Rather, the view was upbeat for users of the next generation of information appliances. The microprocessor makers assembled for the forum may have been concerned, however, as Halla left unexplored some of the implications of the reduced priced, proliferating technology he described.

"If you thought the last 30 years was the information age, you ain't seen nothing yet," Halla said. The Internet will have a dramatic effect on the way many people live by allowing them to avoid or enhance many of today's chores. Citing an example of ordering show tickets via e-mail that's been transformed by voice recognition and language translation technology, Halla portrayed a future focused on networking and graphics-rich processing.

In another example, Halla said grocery store shopping will be conducted over the Internet in the future. "Why do it any other way?" he asked. "Perhaps you want to go to the store to fondle the meat."

Extrapolating from the $1,000 Compaq Presario in 1997 and the $500 eTower from Emachines in 1998, Halla provocatively raised the prospect of the PCs being given away in 1999. Many service providers may prefer to give away a technology platform and be judged for the service they offer, rather than for the platform, he said.

Halla appeared to relish an era of even more intense competition and new brand names. "There could be a Safeway PC," he said. "Why not?"

In portraying a future populated with wide variety of coexisting information appliances, Halla revealed himself as a proponent of Windows-based terminals. That idea has yet to find wide market acceptance. Halla affirmed that it reduces ownership costs, due to the use of "thin-clients," and cited as an example National's internal network of 7,000 desktops, which makes heavy use of Wyse terminals.

"National's market model is that there are a number of information appliances, including the PC itself but extending down to palm computers and handheld computers, wireless terminals and phones," Halla said. "Although the PC was $2,000 to $5,000, maybe $1,500, all the others are $500 to $200 propositions and they are being joined by the PC [at that price range]."

Such low priced, high volume devices will be realized through integration, Halla said. The Sony Playstation demonstrates that high performance in terms of graphics is not at odds with low-priced consumer processing engines, he said. "The Sony Playstation at 34 MHz achieved 200-Mips, so why can't 333-MHz get you 2-Bips [billions of instructions per second]?"

In the future, Halla suggested, the standardization of network connections will allow dedicated hardware, rather than software running on a general-purpose microprocessor, to provide greater efficiency. "All these information appliances share data coming down the pipe," he said. "Support the standards associated with that data in hardware. We already have standards: MPEG-2 for decompression; QAM and QPSK for demodulation; Viterbi and Reed-Solomon for error correction. Why ask the Pentium to interpret the data? You don't ask the faucet to decide each time whether its water or crude oil coming down the pipe. You don't ask the wall socket to check the voltage," he said.

Halla said improvements in process technology illustrate how quickly the integration he described would be possible. In 2008, Halla said the industry will be using 0.05-micron process technology, and a Pentium II will cost 75 cents. Its die would measure 2 mm on a side, and 100 Pentiums will fit on a single die, he said.