Intel wants WiMAX to power a mobile computing revolution

YOU HAVE TO WONDER whether Sean Maloney, way back when he joined Intel, figured that he'd have to become as much actor as techie in his career ahead.

But since presentation and spin - as we now know - rule Middle Earth, you need to cut the mustard on stage as well as in the meeting room, should you aspire to lofty heights.

A supporting cast helps, of course, and Maloney wheeled out an old favourite here today in the form of the man who, according to him, "invented the mobile phone and changed the world," Marty Cooper.

Marty too had studied his script. A doddery old fellow now, with silver beard and yet a twinkle in the eye, Cooper must do the rounds carting along with him his brick, or - as it was heralded on the day he and his colleagues at Motorola unveiled it to a bemused world -“the take-along phone”.

And, according to Marty, what had enabled him to come up with the brick was the fact that AT&T had cottoned on to the idea of a cellular network to, he said, enable the telephone in the car. Why stop in the car? he mused. Why not take it everywhere? The last 35 years have proved that people wanted to be mobile. “We freed them,” he proclaimed.

Of course, where Marty was leading was to WiMax. The problem with Wi-fi he said is that you have to find a hot-spot. WiMax on the other hand offers broadband at very low cost.

Maloney, introducing Marty said that the uptake for mobile phones was similar to that of laptops. Except that, after twenty years or so, mobile use went through the roof. Intel is banking on the same thing happening for mobile computing devices, whether this be a laptop or something smaller Intel will have a 45nm chip to power it.

That chip may well currently enjoy the label Silverthorn, from what we can gather. µ