Hoping to shape the future of cloud and embedded computing, Intel (News - Alert) Labs has created two new Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) at Carnegie Mellon University. For that, the technology giant is planning to invest $30 million over the next five years, as part of the larger $100 million program designed to increase university research and accelerate innovation.

According to Intel Labs, the new centers will encourage tighter collaboration between university thought leaders and Intel. To encourage further collaboration, the ISTCs will use open IP models with results publically available through technical publications and open-source software releases, said the investor.

“These new ISTCs are expected to open amazing possibilities,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, in a statement. “Imagine, for example, future cars equipped with embedded sensors and microprocessors to constantly collect and analyze traffic and weather data. That information could be shared and analyzed in the cloud so that drivers could be provided with suggestions for quicker and safer routes,” added Rattner.

Intel said that the ISTC forms a new cloud computing research community that broadens Intel’s “Cloud 2015” vision with new ideas from top academic researchers, and includes research that extends and improves on Intel’s existing cloud computing initiatives. The center combines top researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology (News - Alert), University of California Berkeley, Princeton University, and Intel. 

The researchers will explore technology that will have important future implications for the cloud, including built-in application optimization, more efficient and effective support of big data analytics on massive amounts of online data, and making the cloud more distributed and localized by extending cloud capabilities to the network edge and even to client devices.

In the future, these capabilities could enable a digital personal handler via a device wired into your glasses that sees what you see, to constantly pull data from the cloud and whisper information to you during the day – telling you who people are, where to buy an item you just saw, or how to adjust your plans when something new comes up.

Likewise, tapping into the expertise of leading researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley and Intel, the ISTC for embedded computing forms a new collaborative community to drive research to transform experiences in the home, car and retail environment of the future., Intel said. With the growing popularity of mobile real-time and personalized technology, there is a corresponding rise in demand for specialized embedded computing systems to support a broad range of new applications, added Intel. 

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