The company is also doing research to pave the way for digital radios in future chips, removing the traditional analog radios being used for communications. Digital radios will reduce signal interference on chips, which will make it easy for the integration of CPUs and modems on a single chip. The ultimate goal for Intel is to bring the radio and CPU on one chip, with an example being Rosepoint.

The researchers are approaching the digital radio development as a mathematical issue, said Yorgos Palaskas, research leader, radio integration lab at Intel Labs.

"We had to rethink radio problem," Palaskas said. "We wanted to tackle this as a computational problem."

The company has resolved some of the equations involved, and is working to bring the transmitters to the transistor layer, Palaskas said.