UK

Intel, Bloodhound and 1,000mph travel

intel@monumentpr.com — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:08:11 GMT

Wing Commander Andy Green has given BBC News a tour of the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car that will hopefully propel him to more than 1,000mph.

The 1:1 replica of the 12.8m-long (42ft) Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC) is the result of three years of aerodynamic study, powered by Intel.

In the tour with BBC News Wing Commander Green said: "What makes it all possible is the technology not just behind the power plants but behind key bits of aerodynamics to keep it on ground. Intel our IT partner has given us an incredible amount of computing power. Swansea University has used this to keep the car on the ground."

The project takes advantage of world class aerodynamic research using Computational Fluid Dynamics conducted by Swansea University, MathWorks and EPSRC, and at key moments the project utilised more computing power than the Met Office.

The project began using a server platform based at Intel UK headquarters and powered by 128 Intel Xeon processors 5500 series, giving the scientists five times the power they had available at the university.

Intel has also helped develop the Bloodhound Driving Experience, a cockpit simulator designed to replicate the thrill of driving at 1,000mph.

Dell's view on Dell Tech Camp

intel@monumentpr.com — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:32:37 GMT

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.

Mobile clinical computing at #delltechcamp

intel@monumentpr.com — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:57:19 GMT

Healthcare is a growing sector for all parts of the IT industry. Dell has been piloting a project called Mobile Clinical Computing which is being trialled in 11 hospitals, three of them in the UK. And of course, the technology is powered by Intel.

The project is designed to respond to the different computing needs of clinicians - the need for data security, the mobility of staff within a closed environment, and medical archiving.

I spoke with Nigel Leaney, from Dell, who has been looking after the project.

Intel at #delltechcamp

intel@monumentpr.com — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:18:05 GMT

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."

Intel powers Cisco's new generation of business tablet

intel@monumentpr.com — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:58:58 GMT

After years in which tablets seemed to be just a niche, it appears that they are cool again. And the internet is all aflutter about a new device - not from Apple, but from Cisco. Yes, Cisco - the giants of networking and unified communications tools.

The Cisco Cius is a tablet designed for the enterprise market - focusing on leveraging Cisco's hardware/software applications such as Cisco Show and Share, Presence and Cisco Quad - ie Cisco's entire unified communications and collaboration tools.

The device also has a 720p high-definition webcam on the front and a 5-megapixel camera on the back for still images and streaming video.

From high definition video conferencing to Twitter, it would seem the Cius is designed to capitilise on the consumerisation of enterprise tools - a device that has the functionality and flexibility of a consumer tool, with the services and utility of a business device.

As the New York Times reported: The Cius may have an edge over more consumer-oriented products because Cisco will ship it with a variety of security and management controls aimed at pleasing I.T. departments. [Cisco] acknowledged that consumers exerted more influence these days over what technology was picked at companies, but added that companies wanted controls over the technology.

It's being billed as a "mobile collaboration tablet designed for business", and to my mind it's a device designed to bridge the gap between corporate desktop and laptop/phone. Instead of a docked laptop that you drag to a meeting, and potentially have to sync with your network before and after, the Cius is an always-on device that is always in sync with your network.

The device is powered by Intel's Moorestown chip, aka Atom, giving the device enough power to offer virtualisation - putting the desktop flexibility and power onto that 7 inch screen wherever you are.

The UI looks interesting - focusing on contacts rather than applications. And the device is powered by Android, and will have access to the Google Andoird Marketplace.

That gives the device the kind of open application boost not typically seen in business-specific devices. Cisco vice president Kara Wilson said: "This open platform provides access to the ever-expanding Android Marketplace.

"We'll also be partnering with Android developers to integrate Cisco's APIs into Android-developer applications, thereby bringing Cisco's value to the Android-developer community."

For further reading

Cisco Finds Its Tablet - New York Times

Cisco uncloaks video tablet - The Register

Cius - Cisco

Intel and Dell Case Study for Renewable Energy Systems (RES)

laura.conger@intel.com — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:25:02 GMT

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.

Up, up and away - it's supercomputer

intel@monumentpr.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:04:29 GMT

Is it just me or is there something fascinating about supercomputers?

BBC News has a great set of features about the annual Top 500 Super Computer chart, focusing on China's new supercomputer Nebulae, the second most powerful computer in the world, and powered by Intel.

It is built from a Dawning TC3600 Blade system with Intel X5650 processors and NVidia Tesla C2050 GPUs and is now the fastest in theoretical peak performance at 2.98 PFlop/s and number two overall with a Linpack performance of 1.271 PFlop/s.

In fact, Intel dominates the supercomputer world making the processors for 82% the world's top 500 fastest machines.

The interactive graphic from the BBC is great fun - you can view the world's most powerful computers by country, by processor, by application and OS and by speed.

Intel is incredibly serious about supercomputing or so-called High Performance Computing. The Wall Street Journal reports on an announcement by Intel on Monday to develop its own chips that can be used to accelerate specialised computing jobs

The Silicon Valley company said the new technology—code-named Knights Corner—will have as many as 50 processor cores on a single chip. It will be created using the company's next manufacturing process, which creates circuitry with dimensions of 22 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, compared with 32-nanometer circuitry in Intel products today, the company said.

The company said the technology—called MIC, for many integrated core—builds on a prior research effort called "single-chip cloud computer" as well as Larrabee, the code name for a chip design that Intel had been developing as a GPU.

You can read more on Intel's ambitions here.

Intel 'no longer a chip firm'

intel@monumentpr.com — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:11:42 GMT

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.

Atom, Flash and storms in tea cups

intel@monumentpr.com — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:49:10 GMT

Forget the election - the biggest clash over the last few weeks has been the one between Steve Jobs and, well, everyone.

If Apple isn't tracking down whoever "sold" a prototype iPhone to Gizmodo, the firm is raising the stakes in its battle with Adobe over Flash.

And unlike the flash of lightning alone, this battle is producing light, heat and its own rolls of thunder.

So in a nutshell - Apple has not supported Flash on any of its iPhones, and now its iPad, since launch. For a few years it always looked as though Flash would appear one day. Certainly, Adobe made lots of reassuring noises that Flash would arrive on the devices soon.

But as time ticked on it looked less and less likely. And with the launch of the iPad, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter in which he basically spelled out the reasons why Flash would never be coming to the devices.

The long and short of it is this - and I'll try and be as balanced as I can - Apple feels Flash is an unstable product that has never worked in the mobile space, and it also fears that by letting Flash on to the iPhone/iPad platform - either as a runtime or even as a cross-platform tool for development of apps, the whole future development of iPhone and iPads could be beholden to Adobe. ie Any new version of the devices would have to take into account the numbers of users using a version of Flash that is no longer compatible with the latest firmware/hardware.

Essentially, Apple doesn't want to cede control of the platform to a third party. From Adobe's perspective, and many other developers, Apple is trying to be too controlling - and is afraid that it will lose financial control of the platform. Adobe says its forthcoming version of Flash 10.1 is stable and would work on the iPhone/iPad.

So where does Intel come into all of this? Well, the answer is that is doesn't. Intel is entirely agnostic about such matters - and works to ensure that users can run any type of application.

The latest version of Intel's Atom chips have the smartphone and tablet market firmly in mind - exactly the territory that Apple is finding so fertile. Apple doesn't use Intel's chips in its handhelds - it uses chips based on ARM architecture.

As Jack Schofield at the Guardian explains: "Intel has made extraordinary progress in moving its x86 architecture from large power-hungry Pentium-type chips to very small low-power Atoms. It has narrowed the gap to ARM, and it's not stopping.

"Today's Atom chips are more suitable for netbooks and media tablets than smartphones. The next design, code-named Medfield, could take the fight into ARM's home ground."

The important thing from a user perspective is that Atom can be used to run a range of applications - including those based on Flash. Intel is not prescriptive about how its chips are used. It basically favours choice.

And we seem to be seeing two broad fronts opening up in the tablet/smartphone space:

A controlled ecosystem from the perspective on both consumers and developers - Apple

An open ecosystem giving developers and consumers choice - Android.

It's going to be a fascinating battle.

Hawking and Intel - a brief history of time

intel@monumentpr.com — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:55:33 GMT

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 1979 Intel releases the 8088, boasting 29,000 transistors on a single chip

- In 1982 Hawking is awarded the CBE, and begins work on an important book about cosmology, which will become A Brief History of Time.

- 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 1989 Intel releases the 80486 chip - which breaks the million barrier with almost 1.2m transistors.

- In 2000 Prof Hawing declares - "I think the next century will be the century of complexity'

- In 2000 the Pentium once again helps Intel revolutionise computing. With 42 million transistors, and for the for the first time each is measured in nanometers - at 180nm.

- In 2009 Professor Hawking retires from his post as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge.

- 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.

Belated happy Earth Day

intel@monumentpr.com — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:31:30 GMT

It was Earth Day last Thursday - did you realise? I'll admit it completely passed me by and it is easy to be cynical about these organised days but they do give everyone the chance to take stock and think about issues in a measured manner.

There might appear to be a natural tension between the needs of the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer and energy efficiency - but you'd be mistaken.

As a company Intel takes the environment very seriously and you can read more about the company's commitment here.

But Intel's commitment to energy efficiency starts small - in fact, at the atomic level. By building ever more efficient processors, cramming ever more transistors onto a slice of silicon, Intel is powering a revolution in green issues.

The very fundamentals of Moore's Law underpin a very serious intent around green issues. For starters, the advances that Intel makes every year makes it possible to do more with less power.

And what does that mean? It means less cooling for computers - from laptops to data centres.

It means taking large inefficient severs out of operation and replaced by cooler, more energy efficient machines. Intel's latest Xeon 7500 server processors have a 20 to 1 replacement ratio.

Data centers can replace 20 single core servers with a single new Intel Xeon7500 processor series-based system. Imagine the energy savings! Well, you don't have to imagine because it means a 92 percent estimated reduction in energy costs

For IT managers it means they can completely re-think their data centre operations.

And it's not just at the level of the data centre. Laptops need less power to perform critical tasks, requiring less time plugged into the wall to charge because the batteries will go further.

And the introduction of vPro technology means IT managers can remotely roll out security fixes and updates to machines, substantially reducing maintenance costs.

But perhaps one of the most exciting ways to save energy is virtualisation. By running virtual machines on physical machines, from desktop operating systems to servers, the rules of infrastructure are changing. Virtualisation means business can eliminate whole racks of servers.

Here's a graphic, from a study late last year, which shows how data centres are changing.

One of the arguments against virtualisation is the enforced downtime and complexity in setting up such virtual machines. But Intel technology can make it incredibly simple - as simple as drag and drop.

Coming Soon! Expert Chat on the Next Generation Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 Series

sukhjit.k.dhillon@intel.com — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:25:28 GMT

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

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

Join us on Thursday the 29th of April for an interactive live chat with Intel® experts on the New Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 Series.

Click here to find out more about the New Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series and receive a ‘save the date’ calendar invitation.

As members of IT Galaxy, you have priority in getting your questions answered by simply commenting on this blog.

Meet the Experts:

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.

Intel puts the smart into smartphone?

intel@monumentpr.com — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:04:10 GMT

Over the last two years there has been an interesting dynamic in the mobile space. As the demands of mobile phones have become greater, the chips that power them have become ever more powerful, and a new space between phone and laptop has emerged.

It has been called the Mobile Internet Device, or the tablet, or the smartphone and not forgetting the netbook. All of these devices are actually quite different - and offer different functionality, but what we are seeing is the creation of tools that sit between the convenience of a phone and the power of a laptop.

Everyone agrees that the mobile internet is the next great battleground and unsurprisingly Intel wants a slice of that market. To my mind what has been interesting is watching two forces in action - a bottom up force and a top down force.

What do I mean? Well, smartphones by and large are dominated by processors designed by small British firm ARM. The laptop space (and pretty much every other space) is owned by Intel. Intel has been pushing down into the mobile space, thanks to the genius of Moore's Law creating ever more low power and efficient processors, while ARM processors are pushing up into devices like Apple's iPad.

One of the reason of course for the success enjoyed by Intel is it's relationship with Microsoft and Windows - the operating system that dominates the OS landscape as much as x86 chips dominate the computing landscape.

But Windows has never really taken off in the smartphone sector, yet XP has dominated the netbook space and Windows 7 could yet be a player in the Tablet/Netbook space. We are now seeing other OSes emerge with real clout - namely Android and iPhone OS.

So Intel has taken several strategic steps in the last few years. It has partnered with Nokia, and the two firms have merged two separate OSes, Moblin and Maemo to create MeeGo.

And we're beginning to see the first results. Below is a video showing MeeGo running on an Acer netbook, giving a glimpse of what's possible.

There are a number of interesting things happening here. First of all, the netbook is powered by Intel's Atom processor, a chip that is revolutionising what we can expect from our mobile devices. The MeeGo platform is also a sign from Intel that it is not simply leaving it to platform developers to choose what processors they want to work with.

And here's a video showing MeeGo running on a variety of different systems.

So where are we going with this? Well, expect to see Nokia and Intel announce a smartphone powered by Atom soon. That's my opinion - I have no insider information!

What has been announced officially is that Intel has now got Android to run on its Atom processors. Why is this a big deal? Well, Android is currently exploding in usage in the smarthpone sector and we will start to see an increasing numbers of netbooks and tablet devices powered by Android in the coming year.

And finally, the Atom processor will take another step forward this year when Intel launches the first dual core Atom for netbooks, reports Cnet..

Things are getting really interesting in the mobile space, that's for sure.

Tech trawl: best of the web

intel@monumentpr.com — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:20:35 GMT

And so to our semi-regulator feature rounding up the news and features we've spotted on our RSS travels.

Perhaps the most unusual story of the week comes courtesy of EWeek Europe, which reported that a quarter of Germans were happy to have chips implanted in their heads if it means shorter lines at the supermarket.

Silicon.com reports on Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms telling told the European e-skills conference in London that CEOs of UK tech companies weree "finding it hard to persuade universities" to run the courses that the IT industries most need.

ZDnet reports on a partnership between Intel, EMC, RSA, and VMware to take advantage of Intel's Trusted Execution Technology in its Westmere processing chips.

The Register writes about Intel's 48-core chips that are being shown at CeBit this year.

Speaking of CeBit, Mobile Computer Mag takes a look at two new laptops from Asus, and comments on the Atom processors inside...

Finally, Information Week has the inside track on new servers from IBM, which incorporate Intel's 45-nm Nehalem processors.

What is everyone saying about new vPro Core?

marc@ambasnajones.com — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:31:20 GMT

A quick look at some comments and stories about the new vPro core family of processors…

Brad Anderson, Microsoft

Anderson claims vPro is key to helping Windows 7 fulfil its potential of helping businesses improve energy efficiency, security and virtualisation. “vPro has enhanced Intel’s reputation as an innovator,” he said.

Steve Morton, Symantec

Symantec has built its new Client Management Suite 7.1 based on the knowledge of vPro. Morton said that vPro has enabled Symantec to “support things like KVM and the idea of a fast call for help.”

The Register http://bit.ly/dizsiZ

“The vPro management capabilities will no doubt appeal to harassed sysadmins…”

ZDNet UK http://bit.ly/cvBz90

“The new KVM functions will let engineers control a PC remotely while seeing what is on the screen, irrespective of which — if any — operating system or application software is running.”

The Inquirer http://bit.ly/ccelih

“Security is further bolstered by Intel's inclusion of six new instructions to speed up AES hardware based encryption and decryption, while remote encryption management allows IT personnel to remotely manage PCs with encrypted hard drives.”

Ken Chan, Toshiba UK http://bit.ly/ambujb

Talking at the launch of Toshiba’s new laptop range, Chan said that the difference in the new machines is the new remote management capabilities provided by Intel's Core vPro update, on which the new Tecras are based, and which "offer up a whole new proposition to the market,” he said, according to news site V3.co.uk . "Suppose I'm a business, and I'm concerned about supporting my laptop users, and I don't want to have to keep them up to date with patches and anti-virus. I can pay some service provider to take care of that for, say, £20 per month."