Your PC in 2008 and Beyond

Great Graphics Inside

"Integrated graphics" has long been synonymous with "sluggish graphics." But soon the phrase will have a whole new meaning, thanks to new CPUs with powerful graphics hardware built in.

What is it? AMD's acquisition of ATI brought the company's rivalry with Intel--which already made its own basic graphics chips--to a new level. Since then the two competitors each have been working to bridge the gap between CPUs and graphics processors. Building graphics-processing functionality directly into a CPU eliminates the delay you'd otherwise experience as data passes between the CPU and GPU across the system bus. Such combined CPU/GPUs will feature DirectX 10 support and acceleration for Blu-ray and HD-DVD while consuming substantially less power, requiring less space on the motherboard, and performing significantly better than most of today's discrete graphics cards do.

When is it coming? Intel plans to put its graphics-integrated Nehalem processors into production in 2008, beginning with a line of server chips. AMD intends to release its integrated Puma notebook platform about the same time. In 2009, Intel will bring its graphics-integrated chips to desktops and notebooks, while AMD's Puma will likely reach desktops in 2010.

Screens Get the Bends

The smaller and more powerful devices become, the harder they are to use. Tiny screens just don't cut it when you want to do real work. But if your phone or PDA came with a large roll-out display, you could work in comfort without sacrificing portability. That's where flexible polymers will come in.

What is it? Display manufacturers make traditional LCD screens by sandwiching liquid crystals between layers of glass and then zapping them with electricity. Replacing that glass with plastic makes things a little more malleable. Initially developed by E Ink and Philips, so-called electronic paper compresses organic light-emitting diode (OLED) crystals between very thin layers of polymer, allowing for tremendous flexibility. Unlike conventional LCD screens, such ultrathin displays are completely shatterproof, and can even be rolled up into tight spools. The result is a wide-screen monitor that you can carry in your pocket and use anywhere. Better still, such screens will be cheaper and easier to manufacture than today's flat panels--they'll simply be printed directly onto sheets of plastic.

When is it coming? First-generation flexible displays are already here--they're just not that flexible yet. E Ink's electronic paper can be found in such nonflexible products as the $300 Sony Reader and the $130 Motorola Motofone F3. The first actually rollable displays, created by the labs of Philips's Holland-based spin-off Polymer Vision, will reach the market in 2008: A cell phone from Telecom Italia will carry the world's first Polymer Vision roll-up display. Currently under wraps, the phone (pricing not yet available) is expected to offer a 5-inch, 320-by-240-pixel, monochrome rollable display. By 2010, Polymer Vision expects to market larger color displays with much higher resolution.