Intel to Release Anti-Theft Technology for Laptops

The technology, which appears to render both the processor and storage inaccessible, aims to ease concerns over loss of valuable corporate or personal data.

Intel plans to release an anti-theft technology for laptops during the fourth quarter of this year, but the company isn't offering many details yet.

Called Intel Anti-Theft Technology, the new capability will be added to Intel's Active Management Technology, which is part of Centrino vPro and allows IT managers to remotely access and configure computers.

In the event of theft, the technology will "basically lock the system, lock the disk, so people cannot be maliciously using and getting the data," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobility Group, according to a transcript of his presentation at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Shanghai.

The technology, which appears to render both the processor and storage inaccessible, aims to ease concerns over valuable corporate or personal data falling into the wrong hands when laptops are lost or stolen, according to Perlmutter.

The problem of lost data on stolen and missing laptops is a long-standing problem and a growing concern, particular for its impact on personal data.

In December 2006, Boeing reported the theft of a laptop that contained Social Security numbers, names and home addresses of 382,000 current and former employees. The laptop was stolen from an employee's car, the company said. The incident was particularly noteworthy because it pushed the number of U.S. data breach victims past the 100 million mark -- nearly one-third of the population at that time.

Since then, there have been many other incidents of stolen laptops carrying sensitive data, such as the December 2007 theft of a laptop containing sensitive information on 268,000 Minnesota-region blood donors.

The anti-theft technology being developed by Intel would presumably give IT managers a way of protecting this data once a machine has gone missing.

Besides Intel, several other companies are working on the anti-theft technology, including Lenovo Group, McAfee, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Phoenix Technologies.

More details of the technology will be made available when it is closer to being released, Intel said.

Programming for Multicore Chips a Challenge, Intel Says

Adding cores could create challenges for programmers writing code that lets applications work effectively with multicore chips.

Adding more cores is desirable to meet growing computing demands, but it could create more challenges for programmers writing code that enables applications to work effectively with multicore chips.

As technology develops at a fast rate, a challenge for developers is to adapt to programming for multicore systems, said Doug Davis, vice president of the digital enterprise group at Intel, during a speech Tuesday at the Multicore Expo in Santa Clara, California. Programmers will have to transition from programming for single-core processors to multiple cores, while future-proofing the code to keep up-to-date in case additional cores are added to a computing system.

Programming models can be designed that take advantage of hyperthreading, which enables parallel processing capabilities of multiple cores to boost application performance in a cost-effective way, Davis said. Intel is working with universities and funding programs that will train programmers to develop applications that solve those problems, Davis said.

Intel, along with Microsoft, has donated $20 million to the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, to train students and conduct research on multicore programming and parallel computing. The centers will tackle the challenges of programming for multicore processors to carry out more than one set of program instructions at a time, a scenario known as parallel computing.

Beyond future-proofing code for parallelism, adapting legacy applications to work in new computing environments that take advantage of multicore processing is a challenge coders face, Davis said. Writing code from scratch is the ideal option, but it can be expensive.

"The world we live in today has millions of lines of legacy code ... how do we take legacy of software and take advantage of legacy technology?" Coders could need to deliver what's best for their system, Davis said.

Every major processor architecture has undergone quick changes because of the rapid rate of change as described by Moore's Law, which calls for better application and processor performance every two years, but now the challenge is to deliver performance within a defined power envelope. Power consumption is driving multicore chip development, and programmers need to write code that works within that power envelope, Davis said.

Adding cores to a chip to boost performance is a better power-saving option than cranking up clock frequency of a single-core processor, Davis said. Adding cores increases performance, but cuts down on power consumption.

In 2007, about 40 percent of desktops, laptops and servers shipped with multicore processors. By 2011, about 90 percent of PCs shipping will be multicore systems. Almost all of Microsoft Windows Vista PCs shipping today are multicore, Davis said.

Intel is also working on an 80-core Polaris chip, which brings teraflops of performance.

"We're not only talking about terabit computing, but the terabyte sets [of data] we can manage." Davis said. Users are consuming and storing tremendous amounts of data now, and in a few years, the amount of data should reach zettabytes, Davis said.

The next "killer" application for multicore computing could be tools that enable the real-time collection, mining and analysis of data, Davis said. For example, military personnel using wearable multicore computers are able to simulate, analyze and synthesize data in real time to show how a situation will unfold. Doing so is viable and doesn't create risk for military personnel, Davis said.

"These types of applications have taken weeks to do ... now these types of applications are literally running in minutes," Davis said.

As cores are added, the performance boost may also enable more applications, Davis said. The oil and gas industry will demand one petaflop of computing capacity in 2010, compared to 400 teraflops in 2008, to cost-effectively collect seismic data, compare it to historical data and analyze the data. Compared to the past, oil and gas explorers can collect and analyze data much faster now, Davis said.

Intel Showcased Cliffside Technology with Seamless Connectivity in Shanghai IDF

Intel has just unveiled a new technology that can enable two independent network connectivity through a single WiFi network adapter during recent IDF (Intel Developer Forum) held in Shanghai. Within a single network module, there will be an additional functionality being added in which it will be able to link normal PC at home to wireless router and at the same time setting up another network link that can be used to create a PAN (Personal Area Network) to link both together for seamless connectivity at home.

You can think of the second link as a replacement of Bluetooth or some other wireless technology for LAN (Local Area Network) on your PC. The major advantage here is the technology doesn’t need additional standalone module to cater for PAN coverage which could further reduce the board design space and cost. At the same time, it will able to boost up the available bandwidth even higher as compared to existing technology. Not to be lack of, it will still feature some security and encryption methods such as WEP and WPA for secure channels among network devices. It is claimed that the technology can support up to eight network devices simultaneously.

Currently it is still too early to disclose on when the technology will be commercialized as it is still in research and exploration stage. However, we should foresee the new usage to be adopted soonest as it is driven by the giant chipset maker.