Good afternoon, all -
Well, the great migration from ADSL to @Home is complete. Connected, we are.
The Mobile Last Mile has been identified as a huge "sweet spot" in future wireless revenue, particularly as regards the cell phone. We started from the point of an idealized network, or domain, aggregated on fiber, and extending to satellite, in which the mobile solution(s) were designed for optimal connectivity and throughput. All streams would be digital; latencies would be minimized within the domain, allowing VoIP. However, even though the "sweet spot" lies in cell phone (PCS) services, there will be added system load from wireless embedded devices, and simple data transfer.
Some investigation of Intel's thoughts on these matters reveals a number of interesting links from their site. This is one that I found particularly relevant...
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Intel Developer Forum
Keynote address by Mark Christensen
February 16, 2000
Palm Springs, CA, U.S.A.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: Well, good morning.
You know, we hear a lot about convergence out there, data and voice and these two industries coming together, and how we're going to have lots of data types over these networks. But I think actually it's more exciting than that. I think there's a lot of people who have sort of lost what's really happening is not that just data and voice are coming together, but it's really data, voice, and computing are converging.
And it's the trio of those three things that I think is what is energizing the entire industry right now about the opportunity to put new capabilities and new services onto these networks and that the role of the computers, whether they be the server technology, as Paul showed, or the client technologies, how they all interact together.
And that's what I'm going to talk about today.
In September of last year, we introduced here at IDF the Intel Internet Exchange Architecture, and that is designed into bring intelligence into the network and simplifying the other end of the wire where the PCs and servers connect into.
So I want to give you an update on the progress we've made since September, because we've made tremendous progress since that time.
Secondarily, what I want to talk to you about is the other end of the wire, the PCs and the servers both in the business space and in the home, what's happening in the emerging e-Home.
Now, as we look back at September, we talked about the problem that the communications industry faces is very similar to the problem that the computer industry has faced, although it's slightly different. The differences really aren't around the thermal dynamics, because both industries have, you know, challenges about margins and about how much you have to cram into a small space and how fast the competition is making things change.
I think the biggest difference is around the depreciation cycle and how long things happen.
A PC or a server typically has a two- to three-year depreciation cycle, whereas in the communications space, it's about five- and six-year depreciation cycles, long lives of the equipment when they go out into the field. They have to live there, they have to be upgradable.
And right now, that is a major problem when you're talking about changes happening in Internet time, where everything is changing, industry standards are changing, technologies are changing, and this is really throwing a real challenge to the equipment makers trying to provide the latest generation of technology to their customers.
Now, the approach customarily they've taken is true silicon, vertically ore yet, you put as much as possible as quickly as possible in custom devices that provides you that leading, bleeding edge for your customers. But the problem with this is it just isn't keeping up. You cannot afford now to spend multiple years bringing out custom silicon and custom devices and then only to have your competition one up you and you're stuck with this fixed function device and you have to spin a change which can take six months to a year to change one of these devices.
And so in September, we said, maybe there's a better way. And that better way that we talked about was the Intel© Internet Exchange? Architecture. It's a framework of thinking about how you design equipment, of segmenting the job into building blocks.
Taking from a physical layer all the way up into the processing layers as services and software become integrated inside the computer and inside the communications platforms, you break the problem down. And you provide as much programmability as you can so you're doing less hardware design and more software design, which simplifies your time to market and allows you to keep your equipment in the market longer, because you can upgrade that equipment through software.
So the key flagship to this IXA or the Internet Exchange Architecture is the IXP1200 network processor that we shipped in the November time frame. We have been shipping that in limited production. We'll go into full production next month. We're really excited about the momentum behind this entire program. I think we've really hit something here that is solving a real need in the marketplace just at the right time.
To show you what we're seeing here in the momentum is we're seeing design wins, we now are announcing today we have over 30 major designs going on on the IXP 1200 and over double that in the design pipeline behind it. Probably even more important than the numbers, though, are the applications we're seeing it used in.
In any processing architecture, it's really important to get as broad a base of applications as you can in order to have that product adopted by customers and then used in a variety of different ways so that you can reuse software and actually provide a software base for the processing architecture.
We've seen applications in -- from the carrier space through the access, and into the enterprise. And all the major segments of the marketplace, we're seeing the network processor being applied, which is incredibly exciting to us.
Six months ago, we talked about we had six initial alpha customers who had worked with us on this product. But what I'm really happy to show is that in the last four months, we have brought together customers who are truly the leaders in their own fields, whether it be in the wireless area from Ericsson and Nokia, to the more traditional network players like Lucent or Nortel, to startup companies like Phobos and Mayan Networks, and Zhone. To international players such as Marconi and Huawei Technologies, the largest telecommunications equipment provider in China. Across the base, you see a large customer base with incredibly exciting applications.
But we know that, historically, we've always looked back, and what makes a good microprocessor or a processor a great processor is its software. And the software base that runs on that processing architecture.
And the IX API, or the API layer we're laying on top is equally important. And today you're seeing companies that are truly the leaders in their field, whether it be on intrusion detection, on firewalls, traffic management, whatever the capability of the next-generation network based on the Internet is about, these companies are adopting the IXP API. But rather than having me tell you that, why don't we listen to what they have to say. Can we go ahead and roll the video.
(Video playing.)
VIDEO: The increase in the use of Internet to conduct business is absolutely exponential. It's starting from companies with their mobile employees and their customers, and it goes on to extranet and building networks which connect companies to their suppliers, business partners, and to basically the entire world.
We're not dealing with hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of users. We're dealing with millions of users.
Networks continue to grow, systems proliferate. And there are just ever-increasing demands on performance and functionality.
That's where the Intel IXA comes into place, by ensuring the customers that we can use the technology which we have and that we want and scale it up to the highest level of performance as the use of their networks and services over the Internet grows.
When we looked at IXA architecture initially at Secure Computing, what we saw was a technology that provided a standard API that was very flexible yet powerful.
We've been collaborating with the team that develops the IXA for almost two years. The group that we are working with now has the best technology to be the first to market with the best architecture.
It's a platform that allows for performance, scalability, and flexibility, with the API that is at the heart of IXA, it provides a constant platform to develop from. Our developers are going to get better and better working with that. And that's a win-win for everybody.
It's extremely difficult to predict what features are going to be important two years down the line. For us, as designers of software products, it makes it very important that we design the systems to be extremely flexible.
We think Intel's IXA strategy will help us get to market quicker.
IXA API standard allows writing once and using across the network and using in a compatible fashion with complementary products.
IXA can help enhance our revenues and therefore our profitability by delivering market-leading products to market before competition.
It's very, very important to the customers to know for these large corporations that behind the architecture they are choosing, there is a well-known brand name.
Brand is critical today. Our relationship with Intel is very important, because the Intel name is a very strong brand. So it gives additional credibility to solutions that we offer our customers.
Intel represents not only an innovative company, but a tremendous partner and a strong brand in the industry as well. In many ways, they're part of it.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: So I talked to you a little bit about the progress we've made on the design wins and the software stacks. But as we introduce a new architecture, what you'll always find us doing is looking out beyond the products to really bring the whole product to the marketplace and the whole solution to the customer.
So with that, we are investing in building out an ecosystem around the architecture to make sure that we have all the right pieces of the solution set.
Now, in September, we announced that we would form a developer's forum, an IXA developer's forum to bring together third-party companies who could work with Intel and our partners to provide a complete solution set. We're extremely pleased that here at IDF we have the first-ever IXA developers forum. This group of over 20 companies is here today to listen to where we're going, what road maps we have, give us feedback on those road maps, to take a look at the first API, actually, the first spec of rolling out the API. So we're extremely impressed and happy with the level of support we're getting from the industry in the area of more products that can plug into the IXA.
The other thing in building out the ecosystem is not short-term, but long-term. We've got to make sure that the next-generation engineers and scientists are being developed today to work in your companies to build the kind of products using network processing technology. So we're extremely pleased today to announce that there are seven major universities in the United States today that have signed up with Intel to do major research programs in graduate and doctorate programs at the following schools, at University of Texas at Austin, at MIT, there's actually two programs, at Princeton, Carnegie-Mellon, Oregon Graduate Institute, Columbia, and the -- the International Computer Institute, Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, which is a joint venture between Berkeley, Spain, Italy, and Germany.
So these seven universities have eight different research programs going on to do innovative research in the area of applying network processors to Internet switching, security solutions, and other new Intel applications that are going to be coming in the future. And again, this is the training ground for the next generation of engineers and scientists who are going to develop this kind of technology
In September, we also announced a $200 million communications fund targeted at building out and giving companies the capital required to support either the CT media APIs or the IXA APIs. And we're very happy to say that that organization has been formed. We've received over a hundred requests for funding. We've announced eight investments so far, spending about $25 million. But that program is very much on track and proceeding forward.
I'd now like to shift gears. That's where we are in IXA. I think you're going to -- you've seen we've got a tremendous amount of progress and excitement there in what we're doing. The developers forum, the people who are here as partners in that, they're in a forum you can see during an open session this afternoon. So come talk to them, find out what they're doing with the IXA.
But I'd like to now shift gears and talk more about the client and the server, both in the home and business, and what's happening.
Personal community has always been about personal. And today the Internet has made everybody into a -- it gives them the ability to communicate with anybody else. It's fundamentally changed the way that people interact with their business and interact with their homes and interact with each other.
And so what I want to do is talk about the changes the Internet is bringing to us all. And first of all, I want to focus on the business side of this. Now, if you think about what PCs are evolving to, in essence, they are the onramps to the Internet economy. They are the number-one, the most prolific, the most ubiquitous solution set for accessing information and providing not only access to the information, but then looking at the information, massaging it, and interacting with it.
Now, as a platform, the PC platform has continued to evolve. Initially, with the processor technology, including the chipset technology and the bus structures. And so all of these have been part of an integrated platform that you've all come to know.
But today, the reality is that all computing is connected computing. There is no such thing anymore as a standalone computer.
And so that communications is the next thing that really needs to evolve and embrace to become part of the de facto platform.
No PC or server should leave without some type of connectivity device, some kind of communicating capability that's going to link it into this Internet economy.
Now, traditionally, in business, the last 20 years or so, we've been working on Ethernet, originally ten-megabit Ethernet. Then Intel drove the Fast Ethernet alliance in the '80s and today that is the predominant technology for connecting different types of computers in business. That continues to evolve to things like Gigabit Ethernet. And if you see new emerging types of technology, especially as mobility becomes more important, such as wireless networking, it's just now beginning to emerge into business as a critical component.
Historically, networking was about transportation. It's really been about moving bits from point A to point B. That's what networks were all about, whether it was the Internet, it was about accessing information, through the university or the military, or whether it's your local area network, which is about file sharing and print sharing, but it was about moving bits from point A to point B or basic transportation.
As we look into the future, though, that's not going to cut it. That's kind of like laying down the highway system of the United States without any traffic control. What we have to now do is bring sophisticated traffic control and sophisticated capability into that highway system so we can begin to build new services and new capabilities into those networks. So what you're going to see is an emergence of intelligent networks, where the networks know about the application and the applications know about the networks. And that the PC and the servers play an integral role at bringing those two worlds together.
Now, what does it mean to enable this -- these services that are going to be coming? What is actually happening in that space?
Well, our role at Intel is to make sure that as these new services be deployed, that the Intel Architecture platform is the easiest and most capable platform for deploying these new kinds of services. Some of these are services we already know, and some of these are in people's imagination right now with what's happening in the Internet, and the new things that are going to be coming in the next few years.
As you look at the new kinds of capabilities we have to build into the platform, that's about how do you manager it centrally, remotely, push different capabilities down the wire to it. How do you control it? So once it's on the network, how do you guarantee that the bandwidth you need in your application is there when you need it? And what kind of availability is there when you need it?
You can't afford to not have things up and running when you need them.
How do you secure it? I think the last two weeks, with all what's happening on the Internet, one thing that's clear, is that if there's something of value out there, somebody's either going to try to get it or tamper with it. So security, whether it's making sure the right person is on the network who you think they are, or whether it's encrypting the data appropriately, we're going to have to have different levels of security into the network, much more than we have today.
And, finally, these new services are all about billable capability. It's about money. It's about how easy it is to add new people to your network, how easy it is to add new people to your service, and then how do you bill for those services once they're on your network. So it's been provisioning new customers and billing for the customers you have.
Okay. What we're seeing here now is an e-business that the client is fundamentally playing a much more important role in what's happening in these different levels of service. So what I'd like to do is a demonstration to you of some technology that Intel has been working on both within the IDF -- both here at IDF, with Microsoft as part of Win 2K. Some of these capabilities you're going to see here and demonstrated are in the latest release of Win 2K. But what we're going to show is a way of taking technology and simplifying the way services are put into a network and specifically how clients can play a role in that.
Now, in networks today, there are directory services, this is where you keep all the information about the clients and about who's using your network. And that there's policy servers being deployed which will allow management of these IT resources to allow them to manage their network of who should get the appropriate services within their network. Who needs to be secure or have extra levels of security? Who needs to have quality of service for their applications to make sure their applications run when they want them to?
Now, the work we've been working on with Microsoft, and most recently with the DMTF, the Desktop Management Task Force, is to set a standard way of allowing companies to have connectivity capability built into their client and provide a unified interface for features like security, quality of service, and management, up into management applications.
So what I'd like to do is a demonstration of some of these capabilities coming into the client. These are capabilities which some of these are available today from Intel and some will be available in the next few months. So I'd like to have Tim Dunn and Tracy come up and let's go do a demonstration of some of this new capability.
Hi, guys.
Tim, what are we going to see here today?
TIM: Okay. What we've got is we've set up an actual network. We have a couple of PCs connected through a couple of work group switches into a backbone switch. And then we have a traffic generator that's putting traffic onto this network. Now, this network is typical of most networks today. All of the traffic between the end stations is handled on a best-effort basis. All of the packets are competing for the same bandwidth. And there currently aren't any services running on this network.
Now, what you're going to see is Tracy's PC will be displayed up on the left-hand side of the stage. And Mark's PC will be on the right-hand side.
Now, what we're going to do is we're going to initiate a NetMeeting conference between the two PCs. And what this will do is show you, even though NetMeeting is a low bandwidth application, what happens when time-sensitive information collides with the background traffic.
So if you want to go ahead and initiate a call.
Mark's going to call Tracy's PC up. And what you'll see is the kind of quality you get on a typical network, best-effort case.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: Hi, Tracy.
You don't look too good this morning.
TRACY: Neither do you, Mark.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: A little too much partying.
TIM: What I'm going to do is push a policy down to each of these end station. And what the policy will do is prioritize this NetMeeting traffic and effectively put it in a fast lane through the network. So I'm going to go ahead and push this policy.
Okay. It's going down, reconfiguring the end stations. And you'll see pretty quickly that that video image is much better.
TRACY: Very much.
TIM: Okay. Now what we've done is layered upon the first service, we've layered upon quality of service to improve the image.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: So this is about quality of service. So this is like applications like backup and some of the other things besides just video conferencing, critical, time-sensitive applications can be done in the middle of the day and guarantee them the priority they need.
TIM: Exactly. Say you wanted to back up a Web server, but you don't want to degrade the performance. You can put the backup traffic into the slow lane, prioritize the client access and you maintain the quality of service.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: What can we do about the security problem?
TIM: Okay. One of the issues with this network here is that all of the traffic on this segment is exposed. What you can do is go out on the Intel and download a sniffer program and snoop on any segment on a network today.
What I've done here is I've got just a standard off the shelf sniffer program running on this PC here. What we're going to do is send a sensitive document across this network. And I'm going to try and pick it off with this -- this network sniffer. So let me go ahead and get the sniffer program set up. Okay?
Okay. We've launched that. Okay, if you want to go ahead and send the document.
This is a document that you wouldn't want falling into the hands of the wrong person.
TRACY: I got it, Mark, it's the Level One acquisition, looks like.
TIM: Let me go ahead and stop this and view it. See if I was able to capture that. Okay. And so what you see is, the packet's on the network here, displayed in the center. And if I scroll down, let's see, click into this field here. As I scroll down, there we go, executive -- Level One executive summary, we are requesting that the board of directors grant approval for Intel to acquire Level One Corporation for $2.2 billion. Now, this is not the kind of information you'd want out on the network before -- before it's supposed to be out.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: So what can we do about it?
TIM: Okay. Now what we're going to do is look at how do we apply security to this network.
And what I'm going to ask Mark and Tracy to do is go ahead and set up a security policy using IPSec technology on the end stations. These end stations are running Windows 2000 and IPSec has been integrated into Windows 2000. They're going to set the policy manually. But we could have done this using Active Directory across an entire installation.
Okay?
So now what I'm going to do is reset the sniffer here. Okay. I'm going to start it up again.
If you want to go ahead and re-send that document across the network.
Tracy should have it.
TRACY: Okay. I got the document again, Mark.
TIM: I'm going to see what I was able to pick off here.
Okay. Now, what you can see up here in that center screen is that all of these packets have been encapsulated using IPSec technology. And if I scroll down, all of the information across this network has been scrambled. And so I, as an unauthorized intruder, wouldn't be able to pick off any information across that network.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: What does this do to the performance of the client? Isn't IPSec pretty MIPS-intensive?
TIM: Exactly. The one issue here is that running DES encryption on these end stations will pull down the network performance if there isn't some additional assistance applied.
And we want to give you an example of how CPU intensive this is. If you want to switch gears to the performance part of this.
Okay. What I have here now on the center console is a performance monitor that's monitoring the CPU utilization on these end stations, as well as the network traffic. And I'm going to have Mark first launch an application that will pull a video file off of a server. And you'll see what happens when we apply IPSec technology without any sort of assistance.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: Okay. Okay. So the video's running. But you can see how jerky it is. It's not -- jerky audio, jerky video.
TIM: Okay. So not a real transparent experience for the end user. Right?
MARK CHRISTENSEN: Okay. Tim if you want to go ahead and shut that off.
TIM: What we've done at Intel is we've just announced a new family of network adapters where we've integrated a security coprocessors onto the adapter card. This is a standard adapter product for installation across an enterprise. And that security coprocessor will actually offload the security algorithm onto the adapter and provide hardware acceleration. And so Tracy's system actually is outfitted with this. And one thing I want to point out, actually, up on the screen here is when Mark was running his, this red bar over here shows you the CPU utilization. And down here is the throughput. Now, you're going to see what happens when Tracy launches the same application using hardware acceleration.
COMPUTER: Introducing the Pentium III processor. It has the power to make the Internet come to life. (Music playing.) The Pentium III processor. Don't just get onto the Internet. Get into it. Find out how at Intel.com.
TIM: Okay. Much better video and audio quality. But what's important to note here in this center console is that while Mark's station was running at about 60 to 70 percent CPU utilization, Tracy's was running down around 30 percent. So dramatic reduction in CPU utilization, and you can see this white line here is Mark's throughput compared to Tracy's. The network throughput went up significantly. So here we've been able to layer upon quality of service, layer upon security, and then add hardware acceleration to bring the performance of the network back up where we want it.
MARK CHRISTENSEN: Great. Super demo. Thanks, guys.
TIM: Thank you.
(Applause.)
MARK CHRISTENSEN: So as we look forward to the client, I think this is the exciting new area you're going to see. This is going to be built in now to all standard Intel platforms in the future. We're moving that direction very rapidly. We're offering it today in multiple levels of integration. And this level of security is going to become a de facto part of the dial tone of the network. And this year both in the server area and in the performance area, we expect this to be a very hot item and become a key part of the platform this year.
We also see that obviously, in the value segment, this year, that the Fast Ethernet is continuing to be adopted there. And in the business space, 802.11b, the 11-megabit started for wireless is emerging as the standard that Intel will adopt for business networks as far as the current generation of wireless technology
Now, as we look out into the end of this year and entering into the next couple of years, there's a lot of changes that are going to be occurring. First of all, Gigabit Ethernet is absolutely going to be happening, Gigabit Ethernet over copper, that'll be happening. But we expect that to happen later this year, first on the server technology. Because of some of the limitations of Microsoft, and so forth, we're seeing -- you're going to see that the gigabit technology for clients probably is a good year away before you start to see it in the performance workstation area. And then you'll start to see it in the clients later from that point.
The other thing I'd like to point out, though, here is that in the area of the value segment, the value segment is really cost-sensitive. What they want is basic connectivity at a great price. Well, as we analyze this, we go back to this model that the fundamental platform of the computer is changing, that you're going to see us integrate more and more tightly into with the complete solution set of the PC, to provide the best, lowest-cost experience for the value segment of the marketplace. So you can expect to have technology integrated into the chipset with companion technology to provide the right experience for the right customer. And I'll talk more about that in a few minutes.
The other thing we see, though, is that in the next two to three years, the next generation of wireless standard that Intel will be standardizing on is 802.11a, which is the 5.2 gigahertz wireless technology, which should be able to take us from wireless from ten megabits to 11 megabits up to about 40 megabits per second.
Now, speaking of wireless, historically, Intel has not been able to offer you very much in the area of wireless solutions. On Monday of this week, we're extremely excited to announce a joint working relationship, a joint development pact with Symbol Technologies. While Intel has been the leader in providing you wired building blocks for process Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet, Symbol Technology is the leader today in providing wireless technology on 802.11 networks. This announcements of the two companies is we're both collectively putting in our engineering resources, our intellectual property, and doing joint development on technology and road maps of which Intel will then take those products into the marketplace and Symbol Technologies will take those products into their vertical marketplaces around bar code scanning, which are the core part of their agreements. This includes a $100 million equity investment of Intel into Symbol Technologies as well.
You can expect that the first products of this will be coming out, first joint products, will be available around the end of this year. However, you can expect also that in the near term, Intel will be OEMing in the Symbol Technology products and offering them through our channels in the near term.
Very exciting opportunity for us in the wireless space. And we really welcome Symbol as our next partner.
Switching gears. That was the business side, and I think you've seen we have a lot of great work going on in enabling the business client for e-Commerce in the future to allow these new services and capabilities.
As we look now into the home, home also is emerging as a place where connectivity is playing a very key role.
Now, traditionally, the home has been around modem connectivity, V-34, then V-90 technology. But increasingly right now, there's a tremendous amount of momentum going on in the area of broadband, both in cable and DSL, as well as in the area of wireless networking and home networking.
So what I'd like to do, though, is kind of set everybody -- I think it's always good to go back and listen to our customers. So let's go listen to some consumers about what they would like to see in their consumer platforms.
(Video playing.)
We're pretty exciting about broadband coming.
I envision my house in a few years having several devices all talking to one another.
I would rea |
