IDF 2012 | Intel Keynote: Haswell, Dragon Assistant, Atom and more

While most eyes are focused on Apple's iPhone 5 event tomorrow, there is another event already going on here in San Francisco. Intel's annual IDF 2012 began today at the Moscone Center, and we were on hand for the keynote address.

Intel's speech mainly revolved around a "Digital Transformation" where any device, regardless of size and shape, can offer the same experience. New innovations have lead to a variety of ways in which customers can interact with their devices, ranging from new input methods to increased mobility. 

As an example of such innovation, Intel showed off their voice control system, which has been developed in partnership with Nuance. Dubbed "Dragon Assistant" the software was displayed on a Dell XPS 13, and the computer was able to search Google, tweet, shop and play music using simple voice commands. 

Of course, the big highlight of the event was Intel's new Haswell technology, which promises to offer twice the performance of Ivy Bridge while using the same amount of energy. As an example, Intel's executive VP, David Perlmutter, compared an Ivy Bridge Ultrabook with a Haswell device under similar power conditions.

Using the Unigine benchmark (video below), the Haswell device was able to offer a smoother performance than its Ivy Bridge counterpart and pushed out 40 FPS as opposed to Ivy Bridge's 20 FPS. Furthermore, when Perlmutter cut the power on Haswell by 50%, the processor was still able to equal the performance of Ivy Bridge.

Although Haswell clearly stole the show today, Intel did also have a couple other things on display. The company's upcoming Atom processor, Clover Trail, was seen powering a Dell XPS Duo tablet and it was able to easily handle a video editing application in Windows 8 UI/Metro. In addition, Intel is teaming up with MasterCard to compete with various other NFC technologies, and their PayPass hardware will come integrated in Ultrabooks allowing credit card purchases to be made by simply swiping a credit card along the touchpad. 

Overall, Intel's keynote offered a slight glimpse at what Intel has in store for the upcoming years. More goodies and devices should be coming as the event gets into full gear, and we'll be sure to have all the details right here.

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