Intel Foresees Smaller PC Form Factors, Integrated Access Points

Intel on Wednesday spelled out its vision for the digital office, which rests heavily on its upcoming Grantsdale and Prescott desktop platforms as well as hardware-based security features--all of which are slated to be available later this year.

Bill Siu, vice president and general manager in Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, said smaller, sleeker desktop BTX form factors will hit the market this year. The hardware also will come with integrated access points for wireless networking.

"I think this is a real breakthrough," Siu said of the new 6.9 liter form factor. "These actually use standard chassis and standard components," he said, adding that the new hardware will be available from "multiple sources this year."

Siu made his remarks during a speech at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. In a demonstration, Siu showed the new BTX desktop with the built-in access point, designed to provide wireless networking and synchronization inside a digital office.

Intel also expects to ship additional computing security features directly on its hardware later this year, Siu added. The features will be based on Intel's still-in-development La Grande technology, which company executives began discussing publicly last year.Siu noted that Intel is intent on bringing into the digital office the same high-profile technology that it's been showing off for digital homes. "We focus on creating value for the line of business and improving collaboration and mobility. At the same time, we deliver value to it by improving security and manageability," he said.

Siu also reiterated earlier Intel statements that the company plans to provide a number of performance improvements in its Grantsdale and Prescott processing platforms for the desktop, which are slated to ship in the first half of this year.

"We're going to provide even better improvements to media processing, coding and encoding," Siu said. Intel eventually plans to transition from its current Hyper-Threading technology to dual-core CPUs that provide better performance in multitasking and in using digital media, he added.

Article appears courtesy of CRN.