PC Communications

Intel and other industry leaders are working to further advance PC communications and incorporate new capabilities into the PC. Some of the new and exciting capabilities evolving for the PC are:

Realistic Sound Experience (RSX) Technology provides realistic sound for Internet applications. RSX creates a rich audio environment using any sound card and regular PC headphones or speakers. Developers can use the RSX SDK to incorporate the technololgy into their applications. RSX is ideal for use in virtual environments and has already been incorporated into the Netscape* Live3D* VRML browser.

InstantON's task scheduling and power management makes your PC always available. If your PC supports power management, don't turn it off... switch it to low power. Schedule system tools like ScanDisk to run late at night and leave your PC in low power in the meantime; your PC saves power and still wakes up to receive an incoming FAX or when you move the mouse.

WinSock 2 maintains 100% compatibility with the immensely popular WinSock 1.1 interface while expanding to support virtually all transport protocols (including IPX/SPX, OSI, and native ATM) and offering quality of service capabilities for multimedia communications.

Cellular Enhanced PCs. Preliminary work on defining advanced digital cellular capabilities for Windows*.

Telephony software technology symbolizes a major step in the evolution of the personal computer as it brings the utility and almost limitless reach of the telephone to the desktop computer.

Universal Serial Bus is a new peripheral interface which provides a low-cost way to simplify and improve the performance of all aspects of PC-to-peripheral and PC-to-telephony applications. USB supports PC connections to I/O devices such as keyboards, mice, speakers, and graphic tablets, curtailing the proliferation of dedicated ports on the PC. A Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI) Design Guide is available for hardware designers to aid in the implementation of Universal Serial Bus (USB) Host controllers.

Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data is the first open PC-modem standard allowing digital voice and data to be transmitted simultaneously over a single analog telephone line.

For information about some of the exciting new PC communication applications offered by Intel, see the Communications and Networking sections of this server.