Today, Intel executives Murthy Renduchintala and Diane Bryant shared at the Intel Developer Forum more developments in technologies and trends that will shape our more connected future. Intel says that by 2020, more than 50 billion machines and devices out there will be connected and the amount of data generated will increase by orders of magnitude beyond what we experience today. In fact, connected cars will generate 4 terabytes per day and a connected factory can create more than 1 petabyte per day. For perspective, an MP3 player with one petabyte of songs would play continuously for 2,000 years.

However, data by itself has limited value. Advanced analytics can be applied to empower machines with human-like intelligence. This is where artificial intelligence becomes exciting. Whether it’s a highly personalized treatment plan for a cancer patient or improved crop yields for feeding the world, gaining deeper insights from this complex data is the key to unlocking more value for businesses and societies.

To help make this a reality, Intel disclosed the next generation of the Intel Xeon Phi processor family (code named Knights Mill), which is focused on high-performance machine learning and artificial intelligence. Knights Mill, expected to be available in 2017, is optimized for scale-out analytics implementations, and will include key enhancements for deep learning training. For today’s machine learning applications, the large memory size of the Intel Xeon Phi processor family helps customers like Baidu make it easier to train their models efficiently.

Of course moving all of this data in and among data centers will be critical. Intel announced that its first Intel Silicon Photonics 100G optical transceivers are now commercially available. This critical advancement allows enterprises and cloud service providers to use the power of light to move large amounts of information at 100 gigabit-per-second over distances of up to several kilometers over fiber-optic links.

Silicon Photonics is a combination of two of the most important inventions of the 20th century: the silicon integrated circuit and the semiconductor laser. With this combination, light has been integrated onto Intel’s silicon platform. It takes advantage of the bandwidth and reach of optical connectivity on the scale and technology capability of silicon.

Three factors will characterize the evolution of technology required for a smart and connected world.

First, computing will be everywhere and in everything. More than 50 billion things and devices are expected to be connected by 2020, in addition to more than 200 billion connected sensors - all generating massive volumes of data.

The second factor shaping the future of technology – compute, analytics and storage capabilities distributed into the fabric of the network – turns connected things and data into meaningful insight for making faster, better informed decisions much closer to the edge device. For instance, in just milliseconds two autonomous vehicles will be able to sense a collision and communicate directly with each other to prevent an accident. First responders will use data and insight from the sensors embedded in their uniforms and in the environment around them to fight fires more efficiently and help save more lives.

Pervasive connectivity between the things, through the network and to the cloud is the third factor shaping the future of technology. Intel is laying the groundwork for a smarter and more connected world with 5G technologies. 5G is the next generation wireless network built to unleash the potential of the billions of things and devices and the data they will generate for new experiences. 5G connectivity will be foundational to linking everything that is around us and continually feed the virtuous cycle of growth for the industry.

To build this foundation we need faster, more efficient and intelligent networks. Intel says it is positioned to power 5G end-to-end with solutions from the device to the network and cloud, as well as to enable meaningful collaboration with cross-industry leaders – from device manufacturers to equipment makers to network operators.

AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan took the IDF stage to discuss the transformation of the network and services delivery and the importance of long-term planning, early technology enabling, deep architectural collaboration, validation and optimizations. To get there, AT&T is already using server, cloud and virtualization technologies to more quickly and cost-efficiently deliver more value to its customers. Through an expanded collaboration with Intel, AT&T will continue to accelerate its development, deployment and monetization of new services in the cloud and throughout its infrastructure, laying the foundation for delivering cutting-edge capabilities.