CES 2011 is it all about chips

A few weeks ago we were all speculating what the main focus of CES would be. Maybe like last year it would be 3D or perhaps tablets. Now there have already been plenty of tablet announcements but so far these have not been really significantly innovative (except perhaps for Asus’s slider.) The interesting thing is that so far the announcements that seem likely to have the most impact on the digital lifestyle have come from Intel and AMD.

intel’s Sandy Bridge range of new i3 to i7 chipsets with their emphasis on entertainment graphics and sound are certain to be key elements of any new Home Theatre style PCs. In particular their ability to greatly accelerate video conversion and transcoding is going to help cross the ecosystem divide we often talk about between the Apple and Microsoft world.

AMD have also launched their new Zacate range of mini-ITX boards making for a significant challenge to Nvidias ION range and these will definitely have an impact in reducing the cost of set back pcs.

With Windows Embedded being likely to be pretty significant you can see how both of these new chipsets will fit into that space.

I am also really expecting to see some significant announcements round the mobile chip space.

So maybe this CES is the CES of the chip.