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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."
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"Intel Trusted Execution Technology". Way to sound ominous.
What's with this naming practice that seems to be going on in every god damn company? I can't even start a fricking sentence with name like vPro, iTunes, iFolder, omgXIITLOL since first letter should be in CAPS. Well, I'm not sure about english grammar but at least finnish grammar forces capitals.
You don't know what you don't know.
...more interesting than a link to a marketing blurb would be a link to the TPM-specifications. Actually, i do trust a platform - until it's "tpm-enabled".
I am not aware of a single hardware company that is as open with their specifications and hardware documentation as Intel. Their chipsets are open and documented, the audio, network and disk controllers are open and documented, their video hardware is open and documented (Who else can you say that about?). They have a great developer relations program, although you can download a lot of their documentation without even joining it.
So what's all this secretive technology you think Intel have been producing?
``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.
Intel Updates vPro Platform and Features.. ..in their continuing efforts to help Microsoft mutate the personal computer into the final planned state of being essentially a tamper-proof remote contolled type-writer and entertainment vending machine for the masses.
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.
Aaah what I really want to know is about those "chispets", are they some kind of pokemon from intel or something?
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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.
Intel's efforts in video cards are meaningless because with vPro/LaGrande/Trusted Computing their control has moved from the source, to the binary.
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.
All in all, you strike me as someone who simply hasn't followed the news over the last few years. Intel isn't moving towards the front of DRM... it HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE. Way back since 1998 when I head a talk from an Intel engineer bragging that their next challenge was to secure a PC from its owner in the name of controlling content (it wasn't DRM then) and "security".
Since then, every move Intel has made has been driven by finally locking down the PC -- and their other DRM schemes across the media world (HDCP for example). The name LaGrande was dirtied by its association with DRM and uber-lockdown, and has now gone through the customary corporate name-change in an attempt to cleanse it. So we now have vPro... and hardware DRM... and the arrival of Intel's dream of a locked down "cable-box" PC that isn't really owned by the person who pays for it.
Oh, and BTW, I'm sure Intel supports "open source"... since that's a watered down meaningless term.
Interestingly, Richard Stallman warned us about "Treacherous computing" years ago. It's sad that these things are becoming reality.
.: Max Romantschuk
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
I think my Adblock is broken because there's this Intel advertisement at the top of slashdot where I usually expect to see the first article.
Seriously though, adblock should just automatically block anything with the text "next-generation".
How difficult would it be to mod a mobo, removing the TPM? Is TET (because Execution begins with the letter E) done in Microcode or is it all in silicon?
Why mod when you can buy a motherboard without it? When I went shopping for Intel motherboards a few weeks ago I noticed TPM and non-TPM versions of the same motherboard.
Before someone out there decides to write "But what about buying from Dell, HP, etc?" note we are discussing modding. Someone who is going to mod a motherboard should be able to operate a screwdriver and install a motherboard.
Open Source Intel AMT Drivers and Tools. (the part that runs on the PC), Intel Active Management Technology Reference Design Kit (the part that runs on a server and remotely takes over the PC).
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l able.htm
No problem, Intel has motherboards for you too. I was specing out a quad core and noticed Intel has TPM and non-TPM versions of the same motherboard, for example the D975XBX2.
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bx2/bx2_avai
The non-TPM version seems to have more features too, digital audio out, 8 SATA instead of 4, IEE1394/Firewire, 3 year warranty rather than 1 year.
Intel is even friendlier than you suggest. They offer the same MB in TPM and non-TPM versions, and the non-TPM seems to have more features as well. To avoid a redundant thread see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=281229&cid=203 85475
``Oh, and BTW, I'm sure Intel supports "open source"... since that's a watered down meaningless term.''
Not as long as software controls the hardware. Which I believe is still the case; there may be a TPM chip in my computer, but it's not doing anything unless I actually use software that activates it. That doesn't mean I'm happy it's there, but it does mean it's Mostly Harmless.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
WS-Management (look it up on dmtf.org) is the protocol being used for remote hardware (BMC) management.
Because it's already cracked.
They think it allows them to observe unobtrusively.
What really happens is it allows us to observe them thinking they are observing us unobtrusively. Stupid bunch of scriptkiddies.
Heh. Honeypot, anyone?
Number one, managing access on a per-page basis couldn't be done on iNTEL until now?
We knew that Microsoft has made their place by selling unsafe software for all these years. Now we see that iNTEL has done the same. And we see that, just like Microsoft, when the power of CPUs actually makes it possible for them to sell amost competitive products that are built correctly, they still have built them correctly to the wrong standards. And we will see that they aren't really competive, after all. Maybe watching video will mostly work without too many glitches, but thid inversion of trust they call TPM is going to make it impossible to use more than half of the cycles that should be available from your CPU, and that only if you have just one virtualized machine.
And Symantec's stupid anti-virus hypervisor? It's broken already. Now there's one more speedbump between you and my keyloggers.
All you iNTEL fanbois, look what your fanaticism just bought you.