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Intel + Windows 10 = Better than Ever

By Kirk Skaugen on July 28, 2015

I spend a great deal of time traveling around the world attending technology events and meeting with our customers. I get to test-drive new laptops, 2 in 1s and tablets on a regular basis. And I get to try out the new operating systems that run on them. I check the performance, new usages and experiences, and generally try to see how much these things have improved.

Over the years, I have seen technology make great strides and deliver amazing new user experiences and increased productivity. But I am especially excited about what is coming to market this year.

Today, we celebrate the launch of Windows® 10 with Microsoft and support their vision of inspiring and empowering people with technology. Windows 10, combined with Intel’s best new processors powering these new devices, marks a major milestone in helping drive new computing experiences forward. This is one of those pivotal moments in time where Intel and Microsoft products are building on each other and delivering some amazing new user experiences.

Hundreds of millions of people who are accustomed to the performance and experiences of their 5 year old computer will want to take a second look at their machine. New computers, powered by the 5th Gen Intel® Core™ processors, run the latest software and apps, offer 3 times the battery life, are 10 times better when it comes to gaming, and are almost half as thin and light compared to those older computers. Those old PCs just aren’t capable of delivering the experiences that can help people and businesses run more effectively, efficiently and intuitively. To add to that, system prices have been steadily on the decline even with the addition of a broad set of new features, making this the best time to buy a new device , ever.

This year, new Intel® Atom™ x5 and x7 series and Intel Core processors running Windows 10 will deliver amazing performance in exciting new form-factors. And only devices powered by x86 processors will let people take advantage of the full Windows 10 experiences while also running the existing Windows applications and peripherals people depend on today. So any Intel Atom x5 and x7-powered tablet can run both full Windows and all your favorite older Windows applications. That’s pretty exciting.

I’m also excited about many of the new experiences that take advantage of our best processors and newest system hardware including:

The Cortana Smart Digital Assistant can make dinner reservations, find out what’s playing at the local theater and remind you to pick up a gift or discuss a key report with a work colleague based upon your calendar for the week. Intel has enhanced the overall responsiveness of Cortana on its processors by optimizing speech algorithms, voice activation capabilities and improving microphone implementations.

Content and access to Xbox and Xbox Live on Windows 10 allow people to play Xbox games directly from their PC. The CPU and improved graphics performance enabled through Intel’s latest processors and Windows 10 are delivering new excitement to gamers.

Smooth wireless docking on Intel platforms running Windows 10 allows people to set up devices that pair automatically to a wide range of displays and USB peripherals.

Systems running Windows Hello, which works with Intel RealSense technology, let people unlock their PCs and 2 in 1s in a matter of seconds by scanning their faces using biometric authentication instead of typing a password.

We’re here at an exciting time for consumers and businesses. There has never been a better time for people to gain access to amazing new experiences and performance made possible by Intel, Microsoft and our OEM partners. Congrats to Microsoft, and we’re looking forward to putting all of this in the hands of people worldwide.

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Announcing 18 New How-To Intel® IoT Code Samples

CHESTON C. (Intel) on November 6, 2015

We are pleased to announce the release of 18 new how-to Intel® IoT code samples designed for anyone interested in learning IoT development. These applications are part of a series of how-to Intel® IoT code sample exercises using the Intel® IoT Developer Kit, Intel® Edison development platform, APIs, and other technologies.

A complete list of these JavaScript* code sample titles is provided below along with their links to instructions and code.

From these exercises, developers will learn how to:

Connect the Intel® Edison development platform, a computing platform designed for prototyping and producing IoT and wearable computing products.

Interface with the Intel® Edison platform IO, Grove* sensors, Xadow* wearable sensors, and sensor repositories using MRAA and UPM from the Intel® IoT Developer Kit, a complete hardware and software solution to help developers explore the IoT and implement innovative projects.

Run these code samples in Intel® XDK IoT Edition, an IDE for creating applications that interact with sensors and actuators, enabling a quick start for developing software for the Intel® Edison or Intel® Galileo board.

Set up a web application server and store data using Azure Redis Cache* from Microsoft* Azure*, cloud services for connecting IoT solutions including data analysis, machine learning, and a variety of productivity tools to simplify the process of connecting sensors to the cloud and getting an IoT project up and running quickly.

Invoke the services of APIs including Twilio* for sending text messages, the United States Geological Survey* (USGS*) for accessing earthquake data and Weather Underground* for accessing weather data.

To get started, select any of these titles:

     Access control

     Air quality sensor

     Alarm clock

     BLE scan bracelet

     Close call reporter

     Doorbell

     Earthquake detector

  Equipment activity monitor

     Field data reporter

     Fire alarm

     Home fall tracker

     Line following robot

     Plant lighting system

     Range finder scanner

     Robot arm

     Smart stove top

     Storage unit flood detector

     Watering system

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The Excitement is Building for Intel® Omni-Path Architecture

By [email protected] on September 4, 2015

Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) is gearing up to be released in Q4’15 which is just around the corner! As we get closer to our official release, things are getting real and we’re providing more insight into the fabric for our customers and partners. In fact, more Intel Omni-Path architectural level details were just presented on August 26th at Hot Interconnects. Before I talk about the presentation, I want to remind you that this summer at ISC ’15 in Germany, we disclosed the next level of detail and showcased the first Intel OPA public demo through the COSMOS supercomputer simulation.

For those who didn’t make it to Frankfurt, we talked about our evolutionary approach to building the next-generation fabric. We shared how we built upon key elements of Aries* interconnect and Intel® True Scale fabric technology while adding revolutionary features such as:

Traffic Flow Optimization: provides very fine grained control of traffic flow and patterns by making priority decisions so important data, like latency sensitive MPI data, has an express path through the fabric and doesn’t get blocked by low priority traffic. This results in improved performance for high priority jobs and run-to-run consistencies are improved.

Packet Integrity Protection: catches and corrects all single/multi-bit errors in the fabric without adding any additional latency like other error detection & correction technologies. Error detection/corrections is extremely important in fabrics running at the speed and scale of Intel OPA.

Dynamic Lane Scaling: guarantees that a workload will gracefully continue to completion even if one or more lanes of a 4x link fail, rather than shutting down the entire link which was the case with other high performance fabric.

These features are a significant advancement because together they help deliver enhanced performance and scalability through higher MPI rates, lower latency and higher bandwidth.  They also provide for improved Quality of Service (QoS), resiliency and reliability.  In total, these feature are designed to support the next generation of data centers with unparalleled price/performance and capability.

At Hot Interconnects we provided even more detail. Our Chief OPA software architect, Todd Rimmer, gave an in-depth presentation on the architectural details of our forthcoming fabric. He delivered more insight into what makes Intel OPA a significant advancement in high performance fabric technology.  He covered the major wire-level protocol changes responsible for the features listed above – specifically the layer between Layer 1 and Layer 2 coined as “Layer 1.5.”  This layer provides the Quality of Service (QoS) and fabric reliability features that will help deliver the performance, resiliency, and scale required for our next-generation HPC deployments. Todd closed by keeping to his software roots by discussing how Intel is upping the ante on the software side with a discussion on Intel OPA software improvements, including the next-generation MPI optimized fabric communication library –  Performance Scaled Messaging 2 (PSM2) and powerful new features for fabric management.

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Access Your Data Anytime, Anywhere With Intel ReadyMode Technology

By [email protected] on September 3, 2015

Today, desktop PCs like the ASUS K20CE* mini PC come with up to 3TB SSD drive to accommodate users’ massive collections of HD videos, photos, eBooks, recorded TV, and other huge files. That’s terabytes! Some feature even more storage.

But how do you access these files away from home? You could use one of the many cloud services on the market; however, if you have lots of personal photos and videos, or large documents and files from work, you’ll quickly reach the cap on the free capacity and have to start paying monthly subscription fees. Plus, you’d need to remember to upload files that you might want to access later to the cloud, and if you want to change services, move your files digitally from one network to another, which can be a hassle, not to mention a security concern.

Access your data anytime, anywhere

A better option would be to take advantage ofIntel ReadyMode Technology (Intel RMT) and third-party remote access software such as Splashtop, Teamviewer, or Microsoft Remote Desktop to turn your desktop PC into an always-available “personal cloud” that lets you access all of your files on your other devices, such as your smartphone or tablet.

home computer so you don’t have to worry about people hacking into it. You can access it through remote log on or through VPN,” said Fred Huang, Product Manager, ASUS Desktop Division. “It’s a better way to access your personal files that exists today with ASUS systems running Intel RMT.”

Intel RMT replaces the traditional PC sleep state with a quiet, low power, OS-active state that allows PCs to remain connected, up-to-date, and instantly available when not in use. Plus, it allows background applications—like remote access software—to run with the display off while consuming a fraction of electricity it normally would when fully powered on.

For home PCs, this means you can get the convenience of anytime, cloud-like access to your files without a cloud-service bill, as well as the ability to share it outside your own personal login.

The perfect home (and work) desktop

ASUS desktop PC allow users to do everything from daily tasks to playing 4K ultra HD video with enhanced energy efficiency, better productivity and powerful performance across all its form factors. Other highlights include instant logins, voice activation, and instant sync and notifications.

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Building the Next-Generation Car with Intel IoT

By Sam Lamagna on November 23, 2015

Consider for a moment what the creation of a truly connected and intelligent vehicle could mean. First and foremost, increased safety. Also, improved fuel efficiency. Less congestion. Decreased pollution.

Even better? A driving experience enhanced with Intel Internet of Things (IoT) that can help make your commute safer, more productive, and enjoyable.

With the rapid convergence of commute and compute, the automotive industry is undergoing a radical transition not seen since the creation of the assembly line. And that’s presenting automotive and IT professionals with a unique opportunity: to take a fundamentally different approach to vehicle function, design, and construction.

Today, our cars are transportation machines that contain computers. Tomorrow, they’ll be intelligent data devices that actively help us take advantage of every moment on the road. Even the materials we use to build them may change; we could have plastic vehicles, or even biodegradable ones.

Sound too sci-fi? It’s not. Look at what we’re already doing with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Twenty years ago, adaptive cruise control, automatic parking and braking, blind spot detection, and collision avoidance—and self-driving cars—were just engineers’ dreams.

Navigating a connected environment with V2x

As automakers race to build the ultimate ADAS, two camps are emerging.

The first is focusing on vehicle message passing, in which the car communicates with:

Other vehicles (V2V)

Infrastructure points, like signs and traffic lights (V2I)

Bicyclists and pedestrians, via smart-phone apps and wearables (V2P)

The cloud (V2C)

Combined, we call this “V2x.”

The main challenge with V2x is what to do with the incoming data. Many proponents feel that the best approach is to compile and present it to the driver to interpret and act upon. But then there’s the danger of information overload. We know from managing cybersecurity breaches that it’s risky to treat all incoming threats equally. They need to be prioritized, so that people are alerted only to the most pressing concerns.

Plus, much industry work is required to ensure that V2x communication protocols are standardized. To get a serious systemic payoff from the technology, all vehicles must speak a common language. Disparate formats will both diffuse the safety benefits and confuse consumers.

Finally, V2x by itself is dependent on robust network connectivity. Not all wireless communication protocols are created equally in ensuring secured, deterministic message passing. And not all can achieve global ubiquity, efficiency, and cost-effective economies of scale.

Putting the driver in the passenger seat with onboard intelligence

The alternate camp says the way to increase driving safety, enjoyment, and productivity is to remove critical tasks from the driver and assign them to an onboard computer. To, essentially, create an autonomous car.

That means the individual vehicle reads and reacts to its surroundings, so it’s less dependent on connectivity and incoming messages.

There are challenges to address here, as well.

Security is as much a concern with autonomous cars as it is with V2x. You don’t want your connectivity or onboard systems vulnerable to hacking. And the profusion of discrete electronic control modules (ECMs) aboard an intelligent car presents a tempting array of attack vectors. Particularly since many are sourced from third-party suppliers and may go unchanged for years.

Then there’s the challenge of getting public buy-in. In the United States in particular, we have a driving culture that values individual driver control. If you ask your average driver if they want a computer to take over in an emergency, many will say no.

Joining the best of both worlds

So, my question is, why do we have to choose one or the other of those approaches? Why not blend the two to create an incredibly intelligent vehicle with an ADAS that can interpret and respond to its surroundings, and augment it with connectivity to cameras, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), and radar? A vehicle that complements and enhances human cognitive abilities, rather than replacing them?

Reimagining the car, from the wheels up

To build this next-generation intelligent car, we’ll have to enable sensor output fusion and shift to a centralized computer—one that can mimic a human brain. And the vehicle will need 360-degree awareness.

This will require an unprecedented amount of compute horsepower in a small thermal envelope, scalable from vehicle to vehicle and generation to generation. It will also require the greatest ratio of performance per watt per cost per functional safety. Plus—and this is critical—the system has to fail safely and fail operationally.

So, as you can see, all of this calls for a major reimagining of car architecture. As well as unprecedented levels of collaboration between industries, government agencies, consumers, and special interest groups.

Developing the car as a platform for innovation

That’s why my team at Intel is made up of a combination of forward thinkers from the automotive industry, industrial control, functional safety, and overall platform design. As well as hardcore IT silicon specialists who have dedicated their careers to building mission-critical servers.

Together, we’re looking at the car as a holistic platform. We’re exploring the best and most efficient way to capture data, then securely move it from the edge to the central brain in real time.

No more siloed systems. No more just bolting on another box when you want to add an ADAS feature. We’re building a whole new backbone. One with a brain that assists as needed and controls when control is handed over to it. Essentially, we’re creating an entire car that’s an ADAS.

To do that, we’re borrowing best practices from the avionics industry. Think about how commercial aviation has changed. And how it hasn’t.

We now have onboard computers, autopilot, and collision avoidance systems, and they all make air travel far safer and more reliable. But we haven’t made pilots obsolete; they’re still the apex decision makers. And that’s how we think the next-generation intelligent car should operate.

Driving the evolution of automotive with Intel IoT

For more than a century, motor vehicle research and development has concentrated on engineering mechanical systems. Automatic transmissions. Air conditioning. More efficient engines.

But that emphasis is shifting as the worlds of automotive manufacturing and computing converge. In the future, the majority of vehicle research will focus on software, not hardware.

Intel IoT is uniquely situated to play a central role in developing a connected car; one that not only leverages more powerful and efficient computing, but can also help to enhance safety and security. We’ve been involved in mission-critical systems for decades. And we want to catalyze the development of best practices, standards, and platforms that will be used across the automotive industry.

That’s why we created the Automotive Security Review Board (ASRB) to convene top thinkers from across the technology and automotive sectors. The ASRB is exploring how drivers use cars, what they value, and how we can expand the user experience. And, above all, how to increase safety and reduce accidents.

Intel is also inviting industry experts to comment on our new white paper, Automotive Security Best Practices: Recommendations for Security and Privacy in the Era of the Next-Generation Car. We’ll publish revisions based upon feedback and findings from the ASRB.

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Increasing Interest in Cybersecurity Education and Careers

The world is facing a growing problem as people’s everyday lives are becoming more digital and increasing our reliance on cybersecurity to protect our interests, yet there are not enough security professionals to fulfill the rising demands.  This leaves gaps in the security of companies and organizations we share information with.  There is hope on the horizon.  Academia is adjusting to increase the training of graduates and there is a rising interest in students to study the variety of cybersecurity domains.  But more students are needed as demand is far outpacing the expected rise in available talent.

All the right elements are in place.  Pay for cybersecurity is on the rise, the needs for an estimated 1.5 million jobs is already growing, and higher education institutions are working collaboratively to establish the training infrastructure necessary for the next generation of security professionals to be prepared for success.  What is missing are the necessary numbers of students.  There simply is not enough.

The good news is millennials are interested, but need more information in order to commit.  Survey results from the Raytheon-NCSA Millennial report show the most prevalent factor for prospective students to increase their interest, is being provided data and expertise to explain what jobs entail.

Providing basic career information is absolutely possible but not as simple as it may seem.  Job roles do morph very rapidly.  Some data suggests as often as every nine months security professionals see their role, expectations, and focus being shifted into new areas or vary radically.  With such a rapid rate of change, cybersecurity is truly a dynamic domain where responsibilities are fluid.  This is not likely to turn off prospective millennials, as they are a generation which embraces diversity.  It may in fact, contribute to the attractiveness of these careers.  Combined with a strong employability and excellent pay, the industry should have no problem filling desk seats in universities.

What is needed right now are for experienced professionals to step up and work with educational institutions to explain the roles and responsibilities to the pool of prospective students.  Open forums, virtual meetings, presentations, in-class instruction, and even simple question-and-answer sessions can go a long way in painting a vivid picture of our industry, opportunities, and challenges which await.  The community should work together to attract applicants to the cyber sciences, especially women and underrepresented minorities who can bring in fresh ideas and perspectives.  I urge higher education institutions to reach out to the security community professionals and ask for help.  Many are willing to share their perspectives and industry knowledge to help inform students and encourage those who might be interested in a career in cybersecurity.  Only together can the private sector and academia help fulfill the needs for the next generation of security professionals.

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Software optimization boosting Tencent’s storage performance

By [email protected] on September 16, 2015

Making a large investment in buying new servers and adding computing power to your data center is not a good thing, if you are not able to maximize the return on investment. Have you ever considered that the software can be the bottleneck for your data center performance? I came across an interesting case about how Tencent achieved significant results in storage system performance through software and infrastructure optimization.

Most of you are probably familiar with Tencent, one of China’s top Internet service providers. Its popular products like QQ instant messenger*and Weixin*, as well as its online games, have become household names among active online users in the country.

With the popularity of its social media products and massive user base in hundreds of millions, it is not surprising that Tencent needs to process and store lots and lots data like images, video, mail and documents created by its users. If you are a user of Tencent’s products, you are likely contributing your photos and downloading your friends’, too. To manage such needs, Tencent uses a self-developed file system, the Tencent File System* (TFS*).

Previously, Tencent utilized a traditional triple redundancy backup solution which was not an efficient solution in storage utilization. The storage media was found to be a major cost factor of TFS. As a result, Tencent decided to implement an erasure-code solution using Jerasure* open source library running on Intel® architecture-based (IA-based) servers.

As Tencent engineers validated the new solution, they noticed the computing performance was lower than the I/O throughput of the storage and network subsystems. In other words, the storage servers were not able to compute the data as fast as the I/O subsystem could move them. Adding more compute power might appear as an obvious but costly solution. Instead, Tencent used software optimization tools like Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE and Intel® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library to identify inefficient codes in its system and optimize them for the Intel® Xeon® processor-based server. The results were very effective and the bottleneck of system performance moved to the I/O subsystems. This was then easily addressed by Tencent when it migrated to a 10 Gigabit network using Intel® Ethernet 10 Gigabit Converged Network Adapter.

As a result of the cost-effective optimization effort, Tencent was able to get the most out of the storage system it deployed. Tencent found the optimized erasure code solution effectively reduced storage space by 60 percent and storage performance enhanced by about 20 times, while the I/O performance of TFS improved by 2.8 times. With cold data now being processed using the new TFS system, Tencent has saved significant server resources and raised the performance-price ratio for storage.

The new solution not only contributed to performance and user experience. Tencent is also saving hundreds of kilowatts of energy as it no longer needed to purchase thousands of servers to meet its storage needs.

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Beyond Devices: mHealth is More Personal Today

by JohnSotosM  Nov 2, 2015 8:35:00 AM

The seventh annual mHealth Summit kicks off Nov. 8 with the theme, Anytime, Anywhere: Engaging Patients and Providers.

This event, which is now part of the HIMSS Connected Health Conference, has come a long way since the first show in 2008, when the focus was primarily on devices. Since then, the meaning of “mobility” has evolved, with mHealth now driving a swelling tide of innovation that will ultimately fill the data hole that has vexed physicians for millennia: How is my patient doing at home?  We’re seeing bits and pieces of the innovations and use-cases that will make this possible—from footstep-monitoring smart phones to wearable biosensors for Parkinson’s patients. But these just hint at the disruptive changes that lie ahead.

Where are we heading, and how do we get there? That’s what we are looking forward to sharing next week as several experts on our team will be presenting ideas on the next phase of mHealth technology.

For example, here are just a few of the activities on the agenda:

The Intel booth (#703) will be a hub of activity showcasing many leading technologies, such as: a Patient Room of the Future, remote patient monitoring systems, Intel® RealSense™ cameras for wound care, portable teleclinics, IoT platforms that record, store and analyze data, plus the newest mobile devices featuring Windows* 10.

I will be delivering a keynote address on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. in the Potomac Ballroom on the main stage and will be looking at mHealth’s growing role in enabling connected and proactive care wherever you are, tailored to you, your data, and your care community. Plus, I’ll be sharing some innovations that are moving us from wearable to implantable health technologies.

Our Cybersecurity Kiosk (#4) will feature our security expert, David Houlding, covering security maturity models and online tools. Come with your questions and have a chat with him.

The Connected Health Pavilion is where you can learn about big data analytics and see the Basis Peak™ watch in action in CH-3.

Mobility is a given as today’s healthcare continues expanding beyond institutions into more home-based and community care settings. Mobile technology offers the promise to help busy clinicians improve quality of care and efficiency of care delivery. Intel powers mobile devices with modern user interfaces for on-the-go clinicians, while helping IT departments meet the challenges of managing and securing devices in a “bring your own device” (BYOD) world.

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Patient Engagement: Pinpointing Best Practices

by Guest post Nov 5, 2015 1:33:00 PM

Patient engagement is a top-of-mind subject for healthcare providers. After all, successful patient engagement usually results in better outcomes for all parties involved in care – for providers, it can result in a more comprehensive view of their patients’ health and/or condition stability as well as improved patient satisfaction, and for patients it can mean more confidence in their improvement, their sense of care and ultimately their health.

Even with the industry’s sights set on the promise of patient engagement, many healthcare providers have found it difficult to connect with patients in a meaningful way. While widespread consumerization of healthcare has not yet taken hold, there are still some compelling examples of organizations that are moving toward meaningful patient engagement, which can easily serve as a form of encouragement for those still seeking direction.

Recently, athenahealth collected data from millions of portal visits and more than 2,000 clients in hopes to be able to “nudge medical staff in the interest of better efficiency and performance.” Their findings could be equally as helpful to other providers, with key takeaways such as:

Age is not necessarily a pain point. Many providers are tempted to point to their diverse portfolio of patients when examining troubles with patient engagement. While in some cases, older individuals are slower to adapt to new norms and less comfortable with technology, athenahealth has found that in terms of patient portals, age is not a limiting factor. Specifically, the study found that “patients in their 60s register for portal accounts at the same rate as those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s” and “patients between 70 and 79 use portals at roughly the same rate as twenty-somethings.” Speaking even further to age as a non-issue, athenahealth points out that “older patients sign into their portal accounts significantly more often than younger patients.”

Specialty providers can benefit from portals. Athenahealth found “significant” adoption of patient portals from specialty practices. They name “tremendous reductions in staff work from engaging patients electronically” and “better adherence to perioperative protocols” as specific successes.

Defaults encourage engagement. Providers should not be hesitant to sign patients up for portals automatically – leaving them with the option to opt out. Athenahealth found that practices using this approach “see a much higher adoption rate than practices that ask patients to register for the portal on their own.”

As an industry, we know that patient engagement is more than complying with meaningful use requirements – we are moving forward with better strategies to engage patients and with the intention of creating an overall better-coordinated care experience. Portals are not the only tool available, but they remain a great place to start. As patient engagement continues to challenge providers, it’s important to follow the latest studies and their results, such as the one from athenahealth. These insights into the healthcare industry are a great way to glean best practices, understand different approaches, and understand what an improved patient engagement strategy can look like for your organization. By sharing findings, opinions, successes, and failures, we can, together, reinforce what really matters: improving overall care and maintaining patients as the top priority.

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Hybrid-Access: A New and Ultrafast Path for bringing Broadband to Underserved Customers

By Christoph von Schierstaedt on October 27, 2015

What can you achieve by integrating an industry standard protocol with a powerful telecom network server node and powerful Intel Home Gateway network processor?

How about a fast path to enhanced broadband access for underserved customers? Intel and Ericsson are using standards-based technology to improve the broadband experience of consumers and optimize carrier network utilization. The collaboration will help telecom carriers meet requirements for fast broadband services on the edge of widely distributed network service regions.

In demonstrations at Broadband World Forum 2015,the two companies are showing an end-to-end access solution based on Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP). The hybrid solution aggregates the bandwidth of both DSL and LTE transmission links to multiply data rates and create a single, powerful broadband pipe between the network service node and customer’s Broadband gateway / router.

Benefit for User and Telcos

The global average broadband access speed is 3.9 Megabit per second. A growing number of network operators face the challenge to upgrade these underserved regions and customers in a cost-effective way to higher broadband speeds. Use case scenarios show that for example a “20 UP / 20 Down Mbps data pipe” would perfectly serve the broadband needs of today’s cloud based services, IPTV or modern office scenarios. The combination of fast VDSL and LTE enables operators to reach this performance goal with minimum investment as they smartly re-use their existing network infrastructure. Carriers combining mobile and fixed line network access can even create one broadband pipe that reaches up to 300 Mbps aggregated data throughput with high reliability.

The Intel / Ericsson hybrid access approach adds an LTE link to a DSL gateway, allowing operators to boost broadband access performance. At the same time operators significantly increase their network reliability for fallback scenarios. As a result, combining DSL and LTE opens up new business opportunities for Operators.

For the broadband subscriber, the benefits are obvious: Superfast broadband connection on existing infrastructure, without any construction works. Users simply need to plug in their new broadband routers at home and are ready to go.

Technology helps to bring Broadband to Underserved Regions

The MultiPath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) is a Linux kernel protocol that is currently in the standardization process with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (RFC6824). Ericsson is adding the protocol to the feature set of its MultiService Proxy (MSP) network node. Concurrently, Intel is incorporating the technology in a new DSLTE™ Home Gateway reference design based on the AnyWAN™ GRX 350. Intel AnyWAN platforms can be easily configured to support any incoming WAN data link, including all variants of Cable, DSL, FTTx and LTE. That simplifies design and implementation of product families for OEM/ODM customers and helps ensure that carriers can source solutions from multiple Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) vendors.

“With three years of experience as a provider of DSLTE gateways, we know that telecom providers recognize the importance of improving the experience of end-users on the network edge,” said Dan Artusi, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Connected Home Division. “The Intel DSLTE reference design enables suppliers to quickly develop products to fill this need for carriers. Developing this Hybrid Access platform with Ericsson as a world leader in communications technology brings tremendous value to carriers. They can optimize the performance of their network assets and finally offer best user experience and ultrafast broadband connection to the subscriber.”

Hybrid DSL and LTE is a cost-effective way to upgrade DSL for subscribers that only have access to low data rates today and live in areas where it is too expensive for the operator to upgrade network infrastructure (using VDSL, bonding, vectoring, or fiber). It’s a superb complement to the broadband mix of network operators as it extends the reach of broadband service with no new investment in existing DSL or LTE infrastructure.

Ericsson’s Multiservice Proxy (MSP), a part of the Media Delivery Network solution, is the link between mobile networks and Internet services and gives the operator a rich suite of tools with which to optimize and assure data delivery. Ericsson is the leader in video and data delivery solutions. The Ericsson MSP is deployed with over 150 Media Delivery customers to date.

The Intel/Ericsson collaboration is the first open, software-based end-to-end hybrid solution to increase broadband capability and optimize carrier network utilization using existing infrastructure. Development projects with select customers are starting now, with general commercial availability planned for the first half of 2016.

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The Enchantress of Numbers: Remembering Ada Lovelace, the Mother of Tech Marketing

By Kim Gerardi on December 10, 2015

As we look ahead to the future of tech, marketing, and diversity in STEM fields, it’s important to take a glance back. History can tell us a lot about who we are now, but most importantly it can illustrate ways that we can get from where we are to where we want to be. One of my personal inspirations is the incomparable Ada Lovelace. Ada is often called the first programmer, but she was so much more than that — and I suggest that her most important role was as the first tech marketer. Modern leaders, innovators, and storytellers in tech can learn a lot from her and her story.

“The Enchantress of Numbers”

Ada Lovelace

Born Augusta Ada Byron in 1815, Ada’s parents were a famous poet and a devout scientist — virtually fating her to have a remarkable life. Her father, George Gordon Byron (or more commonly, Lord Byron), was only married to her mother for a year before they separated when Ada was just a month old. Ada’s mother, Anne Isabella Noel Byron, was a devoted lifelong student of math and science. Afraid that Ada would inherit her father’s extreme emotions and wild behavior, Anne kept her daughter on a strict regimen of math and science. Art and poetry were forbidden.

From this strict upbringing, Ada grew up to be an educated woman with a brilliant mathematical mind that was evident to everyone around her. When she was 18, she was introduced to a renowned mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, who was immediately impressed by her. Despite her mother’s attempts to quell her imagination, Ada was still filled with ideas about the future of science. Later Charles would call her “The Enchantress of Numbers,” observing that she threw “her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects could have exerted over it.”

Marketing the Engine of Change

Charles showed Ada his Difference Engine, a counting machine he’d been hired to design by the British government. Ada was fascinated by the machine and continued to write letters back and forth with Charles for the next nine years; during this time, Babbage updated his Difference Engine into a more general-purpose computer he called the Analytical Engine. After the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea wrote a long paper about the Analytical Engine, Charles convinced Ada to translate it into English and improve it with a few footnotes. However, the final English translation was nearly three times as long, and illustrated a sort of insight into the possibilities of the technology that had eluded even the inventor.

It may have been Babbage who did the engineering and Menabrea who first described it, but it was Ada who was able to take a description of a machine and contextualize it, articulate the human story behind it, and envision what it might mean for the future. Ada put the pieces together and put a human face on computing technology — she was the first tech marketer, and in this regard she was a visionary.

A Testament to the Power of Diversity

Ada was able to do this in an era in which the idea of women in STEM was virtually unthinkable. To give some context, in the same time and place when Ada was articulating the human face of technology, the Brontë sisters had to write their novels under men’s names in order to get published. Ada’s story is but one of countless illustrations of just how important it is to bring diversity to STEM. You never know where the next revolutionary idea is going to come from.

Many historians have pointed out that Ada didn’t add much to the way counting machines were built, and that she probably didn’t write any of the punch card programs the machines ran. As a brilliant mathematician, it’s likely she had the skill set to do so; however, her true skill was that of a visionary and as a connector of the dots between the hard sciences and the humanities.

Bringing Poetry into STEM

Ada Lovelace

Whenever I meet with young STEM students, my advice for them is just the opposite of Ada’s mother’s guidance — I encourage them to expand their studies by taking classes in poetry, literature, and other forms of creativity that are vastly different from mathematics. Although the literary arts may seem unrelated on the surface, they get you to think differently. Fostering the creative side of your brain can help you look at problems in new ways.

Even more, a proficiency in language empowers you to communicate your insights effectively to others, which is a critical skill. Ada’s ability to connect the dots between the technological innovation and the possibilities it held was invaluable. A century later, the personal computer first appeared as a consumer product in the 1969 Neiman Marcus holiday fantasy gift catalogue as a $10,000 recipe storage machine. Today, look at all that has been possible because of the personal computer.  Creative possibility thinking and skilled communication are skills to acquire in STEM fields to be sure.

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Building the Next-Generation Car with Intel IoT

By Sam Lamagna on November 23, 2015

Consider for a moment what the creation of a truly connected and intelligent vehicle could mean. First and foremost, increased safety. Also, improved fuel efficiency. Less congestion. Decreased pollution.

Even better? A driving experience enhanced with Intel Internet of Things (IoT) that can help make your commute safer, more productive, and enjoyable.

With the rapid convergence of commute and compute, the automotive industry is undergoing a radical transition not seen since the creation of the assembly line. And that’s presenting automotive and IT professionals with a unique opportunity: to take a fundamentally different approach to vehicle function, design, and construction.

Today, our cars are transportation machines that contain computers. Tomorrow, they’ll be intelligent data devices that actively help us take advantage of every moment on the road. Even the materials we use to build them may change; we could have plastic vehicles, or even biodegradable ones.

Sound too sci-fi? It’s not. Look at what we’re already doing with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Twenty years ago, adaptive cruise control, automatic parking and braking, blind spot detection, and collision avoidance—and self-driving cars—were just engineers’ dreams.

Navigating a connected environment with V2x

As automakers race to build the ultimate ADAS, two camps are emerging.

The first is focusing on vehicle message passing, in which the car communicates with:

Other vehicles (V2V)

Infrastructure points, like signs and traffic lights (V2I)

Bicyclists and pedestrians, via smart-phone apps and wearables (V2P)

The cloud (V2C)

Combined, we call this “V2x.”

The main challenge with V2x is what to do with the incoming data. Many proponents feel that the best approach is to compile and present it to the driver to interpret and act upon. But then there’s the danger of information overload. We know from managing cybersecurity breaches that it’s risky to treat all incoming threats equally. They need to be prioritized, so that people are alerted only to the most pressing concerns.

Plus, much industry work is required to ensure that V2x communication protocols are standardized. To get a serious systemic payoff from the technology, all vehicles must speak a common language. Disparate formats will both diffuse the safety benefits and confuse consumers.

Finally, V2x by itself is dependent on robust network connectivity. Not all wireless communication protocols are created equally in ensuring secured, deterministic message passing. And not all can achieve global ubiquity, efficiency, and cost-effective economies of scale.

Putting the driver in the passenger seat with onboard intelligence

The alternate camp says the way to increase driving safety, enjoyment, and productivity is to remove critical tasks from the driver and assign them to an onboard computer. To, essentially, create an autonomous car.

That means the individual vehicle reads and reacts to its surroundings, so it’s less dependent on connectivity and incoming messages.

There are challenges to address here, as well.

Security is as much a concern with autonomous cars as it is with V2x. You don’t want your connectivity or onboard systems vulnerable to hacking. And the profusion of discrete electronic control modules (ECMs) aboard an intelligent car presents a tempting array of attack vectors. Particularly since many are sourced from third-party suppliers and may go unchanged for years.

Then there’s the challenge of getting public buy-in. In the United States in particular, we have a driving culture that values individual driver control. If you ask your average driver if they want a computer to take over in an emergency, many will say no.

Joining the best of both worlds

So, my question is, why do we have to choose one or the other of those approaches? Why not blend the two to create an incredibly intelligent vehicle with an ADAS that can interpret and respond to its surroundings, and augment it with connectivity to cameras, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), and radar? A vehicle that complements and enhances human cognitive abilities, rather than replacing them?

Reimagining the car, from the wheels up

To build this next-generation intelligent car, we’ll have to enable sensor output fusion and shift to a centralized computer—one that can mimic a human brain. And the vehicle will need 360-degree awareness.

This will require an unprecedented amount of compute horsepower in a small thermal envelope, scalable from vehicle to vehicle and generation to generation. It will also require the greatest ratio of performance per watt per cost per functional safety. Plus—and this is critical—the system has to fail safely and fail operationally.

So, as you can see, all of this calls for a major reimagining of car architecture. As well as unprecedented levels of collaboration between industries, government agencies, consumers, and special interest groups.

Developing the car as a platform for innovation

That’s why my team at Intel is made up of a combination of forward thinkers from the automotive industry, industrial control, functional safety, and overall platform design. As well as hardcore IT silicon specialists who have dedicated their careers to building mission-critical servers.

Together, we’re looking at the car as a holistic platform. We’re exploring the best and most efficient way to capture data, then securely move it from the edge to the central brain in real time.

No more siloed systems. No more just bolting on another box when you want to add an ADAS feature. We’re building a whole new backbone. One with a brain that assists as needed and controls when control is handed over to it. Essentially, we’re creating an entire car that’s an ADAS.

To do that, we’re borrowing best practices from the avionics industry. Think about how commercial aviation has changed. And how it hasn’t.

We now have onboard computers, autopilot, and collision avoidance systems, and they all make air travel far safer and more reliable. But we haven’t made pilots obsolete; they’re still the apex decision makers. And that’s how we think the next-generation intelligent car should operate.

Driving the evolution of automotive with Intel IoT

For more than a century, motor vehicle research and development has concentrated on engineering mechanical systems. Automatic transmissions. Air conditioning. More efficient engines.

But that emphasis is shifting as the worlds of automotive manufacturing and computing converge. In the future, the majority of vehicle research will focus on software, not hardware.

Intel IoT is uniquely situated to play a central role in developing a connected car; one that not only leverages more powerful and efficient computing, but can also help to enhance safety and security. We’ve been involved in mission-critical systems for decades. And we want to catalyze the development of best practices, standards, and platforms that will be used across the automotive industry.

That’s why we created the Automotive Security Review Board (ASRB) to convene top thinkers from across the technology and automotive sectors. The ASRB is exploring how drivers use cars, what they value, and how we can expand the user experience. And, above all, how to increase safety and reduce accidents.

Intel is also inviting industry experts to comment on our new white paper, Automotive Security Best Practices: Recommendations for Security and Privacy in the Era of the Next-Generation Car. We’ll publish revisions based upon feedback and findings from the ASRB.

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Successful Mobile Analytics Solutions Demand A Mobile Mindset

When we design for mobile analytics solutions, we are not just building a report or a dashboard. We’re designing to deliver a superior mobile user experience each and every time.

This means we need to consider all facets of user interactions and take a holistic approach when dealing with all aspects of the “mobile analytics user life cycle.” This life cycle starts before installation and does not end after the mobile analytics asset is downloaded and consumed.

In this new Intel Tech Innovation series, I will be covering many aspects of the mobile analytics design from installation to user interface (UI), from functionality to performance. I consider these best practices to be a framework for innovation applicable to all mobile analytics solutions regardless of your organization’s size, industry, or business model.

As anyone who designs professionally can tell you (whether interior designer, technology consultant, or product specialist), design is both art and science. Building the end-product is the science part. How we go about it? That’s completely art. It requires both ingenuity and critical thinking, since not all components of design come with hard-and-fast rules that we can rely on.

You can’t design for mobile like you do for a PC

In order to design an effective solution, we need to first get a sense of what mobile analytics represents. Although your perception of mobile analytics will be influenced primarily by your understanding of enterprise analytics or business intelligence, there are fundamental differences between mobile design and traditional, PC-based analytics design. Some of these changes may be obvious and others are more subtle.

Understanding these distinctions is critical and must come before we write a single line of code. So I’ll explore some of these contrasts in this series, and include examples to illustrate different design concepts for the benefit of both the layman and tech savvy.

Great mobile design requires the right mindset

As mobile architects and designers, we must embrace a certain mobile design philosophy that will be unique to each of us and the environments we work in. This is important because that philosophy will be our guiding light when best practices alone may not be enough to help us navigate in uncharted waters.

To me, mobile design requires a mindset that embodies human ingenuity in order to generate excitement for new ideas that can lead to mobile solutions to address unmet needs. Therefore, I always argue that mobile analytics must draw its strength from a desire to go beyond the basic capabilities of a mobile device to deliver actionable insight for faster, better-informed decisions.

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Intel Supports CONNECT for Health Making Chronic Disease Patients’ Lives Better

By Alice Borrelli on February 2, 2016

Tomorrow, Senate and House champions for remote care will take an important step toward making the lives of chronic disease patients better through the introduction of the CONNECT for Health legislation. Working with providers for chronic disease patients in a wide range of settings, we have seen connected care keep patients out of hospitals and emergency rooms for unnecessary visits. By delivering clinically approved educational information to patients in an immediate response to their recorded vital signs, patients are empowered to change their behavior toward a healthier lifestyle and sustained wellness. For example, Care Innovations (an Intel -GE joint venture) participated with Ascension Health’s St. Vincent’s Hospital in a Beacon Community grant where a 75% reduction in readmission rates for patients with chronic disease was documented. Today, Care Innovations has an ongoing program with the University of Mississippi Medical Center, designed to measure the impact of connecting rural diabetics to chronic care managers utilizing a remote care management solution. Initial results show a cost savings of over $334,000 for the first 100 enrolled patients.  Total projected Medicaid savings for the State of Mississippi are $189 million annually.

Intel supports the thoughtful approach by Senators Schatz, Wicker, Cochran, Thune, Cardin and Warner and Representatives Black, Harper and Welch have taken over the last year to develop a legislation that will expand access for patients while reducing unnecessary expenses. We consider the CONNECT for Health legislation to be the model for chronic care improvements through remote care.

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Cybersecurity is Suffering Due to Human-Resource Challenges

By Matthew Rosenquist on January 28, 2016

The cybersecurity industry is in a state of disrepair. Human resource problems are growing which put the efforts to secure technology at risk, due to insufficient staffing, skills, and diversity.

The need for talent is skyrocketing, but there aren’t enough qualified workers to meet the current or future demands.  By 2017, prospective hiring organizations may have upwards of 2 million unfilled security related positions.  With supply low and demand high, prices rise quickly.

Security roles benefit on average from a $12,000 pay premium over other computer related jobs.  Job growth in the digital security field outpaced IT positions by double and twelve times the rate of the overall job market.  As a consequence, hiring companies are becoming very creative in their attempts to attract talent.  Industry headhunting practices are more aggressive and prolific to meet the demand.  Companies must not only deal with the challenges of hiring, they must also maneuver carefully to retain the professionals they currently have.

To add to the problem is a lack of diversity.  The industry needs greater inclusion of more diverse people who infuse new ideas, innovation, and practices.  Without an expanding range of perspectives, the industry remains encumbered by traditional thinking.  It becomes limited by the boundaries imposed from homogenous experiences, while the threats evolve and blossom in both size and depth of imagination.

Lastly, graduates lack consistency and applicability of skills.  Cybersecurity is a rapidly changing field, requiring student’s growth and knowledge to keep pace with relevant methods, technology, and practices.  The education system is facing tremendous challenges to reliably prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals to be able to protect the digital world we want to live in.

To correct the problem, the industry needs to attract a broader pool of students, including women and underrepresented minorities, to sufficiently meet demand and infuse varied perspectives into the workforce.  Academia must align education practices to deliver higher levels of consistency and timeliness of skills in high demand for a rapidly evolving employment landscape.  Only then will we achieve a sustainable position to create the future generations of cybersecurity professionals necessary to protect technology.

Diversity in Cybersecurity Education – 2016 ICT keynote – M.Rosenquist  from Matthew Rosenquist

I recently spoke at the ICT Educator Conference and highlighted the workforce challenges, the need for more diversity, and how Intel is working to improve the academic pipeline.  One of the highlights I discussed was Intel’s $300 million investment in diversity.  It is a great example of how a corporation can make a difference in the hiring, progression, and retention of a diverse workforce, contribute to building a sustainable flow of talent, and directly support other organizations doing the same.  Finally, I discussed how academia is shifting to build a formal degree program for cyber-science related fields.  This will ease the frustrations of hiring organizations by improving the consistency of skills supported by applicants’ degrees.

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The Mobile Utility Worker of the Future: 3D Depth Information and Wearables

By Kevin O'Donovan on January 26, 2015

In a world that’s never slow to hype the next best big thing, augmented reality and wearable technology are certainly on the 2015 hype curve. At CES a few weeks back, both were key themes. As we head off to DistribuTECH in San Diego, it will be interesting to see how much these “consumer” topics will be present. From the exhibitor line up, a number of companies are showing off various industry use cases for both. I’d propose that these topics have some real concrete utility industry use cases already today.

Let’s look at augmented reality first. Cameras in mobile devices that provide overlays of GIS data to photo images are not new, but the ability to now get 3D depth information opens a whole different set of use cases. The capabilities of the Intel® RealSense™ Snapshot Depth Camera are impressive. Devices such as the super thin Dell Venue 8 7000 Series tablet, which won the prestigious 2015 CES “Best of Innovation” award, comes equipped with the Intel® RealSense™ Snapshot Depth Camera.

For wearables, the newly announced Intel® Curie module, a complete low-power solution designed for developing wearable technology, also opens a raft of potential innovation. We’re seeing companies exploring safety vests, hard hats that detect impacts, and wearables that detect proper lifting technique to prevent back and knee injuries. You may see this as a bit of overkill, but these use cases are in the market and can be a benefit for health, safety and wellness as well as heading off insurance claims down the line. Regardless of the business case, preventing a bad back later in life has to be a good thing.

While the technology that enables all of this is remarkable, it’s not all about the technology. The key feature here is related to acceptance of the technology, especially by the worker; it has to bring them value. This can lead to some interesting discussions around tradeoffs. Everyone agrees the technology would be beneficial if a wearable provides the ability to detect if a worker is in a place of danger, or if they have fallen in a remote location. But the same technology can also figure out that the worker is in the local coffee shop when he or she is not supposed to be.

The same tradeoff goes for wearables that provide heads-up display technology. We’ve all seen some great use cases on how such technology can be used for on the job training, servicing a given product, or showing a support group in real time what’s going on at a given site. But then what happens when a worker walks into my street or house wearing such a device? Am I comfortable with this? This can make for a number of interesting ‘what if’ scenarios.

The good news is that the utility industry does not have to figure all of this out by itself. Governments are striving to come up with overall privacy legislation that allows for protection of the individual, whether a  private citizen or a worker.

The bottom line is that we seeing more and more companies exploring the benefits such capabilities can bring. Innovation today is being driven by business need.

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The Journey to 5G is built on Open Architecture

Posted by Raejeanne Skillern in The Data Stack on Feb 24, 2016 2:52:00 PM

The rise of the digital services economy demands a new generation of data center infrastructure, one that is software-defined and provides data center-wide resource pooling for efficiency. This next-generation architecture must be ready for the data rates of 5G networks and an ever-larger flood of bits and bytes from billions of connected devices and the Internet of Things.

This isn’t just talk of the future. This is a look at what is here today in the form of next-generation data center solutions that are in the spotlight this week at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 in Barcelona.

In one of these solutions, Ericsson used the MWC event to showcase a new strategic partnership with Quanta Computer to scale the design, development, and manufacturing of an expanded, next-generation Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000.

This Ericsson solution is based on a software-defined architecture that leverages key Intel technologies for the next-generation data center, including alignment to the Intel® Rack Scale Architecture and Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications. Ericsson plans to offer the forward-looking solution in both existing form factors and an OCP form factor, with all designs and component alternatives managed via a common software control plane.

To further accelerate the development of the Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 solution and open architectures for hyperscale data centers, Ericsson has joined the Open Compute Project as a platinum-level member. The company is focusing its OCP efforts on hardware design for scale-out data center solutions that will drive the adoption of the Intel Rack Scale Architecture with open form factors.

This is a very powerful mix—best practices from the Open Compute Project and Intel® Rack Scale Architecture coupled with software-defined infrastructure to deliver advanced automation capabilities for the next-generation cloud data center. Put it all together and you’re poised to help companies capitalize on the opportunities brought by lightning-fast 5G networks and billions of connected devices.

Want to make this story even better? In another MWC announcement, Ericsson unveiled its plans to extend its cloud transformation services and infrastructure portfolio to leverage Amazon Web Services. Under a new global alliance, Ericsson and AWS will work together to accelerate cloud transformation for communication service providers by driving the convergence of mobile infrastructure and cloud.

At Intel, we love to see world-class companies collaborating to accelerate this transformation. We’re not talking about making incremental changes to the existing infrastructure. Together we are simplifying advanced technologies and accelerating mass adoption of new data center architectures that are built to fuel the next wave of the digital services economy. We’re talking about putting a new software-defined foundation in place to drive a whole new level of scale and automation.