Intel looks beyond chips at IDF

With dwindling PC sales, Intel is looking beyond computer CPUs. At this year's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, its opening keynote had hardly any details about actual chips.

It has been treading the path for a while now, and had even pushed into the Internet of Things, unveiling the smart mug and connected baby onesie in CES 2014.

Also in a recent move, the company had made a big investment in wearables with its button-sized Curie module and the purchase of several wearable companies, including Basis and Recon.

RealSense, an update of Perceptual Computing, is Intel's initiative to work with expanding numbers numbers of virtual reality platforms. Developers integrated those platforms into devices and applications based on a library of pre-programmed routines, meant to take advantage of 3D capabilities in cameras.

Intel had also forayed into other arenas, like RealSense, its depth-sensing, 3D-scanning tech in line with Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich's statement during an interview at IDF: "We want to be everywhere."

That certainly was the case with wearables, which Krzanich pointed out to Nicolle Lee of Endgadget during a brief tour of the IDF show floor.

"I believe we can bring a lot of capability to wearables, probably more than what you see now," he said. "We can make them much more connected."

Meanwhile, Intel has joined hands with Google to bring its RealSense 3D mapping and scanning technology to Google's Project Tango.

Krzanich also gave attendees a look at a prototype smartphone integrated with an Intel RealSense 3D camera, which would be contained in a Google Project Tango smartphone.

Holding up the prototype phone, which was about the same size as an average Android smartphone, Krzanich said the device "breaks the limits of what a phone can do." The Intel Israel team integrated the 3D tech with Project Tango.

Project Tango, announced by Google in early 2014 is a partnership with universities, research institutions, and industrial partners aimed at building an understanding of space and motion into mobile devices.

Project Tango's goal is to deploy the technology gathered from Google's various partners into a single mobile phone with customised hardware and software that gave it 3D capabilities.

LAst month Intel unveiled its new processor, Skylake, which delivers a performance boost over the current Broadwell line-up (See: Intel's Skylake chip to deliver better graphics, increased battery life).