Cape Town, 21 Aug 2003
Intel took advantage of its sponsorship of Cape Fashion week to illustrate the capabilities of its Centrino technology this week.
The Centrino chipset is the first processor developed for mobility from the ground up, rather than being merely an adaptation of a desktop box.
"The sponsorship of Fashion Week made sense because fashion and technology are both driven by innovation, having to adapt to the dynamic lifestyles of their users," says Fathima Haniff, Intel`s market development manager.
"The Centrino chipset was developed after research into the market that told us users were looking for four main benefits from mobile technology, being sleeker form factors, extended battery life, seamless wireless connectivity and performance."
Intel teamed up with Gavin Rajah, a South African designer who has received international acclaim, who used the Centrino microarchitecture as inspiration for some of the grid-like diamond patterns on his evening wear. The magenta of the Centrino logo also appeared in some of his designs and his bags were all designed to hold some form of "sexy" technology.
At the start of Rajah`s show, Haniff showed how software that relies on the mobile processing capabilities of the Centrino is being used in the fashion world. V Stitcher by BrowZware allows designers to 3D model the exact behaviour of different fabrics on any body shape.
"Wireless technology is opening up new opportunities for all sorts of industries," Haniff says. "The campus of the University of Stellenbosch is now a wireless hotspot, and at a hospital in Taiwan, caregivers are spared the challenges of illegible paperwork by using tablet PCs to access patients` files on a network."
She points out that in this way, mobile technologies are bringing about a whole new ecosystem of business applications, which is why Rajah`s show was called "Evolution".
"Wireless technology is going to be the next killer app," she says.
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