needless to say, this chain does quite well because they actively enforce their rules.
4. Re:Good job Intel by jandrese · 2014-12-01 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  Given to the kids as a video player seems like a legit use for a table. Also: reading comic books online (where traditional e-ink readers kind of suck). I have an ancient Iconia tablet that still sees regular use despite one of the battery cells ballooning up and warping the case. I don't use it as much as my phone, but it's way easier to use than a laptop on an airplane.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
5. Re:Good job Intel by CreatureComfort · 2014-12-01 04:24 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  If you think your local bar doesn't have cameras and audio recording covering most, if not all, of its premises, you're delusional.
  
  Lawsuits, vandalism, and outright theft are too prevalent for any business owner not to take it seriously, and get everything recorded they can for later evidence, if needed. Heck several of the bars I go to, have cameras setup all over that stream constantly to the internet.
  
  Understand this. If you are in public... YOU ARE IN PUBLIC. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy sitting in a booth or on a barstool. Your intimate conversation, business deal, or random chit chat is being overheard by everyone around you. Oh, and that guy wearing Google Glass? Yeah, he doesn't care about you and what you say or do any more than the other folks around, unless it's really juicy and worth immediately posting to YouTube, along with the other 5-10 people who will whip out their camera phones as soon as they notice you're making an idiot of yourself in public. Glass wearers either don't record 24/7, only turning on recording when something interesting is happening (just like everyone with their cell phones), or if they do record constantly, I can assure you they don't go back and re-watch all the boring minutia over again.
  
  --
  "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
  Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
6. Re:Good job Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  The difference between the local bar and the local glasshole is simple: the local bar is running cameras for safety and security purposes. Who knows what the local glasshole is using it for.
  Sure, the cameras that are constantly filming us for safety and security could potentially be misused for nefarious or creepy purposes. But, their intent is not that and if a bad actor gets caught using them in the wrong ways, the law is catching up and punishing them.
  A glasshole, otoh, could easily be using the camera for nefarious or creepy purposes and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.
  That's a big difference in how the public perceives always on cameras. Those for security are tolerated, those with arbitrary intent are not.
7. Re:Good job Intel by stjobe · 2014-12-01 04:57 · Score: 2
  
  However, someone coming into a bar recording everything (both visually and via audio) that should be private [...] being constantly recorded in a place where privacy is expected
  I don't know what kind of bars you have where you live, but around here bars are public places. In fact, they're usually called "pubs" (short for "public house", apparently). There's no more expectation of privacy at the bar than in a park or other public place.
  With Google Glass, at least you see them recording; the cellphone that's on "record" two tables over is just lost in the clutter...
  
  --
  "Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
8. Re:Good job Intel by oldmac31310 · 2014-12-01 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  Wow. Thanks for your humble wisdom. You seem to know an awful lot about this subject. Hey, everyone, listen to this guy. He knows a lot of things and is very wise. He can read minds too.
  
  --
  http://www.acetonestudio.com
9. Re:Good job Intel by 0123456 · 2014-12-01 05:30 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  The difference between the local bar and the local glasshole is simple: the local bar is running cameras for safety and security purposes. Who knows what the local glasshole is using it for.
  They're also not uploading it to the NSA. Sorry, Google.
10. Re:Good job Intel by jandrese · 2014-12-01 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  Ballooned cells don't catch fire. That's a different failure mode (internal shorting). They do stop holding charge though.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
11. Re:Good job Intel by exomondo · 2014-12-01 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with it isn't the privacy aspect, it's the obtrusiveness of it. Sure you could be surreptitiously filmed on a smartphone (though even then most people are pointing their cameras down when using their phones so it's pretty obvious when they're filming) but that's not quite the same as somebody holding their phone up and aiming the camera at you, it appears the latter is what google glass feels like to people.
Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by HetMes · 2014-12-01 02:41 · Score: 1

...and I don't think processing power wasn't a problem, at all.
1. Re:Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by CajunArson · 2014-12-01 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  So if you don't think it wasn't a problem.... then it WAS a problem.
  Oh, and battery life (or lack thereof) in Google Glass is another big issue.
  
  --
  AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
2. Re:Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by citizenr · 2014-12-01 05:13 · Score: 2
  
  battery life was too long, intel will fix that
  
  --
  Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
3. Re:Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by Andy+Dodd · 2014-12-01 05:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The raw performance of the OMAP4 wasn't the issue, BUT the fact that it's an EOL architecture no longer supported by TI is showing in the current software quality of Glass. Ever since Google deployed KitKat to Glass (which has not been deployed in production to ANY other OMAP4 device), Glass has been unreliable and suffered from wildly inconsistent battery life. XE19.1 was a big improvement, but it was still a significant backwards step from pre-KitKat Glass. Then Google went and fucked it up again with XE21 - Twice in one week I had Glass run out of battery in only 8 hours with effectively zero usage other than sitting on my head idle. (1-2 notifications/hour, no Navigation, etc.)
  Even before KitKat, the OMAP4 was a woefully inefficient CPU due to its age. A Snapdragon 400 with half the cores disabled would provide a MUCH better experience - more efficient/capable GPU, more efficient video encoding/decoding engine (no burning your head when recording), more efficient CPU.
  I haven't worn Glass in nearly two months now. It's in desperate need of a hardware refresh to improve power management and stability, but Intel is the LAST thing Glass needs. Intel's mobile SoCs are worse than even Cortex-A15 in terms of power efficiency, which is why you see a number of Intel-based tablets and settop boxes, but next to no Intel-based phones (there are about as many Intel-based phones as Exynos5-based phones, another SoC that's woefully unsuitable to phones due to power consumption.)
  
  --
  retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
4. Re:Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by Kjella · 2014-12-01 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  Intel's mobile SoCs are worse than even Cortex-A15 in terms of power efficiency, which is why you see a number of Intel-based tablets and settop boxes, but next to no Intel-based phones
  I thought the main reason was that many apps use native code and that code is all ARM, pushing Android-x86 tablets out there has been to get developers to make native binaries for Intel while running an ugly binary translation. The only phones they've been able to sell is feature phones that don't expect apps from the play store to work, where I understand they've been decent. Not particularly great, not particularly bad either. If Google Glass ends up running x86, developers will need to make native binaries.
  Certainly Intel is looking to get on Google's good side, I'm sure they'll give it their best effort at least. Core M Y-series has been taking a bit of flak, but last I checked it had 1/3rd the TDP of the Haswell U-series for much more than 1/3rd the performance, so the problem is that it is oversold as a replacement for something it's not. Once the series fills out with more high-TDP parts it'll hopefully get better.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
5. Re:Had access to Glass for an afternoon... by Andy+Dodd · 2014-12-01 11:00 · Score: 1
  
  That doesn't help either, but even for non-native stuff, the Haswells are about on par with Cortex-A15s (if Chromebooks are any indication) - and the Cortex-A15s are pretty much non-starters in the "small device" category, which is why Qualcomm's Krait architecture has become so dominant even in devices that are wifi-only. (See Nexus 7 2013 version)
  Dual Cortex-A7s seem to be the "go-to" for wearables nowadays, providing similar performance (at greatly reduced power consumption) compared to the dual Cortex-A9s of the OMAP4. There are very few dual-A7 solutions out there, so the go-to seems to be to disable two of the four cores of a Snapdragon 400 (quad-A7). Nearly every Android Wear device except the Moto 360 is using a "crippled" Snap400, and the Moto360 keeps getting slammed for battery life due to being an older OMAP3. (One of its updates greatly improved that, but the "crippled" S400s still win as even on the same manufacturing process, Cortex-A7 is much more efficient than A9, and the A9 is more efficient than the A8 in an OMAP3. Add to that the S400s being on a 28nm manufacturing process instead of, if I recall correctly, 45nm for OMAP3/OMAP4.)
  
  --
  retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Nice, but... by EzInKy · 2014-12-01 02:50 · Score: 1

...certainly their chips will also have some real world uses as well? It's not like Google spy hardware has much of a future after all.

--
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
1. Re:Nice, but... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-01 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  Intel chips have actually gotten surprisingly common in the cheap 'n dubious Android stuff segment. I didn't know that you could even get an American salesman to quote you a price for the amount of money that RockChip or their ilk will sell you a mostly-functional device for; but it is a matter of fact. Maybe the 'promotional support' is particularly generous these days.
  
  I picked up a couple of $45 specials over the weekend (not for use as actual tablets, obviously; but if you need a small monitor to serve as a UI/display for some DIY job it's gotten to the slightly weird place where an entire Android tablet costs substantially less than a screen of equivalent size), in all their plasticky, poorly translated, glory, and "Intel Inside".
Battery life by MouseR · 2014-12-01 02:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Because already they had too much.
1. Re:Battery life by hawkeyeMI · 2014-12-01 04:35 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  If you read TFA, it's an Intel-made chip with the ARM architecture.
  
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  Error 404 - Sig Not Found
2. Re:Battery life by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  It just competes with ARMs. The Intel Quark is an x86.
Re:google glass? by MouseR · 2014-12-01 02:51 · Score: 3, Funny

Cities are going to be built around this.
Not in the hospital I work at. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 02:52 · Score: 1

We have already evaluated these at my hospital. Though I'm not in IT (I'm a clinical pharmacist), I was on the committee. Basically, unless fully firewalled against the Internet, as in fully offline, we can't allow them in any room with a patient.
1. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by TheCastro1689 · 2014-12-01 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  I've been to hospitals where they pulled up my records on tablets, then proceeded to look something up on google that we were talking about.
2. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by ihtoit · 2014-12-01 03:17 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I set a local private clinic up with its own offline, airgapped copy of the BMJ among other journals and encyclopedias, complete with a dedicated email account set up to receive xml feeds for uploading to flash and dropping onto the clinic server. They were well happy, they can do a full text search for practically anything connected with medicine without going online.
  
  --
  Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
3. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by Trepidity · 2014-12-01 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  That actually sounds pretty reasonable. Presumably a doctor isn't looking for medical advice on Slashdot or Quora or whatever, so just providing them the high-quality sources with an airgap provides one less means for something stupid to happen. In general I cringe whenever stuff in a remotely sensitive setting is routinely on the internet, because in some percentage of those cases you're going to end up with a bunch of malware-infested tablets uploading private data that had no business being connected to the internet in the first place.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
4. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by ihtoit · 2014-12-01 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  that was the brief, they actually thought it wasn't possible to get an up-to-date (as in, less than 24h old) medical reference on an airgapped LAN. The one thing they absolutely didn't want, for reasons of personal data security more than general malware issues (the tablets all run WinME, which was a fixed quantity so I decided to install the server with xp), was an internet connection. Took me just a week to gather the required journals and set up the updates.
  
  --
  Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
5. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by mlts · 2014-12-01 03:46 · Score: 1
  
  I did something slightly different with another client (although it wasn't medical, so HIPAA regs didn't apply). The machines on the intranet were on a subnet that was not Internet connected (with a small appliance ensuring that traffic couldn't go into that segment) , but there was a machine that allowed restricted access to a Citrix server, and that server allowed access via a Web browser to the Internet. Agreed it is less secure than a complete air-gap, but with physical ASA firewalls in place, someone who compromised the Citrix box couldn't get to the internal machines.
  This provided for decent Internet access while keeping internal data locked up tight.
6. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by jandrese · 2014-12-01 04:02 · Score: 1
  
  Is it not good enough to just put some electrical tape over the camera lens? Obviously microphones can't be an issue because doctors already carry around smartphones/tablets/laptops everywhere and they all have mics, or the hospital has a good way to disable mics that should work equally well on Google Glass.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
7. Re: Not in the hospital I work at. by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-12-01 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  It would be fairly straightforward for your IT folks to set up an SSID that doesn't have Internet access and restrict the Glass to that SSID. If they have clinical value.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
8. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by rockmuelle · 2014-12-01 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  I do similar systems for genomics. Despite all the hype around cloud services in our space, we're finding more interest in local copies of the standard databases with links out to the canonical sources as needed. The local copies keep hospital IT happy and ensure access if the network is wonky.
  And, it turns out that most clinicians are comfortable sorting through database records on their own and don't like magic algorithms attempting to do it for them. Access to the basic data is what they want.
  -Chris
9. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 05:23 · Score: 1
  
  Lol, WinME tablets connecting to an XP server(presumably over WiFi) and they're concerned about the server being connected to the WAN? I'll be honest, when I get bored and do a security assessment at of my Dentist's office: I'm way more interested in the VNC icon in their taskbar than I am in doing a "what is my ip" search and frantically scribbling down the ip address on the back of a tongue depressor.
  From a penetration testing perspective: the wifi network/LAN is a way bigger risk IMHO. The fact that none of those machines are capable of automatically downloading patches means that if the WPA2 key can be successfully brute-forced, or an Ethernet cable compromised: traversing the internal network internally is probably as easy as using a published browser exploit to poison a page request. I'm sure that security in layers is at play and that you're doing some VPN mumbo jumbo to add additional protection against MITM. I'm just saying that those operating systems are ancient and that once the attacker gets past the "impenetrable" psuedo-airgap moat: the internal protections are probably extremely frail as the operating system choice implies that the possibility of a hostile actor on the network has been dismissed from consideration due to excessive confidence in an "idiot-proof" solution to the least likely(not counting drive-by scans/worms) attack surface.
  Difficulty of ex-filtration isn't an excuse if the attacker is physically on the premises and has a nice high bandwidth 802.11 pipe to sip on.
10. Re: Not in the hospital I work at. by BarbaraHudson · 2014-12-01 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  This has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with the camera recording patients (both audio and video) without their consent.
  I made some videos with my cell phone this summer, and the staff were okay with it as long as NO other patient was in the scene. I agree with them - only jerks would video patients in a hospital, even casually, without their knowledge and consent.
  Unless it's to capture a crime being committed, recording people without their consent is a really dick move.
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
11. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by ihtoit · 2014-12-01 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  no wireless, and the patient records are on a bespoke NHS system which I wasn't about to fuck with (I ain't touching that trainwreck, which they understood - unsurprisingly since they specified the airgap). If I'd had carte blanche on architecture it'd've been BSD all the way from the back to the front.
  
  --
  Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
12. Re:Not in the hospital I work at. by stephanruby · 2014-12-01 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  Did you set up a local cached copy of Google Maps too? The last time I was at my doctor's office, the nurse pulled up traffic information to make sure there was adequate travel time between the appointments she was setting up for that same day. Another time was when my mother didn't remember the exact doctor's name she had seen at another hospital, but a quick Google search by the nurse cleared up that question in a few seconds. A third time was when my mom brought medication she had been using in France without the actual box with the scientific names on it. Once again, a quick google search clarified what the active ingredient was in that medication and the American doctor was able to make his own recommendation.
  
  They were well happy, they can do a full text search for practically anything connected with medicine without going online.
  I can only assume that's because they were never given internet access at their practice in the first place, or that when they have a question that requires the internet, they just use their own private smartphone to google for an answer.
Drop resistance? by marciot · 2014-12-01 03:02 · Score: 4, Funny

How does Google Glass compare to Gorilla Glass or sapphire? How far can I drop Google Glass before it shatters?
1. Re:Drop resistance? by BarbaraHudson · 2014-12-01 03:05 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  How does Google Glass compare to Gorilla Glass or sapphire? How far can I drop Google Glass before it shatters?
  The real question is how long can you wear it before someone shatters it for you ...
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
2. Re:Drop resistance? by ihtoit · 2014-12-01 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  that's what TFS was missing, the fact that the biggest criticism of Glass isn't its nerd factor, it's the whole privacy thing. Surely, orders of magnitude more important than how much of dick you look while wearing it?
  
  --
  Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
3. Re:Drop resistance? by Kjella · 2014-12-01 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  My fellow Americans, ask not how you can shatter your Google Glass, ask how your Google Glass can be shattered for you.
  - John F. Kennedy (assassinated by Google Time Agents for sales interference)
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Good job Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-01 03:11 · Score: 1

Which people are those? Oh, you mean yourself? Just because you're a closed-minded technophobe doesn't mean the rest of us are.
what are they thinking? by slashmydots · 2014-12-01 03:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Let me break this down. Here's Intel's apparent product planning meeting:
1. Mobile processors. What to do for the 4th gen Haswell ones...umm...let's make the Pentium 1/2 the speed of the 3rd gen one and still throw it in laptops. Yay! Let's do that! People freaking love double the battery life when it takes twice as long to do everything. I wonder why half the U-series underclocked 3rd gen chips are all on clearance right now...hmmm...

2. Let's take the atom that runs x86 and just emulate ARM and throw it in some tablets like the ASUS MeMO Pad. That'll be efficient and not glitchy at all. Yes, best meeting ever!

3. Next, let's make chips for a controversial product that nobody wants.

I guess this is what happens when AMD says they don't want to compete in mobile processors. Oh well, at least Intel is running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
1. Re:what are they thinking? by 0123456 · 2014-12-01 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  People freaking love double the battery life when it takes twice as long to do everything. I wonder why half the U-series underclocked 3rd gen chips are all on clearance right now...hmmm...
  Why would a slower CPU in my laptop 'take twice as long to do everything' when the current CPU is running at 800MHz 99% of the time?
2. Re:what are they thinking? by slashmydots · 2014-12-02 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  Are you serious? If you're doing something, the CPU usage is maxed. If you're doing nothing, it's at a low multiplier and low effective speed. So no, you can't do nothing at half the speed but you can do something at half the speed. By the way, the lowest power state isn't really any better than the pentium before it. It's the peak power usage they improved.
Re:google glass? by Lunix+Nutcase · 2014-12-01 05:11 · Score: 1

It was a joke, bro. It was mocking what the Segway people said when that was released.
x86? by whoever57 · 2014-12-01 05:26 · Score: 1

The article takes some real information (Intel to be used in next gen Google Glass) and extrapolates it into "x86 to be used in next get Google Glass". But this seems to be a wild guess.
Remember Intel makes ARM chips also.

--
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Terrible link by HalWasRight · 2014-12-01 06:26 · Score: 1

Why does the /. article link to the Venture Beat page? It is completely content free except for the WSJ link, which is what this post should have had.

--
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
"regarded as something that only nerds would wear" by trailerparkcassanova · 2014-12-01 07:28 · Score: 1

No, this is "regarded as something that only dorks would wear".