Intel hopes to wow CES with new tech
Company looks forward, hoping its clients willing to move past chip flaws
LAS VEGAS — Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wants to talk about the future — the really cool if somewhat creepy future of drone swarms and chips that track your every movement. But the past just won’t let go.
The CEO has planned an elaborate, artificial-intelligence-driven extravaganza during his Monday-night keynote address at CES, the world’s largest tech trade show. The company best known for chips that power PCs wants to show off its updated vision of how its smarter, tiny hardware components will look, with a drone light show and musicians creating sound virtually — they’ll play no instruments, but location tech will crunch the data created by their physical movements to power guitars and drums.
However, a cloud formed by a remnant of the company’s past threatens to dim the effects. The tech giant acknowledged last week that its processors in computers and other devices going back more than a decade have potentially-exploitable flaws that could let hackers access the most private areas of a user’s computer or device. Apple said all of its Macs, iPhones and iPads were affected and issued updates, while Microsoft pushed out a patch for computers operating Windows 10.
The bruising disclosure sent Intel shares into a two-day sell-off — while rivals AMD and Nvidia rallied — and forced the company into defensive mode, scrambling to assure customers the fixes to the deep-rooted design flaws wouldn’t slow performance. Krzanich’s own role was also under fire, as news of his sale of Intel shares after the company found out about the flaw circulated. Some chips from rivals AMD and ARM also contained vulnerabilities, but they say the impact is more narrow.
Intel says by the end of the week it expects to have issued updates for more than 90% of processors introduced within the past five years. Krzanich’s share sale, the company says, was unrelated and previously planned.
Still, concern about the possible long-term ramifications of the issue will likely linger in the convention center air when Krzanich takes the stage at CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show.
Krzanich said in an interview Friday he isn’t sure whether he will address the situation from the keynote, which was weeks in the making. More likely, he will focus on wowing the crowd the night before 180,000 conventioneers take over the city.
His and Intel’s message: Prepare for data to change your life even more than you might expect. “Data is going to be dynamic ... and combined with the performance of computing that allows for artificial intelligence to be applied, is going to bring all kinds of insights and additives to enhance everyday life,” Krzanich said.
After largely missing the industry’s seismic shift from PCs to smartphones a decade ago, it’s intent on laying claim to tech’s move into big data. At one time the dominant PC microprocessor maker, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has become a powerhouse in providing memory and functionality for cloud computing data centers —about 30% of its $59.4 billion in revenue last year came from that segment.
And it has bolstered its presence in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and self-driving vehicles with several key acquisitions over the past two years. Most recently, Intel in March paid $15 billion for Mobileye, the Israelibased self-driving car chip and software
The CEO said in an interview Friday he isn’t sure whether he will address the situation from his keynote, which was weeks in the making.
maker it had partnered with to deliver self-driving BMWs.
“We believe Intel is in the midst of a major transformation,” said Amit Daryanani, an equity research analyst with investment bank RBC Capital Markets.
Some on Wall Street see the chip flaw as a major opening for competitors, notably AMD, as large corporations find it smart to diversify from Intel chips.
But for Intel optimists, it’s a blip as the company shifts from PCs to datacentric areas, which now make up 45% of sales. Daryanani considers this a “buying opportunity” for investors. Similarly, Susquehanna International Group equity analyst Christopher Roland expects Krzanich to only make “a side comment at most” at CES about the situation.
Instead, Intel will focus on the disparate technology advances — virtual reality, self-driving cars, autonomous drones — that have one thing in common: the vast amounts of data needed to make them happen require specialized, powerful components, made by Intel.
“All of these technologies that we are putting together, ... our memory technology, our CPU, our graphics architecture, our GPUs, all that is being applied to where the data is,” Krzanich said. “You can almost predict where Intel will be in the future. It will be where data resides.”
Among the new advances to be highlighted in Krzanich’s CES speech are more venues for virtual reality, an area that’s received much attention from tech companies but has still failed to catch on with consumers.
Intel says it already crunches as much data as is held in the Library of Congress in each quarter of the NFL football games it captures with 30plus cameras. Now, the company will begin bringing NBA games to VR, starting with the NBA All-Star Game next month.
While the future is pretty much here for VR, it’s accelerating more slowly for autonomous vehicles. Last year, selfdriving BMW SUVs with Intel tech onboard motored along the Vegas strip and its highways.
For consumers, the self-driving vehicle revolution is a gradual one, he says. “You are not going to walk out one day and go to your local car dealer and the lot is going to suddenly switch from non-autonomous cars to autonomous cars,” Krzanich said. “You are going to see a systematic transition over the next several years where cars go from adaptive cruise control and lane departure, like we have today, to ... eventually being able to drive in very complex locations, all hands-free. That’s going to happen over three or four years.”
Similar transitions are happening, he says, in drones used by consumers and industry, and in smart AI-enhanced technologies in wearables, smartphones and other devices. “Anytime my daughter and I go for a hike, we bring a drone with us and get some really interesting views,” Krzanich said.
Intel has executed light shows made from drone swarms at major events such as the 2016 CES and at the 2017 Super Bowl. At this year’s CES, expect glimpses of even smarter drones — Intel will even get them into the act musically during the keynote.
Also on display: dancers and acrobats tracked by Intel’s RealSense 3D cameras, which will compute their movements into a Vegas-worthy visual arts performance.
As for the long-term ramifications of the chip flaw, Krzanich is emphatic. “I think you are seeing the patches aren’t having the performance impact that were worried about early on,” he said. “We are confident that the performance impacts will be negligible, and we are very confident in our product road map and our competitive position.”
That confidence was doubted after his November sale of half of his Intel stock holdings came to light.
Krzanich rebuffs those concerns. “I’m more confident than ever in Intel’s future,” he said.