The Intel CES 2014 keynote was all about wearables, with CEO Brian Krzanch revealing new chips to power such devices and a variety of reference designs for anything from smart earbuds to an Intel-powered baby onesie.
Chipzilla even wants wearables to look good, so it will collaborate with fashionistas from Barneys New York, the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Opening Ceremony. Their aim? To "explore and bring to market new smart wearable technologies, and to increase dialogue and cooperation between the fashion and technology industries."
Powering all is Edison, a computer the size of an SD card. It carries a dual-core Quark SoC and built-in wireless capabilities (wifi, Bluetooth), and supports multiple operating systems.
"Wearables are not everywhere today because they aren't yet solving real problems and they aren't yet integrated with our lifestyles," Krzanich says. "We're focused on addressing this engineering innovation challenge. Our goal is, if something computes and connects, it does it best with Intel inside."
Showing off the capabilities of Edison are a number of quirky reference devices-- such as Mimo baby onesie able to communicate with a smart bottle warmer. When the baby starts waking up, the bottle warmer switches on. Clever!
Other Intel-powered designs for wearables seen at CES include a smartwatch, smart earbuds (track biometric data while pushing stereo audio), a smart hands-free headset dubbed "Jarvis" (like Google Glass, but audio-only) and a "smart wireless charging bowl" (a A4WP wireless device charger disguised as a 10-inch bowl).
Similar devices and more should hit the market by end 2014, the company insists.
Krzanich concludes the keynote with some good news-- Intel is implementing a transparency process within its supply chain to ensure its sources for tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold are not inadvertently funding conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hopefully other major CE vendors will do the same.
