[photopress:cuteraflopschip.jpg,full,alignright]Intel will expand its Multi-core University program to 37 universities in China. The program provides Chinese university students training with industry-leading multi-core technology and cultivates the next generation of multi-core developers for the global IT industry.
Well, yes. Good. Nay, excellent.
But what it is also doing is brain-washing the next generation of technology developers into thinking that multi-core is the only way to go — it isn’t — and that the IBM way is the best way (which may well be true but needs to be tested.)
The announcement coincided with Intel’s National Multi-Core Programming Contest. Top prize is RMB50,000 which goes to the best multi-core based software programming and could be regarded, in the context, as chump change.
Wee Theng Tan, Vice President, Intel, and President, Intel China, said, ‘The joint multi-core labs established by Intel and the Chinese universities will help integrate multi-core technology in teaching and research conducted in universities in order to cultivate more technical talents adaptive to this new era.’
The Higher Education Department of China’s Ministry of Education is involved in this and is backing Intel. Intel currently has established five multi-core labs with top universities in China, and plans to establish multi-core labs in 32 Chinese universities. The Intel Multi-core University Program will support China’s Higher Education Quality Project and, it is claimed, help accelerate the integration of advanced technology into China’s IT industry.
By the start of 2008, Intel intends to have Multi-core Curriculum Programs in 235 universities throughout Asia and in over 400 universities worldwide.
It makes one feel slightly uneasy. It is a good thing for commerce to support the world of academia. It is another thing to focus solely on one technology which is effectively owned by that company.
Source: Wireless Design and Development Asia