Vol 19, Issue 52

December 27, 2005

Convergence—Naughty or Nice?

By Kevin Krewell

I recently attended the iHollywood Forum Digital Living Room conference that highlighted the continued conflicts arising from the collision of the PC and digital technology with the consumer and content businesses. Some of the companies on the front line of this

battle were represented, including Intel, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Sony, TiVO, and Walt Disney Corp. Even the CTO of the MPAA was present, trying to put a reasonable face on the association's policies. The arms merchants of the digital-content wars, industry analysts and venture capitalists, were also there to pitch their wares. A number of aspiring startups provided some fresh ideas on businesses that can still be built, and the CEO of RealNetworks, Rob Glaser, used the opportunity to launch a new free service at Rhapsody.com and to complain about the closed nature of iTunes and about Steve Jobs.

The purported reason for the conference was to discuss some of the issues that need to be resolved in order to deliver ubiquitous digital media throughout the home. Some of the problems are technical in nature, but those appear to be solvable with the adoption of a few standards and with some improvements to software and the user experience. There is a need to reduce the technical complexity of connecting all the digital devices for the average consumer, starting with reducing the number of different cables required and improving the ease of home networking. The most difficult stumbling blocks were not technical but rather the differing economic and self-interests of the technology companies and the traditional media companies.

Digital Elfs

This was a timely conference if you also think about the holiday season upon us. Many of the hottest gifts are digital-technology items, including the Microsoft Xbox360 game console (which is hot, at least outside of Japan), Apple's ubiquitous iPod (and other digital music players), digital cameras, and the latest high-definition TVs. These consumer electronics devices also want (or are required) to connect to our PCs to maximize the user value each item offers. Each device represents a growing digital ecosystem in the home, which includes PCs (of course), cellphones, set-top boxes, and digital cameras. There are wired solutions (Ethernet, USB, Firewire, DVI, HDMI, and the various networking technologies that can use either cable coax, phone lines, or power lines) and wireless solutions (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, and proprietary solutions) for digital-device connectivity. Given so many competing and complementary technologies, navigating the complexity creates problems for consumers.

Content companies add to the complexity. These companies fear sending copyrighted material over unsecured digital links, where the content can be pirated in pristine digital form. The battle over digital-rights management (DRM) issues has complicated everything from the next generation of high-definition DVDs (Blue-Ray and HD-DVD) to digital video cables (for example, the video DVI connection is not considered secure enough for transmission of HD content by media companies), to media-center PCs. Intel is hoping that its forthcoming Viiv platform, with improved content security, will convince content providers to offer high-definition content on media-center PCs. To do so, the display will likely have to be secure and encrypted for the content providers to trust displaying HD contents.

Some observers are skeptical that consumers want to share media throughout the home, much less have PCs be the center of the digital-content home. Those are also the people who probably doubted anyone would need a camera in their cellphone, or would spend money to download ringtones for their phone, or watch videos and broadcast TV on their cellphone. They are likely people who are not part of the most recent generation that grew up with an always present PC, Internet-connected game consoles, MP3 players, Napster, IM chat, and immersive Internet role-playing PC games—the age group some demographers call Generation Y. This new generation views analog media and transmission as antiques and a rapidly fading memory. When media (movies, music, photography, print, spoken) is digital, there shouldn't be a barrier to being able to read it/listen to it/view it on any digital device, anywhere, at any time (eventually). The difference between Generation Y and previous generations was a message stressed by consultant Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies at the iHollywood Forum and which I have witnessed in my own household. Only vested interests will stop this ubiquitous media platform from becoming a reality.

We're still in the midst of a very long negotiation process among the stakeholders in digital-media creation, distribution, and display. Apple's iTunes has shown there is a legitimate market for paid digital music and video. Actually, iTunes songs are cheaper and an infinitely better value than those cellphone ringtones or buying a whole CD for only one or two songs you really want. But you have to let go of physical media.

Services providers and media companies will continue to put up barriers and "toll booths" on the digital-media highway that clever people will find paths around, until a mutually agreeable solution is found. It could prove that 2005 was a turning point and that the market will start to forge more agreements in 2006.

2005 Wrappings

In 2005, we were excited to help with the launch of some interesting startups with some big-name founders. In processors, many of the big 2005 stories were about extreme multicore processors like the Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell processor, Sun's Niagara (UltraSPARC T1), Cavium's Octeon processor family, and Raza Microelectronics' XLR processor family. While AMD and Intel battle to get dual-core processors to market, the aforementioned companies are producing 8-, 9-, and 16-core processors. While the chip companies continue to pump out multicore processors, the hard work for system and application programmers is just beginning.

We're always on the lookout for the next cutting-edge startup, and we hope we find more of those in 2006. Looking ahead to the 2006 stories that will likely be most interesting, we will start the year with Intel's Napa platform for dual-core notebooks. We may see the first Apple/Intel platform soon afterward. Later in 2006, the Cell processor should ship in volume inside Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3), and at that time we'll have a better idea of how programmers are overcoming the complexity of this new architecture to produce high-performance threaded code. (While the PS3 programming complexity is challenging, at least if the software hits a deadlock problem, the end user will be at risk of losing only some game-playing time, unlike in enterprise applications, where real corporate revenue might be at stake.) By the end of 2006, Intel is scheduled to launch its next-generation microarchitecture (based on an extension of the dual-core Yonah processor). In between, AMD and Sun should be making steady progress on their roadmaps. A number of startups and large companies are targeting the market for H.264 video hardware, ranging from the broadcast booth to the cellphone, and many will be delivering their chips in 2006. Almost every conceivable processor microarchitecture is being thrown at this market. We'll see what sticks.

As we end the year, we'd like to offer our thanks and best wishes to our readers. We are grateful for your continued support of Microprocessor Report and of our forums. We hope that in 2006 we can continue to improve our coverage of issues that are important to you, our readers. We always welcome your feedback, and in 2006 we will be conducting some reader surveys to help us learn how to serve you better. To those of you outside Silicon Valley, look for a Microprocessor Forum coming to a city near you in 2006, as we're developing plans to bring the forum and our analysts to different countries around the globe.