At the 2008 Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco the future was clear: visual computing. From games to television, from large systems to handhelds, the demand on hardware and software platforms will be to run large amounts of data more efficiently with less power. Some of the breakthroughs to bring video and audio more easily and seamlessly to users include the scalable Nehalem chip architecture, the Media Processor CE 3100, and the architecture codenamed Larrabee.

Connected Social Media Corporate, Intel, Intel Developer Forum, Intel Nehalem 2008 Intel Developer Forum, CE 3100, games, IDF, Intel, Larrabee, Nehalem, visual computing

Intel’s invitation-only event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., showed off the company’s diverse research projects in areas like visual computing, health, life sciences, green-friendly technologies, and wireless, to name a few. “Intel scientists can propose research on any topic they envision a solution for,” said Manny Vara, Intel’s technology marketing director at Intel’s R&D Labs. “It can start when a scientist comes across a problem, even outside of work, and says, ‘Hey, I could do something about that.’” Intel scientists have engaged in diverse research projects from digital money to mobile antennas that provide access to cell phone services in developing regions of the world. This year’s Research@Intel Day featured more than 70 projects.

Connected Social Media Corporate, Intel, Research@Intel digital money, Intel, Manny Vara, mobile antennas, Research@Intel, Research@Intel, visual computing

This year’s Spring IDF, in Shanghai, brought the global community of Intel developers to one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, to discuss one of the most rapidly-changing technologies, and the incredible impact that all of that change is bound to have. Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Digital Enterprise Group, Pat Gelsinger, referred to Intel’s efforts broadly as “architecture for life.” If it sounds ambitious, it is.

The speed of change in the software world is daunting. In his own keynote, SVP and General Manager of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel, Anand Chandrasekher, noted that everyone is trying to “unleash the Internet, unwire it, and make it go mobile.” Again, the words sound almost obvious, like common sense. They’re not.

It’s true that Intel specializes in bringing incredible advancements to technology on a tick-tock product development schedule that allows industries to grow and thrive. You can see in the matter of weeks and months that Intel’s efforts go from being rumor to being confirmed technological advances (like the recent Dunnington news) that the world is watching itself change in real time. It’s true that a lot of time at IDF in Shanghai was devoted to presentations on specific technologies, platforms and products.

We heard a lot more about Nehalem, about visual computing, about multithreaded CPUs (And just for fun, compare this detailed look at Intel’s sometimes-inscrutable codenames with a detailed look at those same codenames, from a slightly different perspective). Keynotes from Gelsinger and Chandrasekher, along with Software and Solutions Group General Manager and Intel Vice President Renee James and Intel’s Andrew Chien helped to clarify just how much more mobile our technology will allow us to be.

But always in the backdrop was Shanghai. In this video podcast, Jason Lopez connects the dots between Intel’s efforts to push technology past its limits and Shanghai’s amazing journey to pass its own.

Connected Social Media Corporate, Intel, Intel Developer Forum, Intel Nehalem 32nm, 45nm, Anand Chandrasekher, Andrew Chien, architecture for life, Centrino, Dunnington, high performance computing, IDF, IDF2008, Intel Atom, Intel developers, Jason Lopez, mobile Internet device, multithreaded CPUs, Multithreading, Nehalem, Pat Gelsinger, Renee James, Shanghai, Silverthorne, unleash the Internet, virtualization, visual computing, WiMax, wireless technology