USB took longer to develop than to win World War II

The topics are AGP 8X -- which will disappear when PCI Express is go, PCI Express, Advanced TCA, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, Infiniband, PC migration, universal plug and pray, spectrum policy, UWB and 802.11x.

But first here's what Andy Grove had to say about why USB took five years to develop, according to Kicking Pat himself.

"We fought and won World War II in less time that it took you to finish USB." As Pat noted, this was not really a compliment.

AG8X
The guy broke the microphone but that was OK because he had a big voice. He said that AGP8X uses the same connector, power delivery, and signal interface as AGP4X and the same programming. The first INTC support for AGP8X will come in workstations at the end of the year. (We saw some Granite Bay boards in the exhibition area from Tyan and that's what its spec said too.)

AGP8X is supposed to improve performance on high end desktops.

PCI Express
The microphone was still broken but this guy had a low voice so we missed half of what he said until the middle, when the microphone was fixed again.<> PCI Express will be used for different kinds of form factors, one example being an external hot plug module, a PC Card replacement for mobiles and desktops.

The first building blocks will appear in 2003, with volume production in 2004, just coming along nicely enough to coincide with Microsoft's Longhorn.

We talked to the PCI Express Working Group -- it has 800 members spread across the whole gamut of industry members. It is showing working demonstrations of prototype silicon and tools.

Advanced TCA (Telecom Computing Architecture
Our own Tony Dennis would understand what the acronym PICMG means, but esentially the architecture seems to be a high speed serial interconnect optimised backplane supporting Ethernet, Infiniband, PCI Express and Star Fabric. The specs and the first prototypes arrive by the end of this year.

USB 2.0
Intel is calling USB 2.0 "Hi Speed" USB 2.0 and Jason Chipzilla said the logo means systems are tested and certified. There are drivers for XP and W2K, and native support in SP1 for MS Windows and .net server. There are also drivers for Linux and there will be native Linux drivers in the next release of the kernel.

Eighty per cent of all PCs shipped in 2003 are likely to have USB 2.0 support, and there are over 300 certified USB 2 peripherals for sale.

Serial ATA
We covered that in a separate story elsewhere in today's rag.

But the lasses and lads over at the Intel stand are showing some tweaks to Serial ATA which will be incorporated in ATA II.

Infiniband
The bus that is supposed to last for another thirty years -- which is what Intel said two years ago -- is a little de-emphasised, with the Infiniband Trade Association having to take the helm. Intel has an Infiniband Evaluation Programme.

Ease of Use
When you move from an old PC to a new PC it ain't easy, as those of us who have had machines since the early 1980s know.

According to Intel, consumer migration can take from days to months (that's years in our case, sometimes), some data sizes are unmanageable, emails are not that easy to move. Intel's initiative is intended to help make these things easier. We suggest the best thing to do this is for Intel to write the operating system and application software, and not Microsoft.

The PC Migration Working Group was started on September 4th and includes Microsoft (aargh), Altiris, Detto, Eisenworld, IBM, Intel, Laplink, Miramar, Symantec and Tranxition. It wants to concentrate on awareness and trust for both businesses and consumers, and develop building blocks for future migration.

Universal Plug and Pray
This group has over 500 members and has a 20 company strong steering committe, although Intel as a founding member has a presence in Gateways, A/V, and Security.

The Universal Plug and Pray Implementers Corporation (UIC), looks after certification and logos, and is led by a board of directors.

New initiatives include a UPNP 802.11x access point, A/V version two, and Remote IO.

Spectrum Policy
Intel found itself in hot water with the UK Radiotelecommunications Agency earlier this year. It wants to harmonise regulation worldwide with this initiative, and try and lobby for regulation to technical outputs and not content.

UWB
Ultra Wide Bandwidth is an idea for high bandwidth short range wireless comms, there's 7.5GHz of free spectrum in the US and over a distance of around three metres, you can get 500MBps, the firm reckons.

Intel's is to design simple CMOS transmitters with very low power and at a cheap price.

There's spectrum problems here though -- it's only legal in the US, and INTC is lobbying Japan and the European Union for the kind of changes it wants. IEEE standard number 802.15.3 may use UWB for high speed wireless networks, but we're talking 2005 here, folks.

802.11
Intel is working on 802.11i, a security version of the standard. It also wants to introduce dual band 802.a/b and then the tri mode which will include 802.a, b, and g.

802.11e will give support for high quality streaming video and audio. Intel is also taking a keen interest in GPRS, mobile VPN (virtual private networks), and mobile IP.