Intel’s Digital Home: One More Step Closer

In his keynote presentation this morning Don MacDonald, Vice President and General Manager of Intel Digital Home Group outlined the major opportunities for industry players in the digital home arena as of today and tried to prove that despite the innovations on the technological and architectural levels (such as introduction of dual core technology) the digital home usage models are getting even more simple and easy to put into life.

Home is a really special place to each of us. Homes come in all shapes and sizes. And many of these are digital homes (right now more than 1 billion people use internet around the planet). Some definitions of a digital home require different terms. But Intel wanted to take a more pragmatic broader definition for a digital home, during that discussion they were intending to show us the possibilities in this global marketplace for the initiative like that. Of course, today they have to address some fundamental challenges about cost and performance of the systems classified as digital home solutions, and this is extremely relevant to the business community and idea of digital home.

Moor’s law works not only for the number of transistors per silicon, but it also works in a digital home space. For example, many of the Wi-Fi devices didn’t exist a few years ago and now they are growing in number. The consumer electronics industry has doubled in the last 4 years. It is about the existing devices that have been reignited by the digital revolution, driven by breakthrough technology in the high definition content.

Microsoft and Intel work together here. It is not only the hardware platform that is important but also the way the hardware platforms and solutions would communicate with the consumer and one another.

Also significant attention is paid to the price point of these devices, their power requirements and their slim and thin form-factor which is welcome in the digital home environment today, as well as security issues, which Intel’s new VT virtualization technology should take care of.