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Intel Updates vPro Platform and Features
MojoKid writes "Intel's has certified the Core 2 Duo E6550, E6750, and E6850 processors for vPro, and is releasing the new low-power Q35 Express chipset with a companion ICH9-DO Southbridge, and 82566DM Gigabit Network controller. With these new chispets and technologies, the vPro platform offers next-generation Intel Active Management Technology, enhanced Intel Virtualization Technology, and Intel Trusted Execution Technology (aka Intel TXT). vPro also supports next-generation management standards like WS-MAN and DASH (draft 1.0 spec) and v1.2 of the Trusted Platform Module. Intel has plans to provide continual updates to the vPro platform and will likely enhance vPro further after the launch of their 'Montevina' platform in the first half on 2008."
Its the current wave of marketing. They're trying to establish brands that sound cool that people can remember when they shop for a computer.
Unless you're talking about chipset/product line codenames (Kentsfield, etc etc) which are geographical locations, since they can't be trademarked.
Err, the Linux kernel, Mac OS X, and Windows all have support for TPM. Still using AmigaOS then?
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
Just to clarify: Read this Ars Technica article about how the new trusted computing technology introduces the kind of DRM geeks have been rebelling against for years.
``The reason Linux became so successful is because of Intel's low-cost, standards-compliant, open-source hardware; but with initiatives like virtualisation, vPro, multi-threaded compilers etc. the balance gets tilted further in favour of TCPA and DRM partners;''
Err, I have no idea what you mean. Intel's hardware used to be standard-compliant and open-source? What standards? Which source? How does virtualization (and I do believe they published specs on how to use it) tilt the balance in favor of DRM? What do multi-threaded compilers have to do with anything?
Now to look at some other aspects, Intel hosts and supports a number of open-source projects, among them open source drivers for certain Intel graphics and WLAN cards. These are recent efforts, as well.
All in all, I don't think I can agree with your suggestion of Intel moving away from being supportive of open-source and towards being one of the forerunners of DRM.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
By way of comparison, AMD/ATi have yet to provide any really decent drivers, little in the way of documentation and have offered virtually zero F/OSS developer support. Via has been slightly better but hardly a font of knowledge. For desktop computing (and including Via was a stretch) Intel is probably the most supportive and easiest to deal with hardware make for a Linux workstation.
You do know that TPM does _nothing_ unless you actually, you know, use it, don't you?
So by disabling it in your kernel config, the only thing you achieve is making your system incompatible with any software that requires it.
Others have commented on the TPM and DRM aspects of vPro, but the part that interests me most is the remote access functionality. Is this coming to desktops now?
... which on the positive side could mean that we get BMC/LOM capabilities soon on normal home machines as well.
Most modern servers have remote management capability these days, through some kind of Lights-Out Management (LOM) system that works even when the operating system is dead or when the host CPU is powered off. It's not just the high profile Sun/HP/IBM brands that have such capability --- even Dell servers have BMC hardware (a small embedded microcontroller) running a LOM and providing access through IPMI, and have had it for many years. I've found all these LOM systems extremely useful, even without the more recent remote KVM features.
I'd love this kind of functionality independent of the running O/S to appear on desktop motherboards too, but motherboard manufacturers have traditionally kept server and desktop markets separate. Is there any sign that the new vPro chipsets could start moving such functionality towards the desktop too?
From the videos, it doesn't seem so, as they're targetted at corporates. But the worries that people have expressed about the TPM/DRM side of vPro suggest that the desktop isn't far away
As always, a powerful tool can be used both for good and for bad, and a BMC could do unwanted things as well as providing a very useful LOM. However, if it can be controlled by the end user, this sounds like useful technology.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Call it hardware DRM, call it Trusted Computing - but this is exactly what corporate and even small business is looking for, and vPro 1.2 delivers. You've got to be able to manage your risks before they turn into an expensive problem. And vPro makes remote management a snap to boot and has for quite some time now, if implemented.
Even if you buy a vPro board and use it at home, which there's no reason you'd really ever do anyway, it's probably not going to come out of the box configured to block anything you want it to do.