Barrett Goes Out with a Bang
By Suzanne Deffree -- EDN, January 7, 2005
LAS VEGAS -- Not surprisingly, Intel's out-going CEO Craig Barrett told a keynote crowd at the official opening event for this year's Consumer Electronics Show that the PC will be the building block for the digital home of the future.
Barrett, who will retire this May after his 65th birthday, will most likely not head a CES keynote next year. In that light, the executive, a repeated presenter at the now largest event in the high-tech industry, went out with a bang.
Barrett brought out Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler and Hollywood legend Robert Redford to add the required dose of glitz and glam to a CES keynote. The man who built his career on semis in PCs held true to his love and used the Las Vegas Hilton Theater event to center the PC as the core technology for digital living, much in the way Bill Gates stressed Microsoft's Media Center the night before in his keynote.
Unlike Gates, however, Barrett spoke more on the envisioned digital home and its benefits than his company's technology and only lingered slightly on semiconductors in general at few points during his presentation.
"Fundamentally, if you look at the very aspects of what we are talking about [for better digital living], it's increasing the computing power, communications capability and broadband and wireless capability. And if you can penetrate those features into silicon devices, put those devices into the system and then combine that with high-powered software, you bring the consumer capability we've all been dreaming about."
Barrett went on to discuss dual-cores and multi-threading techniques, noting Sonoma's slated arrival next month, as a means of accomplishing this, but didn't get into heavy details, instead continuing on with his dream of the digital home and its use of the PC.
"Things have changed dramatically in the last decade," he said. "This wave is sweeping us -- any place, any time, any how, coupled with the personal aspect."
On-demand capability, regardless of where you are in the home or where the source of the content is, is what consumers want, said Barrett.
"What we are talking about is things like the entertainment PC, and that's really the bedrock of the digital home. The entertainment PC is really the capability to do all sorts of things: store content, create content, distribute content. It's really the hub of the home network. And there's a whole new generation of consumer electronics devices that can speak to one another and are really related to the entertainment PC."
The next trend is to remove the wires, Barrett noted. Intel has pressed hard on this point since its original Centrino 802.11b launch in March 2003.
Wi-Fi won't be the end all be all, though. WiMax, 802.11's wider range wireless cousin, will push the wireless envelope. "It's not necessarily competitive with cable or high-speed DSL. It is a good-quality broadband, though and it is very inexpensive to put in."
Barrett concluded on a positive note, chatting with Redford about fly-fishing and his Sundance work, drawing a parallel line between the expression of independent film and the possibilities for digital living and the independence of wireless connection.
"I think what we are talking about is technology that is going to upgrade everyone's lives. It will bring enjoyment, excitement, new opportunities to do things we couldn't even imaging a few years ago. We ought to be inspired by that and we ought to imagine what we can collectively do in the future."
