Amazon, Intel Partner for a Smart Speaker Reference Design With Alexa

Amazon is teaming up with Intel for a smart speaker reference design with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. The speaker will be based on what Intel calls Form Factor Reference Designs (FFRD). Essentially, FFRD is a ready-made modular board design of the board layout that can be placed into a design frame, thereby cutting down the time of development substantially.

The retail giant's collaboration with Intel will allow partners to build new devices with Alexa using Intel-based smart speaker FFRD due in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon wants to expand its voice-based digital assistant's reach, and this partnership will enable third-party developers to bring out a variety of smart home products with Alexa on board.

Amazon AVS content marketing manager Ted Karczewski announced the collaboration in a blog post, "Amazon and Intel see a tremendous opportunity to bring the benefits of a personal voice experience to millions of new consumers and are collaborating to encourage developers and device manufacturers to extend natural voice interaction to more products via Amazon Alexa."

Both Amazon and Intel are focusing on expanding their network to fully integrate into the home. For Amazon to do this, the company knows it cannot restrict Alexa to its own products like Echo - and Alexa Voice Service has been open to third-party integration since last year. Further to than end, Amazon on Thursday also announced a new product called JAM Voice.

JAM Voice is a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled portable speaker that features touch-activated integration with the Alexa Voice Service (AVS). The AVS can essentially put Alexa inside a range of smart devices.

The first FFDR will offer accelerated development of Alexa voice-enables smart speakers on Intel's architecture. It will also support Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth to allow full connectivity in the home.

Additionally, Amazon will also release a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the reference design that will let manufactures incorporate voice and video capabilities into their products, Karczewski said.

Source: Amazon

Intel's Shooting Star is the first drone designed to replace fireworks

A couple of days back, Intel unveiled a tiny new drone, the Shooting Star, designed specifically for entertainment light shows. And Intel's drone is already making headlines by setting a new Guinness World Record.

"With this drone, we will be able to demonstrate that drone light shows can redefine entertainment and create amazing new experiences in the night sky," Anil Nanduri, Intel's VP of New Technology Group, wrote in a blog post.

An individual pilot flew 500 Shooting Star drones simultaneously in early October, breaking the Guinness Book of World Records for most drones operated at once by a single pilot. Simultaneously. it beat a previous record of 100 set by itself in 2015. The flight took place in a small town outside of Munich, Germany, where Intel received a waiver from local regulators to perform the record-breaking flight.

Each drone is packed with full-color-range LED lights. The drones fly with the help of Intel's automation software, which allows artists to design aerial animations with hundreds of drones. It's the type of coordination that would typically take weeks or months, but Intel says its system can design a complex light show in days.

If you may remember last month, Intel unveiled the Intel Falcon 8+ System at the 2016 INTERGEO drone conference in Hamburg, Germany. The Falcon 8+ is the company's first commercial multirotor drone for the United States market.

Intel is better known in the drone industry for its collision avoidance camera technology, Real Sense, which is used in its industrial-grade Falcon 8 drone, as well as Yuneec's Typhoon H drone. The system allows drones to weave between obstacles without being piloted, but the new Shooting Star drones aren't equipped with Real Sense. Instead, the drones are completely controlled by the master computer and operator on the ground. The drones don't communicate with each other either, so they're not a swarm, but are rather radio controlled.

Earlier this week, Intel also disclosed the acquisition of Germany-based drone specialists MAVinci GmbH to expand its capabilities in the growing drone industry. The tech multinational believe drones are an important computing platform for the future.

"I see a future where fireworks and all of their risks of smoke, dirt are a thing of the past, and they're replaced by shows that have unlimited creativity and potential - and powered by drones," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said at this year's CES.

Source: Intel Newsroom

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Microsoft Surface Phone Tipped to Feature an Intel Processor

Microsoft is reportedly working on the Surface Phone. This year has seen many reports ranging from the Surface Phone's alleged specifications to renders showing possible design language. On Friday, some designs of a Dell smartphone that was never shipped were posted by tipster @evleaks stating that it may be powered by a laptop-class Intel processor.

Soon after, someone commented on Blass' post saying that it was a "nice concept but nothing more". Blass replied to the comment saying "Much more than a concept. Stay tuned," and posted some more photos of the alleged Surface Phone, only this time shot in real-life settings, which strongly hint that Microsoft's upcoming flagship may finally be coming soon.

A nice concept, but nothing more https://t.co/T4UTgHSnHT

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) November 4, 2016

While earlier rumors hinted that the Surface Phone would be powered by the Snapdragon 830 SoC paired with up to 8GB of RAM, Blass' tweet now suggests that the phone will now be powered by a laptop-class Intel processor.

Not much is known on the specifications front, but Microsoft is surely going to load its upcoming flagship smartphone with top-of-the-line specs targeting the high-end market.

Microsoft's recent trend shows that the company is focusing less on the entry-level market and is devoting all its resources to bringing out top-end Surface products with category innovation, and the newly-unveiled Surface Studio stands as proof. The move seems logical after the company has seen a dismal performance from its Lumia phones.

The Surface Phone, which is rumored to come in three models, is likely to compete with Apple's latest iPhones and Google's Pixels. The Surface Phone is expected to be launched in 2017, however, Blass' latest tweet hints that Microsoft may be ready for an earlier unveiling.

Source: Evan Blass

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Intel Joule is a high performance Atom-powered IoT module targetted at hardware developers

Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) is underway at San Francisco, and Intel has some good news for hardware developers working in the IoT space. It has unveiled Joule, which is a high performance Atom powered IoT kit. Intel Joule is the successor to the Intel's Galileo, Edison and Curie line of IoT kits which were based on the Intel Quark SoC

Intel is hoping the Joule module to be used in applications as varied as drones, robotics and with support from Intel's RealSense technology to be used in VR and AR applications as well. There isn't much detail on the graphics processing power of the Joule, but according to some websites, the Joule supports 4K video capture and display.

The Intel Joule comprises two variants – the Joule 570X and Joule 550X. Unlike its predecessors which were based on a combination of Atom Silvermont cores and low power Quark CPU cores, the Joule uses Intel's Broxton-M platform – which was initially meant to be used in consumer devices but was cancelled when Intel decided to move out of the mobile chipsets space.

Both the variants use the Intel Atom Broxton-M SoC but with varying clock speeds. The Joule 570X uses 4x Goldmont cores clocked at 1.7GHz which can turbo to 2.4GHz and this is paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC storage. On the other hand the Joule 550X uses 4x Goldmont cores clocked at 1.5GHz with no turbo feature, along with 3GB LPDDR4 RAM and 8GB eMMC storage option.

Both the Joule 570X and Joule 550X come support 802.11ac Wi-Fi along with Bluetooth 4.1. The I/O connectivity options are also similar for both the boards such as USB 3.0, GPIO, UART, MIPI camera and display interfaces and so on. The board measures 48 x 24 x 3.5mm. This is slightly larger than the Intel Edison board.

The Intel Joule will support different operating systems, with a new Linux distro meant specifically for this hardware being the default OS. Intel is calling it the Reference Linux OS for IoT. Canonical Ubuntu Core, Windows 10 IoT Core are also supported.

The Intel Joule 570X is on sale for $369 which comes to approx Rs 25,000, and will be available with Intel partners from next month.

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