Intelligent automobile

Safety-enforcing, self-parking car

Paul Horrell

Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other implanted tech will enable future cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?
   I'm driving through eastern France, the blip-blip of the lane markers zinging backward through my peripheral vision at about 90 mph. I check the mirrors: nothing there. Pretending to doze off, I let the car drift gently to the left. Just as it begins to veer over the dotted line, the left side of my seat vibrates, activated by an infrared sensor looking at the road paint. Meander right, and it's my right thigh that gets the warning. If this really had been a case of inattention rather than journalistic inquiry, I can assure you that the buzzing seat would have jolted me back to the job at hand. The car I'm driving is a prototype from the French automaker Peugeot Citroën, but a showroom-ready copy isn't many months away.
   Flash back five months: I'm at a test track at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, in a Lexus fitted with a pre-crash safety system. I drive down the track at about 40 mph toward a rubber post. Instinct and education make it hard to keep my foot off the brake, but a group of earnest engineers insist that I aim their $70-grand sedan straight for the post. At the last fraction of a second, when the car's radar sensors and microprocessors have determined that the idiot at the wheel really isn't going to steer around the obstacle, the safety system shoots into action. Seatbelt pre-tensioners cinch up, and the front and rear suspension dampers stiffen. As soon as I touch the brake pedal-better late than never-the car's brake-assist tugs them on at max effort. It isn't enough to avoid the crash, but the impact speed is about half what it would have been without the new system.
   The next generation of environment-sensing cars will use more than just radar and infrared sensors to watch for signs of trouble. Video cameras will look for stoplights that have turned red and for children who are running toward the road. Distance-sensing lasers will check for vehicles in the driver's blind spot and the passing lane. These sensors won't do anything that a vigilant driver can't already do, but what if they could? What if your car could sense road conditions and traffic problems that are out of your sight? That's coming too.
   The next giant leap in sensing will be radio networking that enables cars to exchange information. "Communication [between cars] will be like an additional sensor," says Ralf Herrtwich, director of vehicle IT research at DaimlerChrysler. Car-to-car communication will ensure that your automobile is impeccably informed about road conditions ahead. And this extra "sensor" will have almost unlimited range, because information can be instantaneously relayed from one vehicle to the next, to the next, and so on.
   No one doubts the extent of information-gathering and communication features that will be built into the networked cars of the future. Some of these features will merely assist the driver by, for example, pointing out a patch of black ice around the next bend. But what about the driver who fails to act on the warning? Should his car be empowered to "take the wheel"? Some automotive experts foresee a day when our cars will be so well informed that we'll be better off leaving some of the driving to them.
   
   DaimlerChrysler
   Time for another demonstration. It's Berlin, and I'm in a Smart car, DaimlerChrysler's tiny two-seater that has become a familiar sight in Europe's cramped city streets. But this Smart is different: It's smart. On the dashboard, a flashing display warns me of an accident two streets away, and the navigation system suggests a detour. My car, outfitted with a GPS position finder and an off-the-shelf wireless local area network (WLAN) communication system, was tipped off by another car carrying the same gear.
   If knowledge is power, then the intellectual-horsepower rating of tomorrow's vehicles is going to be tarmac-shreddingly high. Say just one car's stability-control system is activated at an unusually slow speed on a highway off-ramp. It'll send out a slippery-road warning. All WLAN-equipped cars in the vicinity then get the message, but they'll warn their drivers only if they're headed for the same off-ramp.
   The system will also provide traffic information on a need-to-know basis. Imagine there's a truck unloading in the next street on your route. It would never make the radio reports, but you could be trapped fuming for 10 minutes. WLAN-"traffic radar," as Herrtwich puts it-will let you know and reroute you. What's really new here is the way traffic will behave almost biologically, like a swarm of bees, a self-educating network.
   This is a killer app, because it doesn't require expensive infrastructure. No traffic-control center or information exchange. No need for roadside beacons that the authorities would have to install. Instead cars will seamlessly set up ad hoc networks, passing information from car to car.
   Virtually all of the necessary hardware is already on the shelf at companies such as Bosch, Delphi and Samsung. What's needed now is the software to tie everything together: sensors, wireless radio networks and GPS navigation systems. Together these technologies create a system that provides immediate warnings of delays, accidents, temporary speed restrictions and road conditions-the everyday hazards that lie in wait just around the corner. And because the system knows exactly where each driver is, it won't drown drivers in a running commentary about what's happening on the other side of town (unless the other side of town is the destination they have programmed into their navigation systems).
   Of course, the system will not work well if there aren't enough vehicles outfitted with the gear. The question is how to reach critical mass. Fortunately, WLAN networks are good for more than just traffic radar; they're also useful for downloading entertainment. "Ten years from now, we're talking about a radically changed way of listening to music, watching TV and videos," Herrtwich says. Once WLAN is adopted for in-car entertainment, the technology could also be used for road-safety and traffic-networking functions. Herrtwich puts the cost at much less than the navigation system it will be paired with. Call it a couple hundred of today's dollars.
   But don't hold your breath. Technical standards are still a few years away-Herrtwich predicts 2008. If the first networked cars roll out in 2010, such features won't be standard for at least another decade.

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Patrick Gelsinger

Intel Senior Vice President; General Manager, Digital Enterprise Group
   Gelsinger updated attendees on all aspects of the enterprise, from small offices to the most powerful high-performance computing areas. He provided a number of new and unique disclosures, more information on the company's upcoming next-generation 45 nanometer (nm) processor families, "Penryn" and "Nehalem." These are the next steps in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year.
   Early Penryn Performance - For Penryn-based desktop PCs, expect increases of about 15 percent for imaging-related applications; 25 percent for 3-D rendering; more than 40 percent for gaming; and more than 40 percent faster video encoding with Intel SSE4 optimized video encoders. These indicators were based on pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel® quad core processor running at 3.33 Gigahertz with a 1333 front side bus and 12MB cache versus an Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor QX6800 introduced last week at 2.93 GHz with 1066 FSB and 8MB cache. For high-performance computing (HPC) and workstation systems, expect performance gains up to an estimated 45 percent for bandwidth intensive applications; and a 25 percent increase for servers using Java*. The indicators were derived from pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel® Xeon® processors with 1600 MHz front side bus for workstation and HPC, and a 1333 MHz front side bus for server versus current quad-core Intel® Xeon® X5355 processors.
   Microsoft Longhorn Demo - Microsoft demonstrated Windows* Server codename "Longhorn" and two technologies: Windows Server Core and its new hypervisor-based virtualization solution, Windows Server virtualization, running on the Intel quad-core Xeon processors. This translates to running up to 8 core virtual machines with "hot add" features, increasing data center uptime and efficiency.
   "MP" Server Processors on Deck - Intel's high-end quad and dual multi-processor servers (codenamed "Caneland") and branded Intel Xeon® processor 7300 series will arrive in the third quarter in 80 and 50 watt versions for blades. The new servers will complete the transition to its Intel® Core™ microarchitecture for Intel Xeon processor-based servers. Just three months after announcing a joint effort Sun Microsystems, a Sun executive demonstrated its Solaris operating system running on an Intel Xeon® 5100 series processor based system using Intel Dynamic Power technology.
   vPro Technology Coming in Second Half - In the second half of the year, Intel will introduce "Weybridge," the next-generation vPro processor technology for business PCs using Intel® 3-Series chipsets (codenamed "Bear Lake"). As announced 2 weeks ago, Intel's forthcoming Centrino platform, due later this quarter, will also incorporate vPro technology for the first time in laptops.
   System on Chip Plans, Enterprise - Gelsinger unveiled "Tolapai" plans, the first in what will be a family of enterprise-class "system-on-chip" (SoC) products that integrate several key system components into a single Intel architecture-based processor. The 2008 Tolapai product is expected to reduce the chip footprint size by up to 45 percent and power consumption by approximately 20 percent compared to a standard four-chip design, while improving throughput performance and processor efficiency. Tolapai will include the new Intel® QuickAssist Integrated Accelerator technology.
   Intel® QuickAssist Technology - Intel® QuickAssist Technology is a comprehensive initiative to optimize the use of accelerators in servers. Accelerators increase the performance of a single function, like security encryption or financial computation, while reducing power consumption. This initiative includes support for acceleration using IA-based multi-core processors and third party accelerators working together in Intel-based servers, and developing new integrated accelerators inside the IA-based processor itself. The approach includes a software layer (Accelerator Abstraction Layer) that allows applications to easily manage accelerators and protect software investment.
   Nehalem Processor Family - After Intel's Penryn processors, Intel will begin manufacturing the Nehalem processor family in 2008. Among many other features, the processors will have from 1-8+ cores per product, and include simultaneous multi-threading to show 2-16 threads per chip. Certain future Nehalem processors will also include options such as system interconnects and integrated memory controllers and high-performance integrated graphics engine.
   Project Larrabee - Intel has begun planning products based on a highly parallel, IA-based programmable architecture codenamed "Larrabee." It will be easily programmable using many existing software tools, and designed to scale to trillions of floating point operations per second (Teraflops) of performance. The Larrabee architecture will include enhancements to accelerate applications such as scientific computing, recognition, mining, synthesis, visualization, financial analytics and health applications.

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Multitude of innovations in Intel products

Intel Corporation announced a host of new technologies, including faster Intel® Core™2 Duo processors, for its latest-generation Intel® Centrino® processor technology used in notebook PCs for consumers and businesses.
   More than 230 Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro processor technology-based designs from PC manufacturers, resellers and integrators around the world are expected to take advantage of these and other features this year. Notebooks will come in a plethora of shapes and sizes, with designs ranging from fully loaded, 17-inch wide-screen models ideal for entertainment to tiny, energy-saving notebook PCs that weigh less than three pounds.
   Intel has faster processors and chipsets, great-looking video and graphics, stronger and faster wireless signals, better security and manageability, designed for energy efficiency to enable great battery life and an option to turbo-speed boot time and software application loading.
   "When we introduced Intel Centrino 4 years ago, Intel changed the computing landscape with our mobile innovations," said Mooly Eden, Intel vice president and general manager, Mobile Products Group. "Now, simply said, we have improved virtually all aspects of Intel-based notebooks, the most popular and fastest growing computing market segment in the world."
   At the heart of the new Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro processor technology-based notebooks is the next-generation of Intel's highly acclaimed Intel® Core™2 Duo processor, which delivers breakthrough mobile performance and responsiveness for demanding business users and consumers alike. Users will experience improved performance when running multiple applications simultaneously such as downloading a video clip while doing a virus scan. Additional power management features will continue to enable users to have the great battery life they have come to expect with an Intel-based notebook PC.
   In addition, the Mobile Intel® 965 Express chipset family with Intel® Clear Video Technology enables an enhanced high-definition video experience. Users can also share their content with family and friends via TV easier than before with Intel® TV Wizard, which is a simplified way to connect to HD-enabled TVs. A new suite of drivers delivers robust and outstanding Windows Vista* Premium experience featuring Windows Aero*.
   In order to download or upload digital content faster from the Internet, the available Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N provides 802.11AGN WLAN capability and allows users more freedom to do more, delivering up to five times the performance for such tasks as downloads and twice the wireless access range.
   Intel® Turbo Memory is an optional feature, unique to Intel technology, that can access frequently used software applications twice as fast and reduce the amount of time it takes to turn on, or boot-up, a laptop by as much as 20 percent. In turn, these faster speeds save on power consumption and increase battery life.
   
   Notebooks mean business
   With a new brand specifically for business users, Intel Centrino Pro processor technology will adopt the innovative and popular features found in desktop business PCs today with Intel® vPro™ processor technology. IT departments will be able to reliably manage both desktops and notebooks and deal with what plagues them most - security threats, cost of ownership, resource allocation, and asset management - and do so wirelessly.
   One of the key innovations designed in Intel Centrino Pro - Intel® Active Management Technology - provides business-class notebook PCs with wireless PC management, protection and remote repair work thereby increasing productivity, IT savings and uptime. Smaller, Quieter and Stylish Desktop PC Designs
   Intel will also use this new mobile technology foundation for a variety of smaller, quieter and high-performing consumer desktop PC designs. These computers will enable crystal clear audio, better graphics and sharper video playback and optionally include integrated 802.11n wireless support and Intel Turbo Memory.
   These stylish PCs, when equipped with Intel® Viiv™ processor technology, enable consumers with notebooks based on Intel Centrino Duo processor technology and Intel® Media Share Software to browse, stream or download media files via a wireless home network. Additionally, users can save content to their Intel Centrino Duo processor technology-based laptop to enjoy their media content while on the go.
   Source: Intel

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