Intel strives toward tiny chips to run wearable computers

22.10.2012
BARCELONA -- Is your memory as sharp as it used to be?

If your memory needs a nudge, you may someday be able to wear a device the size of a brooch or a Bluetooth earpiece to record your daily activities and conversations. Then days or years later you can get a digital reminder of that important meeting or particularly beautiful sunset.

Intel evangelist Manny Vara, in an interview Monday, said wearable computers may be two to five years away. Unlike some early attempts that were too bulky, these would be small, light and convenient.

Intel is working on creating the tiny microprocessors that would power these devices.

"These will be wearable computers that are very small and unobtrusive," Vara told Computerworld during Intel's European Research and Innovation Conference. "Imagine that would tell you, before you shake someone's hand, that she's Mary and it will tell you where you met her last. I would like that. That would help me."

Vara said he has seen early versions of wearable computers that were the size of the palm of your hand and had a thick cable leading to a large memory device that had to be lugged around.