Intel says software to help laptops tap into metaverse

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Intel says software to help laptops tap into metaverse

The Intel Corporation logo is seen on a display in a store in Manhattan, New York City.

Intel Corp executives said that the firm is working on software that will help laptops tap into computing power from other devices, including chips from its rivals, in their first public comments on its strategy for tapping into the metaverse.

While the definition of metaverse is broad, it usually refers to immersive virtual worlds that can be accessed via the internet and a variety of devices, like virtual reality headsets.

In the future, the trend is expected to require more computing power, and firms like Nvidia Corp, which makes chips and software used to build the virtual world, and Qualcomm Inc, which makes chips used in virtual reality headsets, have both gained value in recent months because of investor enthusiasm about the metaverse.

After a presentation at the RealTime Conference on Metaverse technologies on Monday, Raja Koduri, head of Intel's accelerated computing systems and graphics group, said that the company's first technology push into the metaverse would be software that helps devices take advantage of computing power that already exists and is unused.

If a gamer is playing a graphics-heavy title on a laptop that would tax the system's chips but also has an unused gaming PC in another room, the software could detect spare power sitting idle on the PC and tap into it over a home network to make the laptop game run better.

Koduri said the software will work with chips from competitors. The software is designed to solve technical challenges for users, and not just to generate revenue for Intel. Koduri said that part of it will be shared.

Koduri told reporters that the way that we are architecting all layers is that it is going to work with everybody's hardware, as long as they are on industry standard specifications. There's going to be a lot of open sourcing involved with everything we build.