Chipzilla announced a new system-on-a-chip (SoC), which is similar to a few chips on a platter fed to a homunculus that gets some tasks or the odd chore done. Intels new media processor CE3100 (CE as in consumer electronics) is based on the processor formerly known as Canmore. Canmore the former packs a core and with 'multi-stream video decoding and processing', sports two dual audio DSPs said to deliver what was loosely-termed as 'home-theatre quality audio' and features some sort of 3D graphics capability. Intel claims it also delivers the performance for user interfaces and such fancy stuff. It supports PCI Express and USB 2.0, making it -according to Chipzilla - as flexibile and compatible as other Intel marchitecture, but may other parties decide on that. Samsung and Toshiba have already said they want some.

As if all that weren't enough for the weak-hearted, Intel has also put heads together with search engine runner-up Yahoo. Yahoo and Intel showed off an applications framework for tellys and related one-eyed offspring based on Intel's CE marchitecture. Widget Channel, as the framework is cunning called, will let people use Widgets on their telly, saving them from having to twaddle and move around a bit more. Widget channel is based on Yahoo's widget engine and is tweaked to run most smoothly on the new CE3100 SoC. CE3100 sounds similar to T-1000, which was an evil and heartless type series of terminators, mostly known from blockbuster movie Terminator 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-1000

Interested readers can find out more about the Intel  and Yahoo Widget Channel here http://www.intelconsumerelectronics.com/Consumer-Electronics-3.0/Widget-Channel-Overview.aspx and here http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/