10 June - Day 2

Breakfast@Hotel:
Our bodies woke up with shock from the alarm radio suddenly playing at the preset time (0700). Grudgingly, we dragged ourselves awake to wash up and headed down to the lobby for breakfast. The breakfast was not bad; waffles (self-made), coffee, toast was what I had. There were many other choices such as bread with multi-flavored fillings, cereals such as corn flakes and drinks such as milk and orange juice.

HP Labs :
For this tour around HP Labs located in Paulo Alto, Mr. Carl Chow, Visit Manager for HP, was our guide. Unfortunately, we had to surrender any equipment capable of photography or videography to the receptionist, hence there's only a few photos outside of the building. Mr. Chow went through what HP is about ("Simplifying technology experiences around the world"), what HP has to offer to both the consumer market and the corporate markets, and the frameworks that the company works on. In regards to these frameworks, there is 2 that the company sticks by: Company Strategy & Operating Framework. He went on to explain that HP Labs is actually meant to research on technologies for the future with long term goals (5-10 years timeline). He also mentioned that HP Labs had just recently reshuffled their management and categorized all their researches into 5 main themes, in which 23 research labs across the world are also divided by this themes. In the past, only 2 to 3 researchers were attached to a past, however, with this new consolidation, there are more researchers working on the same project instead, hence moving from small projects to generating a high impact research that may change IT forever. For example, memresistor is the new fourth passive circuit element that came out of this lab. Also, he mentioned that HP helps companies to maximize the efficiency and power to cool data systems with e-generators and sensors which helps to cut down significantly power bills used for air-conditioning.
He also demonstrated a few new technologies that they had, for example Indigo is an printer ink that would bring better picture quality for press; Memory Spot, a tag that utilizes elementary RFID concepts, which can contain large amount of data in it; Cable Tracker for telecommunication companies to track unplugged or faulty cables; Free Pad, a program that came out of HP Labs India that reads strokes on the trackpad as characters hence making it like a transcriber; Polynomial Texture Mapping, a black dome with controlled lightings to show details on items that cannot be seen in normal lightings; HALO, a real-life video conferencing technology.
We were also brought around to HP founders' original offices, which was next to each other. Right outside their offices, was their first product: Model 200c Audio Oscillator.
Lunch at the cafeteria at HP Labs was fantastic! The burgers that were there was SO DELICIOUS! After lunch, we moved on to Intel Museum.

Intel Museum:
It was quite interesting at this museum as we began our tour of the museum first with practical on schematics and circuitry where we played with Lego-like pieces to build a complete circuit based on the given schematics. After which, we were guided around the museum by Regina who told us of the history behind Intel, which was derived from "Integrated Electronics", and not "Intelligence" as commonly believed. She also talked about Moore's Law, a statement made by one of the founders of Intel, that "the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years", the very first product that Intel was approached by another company to make chips for. She went on the explain that the chips are made on silicon because they are semi-conductors which mean we can control the electricity that flows through it as compared to insulators or conductors, and that they are made in very sterile environments that everyone in the labs have to wear bunny suits before going in. Also, all ground in the labs have holes in them and are color coded to ensure air flow through them.
As with all museums, there is a souvenir store that sold products ranging from notepads to USB hubs, and from mugs to clothing, almost all with Intel logo stamped on in. There was also an Artificial Intelligence Bot (AI Bot), known as Arty, at the museum that could answer questions thrown at it. From Intel, we moved on to Great Mall for a dinner.



Great Mall:
It was free & easy time! Great Mall is a large one storied shopping area which many boutique retailers selling clothes, electronic equipments and shoes. We had our dinner here which was quite alright.


Regards,
Han Yang
Ngee Ann Polytechnic



Reference:
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm