Intel Outlines Platform Innovations For More Manageable, Balanced And Secure Enterprise Computing
In their keynotes today at the Intel Developer Forum (San Francisco – US), Intel executives Bill Siu and Mike Fister
showed how a variety of Intel-based computers – from clients to back-end servers – enable enterprises to best handle the
unique computing requirements for all-sized businesses.
Bill Siu, vice president and general manager, Desktop Platforms Group, introduced the concept of the “digital office,”
Intel’s vision to improve productivity and flexibility in a more secure and well-managed computing environment. Intel is
uniquely positioned to deliver the platform capabilities and building blocks to address key corporate computing needs,
including collaboration, mobility, security and manageability.
“The digital office is all about bringing value to businesses and IT departments by addressing the evolving needs of
both,” said Siu. “Intel is paving the way for corporations to make IT a strategic asset by bringing products and
technologies to support this vision.”
Innovations for the Digital Office Siu illustrated several cross-platform technologies that Intel is developing and
bringing to market to support its vision of the digital office. PCs based on the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting
Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology**, built with Intel’s industry-leading 90- nanometer (nm) process technology (formerly
codenamed Prescott), and the company’s next-generation chipset, codenamed Grantsdale, form the foundation of the digital
office. HT technology delivers performance benefits targeted at the way professionals use their PCs, running demanding
applications simultaneously. In the future, HT Technology will be followed by multi-threading technology, involving new
processor designs featuring dual cores (essentially two processors on a single piece of silicon). In addition to
technology enhancements, new desktop form factors are also on the horizon. Intel plans to debut “Balanced Technology
Extended,” or BTX, as a new desktop form factor specification that defines motherboard sizes and layouts. BTX will
enable PC designers, for the first time, to use a standard form factor to fit new, high performance features for the
digital office into aggressively compact systems.
In the areas of secure computing Intel plans to combine HT Technology, a new technology called “No Execute” (NX) memory
protection and the codenamed LaGrande technology (LT) to enable improved security. The NX feature, which is already
available in Intel® Itanium® 2 processors for servers, will be available in processors for clients in the second half of
2004. Vanderpool Technology (VT), the codename for a set of hardware enhancements to the processor and chipset that help
improve the resilience and reliability of the platform, is expected to deliver a more manageable office computing
environment. When combined with the appropriate software, VT enables multiple, independent software environments (called
partitions) inside a single PC.
Balanced Platforms Built on Enhanced Products, Technologies As Intel integrates new capabilities into its world class
silicon for the client, it must also deliver new technologies to strengthen the back-end of the digital office
infrastructure.
“Balanced servers and workstations utilising the latest platform technologies are the key to reliable, stable and
high-performing enterpise solutions,” said Mike Fister, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Enterprise
Platforms Group. The Itanium 2 processor family enjoyed strong momentum in 2003, with more than 100,000 processors
shipped by more than 50 systems manufacturers around the world. These systems benefited from more than 1,000
applications running on multiple production operating systems. Intel will continue to innovate on its flagship
enterprise architecture with plans to achieve up to double the performance over the Intel® Xeon™ processor family at
platform cost parity by 2007.
Today, Intel disclosed new Itanium 2 processors optimized for dual processor systems. In 2004, the company plans to ship
Intel Itanium 2 processors at 1.4 GHz and 1.6 GHz, each with three megabytes (MB) of cache, followed by processors
codenamed “Millington” next year. The first multi-core Itanium 2 processor for dual processor servers and workstations,
codenamed “Dimona”, will follow after Millington.
The first dual-core Itanium 2 processor, codenamed “Montecito,” is due in 2005, and will be supported by Intel’s
third-generation chipset optimized for the Itanium processor, codenamed “Bayshore.” Bayshore enables a faster front side
bus (FSB) and supports PCI Express and double data-rate (DDR2) memory. Intel also announced new technologies in
Montecito for enhancing cache reliability and workload performance, codenamed “Pellston” and “Foxton” technologies,
respectively.
Intel also released today the Intel Xeon processor 3.2 GHz with a larger, two MB cache, delivering better performance
than previous Intel Xeon processors. The next-generation Intel Xeon processor, “Nocona,” is due in the first half of
2004 and will ship at 3.6 GHz with an 800 MHz FSB and support for DDR2, PCI Express and 64-bit extensions.
Helping enterprise customers consolidate servers while improving scalability, Intel also unveiled a new four-way server
blade, the Intel® Server Compute Blade SBX44, based on the Intel Xeon processor MP and built in collaboration with IBM.
And, for the rapidly growing small business market segment, Intel introduced the Intel® E7210 chipset, offering enhanced
reliability to entry level, Pentium 4 processor-based servers.
New technologies will continue to drive opportunities in the enterprise ecosystem, such as fully-buffered DIMM (FBDIMM),
DDR2 and PCI Express.
As examples of this industry-driven innovation, Dell Computer Corporation, HP, Intel and NEC Corporation today announced
version 2.0 of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification, to improve server management, enhance
security, and help reduce costs. Also more than a dozen leading companies joined Intel, Dell and HP in establishing the
Memory Implementers Forum, a new on-line community for companies to share information focused on advancing key memory
technologies such as DDR2 and FB-DIMM.
About IDF
The Intel Developer Forum is the technology industry's premier event for hardware and software developers. Held
worldwide throughout the year, IDF brings together key industry players to discuss cutting-edge technology and products
for PCs, servers, communications equipment, and handheld clients. For more information on IDF and Intel technology,
visit http://developer.intel.com.
Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications
products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
* Intel, Itanium, Xeon and Pentium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in
the United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
** Hyper-Threading Technology requires a computer system with an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting HT Technology
and an HT Technology enabled chipset, BIOS and operating system. Performance will vary depending on the specific
hardware and software you use. See www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading for more information including details on which
processors support HT Technology.