Systems/Enterprise:

INTEL EXECS TOUT BENEFITS OF STANDARDS-BASED COMPUTING, SOE

Intel Corp executives shared unique perspectives on how CIOs are transforming their businesses through standards-based computing innovations. Corporate leaders also outlined future platforms and technologies to help IT managers accelerate their technology transformations.

As vice president and co-general manager of Intel's Solutions Market Development Group, Deborah Conrad visits corporations and enterprise industry associates worldwide on a weekly basis. She listed a number of issues IT executives face, ranging from managing expansive computing assets and security to deploying infrastructure in support of an increasingly mobile and global workforce.

"The convergence of computing and communications technologies enables businesses to deliver more value to customers by making it easier to access information and improve response time," Conrad said in her keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum. "Convergence represents a technological and business transformation in how new services are delivered without increasing costs."

To help ease the transformation, Intel introduced the Service Oriented Enterprise (SOE) initiative, a modular approach to better architect an enterprise environment. SOE combines elements of mobility, Grid computing and manageability into a framework to assist IT managers using all or some of these technologies to transform their businesses. It also provides a framework for enabling new capabilities and services such as RFID and Voice Over IP telephony. The goal of SOE is to enhance the IT responsiveness and management of diverse systems as companies grapple with growing mountains of data.

Intel's Prasad Rampalli, vice president and chief architect of the Information Services and Technology Group, highlighted what Intel -- a Fortune 500 company with 78,000 employees in 294 facilities worldwide -- is doing within its own IT infrastructure. He described how Intel is re-architecting its computing infrastructure to help provide faster and easier access to data in an effort to better serve Intel's increasingly mobile workforce. The majority of Intel's employees have mobile PCs, and access Intel's enterprise system remotely, many from wireless networks.

"We achieve agility and deliver breakthrough business value by transitioning to an environment founded on modularity, standardization, automation and end-to-end manageability," Rampalli said. "In doing so, we are also able to hold the line on total cost of ownership by improving overall utilization and establishing an autonomic, self-healing infrastructure."

Intel's Enterprise Platform Plans

Intel's Abhi Talwalkar, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Platforms Group, disclosed a number of new platform technologies and products for the enterprise.

"Intel is uniquely positioned to work with the industry to enable high-volume platforms that support the transformed enterprise," Talwalkar said. "Our focus is to deliver platform value upon which customers can evolve operations and build new services."

For high-end server systems, Intel disclosed plans for new Intel Xeon processor MP and Intel Itanium 2-based platforms. The first two Intel Xeon processors MP based on the 90 nm process, codenamed "Cranford" and "Potomac," are expected in the first half of 2005. The products will include Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T) and Demand Based Switching with Intel Enhanced SpeedStep Technology. They will be supported by a new four-way chipset, codenamed "Twin Castle," that supports PCI Express and DDR2 memory.

Multi-core technology is expected to arrive in high-end systems with a dual-core Intel Xeon processor MP codenamed "Tulsa" and Itanium 2 processor codenamed "Montecito." An enhanced Itanium 2 dual-core processor, codenamed "Montvale," will be the first Itanium processor based on the 65 nm process technology, and is planned after Montecito.

Farther out on the roadmap are a multi-core Intel Xeon processor MP, codenamed "Whitefield," and its multi-core Itanium 2 processor counterpart, codenamed "Tukwila." Whitefield will share a common platform architecture with Tukwila.

For two-way servers and workstations, Intel disclosed "Irwindale," the codename for a follow-on processor to the recently introduced Intel Xeon processor at 3.6 GHz. Irwindale is expected to give customers a performance boost when compared to previous Intel Xeon processors because of a faster clock speed and larger two megabyte cache.

Talwalkar also said future Intel enterprise products will incorporate other already disclosed silicon technologies such as the server version of virtualization technology, code-named "Silvervale," which will allow for partitioning and other security and reliability attributes.