Jason Dunn
03-02-2004, 12:30 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_10/b3873001_mz001.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_10/b3873001_mz001.htm</a><br /><br /></div>"Barrett is convinced now is the time to strike deep into new territory. Communications, content, and consumer electronics, after years of false starts, are rapidly evolving from the old analog world to one of standardized digital products, the realm of Intel's power. Gung-ho consumers, surging broadband adoption, and rapid declines in the costs of hard drives, chips, and other key technologies are driving much of the world to digital content. Once photos, music, and video take digital form, they become the bits that Intel's chips can process, store, and zap across the Web. "Everything in the world is going digital," Barrett says. "Communications is going digital. Entertainment is going digital. We are able to bring our expertise into differ- ent areas where we really had no unique capability before."<br /><br />Translation: Barrett fully intends to upend the status quo in communications and consumer-electronics markets. Think of Intel as a silicon arms dealer. By hawking cutting-edge digital technologies, the chipmaker will offer weapons that upstart companies can use to knock existing players for a loop, while forcing entrenched companies to consider buying the same weapons. This fall, for instance, Intel plans to roll out a chip based on a technology called WiMax that could be used to deliver high-speed wireless Internet access throughout a small city for about $100,000, one-tenth the cost of rolling out fiber-optic lines today. Either cable and phone companies buy into Barrett's vision, or their near-monopoly on broadband could be cracked by upstarts using WiMax. That's just the tactic that led to the dizzying popularity of Wi-Fi, a similar wireless technology, after Intel got behind it last year."<br /><br />From a business perspective, it's fascinating to see what Intel has accomplished, and what they have planned for the future. Everything is going digital, and that requires active processing power, and that's what Intel is drooling over. If Intel accomplishes their goals, I won't mind - I just want things to work. But I'm equally interested in seeing other vendors develop smaller, cooler, and cheaper CPUs - I'm even seeing some motherboards that actually come with a low power CPU on board. Commodotize away, as long as it brings the price and complexity down for those scenarios where raw power isn't a factor.