In the 1990s, Intel began to demonstrate a commitment to delivering end-user benefits in its products beyond the traditional performance metric of megahertz (MHz). Examples of the company's efforts include advancement of multiprocessing – enabled P6 microarchitecture, new instruction advancements (MMX™ technology) and integrated graphics chipsets, as well as the formation of teams focused on software and platform solutions.

In 2001, Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini announced even greater efforts in this direction. He spoke of "moving beyond gigahertz (GHz)" and expanding the company's focus on fundamental technologies and features for delivering greater value and functionality. Since that time, the company has introduced products that deliver on this commitment as exampled by Hyper-Threading Technology, Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology, and the Intel® 915 G/P and 925X Express chipsets.

Today, Intel continues to drive this new definition of performance – a definition that goes beyond speed alone to encompass new features delivering safer computing anytime, anywhere. One group of technologies designed to deliver more performance by expanding user-centric capabilities on the platform are referred to by Intel as the "T's" (Technologies). A premier collection of technologies embedded into microprocessor and platform silicon, the T's represent an evolution in the way computer platforms are designed and used. Intel's combination of user-focused research and development (R&D), ability to drive Moore's Law, manufacturing strength and our ecosystem – enabling efforts allow us to design and introduce these new capabilities to users worldwide.

With the T's, Intel is able to deliver end-user benefits to platforms in all segments, providing features that enhance security, multitasking, mobility, manageability, reliability, flexibility, performance, and more. To put more resources in these directions, Intel has realigned its strategy and moved resources away from pure GHz-oriented projects. As a result, today the company is embracing two priorities: multicore architecture and key platform silicon technologies like the T's.

Coined in 1965, Moore's Law has accurately predicted the doubling of the number of transistors in an integrated circuit every couple of years. Intel has recognized that with the ever-increasing number of transistors also comes ever-increasing opportunities to add more innovations and capabilities to microprocessors and platform silicon. A good example is Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology, which combines communications, power management, chipset and processor capabilities into a single silicon platform (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1. Intel takes advantage of Moore's Law through platformization – putting more capabilities on the platform. Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology is a prime example.

Today, as people see value in performance gains beyond simply speeding up applications, Intel sees opportunities for the seamless integration of end-user features across a wide variety of computing platforms. Through the T's, Intel can deliver new user-focused platforms for the digital home, digital office, enterprise and mobility markets that are optimized to do everything from download movies from the Internet faster to effortlessly run more than one operating system (OS) simultaneously on the same computer.

Examples of other benefits include hardware-based security features, multithreading (the ability to run multiple processor-intensive applications concurrently), enabling a processor to access larger amounts of memory than 32-bit code supports, and the ability to remotely access networked clients even when they are turned off, or lack a working operating system or functional hard drive.

Intel's world-class team of researchers continually delivers breakthrough technologies to the industry. Translating research into products is one of Intel's greatest strengths. Through Intel's extensive R&D, platform- and ecosystem-enabling capabilities, we are delivering compelling new features to the marketplace, which are accelerating disruptive industry shifts like the Internet, wireless, and broadband technologies.

During every phase of the development path to a T, we try to involve customers and users through a number of methods. One method is through ethnographic research into how people use or potentially would use technology, either existing or proposed, in their daily lives. We develop repeatable processes to take new ideas from research through technology readiness to product.

We also look to our customers and ecosystem co-travelers to provide us input on how to improve our products from generation to generation. We've conducted studies with IT managers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and others in the industry on how computing uses will evolve, and many other areas.

Here's a quick list of the current technologies that comprise the T's:

• Hyper-Threading Technology
• Vanderpool (Intel codename) Technologies
• Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology
• Intel® Active Management Technology
• LaGrande (Intel codename) Technology

The T's that are shipping in volume Intel® platforms today include Hyper-Threading Technology in numerous platforms, and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology in enterprise/server platforms. Other T's will deploy on various platforms over the next two to three years. What follows is a brief description of each of these T's.

Introduced in 2002, this technology enables one physical processor to appear and behave as two virtual processors to the operating system. For consumers and businesses of all sizes, Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology) offers more efficient multitasking and system responsiveness. Users enjoy improved performance running multiple applications simultaneously, such as running a virus scan or encoding video in the background while playing a game. For IT managers, HT Technology means more efficient use of processor resources, greater throughput, and improved performance.

HT's key advantage is that it allocates and reallocates processor resources to applications as they need horsepower. By enabling multithreaded software applications to execute threads in parallel, HT Technology maximizes the efficiency of the processor by allowing it to complete more tasks in a given amount of time.

HT Technology is a precursor to dual-core and multicore processors due in the coming years. In the last two years, Intel has shipped more than 50 million desktop, mobile, and server processors with HT Technology.

Virtualization enables a system to run different programs and even entire operating systems on the same machine at the same time. Vanderpool Technologies (VT) take virtualization a step further by providing hardware and platform support that makes virtualization more seamless and secure. Partitioning a system for multiple uses, VT enables one hardware platform to function as multiple "virtual" platforms (see Figure 2). In the home, for instance, VT could enable one family member to be in a room using a PC for gaming while a family member in another room uses a mobile device to simultaneously use the same PC for photo-editing.

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Figure 2. VT adds a set of hardware enhancements to the platform so that one platform functions as multiple "virtual" platforms.

For businesses, VT offers many advantages, including improving manageability, limiting downtime and maintaining worker productivity. For example, an IT staff could perform a number of remote operations on networked clients while not disrupting a single worker. By helping to improve the resilience and reliability of the platform through virtualization, VT offers greater reliability, efficiency and flexibility for server consolidation, legacy migration and security.

VT combined with appropriate software can enable greater reliability and performance for both enterprise and consumer uses. By enabling multiple, independent software environments (partitions) inside a single system, operations in one partition won't impact operations in the other partitions. What's more, by moving some of the arbitration into hardware, VT offers several key advantages over software-only virtualization solutions. It reduces the software overhead, plus increases the performance and robustness of the entire solution by enabling the virtualized partitions to have more efficient access to system hardware.

VT for Itanium® processor-based platforms will be available in 2005. VT for Intel® Xeon® and Pentium® 4 processor-based platforms will be available on server, workstation, and desktop platforms in 2006.

Introduced in 2004 for workstations and high-performance computer server platforms, Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel® EM64T) allows server, workstation, and desktop platforms to access larger amounts of memory. This enhancement allows a processor to run newly written 64-bit code and access larger amounts of memory than 32-bit code. With appropriate Intel EM64T-supporting hardware and software, Intel EM64T-based platforms can enable use of both extended virtual and physical memory.

Desktop introduction of the technology is planned in 2005 along with the release of the Microsoft Windows* XP Professional x64 operating system. Intel is providing tools, technical support and expertise for those vendors optimizing their solutions for Intel EM64T and other Intel® platform capabilities.

Intel's latest addition to the T's, Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT), promises to make life easier for IT managers and businesses of all types. The technology enables IT managers to remotely access every networked computing system – even those that lack a working operating system or hard drive, or are turned off.

Intel AMT was designed in response to problems specifically identified by IT organizations and is a significant step in Intel's vision for the digital office initiative. This initiative is targeted to provide such sought-after features as proactive management, system availability, malware protection, and information security. Intel AMT is one of several capabilities Intel is delivering within this initiative as "embedded IT."

Intel AMT provides solutions for three of the most pressing issues identified by today's IT managers: reducing desk-side visits, improving asset management, and reducing downtime. By using nonvolatile memory to store information, Intel AMT provides tamper-resistant troubleshooting, recovery, and inventory management capabilities that are accessible whether the operating system is running or not. Its integration into hardware and firmware helps prevent intentional or accidental tampering. Intel AMT even allows storage of security agents so systems can remain better protected even if the hard drive fails or the operating system becomes inoperable.

With Intel AMT, IT managers can more easily remotely monitor and maintain networked computing platforms for various issues, viruses, security vulnerabilities, and inventory accounting while maintaining user privacy and choice (see Figure 3). Intel AMT will also help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by enabling IT personnel to focus more of their time on transforming the business through other IT investments. Intel AMT is expected to be available in 2005 on Intel platforms.

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Figure 3. With Intel® AMT out-of-band (OOB) system management capabilities, IT can remotely manage PCs regardless of system power or OS state.

Today's users want secure systems. While a 100 percent secure computing world is probably next to impossible, LaGrande Technology (LT) brings a new level of protection. By enabling protected execution, protected input/output (I/O), and sealed storage, LT provides a solid hardware foundation that helps protect sensitive information from software-based attacks without compromising usability.

LT is a versatile set of client hardware enhancements to Intel® processors, chipsets, and platforms that help protect the confidentiality and integrity of data stored or created on the client PC. LT-enabled platforms provide a sound hardware foundation for strengthening operating systems and applications – and affording users additional peace of mind.

LT will be available on desktop platforms with the release of Microsoft's "Longhorn" operating system. Microsoft's Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) will build upon capabilities enabled by LT.

The variety of ways people use computing and communications devices continues to evolve, as do the devices themselves. Speed will increasingly become just one part of performance. Consequently, Intel will pursue further development of threading technologies and new processors incorporating HT, dual-core and multicore designs.

Intel will also continue to investigate new capabilities and end-user benefits that can be designed into Intel silicon and integrated across computing platforms. Areas that Intel is broadly researching include optimizing 3D and animated graphics, data mining, network processing, speech recognition, and synthesis.

As the range of uses for computing and communications devices grows, Intel has recognized sheer GHz speed as only one component of performance. The company is leveraging our user-focused research and development, ability to drive Moore's Law, manufacturing strength and our ecosystem-enabling efforts in new ways to bring value-added features and capabilities to client devices through key platform silicon technologies like the T's.

Embedded into microprocessor and platform silicon, this collection of technologies represents an evolution in the way computer platforms are designed and used. With the T's, people can expect to see end-user benefits to platforms in all segments, including features that enhance security, multitasking, mobility, manageability, reliability, flexibility, performance, and more.