Intel Wants PCs To Be More Than Just 'Personal Computers' (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report "What people need from a PC, what they expect is really more diverse than ever," Intel's Client Computing head Gregory Bryant said in an interview. "We're going to embark on a journey to transform the PC from a personal computer to a personal contribution platform... The platform where people focus and can do their most meaningful work." Bryant says Intel will focus on five key areas to reframe its vision of PCs: Uncompromised performance (of course); improved connectivity with 5G on the horizon; a dramatic increase in battery life; developing more adaptable platforms that go beyond 2-in-1s and convertibles; and a push towards more intelligent machines with AI and machine learning integration. Admittedly, many of those points aren't exactly new for Intel, and they also fall in line with where the computing industry is going.

Comments

They are

[phantomfive]

PCs are more than just 'Personal Computers.' They are phones and all kinds of devices....it's just that Intel isn't part of that.

Re:They are

[JMJimmy]

Honestly, the area of the market they need to develop is the integrated home PC.

A modular system, wired into the home that enables 3rd parties to develop home technologies. I don't need every device in my home to be connected to the internet - I need them to connect to my home system and be managed locally. My PC should be my home's cloud and every "smart device" should just be a control board & dumb display that get fed data from applications/services running on the PC.

Re:They are

[webnut77]

Honestly, the area of the market they need to develop is the integrated home PC.

A modular system, wired into the home that enables 3rd parties to develop home technologies. I don't need every device in my home to be connected to the internet - I need them to connect to my home system and be managed locally. My PC should be my home's cloud and every "smart device" should just be a control board & dumb display that get fed data from applications/services running on the PC.

The trouble is that those vendors are not going to give you what you want. As vendors, they need to harvest your data. They also need to have a backdoor into your device for reason... Therefore your device needs to connect back to the mothership.

TFS:

and a push towards more intelligent machines with AI and machine learning integration

This makes me nervous. Will this serve me or the vendor?

Re:They are

[Marc_Hawke]

Like webnut said, gone are the days when someone would sell you a product. Now everyone is just using products as bait in order to hook a recurring revenue stream. They could make things that work 'stand-alone' but it's so much more profitable to make it go through the middle-man....with them being the middle man.

That being said, is there an indie/homegrown market for home automation? Is it all just Raspberry Pi based stuff? Are their light-bulbs that will work on my internal network? Is there a remote door lock system that listens on my own IP address and not routed through a server on the internet?

I think their are. The first security camera flaws were poorly secured little web-servers in the cameras themselves weren't they? But at least they had to come to my house to hack me..rather than hacking everyone all at once by hitting the server.

uh

[cascadingstylesheet]

What does the CPU maker have to do with all that?

Just execute the instructions, thanks. Oh, and don't give things access to the memory that shouldn't have it. Thanks again.

We need more pci-e lanes on the desktop and higher

[Joe_Dragon]

We need more pci-e lanes on the desktop and high end gaming systems.

AMD has more on both and on there high end gaming / workstations chips all cpus have the same number of lanes. Unlike the intel ones where min cpu cost is $1000 just to get the same number lanes that can $350-$500 chip used to have.

Still waiting on the phone "dock" to be ubiquitous

[gravyface]

Seems to make the most sense to me: phone + high-quality KVM experience = what 99% of the population wants.

Re:Too much marketing speak

[DontBeAMoran]

No can do, it goes against "uncompromised performance".

Re:improved connectivity

[Austerity Empowers]

I honestly don't want anything they're selling up there except uncompromised performance. I want to see larger DRAM capacity and more I/O bandwidth, on a larger range of their product portfolio than it presently has.

I've got a smart-phone, I don't want it to be my laptop or desktop, nor vice versa.

Learn from Blackberry

[mykepredko]

From the headline & summary, I was immediately flashed back to my time at RIM where the company had exactly the same vision for Blackberries - the talking points are identical to what I heard at RIM. TFA goes into a bit of the technology required for the vision but, again, I could go back 8-10 years to RIM and see identical issues (connectivity, battery life, processors & software omnipotence) being discussed as requirements for the platform.

RIM's failure to succeed was largely due to hubris and inattention to what was going on around them but I tend to think that there was a basic underpinning that there is NO single device that can do everything for everybody and trying to come up with the ultimate device, whether it is on a communications device (Blackberry) or a "personal contribution platform" isn't going to end where the proponents think it will.

Hell no

[smooth wombat]

I want my PC to do one thing and one thing only: do what I tell it to do. I don't want it to "think" for me, make guesses at what it thinks I'm going to do, or get in the way of what I'm doing.

I want a platform which is stable so I can do my work.

Simpsons

[Train0987]

Homer had the same idea when he designed his car.

But does it run Linux?

[jfdavis668]

Or is it going to be locked down to tight to load your own OS?

No thanks

[OrangeTide]

I'm only looking for a Personal Computer or Workstation. I don't wish to commit to anything beyond that.

It's like when I buy a blender, I don't also need it to be a cheese grater.

Re:improved connectivity

[postbigbang]

It would do my heart well if they'd just fix their processors so that they're immune from predictability attacks, rather than trying to distract the world with their latest PR shenanigans.

WTF, Intel? Can we even trust you? EVERY ONE OF YOUR CPUs made in the past decade is abusable. FIX THAT FIRST.

AI and personnal assistants

[Zitchas]

Honestly, I really like the idea of having a personal assistant AI sort of thing that tries to help keep track of stuff for me.

The problem is that everything these days wants to send all that data back to a server somewhere. My personal computer should be just that: My. Computer. I want something that requires zero internet connectivity to do its job. And that job should very clearly be: Do what I tell it to do. Take notes, schedule an appointment on my calendar, open programs, set a timer, or an alarm, or a reminder, etc.

The closest it should get to doing stuff online is if I specifically ask it to do something online. ex: "Search the internet for pictures of kittens." Simply stating "Search for kittens" should default to searching my computer itself. Nothing should go online without my actually stating that it should go online.

Computers in the late 90s were starting to get programs that could do basic voice recognition and dictation. I see no reason why my computer today can't do vastly better at it than the old apple performa did - and without using any servers anywhere to do so.