The Intel Research Labs were a research division of
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
. The organization was known for most of its life as Intel Research, but towards the end of its life the name Intel Research was re-defined to refer to all research performed in Intel, including work done outside the labs.
At its peak, there were six Intel Research Labs. The four university labs were each hosted by a partner university, while the two on-site labs were embedded inside normal Intel sites. Intel Research Berkeley was hosted by
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
, Intel Research Seattle by the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
, Intel Research Pittsburgh by
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
, and Intel Research Cambridge by the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
.
In addition, the People and Practices Research Lab (PaPR) performed ethnographic research at Intel's
Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro ( ) is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many high-technology companies, ...
campus, and one at Intel's
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
headquarters. The Intel PaPR was composed of sociologists and anthropologists whose job it was to understand how people lived their lives with or without technology, and how technology might be able to help.
They used ethnography as their methodology which involves trying to understand how people live their lives, visiting consumers in their homes and workplaces, to see people’s behaviour on their terms within their experiences. Often, consumers cannot articulate what they are looking for in a product, product feature, or service. The Intel PaPR lab could, using ethnography, discover emerging trends that would then inform Intel's business strategy. By understanding the perspective of one group, consumers, they could communicate it to another, such as Intel business decision makers and engineers.
Genevieve Bell
Genevieve Bell is an Australian cultural anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice research and technological development (including as a pioneer in the field of futurist research), and for being an industry ...
led PaPR through many years.
History
Intel Research (as it was then known) was created in 2000, under the leadership of
David L. Tennenhouse. Tennenhouse aimed to model his new research organization based on the US
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
, where he had previously been director of the Information Technology Office. Tennenhouse promoted "proactive computing," where he envisioned users would interact with surrounding things and things would be able to have "digital-life".
In 2001, Intel Research adopted an open collaborative research model. In this model, Intel researchers worked directly with professors and students at the host university and shared knowledge freely.
The contract with the host university stated that all
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
(IP) that resulted from a research project was jointly owned by both parties. Each lab was led by a professor from the host university, both with the goal of building deep connections to the university and avoiding any conflicts or misunderstandings between the lab and the university. Lab Directors included
David Culler
David Ethan Culler (born November 12, 1959) is a computer scientist and former chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a principal investigator in the Software Defi ...
,
Eric Brewer,
Joseph M. Hellerstein,
Mahadev Satyanarayanan
Mahadev "Satya" Satyanarayanan is an Indian experimental computer scientist, an ACM and IEEE fellow, and the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
He is credited with many advances in edge computi ...
, Todd Mowry,
Gaetano Borriello
Gaetano Borriello (1958–2015) was an American computer scientist and researcher in ubiquitous computing. He is known for starting the Open Data Kit project and as the founding director of Intel Research Seattle. ThPlace Labproject he led at Inte ...
, James Landay, and David Wetherall.
Due to the open nature of the research agreement, the labs focussed on areas that were not core to Intel's business, so that Intel did not need to control the intellectual property. Instead the labs worked or topics such as
ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using a ...
and
sensor networks
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...
which might help create demand for aligned Intel products.
In December 2005, Tennenhouse left to head
A9.com
A9.com is a former subsidiary of Amazon that develops search engine and search advertising technology. A9 is based in Palo Alto, California, with teams in Seattle, Bangalore, Beijing, Dublin, Iași, Munich and Tokyo. A9 has development effo ...
, and Andrew A. Chien, a former professor with high performance computing background at
UC San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
took over his position.
Chien left Intel in May 2010 to return to academia as a professor at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
Justin Rattner
Justin R. Rattner is a retired Intel Senior Fellow, Corporate Vice President and former director of Intel Labs. Previously, he served as the corporation's Chief Technology Officer, where he was responsible for leading Intel's microprocessor, com ...
, chief technology office of Intel, then took over Intel Labs and in addition, several vice presidents of Intel Labs were appointed.
The Cambridge lab closed in October 2006.
The other three labs were shut down in January 2011.
Instead, Intel announced it would directly fund research, with its first grant forming the Intel Science and Technology Center for Visual Computing at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, led by
Pat Hanrahan
Patrick M. Hanrahan (born 1954) is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University.
His research focuses on rendering al ...
.
Projects
In most cases, projects were done in partnership with a host university. Some examples:
*
Wireless identification and sensing platform (WISP)
*
Claytronics
Claytronics is an abstract future concept that combines nanoscale robotics and computer science to create individual nanometer-scale computers called claytronic atoms, or ''catoms'', which can interact with each other to form tangible 3D objects ...
*
TinyOS
TinyOS is an embedded, component-based operating system and platform for low-power wireless devices, such as those used in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), smartdust, ubiquitous computing, personal area networks, building automation, and smart me ...
*
Urban Computing
*
Prefix hash tree
A prefix hash tree (PHT) is a distributed data structure that enables more sophisticated queries over a distributed hash table (DHT). The prefix hash tree uses the lookup interface of a DHT to construct a trie-based data structure that is both eff ...
*
PlanetLab
PlanetLab was a group of computers available as a testbed for computer networking and distributed systems research. It was established in 2002 by Prof. Larry L. Peterson and Prof. David Culler, and as of June 2010, it was composed of 1090 nodes at ...
References
{{Intel software
Intel
2000 establishments in the United States