Delivering the industry’s first hardware virtualisation support for desktop PCs, Intel Corporation has introduced new processors that offer businesses improved manageability and bolstered security.
Virtualisation 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 Virtualisation 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 virtualisation 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 virtualisation 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 Virtualisation 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.
“Intel Virtualisation Technology and Intel Active Management Technology have enhanced the capabilities of the desktop PC beyond the normal business usage to create new service revenue models that allow small and medium businesses in China to offer innovative services like remote IT security and management for companies spread across the vast market to drive new revenue streams,” said Zeng Wenli, vice president, Founder Tech.
“Being one of the first market leaders to offer these solutions, provides us the advantage to work with the local software industry to deliver China and region-specific solutions that will create a vibrant ecosystem that help drive hardware-supported virtualisation mainstream.”
In addition, leading industry virtualisation solution providers including VMware, Microsoft and Xen have joined Intel in support of Intel Virtualisation 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 virtualisation support on its dual-core Intel Professional Business Platform, codenamed Averill, later in 2006.
Virtualisation 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 virtualisation 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 Virtualisation Technology. The company will begin shipping this same technology on Intel Itanium processor-based platforms in mid-2006.
The benefits of virtualisation 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.