* Intel’s *T technologies: LaGrande and Vanderpool
Earlier this week we talked about several technologies Intel lumps under the *T moniker. Two of them, LaGrande and Vanderpool, will make their way into servers next year and the year after.
LaGrande is the codename for a set of hardware enhancements for Intel’s processors that provides hardware-enabled protection against software attacks, denial-of-service attacks and other system breaches. Today protection from viruses is largely done in software, where it is more likely to be defeated.
Users have asked Intel to put some protection in hardware to make their platforms more robust. LaGrande provides a hardware foundation that an operating system and applications can use to strengthen their protection against viruses and denial-of-service attacks. It will be available on desktop platforms in 2006.
Servers use a different set of techniques for protection. Itanium already has some of this technology built into it. In the server environment Intel will use some of the LaGrande technology in combination with other security techniques.
Vanderpool is a codename for a set of technology Intel hasn’t productized yet or even talked about much. Vanderpool provides for hardware-assisted virtualization. Intel has had some virtualization technology in its processors since the 386.
Today virtualization monitoring software like VMware’s ESX Server supports the ability to run multiple operating systems on the same machine at the same time in a virtualized fashion. Intel claims the software is not very robust.
“If you crash one virtual platform, so to speak, it will crash the whole machine, and you will have to reboot the whole machine,” says Ron Curry, director of marketing for Intel’s Corporate Technology Group in Santa Clara.
Research among users showed Intel that they wanted the capability for one hardware platform to function as if it were multiple platforms.
Vanderpool is designed primarily for IT managers in business but also for consumers. In businesses, it would be applied in server consolidation where there are currently lots of low-end servers. Customers can expect to see Vanderpool in Itaniums in 2005 and in Xeons and Pentium 4’s in 2006.
