Ever fancied strapping yourself in front of three engines, two of them from jet aeroplanes, hitting a go button and hurtling along at a speed designed to propel you beyond 1,000 miles per hour? Me neither. I tend to like my life these days.

But seriously this is what the folks at the BLOODHOUND project are planning. And of course, its safe, because they're seasoned veterans at this sort of thing. Headed up by Richard Noble OBE, this team have already set up a land-speed record that broke the speed of sound.

And they've also got wider ambitions. Ute Gorjzewski, from the Intel side, explained to me that the project aims to also inspire children to become the scientists, engineers and mathematicians of the future because just being a racing car driver would not be enough to make projects like this happen.

Using the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series in a HPC cluster it was a piece of cake to develop the car's body shape down to the last nanometre. And this is a fine science indeed. Minute inaccuracies in the body shape's aerodynamics could potentially send it spiralling into orbit... or it could become the world's fastest plough. So getting it wrong isn't an option.

Lots of schools have hooked into the project and are basing educational activities around the project, and Intel is sponsoring it.

It's exciting, compelling and inspiring indeed.

I wasn't the only one blogging, Tweeting and Flickr-ing at the Dell Tech Camp last week.  Here are some of the highlights are seen by Dell....

Dell's team picked out a top 10 from the day and one of them was the Virtual Classroom.

Dell also had a photographer on hand to capture the day.

So the Dell Tech Camp is underway at the O2 in London.

There is more than three tonnes of hardware up on the main stage alone, and probably double that amount of hardware on the show floor.   The event is aimed at showcasing Dell's hardware from the last 12 months aimed at SMBs, the public sector, corporations and government.

From laptops, to printers, displays, desktops, workstations and servers - it's an impressive range of technology and what impresses most of all is the fact that much of it has Intel Inside. Ed English, head of enterprise marketing EMEA, for Dell, said: "The computer industry is at an inflection point that will redefine products and services."

Echoing that sentiment Iain Beckingham, head of the enterprise technical team, at Intel, said it had been an important last few months for Intel.  Speaking a day after Intel posted its best ever quarterly results, he said the launch of the Xeon 5600 and 7500 processors offered a mind-blowing leap over the previous generation.

I'm going to be blogging throughout the day and will be adding content here and on our Twitter feed at Twitter.com/intelitgalaxyuk

UPDATE:

I've just grabbed a few words with Ed English, head of enterprise marketing in EMEA, and we discussed the relationship between Intel and Dell.

He told me: "If you were here 10 years ago you would have seen those two logos very close as well. We've been strategic partners with each other for a very, very long time.

"A lot of Intel's objectives like stripping out ineffeciency in the data centre and client space, driving down customers' cooling and power requirements, getting increased productivity out of a finite amont of space; there's a lot of synergy with what we are looking to do from a Dell perspective.

"A great example would be recent launch of Dell R910, a 4-socket server, encompassing the 7500, known as Nehalem EX. It's a great example of a product we have co-designed together and we are trsaking to market and are positioning to customers tro say herre is a truly stable, solid, high performance platform you can take as a realistic option to replace big, existing Unix/RISC infrastructure that might be in your data centre that's costing you thousands and thousands of dollars to run."

Wind farm developer assesses sites 20 times faster and cuts power use by around 75 percent with Dell blade cluster using Intel Xeon processor technology.

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini held an investor meeting today and said two particularly interesting things, reported by the FT.

The first was rather important, I think. He said: "We’re transforming ourselves into a computing company, don’t think of us as a chip company anymore."

Without overstating things, I think Otellini has just signalled the reinvention of the firm. To understand think about the firm's origins.

Founded by Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968 they essentially founded Silicon Valley and spawned the chip industry. The first chip was a RAM chip and three years later the first microprocessor from the firm was released. And in 1974 the 8080 was released - the world's first multi-purpose microprocessor.

From this moment on Intel sparked a revolution - they became the engine of the computing world, and in particular the personal computing world. Intel's role and perception of its role had become fixed - it was the power behind the evolution and revolution in computing.

But now Otellini is saying that they are no longer a chip firm. What does he mean? Well, certainly Intel is not about to stop making chips and I would be incredibly surprised if Intel was going to set itself up as a consumer electronics firm in its purest sense - even if Intel did sell watches in 1972!

Essentially I think he is saying the second great age of computing, the personal computer, is evolving, and perhaps even being superceded.

How we think about computers, how we use them, what we use them for, what they look like, where we find them - it's all changing.

The first signs are here: smartphones have become paradigm-shifting devices capable of delivering the always-on digital world. Netbooks have the sort of power you could find in a desktop a few years ago. Set-top boxes have become rich internet content gateways. Tablet computers are changing the way we use digital content. Desktops have the power of supercomputers and so on.

And Otellini is saying that Intel will be involved with all these sectors - and that it is no longer about simply delivering silicon. It is about platforms, operating systems, working with developers, ensuring software is optimised for the hardware.

In the 1990s Intel took a huge step with the Pentium and Intel Inside campaign, which made people care for the first time about what silicon they had inside their personal computer. Look for more of the same in the years to come.

The second thing he said is: "Everybody says tablets are going to eat the notebooks. On the scale of the PC industry, they’re relatively insignificant."

Of course, he's right. It's like comparing the electric car industry to the combustion engine apparatus. Right now, that is.

Otellini said: "My personal belief is that tablets like netbooks are additive. They’re a new usage model, they’re good for computing, they’re probably good for Intel long term and I don’t think they will take market share away from other devices - you do different things with a tablet than you do with a notebook or a desktop or even a netbook for that matter. A tablet is fundamentally a consumption device.”

It's an interesting comment for a few reasons. Some will see it as a swipe at Apple and the iPad. But I don't think so. Otellini, I think, is saying form and function are still inextricably tied. And he's right because even though computing power gets ever faster and more efficient, and even though today's phones are more than capable of doing what our computers of 10 years ago could only dream of, it's a sliding scale.

Today's desktops are indeed yesterday's supercomputers. And that evolution will continue.

I'm in the privileged position of being invited to an evening with Stephen Hawking this week.

We'll be getting a preview of his latest Discovery channel series, Hawking's Universe, which Intel sponsors, and the rare chance to be in his company.

You may have noticed that comments from the series have received quite a wide bit of press. Prof Hawking is quoted as saying that if we ever met aliens in the universe the encounter might not go to well.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," the Times quotes him as saying.

His incredibly distinguished career prompted me to think about his achievements and Intel's in parallel. That's not as crazy as it sounds - back in 1997 Intel provided Professor Hawking with his first wireless connection to the internet.

Intel enabled Prof Hawking to connect to the internet from almost anywhere in the world using a wireless GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) connection and a notebook computer specially modified for Hawking by Intel engineers and powered by an Intel Pentium® processor with MMX™ technology.

So here goes:

- After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford University in 1962, he stayed on at the college to study astronomy.

- Intel was born six years later. Founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation, by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

- Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, after publishing a paper that showed black holes e-mit radiation.

Here is how scientist and writer Carl Sagan described that moment:

"In the spring of 1974, about two years before the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars, I was at a meeting in England sponsored by the Royal Society of London to explore the question of how to search for extraterrestrial life. During a coffee break I noticed a much larger meeting was being held in an adjacent hall, which out of curiosity I entered. I soon realized I was witnessing an ancient rite, the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton. When at last he finished, there was a stirring ovation. Stephen Hawking was a legend even then."

- Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor, the Intel 4004, in 1971. It operated at 740 kHz and had 2,300 transistors on it. Three years later the 8080 chip had 4,500 transistors

- Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years, taking up the post in 1979

- In 1982 Intel's 80286 changes computing forever. It boasts 134,000 transistors and the performance increase per clock cycle over its immediate predecessor may be the largest among the generations of x86 processors

- Hawking's global best-seller, A Brief of History of Time, is published on 1 April 1988. It has sold more than 9 million copies and  was on the Sunday Times best-seller list for more than four years.

- In 2010 the 8 core Xeon Nehalem EX is reeled - with 2.3 billion transistors on board, smashing world records.

Quite remarkable, I think, to look at two disparate entities - a person and a company - and get a sense of how much they have achieved.

Coming Soon!  Expert Chat on the Next Generation Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series

Thursday 29th April 2010 from 10:00-12:00 GMT

Iain Beckingham – Regional Technical Sales Manager

Iain Beckingham is a manager of the Enterprise Technical Specialist team with Intel. He joined Intel in 1996, and has held a variety of positions in both Sales and Marketing. Mr. Beckingham received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics from Bath University, England in 1993.

Ian Lloyd – Enterprise Technology Specialist

Ian is an Intel Enterprise Technology Specialist. He joined Intel in 2000 and has worked in various technical roles in IT and Server Marketing. He is currently responsible for driving technology adoption within the UK Financial services and Healthcare business segments.  

Jeff Hewlett – Marketing Manager Server Systems

Jeff is currently Marketing Manager for Intel’s volume server systems. He is based in Swindon UK and is focused on the launch and ramp of Intel’s server systems (server boards, rack systems and pedestal systems) based on the new Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series. He joined Intel Corporation in 2000, and has held various senior marketing roles in Intel Corporation EMEA region and in Phoenix Arizona.  His various roles included; Marketing Manager for NetStructure communications and networking products, ramping products built for the Telecom ATCA standard form factor, Marketing Manager for Intel’s embedded processors and Marketing Manager for the Intel Communications Alliance.

Grant Peters – Technical Marketing Engineer

Grant is based in Swindon UK and is a Technical Marketing Engineer for Enterprise Servers.  He joined Intel in 2003 and has held roles in IT and Enterprise Server Marketing.  He evangelises all of Intel’s Server Technologies across a variety of verticals, ranging from Virtualization to HPC clusters.  He holds a  Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Science

Steve Wallace – Technical Marketing Engineer

Steve is a Technical Marketing Engineer for server platforms with Intel. He joined Intel in 1983 and has worked in a variety of roles in Server Technical Marketing for both OEM and Channel customers. He is currently responsible for the design in of Intel® Xeon® Processor 7500 Series.