Roy Want, Principal Engineer, Intel Research

While other engineers were dreaming in color, pushing the graphics envelope and creating high-fidelity bells and whistles for wireless devices, Roy Want was following in the more practicable but visionary footsteps of ubiquitous computing champion Mark Weiser of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. Want came aboard as Intel began a new research organization devoted to destabilizing technologies. Well, nothing is more destabilizing — even to technology — than cutting off the arms and legs. And that's what Want has done.

The personal server he is developing will do away with the display screen and the keyboard — at least in the device you carry in your pocket. “A lot of research for mobility has looked at things like PDAs, or combining computers with cell phones,” said Want, Intel Research's principal engineer. “But these devices have not been very successful.”

That's because they don't do what computers are intended to do: run applications. “You can't really create a document. You can't write a paper or create a presentation,” he said. And while laptops are fine, Want doesn't consider a laptop a truly mobile device: “It weighs about six pounds.”

There is a middle ground where Want says the future will take hold. He is working on a device that makes any PC become your PC. “You can walk up to any computer, make a connection and bring up a window which makes that computer look like yours,” he said. “As storage capacity increases, then progressively the concept of personal computing becomes more attractive because you can carry so much more with you.”

With a development target three years out, Want would like to see Intel bring this technology to market, but if he gets beat, the journey will likely not have been in vain. “If another company is successful and they end up using Intel silicon, it would still be a success for us.”