IDF charts dual-core path

At its spring Intel Developer Forum, Intel outlined the dual-core future of its Xeon and Pentium products, highlighting a number of new technologies designed to improve server performance and manageability.

The chipmaker lifted the curtain on new desktop and server platforms for 2005 and 2006 that will introduce virtualization and management technologies to desktops and low-end servers.

“Platform” is usually an ill-defined term in the technology industry, but Intel’s concept of the platform includes a complete system where a processor, chip set, networking connection, and other technologies work together to enhance performance or usability. Intel is no longer content with simply improving the performance of its processors and is adding features to its products that help users manage or secure their systems.

Intel’s disclosures should help reassure customers that it has rebounded from the company’s strategic and execution missteps of 2004, said Nathan Brook-wood, a principal analyst at Insight 64.

“Buyers want to know if their suppliers and their supplier’s supplier have confidence in the products,” Brookwood said.

One of the new technologies, Intel AMT (Active Management Technology), improves the manageability of hardware assets by allowing IT managers to upload operating system updates, set up new systems, and diagnose problems over a remote network. IT managers can perform these operations even if the user has shut down the OS, as long as that system remains connected to the network.

Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s senior vice president and general manager, demonstrated the benefits of AMT when combined with Intel’s VT (Virtualization Technology). He simulated the effects of a virus outbreak on two systems, one without AMT and VT, and one with the features.

The system without the technologies disconnected from the network once the virus appeared and was offline for an extended period while OS updates were uploaded. A machine with VT and AMT, how-ever, created a protected virtual OS that downloaded the updates with only a slight interruption in connectivity, Gelsinger said.

Intel will introduce AMT and VT in its Lyndon platform in 2005, Gelsinger said. In 2006, those technologies will also appear in Bensley, Intel’s code name for its first dual-core Xeon server platform.

Another technology in Bensley that will help server performance is Intel I/O AT (I/O Acceleration Technology), which reduces the amount of I/O routing that must be taken on by the processor, Gelsinger said. Some server users and companies have turned to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) off-load engines to lighten the load on the processor, but I/O AT takes that one step further: It allocates processing resources from dual-core chips, next-generation chip sets, and network controllers to I/O routing, and it controls all that with software, he said.