Intel Delivers New Era For Virtualization

Delivering the industry’s first hardware virtualization support for desktop PCs, Intel Corporation debuted new processors today that offer businesses improved manageability and bolstered security.

Virtualization allows a platform to run multiple operating systems or applications in independent partitions or “containers” that can be tailored for specific needs such as IT management services and protecting networked assets.

“With innovations such as Intel Virtualization Technology built-in, Intel is at the forefront of tackling some of the biggest IT challenges facing businesses today,” said Robert B. Crooke, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Business Client Group. “Analysts believe virtualization is one of the most disruptive technologies to the PC in a decade, and our technology combined with our industry enabling efforts are going to help bring this into the mainstream.”

With virtualization support, businesses can maintain full control of a portion of a PC to run security or management services without interrupting the end-user or allowing them to easily tamper with critical applications. Businesses can better protect themselves from malicious code or viruses by filtering network traffic through a separate IT partition before it reaches the user.

Configuring multiple partitions on a PC improves manageability by providing support for legacy applications while testing and adopting new operating environments.

Intel Pentium 4 processor-based desktop PCs are being offered by Acer, Founder, Lenovo and TongFang. Lenovo is now offering Intel Virtualization Technology-based pilot systems to select customers, and broad support for desktop PC solutions from several other system manufacturers is expected in the first quarter of 2006. In addition, leading industry virtualization solution providers including VMware, Microsoft and Xen have joined Intel in support of Intel Virtualization Technology on future Intel processor-based PCs and servers.

Further evolving “built-in” world-class IT security and manageability capabilities for businesses, Intel will deliver the second phase of another premier platform innovation – Intel Active Management Technology – together with virtualization support on its dual-core Intel Professional Business Platform, codenamed Averill, later in 2006. Virtualization capabilities will also be extended to notebook PCs, and the company will first support this through Intel Centrino mobile technology-based platforms in 2006.

Businesses are also benefiting from virtualization for their server applications primarily through enhanced functionality and workload support. Intel announced last week that it is shipping Intel Xeon processors MP with hardware-enabled support for Intel Virtualization Technology. The company will begin shipping this same technology on Intel Itanium processor-based platforms in mid-2006.

The benefits of virtualization can also extend to home and entertainment activities. In the future, home PC users will be able to create virtual “partitions” isolating several user environments such as dedicated Web browsing resources, productivity software applications, personal video recorders and offering service providers access for remote diagnosis and repairs.

Desktop PCs based on the Intel Pentium 4 processor 672 and 662 processors with Intel Virtualization Technology are available today on systems being offered by Acer, Founder, Lenovo and TongFang. The Intel Pentium 4 processor 672 and 662 are priced at $605 and $401 respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

Source: Intel

Related stories:

New IBM System Is First to Process 1 Million Transactions per Minute
IBM today announced two IBM System x servers featuring new six-core processor technology from Intel. The new servers offer exceptional power-efficiency, performance and virtualization capabilities for today's most demanding datacenters.
Intel Unveils Seven New Itanium Processors
Underscoring strong momentum and industry support, Intel Corporation today unveiled Dual-Core Intel Itanium Processor 9100 series processors. Built for managing high-end applications and armed with advanced features that improve reliability and reduce power consumption, the 9100 series accentuates the ongoing shift from proprietary RISC products to the choice offered by Itanium-based servers. The 9100 series represents the sixth generation of Itanium chips, with three future generations under development.
New Intel vPro Processor Technology Fortifies Security for Business PCs
Intel Corporation today further reinforced desktop PC security by unveiling the newest generation of Intel vPro processor technology for businesses and IT with new innovations that add better protection against hacking, viruses and other threats.
Intel Launches New Quad-Core Server Processors
Today Intel Corp. launched two quad-core Intel Xeon processors. The new processors boast unprecedented combinations of performance and energy efficiency, along with a pricing strategy to move the enterprise industry to multi-core systems. The new Intel Xeon Processors X5365 and L5335 also contain new virtualization capabilities.
Two New Intel Controllers Streamline Multicore Networking Performance
Intel Corporation today announced two new Ethernet controllers that facilitate high traffic flow and optimize I/O performance in such enterprise server environments as multicore Intel Xeon processor-based systems and virtualized datacenters. The Intel 82598 and Intel 82575 Ethernet controllers distribute workloads across all available processing cores to reduce utilization and achieve optimal system performance.
Mellanox Delves into 10G Ethernet
Mellanox Technologies, best known as a provider of high-speed InfiniBand interconnect technology, is delving into Ethernet for the first time.
Desktop Virtualization Is Starting to Expand
With virtualization fairly well established in the data center as a way to squeeze more out of x86 servers, top vendors, industry watchers and customers have started to turn more attention to getting that same type of potential out of the desktop.
Red Hat to Build a Virtual Appliance OS
The open-source solutions provider has partnered with Intel Corp. to deploy appliances in a virtual machine to bring enterprise-class management and security to the PC.

News discussion:

Technology news