Intel pulls plugs on plans for Kahneeta PC

Want to know about Intel's Kahneeta reference platform? Well you're too late, Intel seems to have pulled the plugs on it well in advance of most of the world having heard of it. If you look here, you'll see that Kahneeta is no more, "due to limited supply," as Intel enigmatically reveals. Other references to what it is/was are scarce, but we've managed to track its appearance in a Microsoft OnNow for Windows NT 5.0 (alias Win2k) late last year. Kahneeta was one of the key desktop platforms Microsoft was aiming NT 5.0 OnNow features at, along with "Intel Atlanta based motherboards," and Compaq and Dell machines. And just to show you how anally-retentive old Chipzilla is, a search of intel.com for Atlanta and motherboard throws up a page in the support section that says: "The phrase Atlanta is not an Intel product name. The correct product name is Intel AL440LX motherboard." So there. The Kahneeta reference platform program was a part of Intel's Instantly Available PC project, which itself is part of the confusing thicket of Intel projects and initiatives designed to make PC easier to use, manage, switch on and off and so on. Intel was showing a "Concept PC" demonstrating ease of use at Comdex last November, and Microsoft was talking about Kahneeta support that December, so go figure. The probable real reason for Kahneeta's sudden demise is of course Microsoft. From Intel's point of view Kahneeta would have related to its own Ease of Use Initiative, which it kicked off at the Intel Developer Forum last autumn. This Initiative was transformed into the joint MS-Intel Easy PC Initiative at WinHEC earlier this year. Until shortly before that point Microsoft's intention had been to handle the lot in Windows 2000 and the consumer product that was going to be built on the NT/Win2k kernel. But the cancellation of the latter kicked a lot of it up into the air again, and you could maybe call Kahneeta collateral damage, spiked while Intel and Microsoft circle one another warily. As Microsoft is now getting its OS strategy back on track, however (MS Roadmap leaks out) it's probably worth watching Intel's Instantly Available reference platform page to see what happens when "we have settled on a suitable replacement for Kahneeta." ®