It's worth remembering what Intel is about. The company sells lightly spiced silicon -- the second most common element on earth -- and is dedicated to proving that anything more exotic elements can do, silicon can do better. Each successive presentation highlighted a market that Intel intends to attack in the near future, with the emphasis on how the Intel way with silicon was better than the accepted wisdom of how it's been done in the past.
Wireless networks operating at impossible frequencies with incredible bandwidths need to be made from gallium and indium and other peculiarly difficult exotica, say those who specialise in such things. Nonsense, says Intel. Silicon chips that do all that, and can be churned out by the million.
High definition displays that fill a wall with gorgeous video need physics stretched to the limit, millions of microscopic mirrors arrayed by nanotechnology or hyper-expensive specialist LCDs, says that industry. Nope, Intel replies. Take a silicon chip, smear it with the appropriate gunk to create a display, and mass-produce the results cheaper and better than any alternative.
Or take the world of fibre optics, where you can squeeze gigabits a second down hair-thin glass threads stretching kilometres. You merely have to spend many thousands of pounds on the exotic devices needed to turn billions of pulses of electricity per second to neat little bundles of photons and back again at the far end. Nah, Intel has a better answer: you can squeeze, scratch and scrape silicon to do exactly the same job, and forget about the money. It will be so cheap, says Intel, the chips inside your PC will use it to talk to each other using light instead of slowpoke electricity.
