For two decades, Intel got rich on personal computers and computer servers. Now we are in a world of machine intelligence everywhere, and Intel has many more potential customers and allies. It also has many very real competitors. "The world has changed," said Renée J James, Intel's president.

Time was, “We’d talk about PCs, one platform, and the features they might build,” Ms James said. “Now it’s about building services, with different parts, contexts and security.”

Makers of hardware and software services must be addressed in new ways. Intel has to make deals with a new range of companies. Its executives must show they have made Intel an important part of new industries. All the changes were on display this week, when Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, opened its annual developer forum.

As always, Intel talked about its latest chips and gave some hints about the future. The idea is the crowd uses this information to make successful products, thus increasing the consumption of Intel chips.

Instead of chips for Microsoft PCs, and the features they might tweak, 5,000 makers of devices and software applications heard about Intel and smartphones, tablets, personal computers, computer servers, cloud computing analytic services, sensors, wearable devices and cordless charging technologies. Nearly all of the smaller devices connect to machines that collect and dispense data. These gateway machines connect to servers in the cloud, which analyse the data from sensors and people. For developers, the more sophisticated world of machine intelligence everywhere means that "instead of building features, we talk about building services," Ms James said. – (New York Times)