At a news conference Monday (April 24), CEO Paul Otellini emphasized that Intel’s focus on mobile technologies, like Centrino WiFi support, does not mean the company anticipates all client platforms will move to mobile systems. Desktop platforms currently ship at a rate of 85 million units a year, he said, many of which will never be replaced by laptops.

“We’ve known for a decade, since Intel was involved in the Desktop Management Task Force, that desktop clients need better security and better management visibility,” Otellini said.

Active Management Technology will let managers audit powered-down PCs; remotely repair systems that are down; and securely wake and update systems.

Security features within vPro, implemented in hardware virtualization and multiple partitioning and in client software, will operate proactively so that security risks can be observed at both end user and management platforms. That will prevent users from turning off or bypassing particular security features, such as authentication, Otellini said. Deep packet analysis prevents bad packets from ever entering the user-partitioned space, he said.

By partnering with third-party software specialists like Symantec, Otellini said, Intel can offer soft “security appliances” implemented as modules directly on the operating system and the user platform. John Thompson, chairman and chief executive of Symantec, said that the modularization of security within the OS platform could respond to “modular malicious code,” where small applets invoke larger security threats when they arrive in the user space of a desktop platform.

The multicore desktop microarchitecture known as Conroe, which Intel first discussed at the March Intel Developer Forum, will play a key role in vPro because of the energy efficiency involved in implementing the microprocessor, Otellini said.