The Next Internet?

Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow and director, Corporate Technology Group and Intel chief technology officer, today revealed his thoughts about the next internet at his keynote address. Rattner talked about how the internet has progressed to a stage where it's more than just content, but an interactive environment with user generated content and social interaction. However, it is still based on a 2D environment.

Rattner suggested how the internet could evolve to being more experiential with 3D environments and how it can be used as a tool for social interaction as well as business collaboration. He termed it as the 3D Internet.

Much like how Second Life is transforming users' interaction in the internet environment, the 3D internet can offer more. Rattner talked about how the 3D internet can be used in a business environment where teams at different locations can collaborate in a visual environment.

At the keynote, Rattner announced a new desktop visualization edition of Qwaq Forums that will integrate 2D desktop applications and shared 3D information workspaces for large numbers of users to easily visualize and manipulate enterprise information. Qwaq and Intel plan to work together to integrate Miramar technology into this new cross-platform edition of Qwaq Forums, which is expected to be available next year. Miramar, which was originally developed by Intel Architecture Labs, was designed to increase the productivity of distributed enterprises by enabling new information visualization capabilities across distributed teams. The Miramar technology leverages immersive 3D environments and enables users to transition seamlessly among virtual environments and traditional 2D desktop applications.

Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow and director, Corporate Technology Group and Intel chief technology officer, discusses the future of virtual worlds on Thursday in his keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum.

Rattner also talked about how today's 3D environments rendered by rasterization techniques were less accurate. He suggested that in order to create a more immersive 3D virtual world, ray tracing, which is a more accurate way of rendering 3D could be applied. However, the compute environment required for ray tracing is high although a dual Intel Xeon X5365 system today could deliver frame rates in excess of 90fps at resolutions of 1280x720, as compared to a 50 Intel Xeon cluster churning only 4fps at 640x480 three years ago.

And the reason for all of these futuristic ideas? Well, if they do come true at some point of time in the future, it would make a giant leap in terms of usage model, user experience and innovation. And because these will all require greater compute capabilities, it would give users and businesses a reason to want more powerful computer platforms. This is where Intel will be able to satisfy the demands of such usage in the future - with their future multi-core and teraflop processor products.