There's been a lot of talk this year about the potential of parallel computing in the home. Nvidia, Intel and AMD are all pushing the idea of using the GPU on a graphics card to offload data-intensive tasks from the CPU.

The Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, for example, features 64 programmable shader cores. For the most part, a card like this is designed for rendering high-level visual effects in video games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3. But the GPU's processing cores can also be reallocated for other tasks – i.e. calculating real-time physics (PhysX), decoding H.264 video or enhancing the quality of photos.

It's early days for multi-core processing. The majority of today's applications are built with single-core processors in mind. But the idea of using the processing muscle of a graphics card GPU has definite benefits for digital home applications.

The secret life of graphics cards

GPUs are ideal for math-heavy tasks – scientific systems featuring clusters of GPU chips are already outperforming CPU-only hardware in fields as diverse as molecular dynamics, ray tracing, medical imaging and sequence matching.

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Hot on the heels of our earlier DLNA article, the organisation has added two new functions to its home networking specification.

A new 'Play to' function enables a DLNA device to push photo, video or audio content for viewing/playback on another device. This could be as simple as instructing a PC to send your photos to a DLNA-compatible TV. At its most complicated, the 'Play to' functionality could allow a mobile phone to order a Network Attached Storage device to send content to a digital photo frame.

Organising your multimedia

Still with me? 'Play to' extends the DLNA concepts of Digital Media Players and Digital Media Servers to include a new class of device – a Digital Media Controller. As the DLNA points out: "Digital media controllers are useful for sending photos, video and audio to display devices which have inaccessible or no integrated controls."

In contrast, the 'Print to' function is very straightforward, enabling a DLNA device to send documents or images to a networked printer.

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While the DLNA continues to push its device interconnectivity standards, another new networking standard has just been born. Dubbed 'G.hn', it has a lofty aim – to develop a single MAC/PHY standard to cover data transmissions over coaxial cable, powerline and telephone wiring.

Waving the flag for G.hn is a new outfit called the HomeGrid Forum, an SIG featuring the likes of Infineon Technologies, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments.

"Products based on G.hn technology will dramatically transform the digital home," claims the HomeGrid Forum. "With increasingly intelligent devices – and the ability to connect these products using any wire, anywhere in the home – people will be free from the hassles typically associated with installing and using consumer electronics."

Next-generation networking

The HomeGrid Forum is calling G.hn "next-generation home networking", promising 20 times the throughput of (current) wireless technologies and three times the throughput of wired technologies.

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One of the major hurdles in building a 'connected home' is that we typically live in a disconnected one.

Yes, we can stream entertainment around the house, download movies and music from the Internet, even flood each room with wireless broadband. But this still falls a long way short of digital home nirvana.

And for a glimpse at what this 'digital home dream' might be, watch the newest video from the researchers at the MIT Mobile Experience Lab.

Future home

Sure some of the ideas MIT includes are wishful thinking: smart energy monitoring (based on weather patterns), daily commuter information with local wiki-based info-sharing and self-diagnosis for buildings. This is especially true when you consider that this sort of technology is (a) going to be expensive and (b) difficult to retro-fit to the majority of today's houses.

But MIT's ideas also make a lot of sense. Smart HVAC and internet integration don't require any new technologies, while you can buy wind turbines and solar panels from your local DIY store. What the digital home market needs next is an affordable system that ties it all together.

With the news that the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is showcasing another 'connected home' at CES in 2009, we're starting to wonder when we're going to say "this is the year of the digital home". The DLNA has been lurking around for four years now, yet the green DLNA badge isn't as recognisable as the HD ready logo or the Digital 'tick'.

"The demonstration will allow users to share and access digital media easily across a variety of wired and wireless connectivity technologies, such as MoCA [Multimedia Over Coax Alliance], Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and will illustrate how consumers can easily share and stream digital content (including DVR recordings, music, photos and videos) between consumer electronics (CE) devices, mobile handsets, set-top boxes (STBs) and personal computers (PCs) anywhere throughout their homes."

It should be fun.

The year of the digital home?

But will this demo be just another futuristic flight of fancy? Or is a DLNA-enabled living room a real possibility for 2009? While DLNA networking technology hasn't yet got mass market exposure in the UK, it can already be found in a range of new products if you know where to look.

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