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Intel: MID Market Was Established by the iPhone, Continues to Grow

In an interesting interview by Tomohisa Takei for techon japan, Intel Fellow Shreekant Thakkar reveals his vision for the future of mobile computing, including the effect Apple’s iPhone has had on the industry.

As Intel explains, Thakkar’s official position is UMG chief platform architect at Intel Corp US, but as an official Intel Fellow he represents the highest level of technical achievement within the company.

In a nutshell, Thakkar believes that “mobile Internet devices (MID) will eventually become the most popular type of computer in the world, evolving and increasing “intelligence” by utilizing information from MID onboard sensors, and providing users with the same Web experience as is provided by PCs.” The growing demand for mobile connectivity and increasingly powerful devices only furthers the point that this market is radically outpacing the rest of PC sales. This year’s holiday sales are a shining example of that.

“I believe that the most popular computer type in the world, in terms of user quantity, will be the MID. As 3G mobile phones, WiMAX and other technologies spread globally, mobile broadband will become more common than it is now,” Thakkar explains.

As mobiles phones are gradually replaced by “smarter” devices, Thakkar believes that “MID-like computers” will continue to evolve and utilize information from MID onboard sensors. The way Apple’s iPhone utilizes location awareness with GPS, wi-fi and cell network triangulation, as well its on board accelerometer are all great examples of this. “I think we’ll see an increasing number of applications making use of equipment sensors,” Thakkar explains.

Delving deeper into the future of mobile devices, “predictive applications” are what is believed to be coming next. As an example, a device may automatically display a map of how to get from one place to another based on the detected location. Because the MID (mobile internet device) would be connected via live networks, it could suggest a taxi, bus, train or determine whether something is within walking distance.

When getting into netbooks, Thakkar doesn’t feel it necessary to distinguish between MID’s such as the iPhone, and compact notebooks with 8-inch displays (netbooks). “The MID market was established by the iPhone….It is still an immature market, and it’s clear that it will continue to grow. The decade starting in 2010 should reach a shipment volume of hundreds of millions of units annually.” As manufacturers compete to have the most powerful, most inexpensive mobile computing device, Intel feels its Atom processor will be easily applied across the market.

We feel that MIDs must be able to provide users with the same Web experience as is provided by PCs. Existing mobile phones, even if they can connect to the Internet, don’t really enable people to utilize the Web in the same way that a PC does. Social networking services (SNS) like YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace are immensely popular, but mobile phones provide only very limited access to these services. I think there is an urgent need for a highly portable device that can deliver the same experience that a PC can deliver.

Scheduled for release for 2009 or “beyond,” Intel continues to work on the “Moorestown” (codename) platform for MID’s. While the chip is still in development, Thakkar does reveal a few interesting pieces of information regarding its future architecture.

The GPU is going to be about the same size as the CPU core, and the image processing circuit will have to be able to code and decode high-definition TV (HDTV) imagery. The volume of data being handled has increased significantly, and we had to expand the memory bandwidth. We want to be able to use the 45nm manufacturing technology we’re using for the microprocessor on circuits like these, which we expect to grow even larger in scale in the future. I’m afraid I can’t provide details of just what sort of circuits are being integrated into the Lincroft, but I can say that it will deliver improved graphics draw and image processing performance.

The Langwell is more than just an I/O hub; it also integrates a solid-state disc (SSD) controller, power supply management circuit, etc. In the Menlow (codename used for the Centrino Atom, the current ID platform) we needed some external components like the auxiliary storage controller and some power supply management parts, but these external components are no longer needed. We expect to be able to achieve reductions in cost, dissipation and mounting footprint.

Check out the full interview here.