Intel unveils vPro desktop platform

Intel has announced an updated corporate desktop platform under a new brand name, vPro. The standard combines enhanced management capabilities with proactive security features to detect and block malware activity, and builds in support for virtual machines handling functions such as client-side firewalls.

The vPro brand platform, available from the second half of 2006, combines the Conroe dual-core processor with a new motherboard chipset, enhanced graphics, a gigabit LAN adapter and an Intel software set that adds advanced new capabilities.

The new desktop specification will form the basis of Intel’s latest Stable Image Platform Program (Sipp), and includes Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT), which allows PCs to be remotely repaired even if powered down; and its VT hardware support for virtualisation.

A selling point for firms is that vPro will have the performance to handle Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system, and has powerful-enough graphics for Vista’s full Aero Glass 3D user interface.

Intel senior vice-president Pat Gelsinger said the new vPro platform offers a set of capabilities designed to work together, and not just a single major component. He compared the new brand to the firm’s Centrino laptop platform. “Like Centrino, we’re tying together components to establish a point around which industry can innovate and be interoperable,” he said.

VPro adds new proactive security, which Intel said will help to counter zero-day attacks by monitoring the PC for suspicious behaviour, such as an attempt to flood the network with packets.

“With proactive management, filters in the PC recognise anomalous behaviour and take it off the network, then notify the management console via AMT’s out-of-band management channel. IT staff can then can remotely fix the node and reconnect it to the LAN,’ Gelsinger said. “This enables proactive security within the PC for first time.”

Intel has also added a virtualisation environment that enables PC builders and software vendors to put inside a PC virtual machines dedicated to fixed functions such as the monitoring of network packets. Some third parties will begin offering these virtual security and management appliances from the second half of this year, according to Intel.

“Virtualisation is common in the datacentre today, but not commonly used in the client world. Long term, we expect it to be part of every client and server we build,” said Gelsinger.

The processor at the heart of the vPro platform is Conroe, the first chip designed around Intel’s next-generation Core micro-architecture. This dual-core chip enables performance “over three times faster than today’s high-end business machines”, according to Gelsinger, while also lowering power consumption.

“We’re ahead of Moore’s law with Conroe - it will make a real difference in how productive users can be,” Gelsinger said.

Altiris founder and vice-president Jan Newman welcomed the new features in the vPro platform. “We’re excited about vPro - we haven’t seen innovation in management technology for some time,” he said. “I predict this will be technology that changes the way we go about managing PCs.”