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Microsoft Aims to Replace Personal Assistants?

REDMOND, Wash. — What would you do with a PC that’s 50 to 100 times more powerful than the one you’ve got? Can’t think of much? Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief research and strategy officer, sure can. The executive assigned to fill retired founder Bill Gates’ role as company visionary has set out to transform mundane laptops and desktop PCs into prescient tools responsive to eye, voice and touch commands.

“Today your computer is the computational equivalent of a hammer,” Mundie says. In five to 10 years, he predicts PCs will evolve into intuitive personal assistants that pay close heed to your quirks, and even anticipate your needs. “We’re going to start to see the computer move to be less of a tool and more of a partner to you.”

This great technological leap actually is well underway. The heart of the PC is a silicon chip, called the “central processing unit.” CPUs have gotten faster and faster roughly every 18 months since the mid-1980s. But now the CPU has reached a physical limit. It can go no faster without using a lot more power.

However, a chip called the “graphics processing unit,” or GPU, has opened new horizons. Commonly referred to as your PC’s “graphics card,” the GPU lets your PC display spectacular games and super crisp color images and videos. Because of its architecture, with hundreds of processing engines, a single GPU can process as much data as 800 CPUs for certain tasks, says Raja Koduri, chief technology officer of chipmaker AMD’s Graphics Product Group.

Developers have begun to apply some of that capacity to tasks other than rendering graphics. GPUs are being used to speed up the format changes required when you transfer video from your camcorder to your PC editing program, for instance. Vast surplus capacity remains in the GPU. But to tap in, software developers must rethink how they create applications.

“From a hardware standpoint, we’re marching along providing this power,” Koduri says. “But to really take advantage, a major change in software has to happen, and Microsoft has a key role to play in this equation.”

Bold course

Mundie knows this full well. So did Gates. Microsoft has pumped $36 billion into raw research since 2004, an investment now being brought to bear on restoring the PC as king of computing. “The desktop-class machines will be where the leading edge of this next revolution will take place,” Mundie predicts.

Microsoft must execute — or risk stagnating. “Without some sort of leap forward, the PC is likely headed toward the status of a toaster, good for certain defined tasks but of limited use otherwise,” says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research.