IDF Fall 2003: Intel showcases virtual hardware

 

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By Alun Williams - San Jose

Posted on 17 Sep 2003 at 09:53

Intel boss Paul Otellini has formally kicked of IDF Fall 2003. In his opening keynote, the president and COO of Intel acknowledged that there is more to life than gigahertz processor speeds - that Intel must provide users with benefits beyond simple processor speed.

Supporting evidence was the showcasing of two new technologies, codenamed Vanderpool and LaGrande.

Vanderpool involves virtualising hardware, to bring more robustness to the support of applications and the general use of PCs. By the use of partitions, a single PC should be better able to support separate tasks - one machine can effectively become two (or even four, with the use of Hyper-Threading).

In the demo of Vanderpool, a computer was being used to watch The Simpsons and play a computer game at the same time, driving separate screens. More importantly, one of the 'machines' could be rebooted without affecting the operation of the other. The Simpsons could continue unperturbed, as it were.

Using virtual machines within processors, independent software environments will be able to co-exist. There was no software emulation involved, he maintained.

La Grande addresses concerns about security rather than robustness. 'At a time when the "virus of the week" seems to plague us all, making our computing devices more secure through the addition of hardware-based security must become a top priority for the industry to ensure future growth,' said Otellini.

Not expected to be available for at least two or three years, La Grande is intended to be a hardware level solution to software-based attacks, but it wouldn't - Otellini stressed - require any 're-architecting' of software platforms. Note that it also involves some of the work carried out by Microsoft under the 'Palladium' umbrella....

Getting back to processors, an interesting announcement concerned the appliance of server science to the desktop space. Otellini said dual and multi-core processors would be developed from the server space into PCs and notebooks, that developers should expect 'dual core capabilities in our mainstream desktop products, and assume that the use of threading is pervasive'.

In terms of wireless networking and 802.11 support, he said dual a-and-b support would appear this month, 802.11g would be supported before the end of the year and tri-band support would be appearing in the first half of next year. He also said Intel was working on 'i', the security flavour of 802.11.

He also set great store by WiMax, aka 802.16, the metropolitan area networking that supports greater areas of wireless coverage. 'WiMax is on track, for 2004, to solve the last mile problem for rural areas,' he said.

On the question of whether Wi-Fi would collide with GSM and its successors, he thought not. 'I don't think so - users want to be independent of the networks around them' (See Radio Free Intel, from yesterday).

He kept Intel's powder dry in so far as an announcement of a next-generation Centrino processor. This should be made on Thursday...

Otellini also name checked the 'Tulsa' and 'Tanglewood' processors in passing, but gave out no further details on these future releases (beyond promising that Tanglewood would give 7x the performance of the current 'Madison' Itanium 2 processor).

During an overview of Intel's progress with silicon production Otellini showed off, for the first time, a 300mm silicon wafer built on Intel's next generation 65nm manufacturing process.

Finally, Otellini also highlighted the management of digital content, specifically DTCP/IP (Digital Transmission Content protection over Internet Protocol). Collaboration with Warner Brothers and Disney was cited as evidence that premium digital content could be managed across a home network. It was, he said, 'a secure way for high-value content providers to move content around the house'.