As an update, Tom's just reviewed the latest Intel effort. Though
improved and bettering the best stock AMDs in a few performance
categories, its still not faster overall.
the link:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/2006/03/22/pentium_extreme_edition_965/
That's funny I didn't see any mention of this in Tom's
review.
What up with that ?
This just an urban myth or is Microsoft and Intel just
getting the look the other way treatment ?
Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips
Friday 27 May 2005 - 11:02
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4915
Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of
controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a
step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights
management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium
D and accompanying 945 chipset.
Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new
offerings come DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory,
allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and
distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard
rather than through the operating system as is currently the
case.
While Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM
technology at its Australian launch of the new products,
Intel's Australian technical manager Graham Tucker publicly
confirmed Microsoft-flavored DRM technology will be a
feature of Pentium D and 945.
"[The] 945g [chipset] supports DRM, it helps implement
Microsoft's DRM ... but it supports DRM looking forward,"
Tucker said, adding the DRM technology would not be able to
be applied retrospectively to media or files that did not
interoperate with the new technology.
However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details
of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the
interests of his company to spell out how the technology in
the interests of security.
The situation presents an interesting dilemma for IT
security managers as they may now be beholden to
hardware-embedded security over which they have little say,
information or control.
Conversely, Intel is heavily promoting what it calls "active
management technology" (AMT) in the new chips as a major
plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood
to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip's
firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or
control individual machines independent of an operating
system.
Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE
redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely
enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and
reload operating systems and software from remote locations,
again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE
control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
"We all know our [operating system] friends don't crash that
often, but it does happen," Tucker said.
Intel's reticence to speak publicly about what lies under
the hood of its latest firmware technology has also prompted
calls to come clean from IT security experts, including
Queensland University of Technology's assistant dean for
strategy and innovation, IT faculty, Bill Caelli.
"It's a dual use technology. It's got uses and misuses.
Intel has to answer what guarantees it is prepared to give
that home users are safe from hackers. Not maybes,
guarantees".
Caelli said it was "critical Intel comes clean" about how
the current DRM technology is embedded into the new CPU and
chipset offering.
Microsoft was unavailable for comment at press time.
