Intel wants to include a software-defined radio on every chip it produces within ten years. Software-defined radios are radios whose in-use spectrum can be changed by the computer, so a single PC add-on coulod go from being an FM radio tuner to a cell-phone to an 802.11 card with the click of a button. The MPAA is currently cooking up a copy-protection scheme for the next generation of digital TV that would require every device capable of receiving and demodulating broadcast digital video to comply with a copy-protection racket scheme so that no device will ever make consumer-initiated copies against the rightsholders wishes. With software-defined radio, any consumer PC could be turned into a tuner that disregarded the copy-protection signals. Uh-oh.
Under this model, said Gelsinger “we want to get where one corner of every die has an integrated radio.” This would mean, in effect, that every processor Intel produces would be potentially radio aware, and could seamlessly roam between available network technologies, from WANs down to PANs.