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54-452: IAL was created by Intel Vice-president Ron Whittier together with Craig Kinnie and Steven McGeady to develop the hardware and software innovations considered to be lacking from PC OEMs and Microsoft in the late 1980s and 1990s. IAL pursued both hardware and software initiatives, both of which were important factors in the evolution of, and the control of, the PC industry. Around the same time in

108-538: A believer that the day of bloatware is over", wrote Microsoft VP Paul Maritz in an email to Bill Gates . "He has more IQ than most [people at Intel]". In November 1998, McGeady testified that Microsoft leveraged its monopoly power in Windows to impede Intel's ability to compete with Microsoft in areas involving system software and influence of OEMs: The DoJ made four major arguments based on McGeady's testimony: Microsoft, in their response to McGeady's testimony, made

162-521: A familiar technical language with their fellow software developers from IAL, allowing the group to work as a single unit to drive the USB standard into the Windows-based PCs of the 1990s and beyond. Unlike previous IAL projects which had resulted in considerable conflict and tension with other companies in the PC industry, the USB project stood out as a highlight of the cooperation between IAL's engineers and

216-608: A fast native x86 port of the Java system. Most of these projects were later shelved, and after 1997 IAL tended not to risk competing with Microsoft. The details of IAL's conflicts with Microsoft over software were revealed in Steven McGeady's testimony in the Microsoft antitrust trial. Not all of IAL's software efforts met bad ends due to Microsoft—IAL developed one of the first software digital video systems, Indeo (tm) - technology that

270-650: A group focused on Internet-based healthcare delivery. McGeady was a co-founder of the Intel Architecture Labs , a research and development group focused on advancing the personal-computer platform. McGeady ran the software , multimedia , data security , and Internet programs within this group for most of the 1990s. His group developed Intel's ProShare video-conferencing technology, the Indeo video compression technology, and Intel's Display Control Interface and VxD graphics software, later licensed to Microsoft to form

324-448: A large software initiative to gradually move the algorithms and software implementations from DSPs to the central Intel microprocessor. IAL's decision to pursue NSP clashed with a similar project that was brewing at Microsoft. NSP's software architecture was designed to be agnostic of the software operating system. This was a common strategic direction with PC chip manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s because it allowed chips to be used in

378-515: A meeting at Intel, Microsoft's plan to " embrace, extend, [and] extinguish " the HTML standard until it would be incompatible with the Netscape browser. While this term had some currency before his 1998 testimony, this was its first prominent public exposure. Documents presented by the government showed Microsoft was concerned about McGeady: "Steve McGeady remains an issue for us. He is a champion of Java and

432-460: A multitude of software operating environments, and not just the Microsoft operating systems (OS) such as Microsoft Windows . Microsoft's equivalent project to IAL's NSP was called Direct Show , and at the outset of NSP, this posed a conflict and a challenge for the working relationship between Intel and Microsoft (traditionally very close partners with highly aligned interests). When Intel proposed

486-556: A new technology called Native Signal Processing, which would have used instructions from Intel's chips, rather than software code from Microsoft, to run multimedia and communications programs more quickly. McGeady testified for the government and against Microsoft despite pressure from inside Intel. Intel's then-COO Craig Barrett instructed McGeady not to cooperate with Department of Justice attorneys, but "He [told] Barrett to go stuff it". McGeady also claimed in his testimony that Microsoft Vice-President Paul Maritz had described, in

540-589: A software engineer and developer, McGeady was often a minority voice at hardware-dominated Intel. In 1996 he was asked by then-CEO Andy Grove to take a job as Grove's assistant and is the only known person to turn the job down. Grove later said that he and Intel would have grasped the importance of the Internet to the company more quickly had McGeady taken the job. McGeady had a less positive relationship with succeeding CEO Craig Barrett , reportedly telling Barrett to "pound sand" when Barrett instructed him not to testify in

594-483: A unique combination of hardware and software definitions, and as a result the project needed a software engineering team from the outset, unlike typical Intel hardware projects. The USB software device driver "stack" was initially developed on Windows 95 using the Virtual Device Driver (VxD) model of Windows 95. The VxD-based USB driver stack was helpful to Microsoft as they implemented a brand new USB stack using

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648-479: Is a family of audio and video formats and codecs first released in 1992, and designed for real-time video playback on desktop CPUs. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video stream format, a hardware-only codec for the compression of television-quality video onto compact discs , Indeo was distinguished by being one of the first codecs allowing full-speed video playback without using hardware acceleration . Also unlike Cinepak and TrueMotion S ,

702-425: Is available for purchase from the official website for use only with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. This includes support for Indeo Video 4.5 and Indeo Audio 2.5 codecs but the version 3.2 video codec has been removed since the original release of Indeo XP for Windows. Although Indeo video is not officially supported by Windows Vista and Windows 7, simply entering the following into the command prompt might enable

756-528: Is very similar to the competing Cinepak . It uses chroma subsampling , delta encoding, vector quantization , run-length encoding and motion compensation ( inter-frame coding) with a recommended key-frame interval of 4 and has distinctly asymmetric runtime characteristics. Indeo Video Interactive had greater computational complexity and was aimed at video game developers. It was based on wavelet transforms and included novel features such as chroma-keyed transparency and hot spot support. Initially, there

810-581: The Intel Architecture Labs in Hillsboro . In 1993, he was promoted to a vice president position at the company. At the time of his departure in June 2000, McGeady was Vice President of Intel 's New Business Group. During 15 years at Intel, he led a variety of software, marketing, and investment initiatives for Intel, including the i960 RISC microprocessor software development, Intel's digital video and multimedia research, Intel's first Internet development group, and

864-504: The classic Mac OS , BeOS R5 and the XAnim player on Unix . Reverse engineered decoders for versions 2, 3, 4 and 5 were introduced in FFmpeg between 2003 and 2011. Indeo version 3 ( IV31 and IV32 ), 4 ( IV41 ) and 5 ( IV50 ) are supported by MPlayer and XAnim. Version 5.11 is freeware and may be used on all 32-bit versions of Windows prior to Vista. Version 5.2 has been created for XP and

918-420: The 1980s based on the hardware-only Digital Video Interactive (DVI) which was previously developed by General Electric . Indeo was first released in 1992 along with Microsoft 's Video for Windows platform. At its public introduction, it was the only video codec supported in both the Microsoft (Video for Windows) and Apple Computer 's QuickTime software environments, as well as by IBM's software systems of

972-497: The IAL engineers and the chipset engineers was crucial in the development of the original USB specification. Throughout the development of the USB 1.0 specifications, the IAL engineers worked closely with chipset designers (inside and outside Intel). Together, the engineering teams in Oregon and California were tasked with building the world's first USB based computer by designing and manufacturing

1026-473: The Internet world, and McGeady openly suggested that Intel's interference with Microsoft would aid the industry. McGeady admitted leaking confidential information to The New York Times journalist John Markoff and met with Netscape's Jim Clark to keep Netscape from being complacent about the threat from Microsoft. Documents show McGeady envisioning entrapping Microsoft in an antitrust suit, and later he indirectly volunteered to testify against Microsoft. McGeady

1080-474: The Microsoft case. In 1998, McGeady was a witness for the US Department of Justice in the U.S. vs. Microsoft antitrust case, where he testified about Microsoft 's attempts to control Intel's software efforts as well as their behavior toward Netscape and Sun's Javasoft . He was the only executive from the PC industry to testify for the government. McGeady testified that Microsoft opposed Intel's 1995 work on

1134-715: The NSP software design to Microsoft, it became clear that the two initiatives (NSP & Direct X) were in direct conflict. Microsoft refused to put their support behind a competing standard such as NSP, especially one with the potential to level the OS playing field for PCs. Despite this conflict, IAL continued to work on NSP, showing demonstrations of DSP software running smoothly on the central microprocessor. With every generation of performance and functionality improvements, Microsoft refused to support NSP in its operating systems. Microsoft and Intel, both large and influential companies who worked with

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1188-469: The PC industry, Microsoft was emerging as the de facto industry standard in PC Operating Systems and software application for the PC. As IAL's software ambitions began to overlap with Microsoft's, a rivalry broke out between Intel and Microsoft as it related to the amount of influence, control, and the setting of standards in the rapidly growing PC industry. Over time, IAL's work in software projects

1242-563: The Plug and Play initiatives assisted in building the first peripheral interconnect that would work with devices without requiring the PC to be dismantled. This vision of a sealed PC that could be extended with external devices was central to Intel's strategy of making the PC more like a consumer device. USB emerged as the lead contender for the interconnect standard interface, and an Intel team of engineers set out to create an industry standard. Intel's engineering standards were well known as being among

1296-524: The USB Host Controller. A critical component of the USB design was the interface between hardware and software, which was the domain of the USB Host Controller, the brains behind the interconnect that all USB devices communicate with. The USB Host Controller was embedded in the South Bridge chip, and was designed to match the USB specification being developed by the IAL engineers. USB was, like PCI,

1350-796: The chief engineers of the USB project in IAL included Brad Hosler, Shelagh Callahan, John Howard, John Garney, and Kosar Jaff, all based in the Hillsboro Oregon Intel site. While the IAL-based USB team was primarily located in Intel's campus in Hillsboro Oregon, the USB project also included a team of chip designers in the Intel Chipset Group (Peripheral Components Division) located on the Intel campus in Folsom, California . The partnership between

1404-520: The compression used the same Y'CbCr 4:2:0 colorspace as the ITU's H.261 and ISO 's MPEG-1 . Indeo use was free of charge to allow for broadest usage. During the development of what became the P5 Pentium microprocessor, the Intel Architecture Labs implemented one of the first, and at the time highest-quality, software-only video codecs, which was marketed as "Indeo Video". It has been developed since

1458-401: The concepts, prototypes, and implementations of DSP algorithms on native Intel microprocessors was widely recognized as an impressive technological feat at the time, and indirectly supported the overall notion of moving dedicated software workloads to general purpose microprocessors like Intel's. IAL also tangled with Microsoft by supporting Netscape and their early browser , and by producing

1512-502: The core of DirectX . His research group worked with the MIT Media Lab , Xerox PARC , and other groups, and developed early prototypes of digital video recorders (DVRs), video broadcast servers, and other technologies. As manager of the i960 software development tools team from 1986 to 1996, McGeady was an early developer and promoter of open-source software, beginning with Richard Stallman 's GNU C compiler and tools. McGeady wrote

1566-648: The day. It was sold to Ligos Corporation in 2000. Intel produced several different versions of the codec between 1993 and 2000, based on very different underlying mathematics and having different features. Though Indeo saw significant usage in the mid-1990s, it remained proprietary . Intel slowed development and stopped active marketing, and it was quickly surpassed in popularity by the rise of MPEG codecs and others, as processors became more powerful and its optimization for Intel's chips less important. Indeo still saw some use in video game cutscene videos, such as in 1998's Police Quest: SWAT 2 . The original format

1620-422: The design or features could prove costly if done without the appropriate rigor and review that came along with the detailed engineering reviews that accompanied the design process. In the early 1990s the initial USB specification was spearheaded in IAL, driven by a small team of software and hardware architects & engineers. The engineers were scattered across Intel campuses in Oregon and California. In Oregon,

1674-423: The development of the specification and first hardware and software implementations. The USB team in IAL, while small and focused, developed a reputation for being collaborative, supportive, and focused on educating the industry about the emerging USB standard. The engineers were regular presenters at USB Developer's Conferences and collaborated with dozens of hardware and software companies who were eager to implement

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1728-536: The emerging Windows Driver Model (WDM) largely because of Microsoft's strategic shift towards Windows NT, and away from Windows 95. WDM was uniquely compatible with both operating systems, and the decision to abandon the VxD stack was a win-win for Intel and Microsoft. The collaboration between IAL and Microsoft improved during the development of USB 1.0, largely driven by the software developers that Intel hired into its IAL labs. Software developers at Microsoft were able to speak

1782-443: The highest in the industry, driven by the company's adherence to careful development of technical specifications before setting out to design or develop a new product. As part of the engineering process, Intel engineers wrote detailed technical specifications during the early phases of design, to ensure the features were well understood and agreed upon. Since Intel's products usually involved complex chip designs, errors or omissions in

1836-403: The i960 target for GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) and led the team that developed a suite of tools including a globally optimizing, trace-driven optimizer for gcc and the first GNU Debugger (gdb) port to a remote, stand-alone system. He hired Cygnus Support to integrate those changes into the mainline GNU tools and to improve the tools' ability to deal with many object file formats . McGeady

1890-400: The industry's first broadly-adopted interconnect standard to make PCs more user friendly. In 2001, after the departure of all of its creators, IAL was disbanded and replaced with the very different Intel Labs under Pat Gelsinger , though most of the creative talent that had been in IAL was by then scattered across the company or had left entirely. In a 2005 re-organization, Intel Labs itself

1944-525: The performance of its chips. As a result of the increase in performance, Intel saw an opportunity to transfer software workloads from specialized microprocessors over to the central Intel microprocessors. This strategy was fundamental to Intel's vision of a powerful central microprocessor made with its advanced chip building capabilities. NSP was, in that regard, a gold mine of power-hungry software workloads which were previously running on Digital Signal Processor chips. This led to IAL's decision to embark on NSP,

1998-530: The playback of Indeo encoded video: regsvr32 ir50_32.dll The Microsoft Windows implementation of the Indeo codec contains several security vulnerabilities and one should not play Indeo videos from untrusted sources. Microsoft tried to remove them in XP SP1 but had to release a hotfix to add it back. The codec was originally licensed from Intel and Microsoft likely do not have the source code that would be required to fix

2052-665: The point that his testimony contained several pro-Microsoft threads and that Intel practiced similar cross-product subsidization, distributing free Intel Architecture Labs software funded by microprocessor revenues. They also claimed that Microsoft's influence over Intel and its microprocessors was unrelated to the downstream software segment. Cross-examination of McGeady revealed conflicting interpretations of many Microsoft/Intel meetings, differing reasons for Intel's decisions, and for McGeady's anti-Microsoft bias: McGeady's notes suggested that portions of his testimony could be considered embellishments or stories heard in other contexts, and he

2106-461: The rest of the PC industry. The IAL USB team worked closely with Microsoft, sharing their lessons learned, and helping the Microsoft team add support for the USB interconnect in Windows, as well as in Microsoft peripheral devices, such as Microsoft keyboards. The IAL team dedicated a full time engineer to work with Microsoft closely so as to avoid delays and repeating mistakes the Intel team had made during

2160-495: The same PC Original Equipment Manufacturers found themselves at odds over the direction of the software and hardware in the PC industry. Microsoft convinced PC makers that the Intel NSP device drivers would render their systems unsupported by the Windows operating system, and in turn this led Intel to pull back from promoting the software, leaving NSP as an orphan project. Although NSP did not achieve commercial success like Direct X,

2214-433: The stream (and thus requiring an add-in card), but allowing the stream to be displayed on any personal computer. Indeo 2, previously known as Real-Time Video 2 , works by delta coding pixels line by line, either against the temporally or spatially directly preceding line, coupled with static Huffman coding . Indeo Video 3 is a traditional DCT -based transform coding format designed for video playback from CD-ROM that

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2268-961: Was Chairman of Portland-based healthcare technology firm ShiftWise . He is a member of the Reed College Board of Trustees, the Portland Art Museum Board of Trustees, and the PNCA Board of Governors, and lives in Portland, Oregon . Steven McGeady was born in Baltimore, Maryland . His father was a manager for Bethlehem Steel . After high school in Michigan City, Indiana he briefly attended Purdue University . Then in 1976, he enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon . While attending Reed College from 1976 to 1980, he studied Physics and Philosophy but did not graduate. The majority of his time

2322-456: Was Vice-President of Intel's Multimedia, Communications, and Internet activities from 1990 through 1996, where he led the development of the first desktop video-compression software for the PC, Intel's early implementations of multimedia network broadcast protocols, the first products to combine television and web pages, online virtual communities, the Java language, and data security infrastructure. As

2376-564: Was arrested at Intel in early 2003. McGeady organized a defense fund and protested Hawash's 6-week incommunicado detention without charge. Hawash ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the Taliban in fighting against U.S. forces in Afghanistan , and received a reduced sentence in the so-called Portland Seven case in exchange for testifying against some of his co-conspirators. Indeo Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as "Indeo")

2430-423: Was called again to testify in the 2001 remedy phase of the Microsoft trial. During 1996/97, McGeady was a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab , pursuing research on emergent and self-organizing behavior in computer networks. During this time he was a keynote speaker at the first Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society. His speech from the event, "The Digital Reformation: Freedom, Risk, Responsibility"

2484-488: Was designed for real-time playback on low-end Intel CPUs ( i386 and i486 ), optionally supported by specialized decoder hardware ( Intel i750 ). Decoding complexity was significantly lower than with contemporary MPEG codecs ( H.261 , MPEG-1 Part 2). The codec was highly asymmetrical , meaning that it took much more computation to encode a video stream than to decode it. Intel's ProShare video conferencing system took advantage of this, using hardware acceleration to encode

2538-463: Was frequently forced to suggest that he had a recollection of meetings and conversations superior to that of other Intel officials, as well as Netscape officers. Microsoft revealed Intel documents that painted McGeady as a "prima donna" who was criticized for his department's belligerence toward Microsoft. Microsoft claimed that McGeady's actions suggested that he considered himself above Intel policy and an extra-corporate defender of truth and justice in

2592-491: Was gradually de-emphasized after the software efforts collided with similar activities by Microsoft. Native Signal Processing ( NSP ) was an example of a significant software effort in IAL. NSP was a software initiative to allow Intel-based PCs to run time-sensitive code independently of the operating system , allowing real-time audio and video processing on the microprocessors of the mid-1990s. Intel, whose microprocessors powered PC hardware designs, invested heavily in improving

2646-408: Was no support for Apple systems. Two variants of this technology were produced: Indeo Video 4 and 5. The format was never officially documented but later reverse engineered to allow for third-party decoders. Indeo Audio Coder is a transform coding format based on the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT). Proprietary bitstream encoding for video, originally developed by Intel. The technology

2700-615: Was occupied at the school's computer center where he and friends would experiment with a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11/70 computer donated by Howard Vollum , the founder of Tektronix . Reed's computer was the first in the Northwest to run the Unix operating system, allowing McGeady to become an early developer in that environment. After college, McGeady was a software engineering manager at Ann Arbor Terminals and Oregon based Tektronix. In 1985 he joined Intel, and in 1991 he co-founded

2754-900: Was reorganized with the intent of rebuilding a research function. Compare Intel's Architecture Development Lab. Steven McGeady Steven McGeady is a former Intel executive best known as a witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial . His notes and testimony contained colorful quotes by Microsoft executives threatening to "cut off Netscape 's air supply" and Bill Gates' guess that "this antitrust thing will blow over". Attorney David Boies said that McGeady's testimony showed him to be "an extremely conscientious, capable and honest witness", while Microsoft portrayed him as someone with an "axe to grind". McGeady left Intel in 2000, but later again gained notoriety for defending his former employee Mike Hawash after his arrest on federal terrorism charges. From its founding in 2002 until its sale in November 2013, he

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2808-622: Was reprinted in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and is credited by some as formulating early theories regarding what became social media . During 1997 and 1998, McGeady was a member of the National Research Council Computer Science and Technology Board Committee on Information Systems Trustworthiness, and is a co-author of its book on the subject. McGeady entered the news again in 2003 because of his defense of his former Intel employee Mike Hawash who

2862-463: Was sold in 2000 to Ligos Corporation. John McGowan states that Indeo 5 employs a wavelet algorithm and other encoding features; its predecessor Indeo 4 employs a presumably similar "hybrid wavelet algorithm." Windows implementations of Indeo have been distributed by Ligos. Apple distributed Mac versions for "classic" operating systems through OS 9, but there is no MacOS support for Mac OS X . Official Indeo 5 decoders exist for Microsoft Windows ,

2916-468: Was used in its ProShare videoconferencing product line but suffered later from neglect and was sold to another company in the late 1990s. However, IAL successes in the hardware world are legendary, and include PCI , USB , AGP , the Northbridge/Southbridge core logic architecture and PCI Express . USB, in particular, was developed in the Oregon offices of IAL, where the architects of PCI and

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