Intel Sees E-Learning As Next Killer App

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April 06, 2001 (8:27 AM EDT)

"E-learning will be the killer application over the next two to three years, with over half of IT training being done remotely," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president of Intel Corp., at this week's Comdex Spring show in Chicago.

Maloney also pointed to RosettaNet as being an example of another killer application—universal, noncompetitive corporate connectivity of supply chains and inventory management systems. "If we had this last year, we would have seen the downturn coming and we would have been able to adjust our inventories accordingly to reduce the effects," he said.

Speaking on the 20th anniversary of the first PC, Maloney continued by declaring that "the reason concepts such as video-on-demand and network-based computing failed is that they tried to replace the PC, not extend it."

The success of e-learning depends on a peer-to-peer model, which Maloney says debunks a recent Wall Street Journal article that predicted the demise of peer-to-peer computing.

"Without peer-to-peer networking, each trainee would have to download the session individually from the remote site in Hong Kong. We just don't have the bandwidth for that," he said.

Instead, one trainee downloads the session, while the others access it locally in real time over a peer-to-peer network. "Huge libraries can then be built up locally and accessed any time by the users," said Maloney.

Referring back five years to optimistic predictions made by Intel about the success of such applications as audio, video, graphics, personal video conferencing, gaming, and speech recognition, Maloney admitted that while personal video conferencing was and is a complete failure, Intel (stock: INTC) was right on other counts.

"Audio has been a huge success, as has gaming video and graphics," he said. "Napster is now responsible for 4 percent of all traffic on the Internet." Demos of the potential uses for audio were given by Thomas Dolby, founder of Beatnik Inc., a company that Intel recently aligned with for its mobile audio expertise.

"Thanks to Intel's Strata-Flash, StrongARM, and Integrated Performance Primitives technology, we're able to implement our multitrack, interactive audio solution on mobile devices," said Dolby, who demonstrated Beatnik's capabilities on a Compaq PocketPC.

The audio subsystem can be integrated into target applications and use 25 percent of the StrongARM's processing power for the audio playback. Until April 30, Beatnik is offering downloads of its technology from its website.