Intel’s Rattner: technology will bring man, machine closer by 2050

Intel CTO Justin Rattner said Intel’s labs are already doing research on human-machine interfaces and investigating implications to computing, with early indicators pointing to change coming sooner than expected.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 8/22/2008

Wrapping up the final day of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Thursday, Intel Corp CTO Justin Rattner examined during his keynote how technology will bring man and machine closer by 2050, and predicted that big changes are ahead in terms of social interactions, robotics and improvements to a computer’s ability to sense the real world.

Rattner (pictured left) noted that Intel’s labs are already doing research on human-machine interfaces and investigating implications to computing, with early indicators pointing to change coming sooner than expected.

“The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago. There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future,” Rattner said during his keynote.

Next, Rattner demonstrated a wireless resonant energy link (WREL) that allows the powering of a 60-watt light bulb without the use of a plug or wire of any kind, which happens to be more than is needed for a typical laptop. WREL is based on principles proposed by MIT physicists and promises to deliver wireless power safely and efficiently by relying on strongly coupled resonators, a principle similar to the way a trained singer can shatter a glass using her voice, Rattner explained. At the receiving resonator's natural frequency, energy is absorbed efficiently, just as a glass absorbs acoustic energy at its natural frequency, he said.

If this technology were enabled in a laptop, batteries could be recharged when the laptop gets within several feet of the transmit resonator, and although many engineering challenges remain, Intel said its researchers hope to find a way to cut the last cord in mobile devices and someday allow wireless power in Intel-based platforms.

Shape-shifting electronics devices?

To make it possible for a device to change physical form in order to suit the specific the user needs it, Rattner said Intel researchers are also investigating how millions of tiny micro-robots, called catoms, could build shape-shifting materials to replace the case, display and keyboard of a computing device. A mobile computer, for example, could be tiny when in a pocket, change to the shape of an earpiece when used as a mobile phone, and be large and flat with a keyboard for browsing the Internet or watching a movie, he said.

Rattner said that while this is a difficult exploratory research agenda, steady progress is being made and demonstrated the results of a novel technique for fabricating tiny silicon hemispheres using photolithography, the process used today to make silicon chips, with this capability one of the basic structural building blocks needed to realize functional catoms, which should make it easier to bring the necessary computational and mechanical components together in one tiny package less than a millimeter across, he explained. Also, the technique is said to be compatible with existing high-volume manufacturing and allows the possibility to produce such catoms in quantity at some point in the future.

Dr. Michael Garner (pictured right with Rattner), program manager of Intel’s emerging materials roadmap, joined Rattner onstage to discuss the importance of research of novel silicon technology, keeping Moore’s Law alive and well through the next decade and beyond. To this end, Rattner reminded that Intel is researching how to go beyond planar transistors to 3D transistors and is looking at using compound semiconductors to replace silicon in the transistor channel, among other things. Looking out, Intel is exploring into a variety of non-charge-based technologies that could one day replace CMOS altogether, Rattner added.