Intel admitted this week that it has begun enhancing MMX so that it can better handle mainstream multimedia applications such as 3D graphics, video processing and theater-quality audio. Officials at the company have said that the enhanced MMX instructions will appear in CPUs some time next year. According to Ron Whittier, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Content Group, the extra processing power will make way for a whole new range of audio video and voice recognition products. The processing capability is such that voice recognition will come well within the computing budget of chips we are producing, he said. Real time 3D animation and voice recognition are the markets of the future. The computer is moving into cars, kitchens and living rooms. Whittier described a scenario where, cooking spaghetti in the kitchen, you could ask the computer to bring up and perhaps even read to you the next step in a recipe. He also talked about car computers that could read out emails as you drive along. Right now, with products from IBM and Dragon you still have to speak quite accurately but voice input is becoming more and more natural, he said. In a year MMX will allow the next level of voice recognition applications.