WINHec: Gates Shows Off Technology To Enhance PC Price/Performance

Gates, in a keynote at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), also demonstrated new PC and network hardware and software designs that, he said, could enhance price/performance and the functionality of the personal computer for several years into the future.

"Clearly, the economy has affected IT spending as a whole," Gates said. "The refresh cycles are longer today than they've ever been. We can bring that back in, somewhat, to justify the expense. But there's work to be done."

A key example, Gates said, can be found in advances made in desktop displays and graphics capabilities in hardware that has not yet led to parallel software enhancements.

"The best example of that is the graphics capability built into these systems," Gates said. "The standard interface of Windows applications is not taking advantage of those graphics capabilities." He said developers need to "take a leap forward and fully exploit graphics capabilities."

Gates' keynote included a demonstration of the new Athens concept PC, co-developed with Hewlett-Packard, that provides next-generation audio, video, voice and text messaging into a single system.

The prototype heightens interoperability between components and functions and adds power management features.

"We're preserving the hardware investment in the peripherals themselves," said Chad Magendanz, lead program manager for Microsoft's Innovation Group, who demonstrated Athens. "Athens represents long-term investments to improve power management and security," including biometrics identification, Magendanz said.

In addition to Athens, Gates' keynote included a demonstration of a new concept, a Dynamic Data Center (DDC), also jointly developed with HP, that connects a combination of servers, software, storage and networking hardware based on a single network architecture.

Under the new design, Microsoft software dynamically assigns provisions and centrally manages the data center resources. The company said this marks a key point in its Dynamic Systems Initiative. Microsoft executives said the architecture allows those in larger workgroups to gain system resources "on the fly."

In addition to Microsoft's pieces of the puzzle, HP has developed an "Authenticated Identity" for ProLiant servers to heighten boot security, in addition to providing and co-developing the new manageability between ProLiants, ProCurve switches and Storageworks disk arrays.

Two of Microsoft's hardware partners had a large presence at WinHEC: rival chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Both are now competing in the 64-bit processor space, AMD with its just-launched Opteron chip for servers and Intel with its Itanium 2 processor.

"You'll see multiple 64-bit processor types running Windows," Gates said. "This transition to 64-bit, this is going to be a far smoother transition than the transition from 16- to 64-bit was. We can make this something where you can mix 64- and 32-bit systems."

Gates' presentation harkened back to predictions that system clock speeds could reach 10GHz by 2005, and between 20GHz and 30GHz by 2007, performance that could continue to be held back because of thermal issues, he said.

"There are some clever ideas to reduce the heat, you have some advanced cooling systems from Intel and some others," he said, adding that Microsoft's work would be to provide tools to leverage the higher clock speeds and increased bandwidth.