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Intel chip to include antipiracy features
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 9/10/2002
AN JOSE, Calif. - Bracing itself for another potential fight with computer privacy advocates, Intel Corp. said yesterday that its next generation of microchips, due next year, would include anti-piracy features that will protect computers against hackers and viruses while giving digital publishers powerful new tools to control the use of their products.
The technology, code-named LaGrande, was designed to protect computers from viruses and bad-natured hackers. But the feature will also give Hollywood, the recording industry, and software makers much stronger controls over the way consumers use their digital music, films, and computer programs.
Publishers, for example, may prevent PCs that run LaGrande and Microsoft Corp.'s software-based Palladium security technology from copying CDs, forwarding certain documents, or running unlicensed software.
Paul Otellini, Intel's president, said the chip maker would include no copyright protections in LaGrande, but he acknowledged that digital publishers could use the technology with software programs such as Palladium to create their own.
Intel intends to include the technology in the Prescott chip design, which will succeed the Pentium 4 as the Santa Clara, Calif., company's flagship PC chip in the second half of 2003.
Until then, consumer advocacy groups say they will lobby to ensure that publishers don't use these so-called secure computing initiatives to spy on PC users.
''These systems are likely to police copyright by watching who consumes what,'' said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. ''There are grave consequences for privacy with these systems,'' he added.
Intel's LaGrande effort is part of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, a coalition of high-tech giants including Intel, IBM Corp., Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard Co.
While Intel is approaching secure computing at the level of the silicon chips and their accompanying components, Microsoft's Palladium initiative is software-based. Microsoft plans to include Palladium in future versions of the Windows operating system.
Privacy groups locked horns with Intel in 1999 over another attempt to solve the same security problems that LaGrande is tackling. Intel assigned a digital identifier, known as a processor serial number, to every new Pentium III chip, but disabled the feature a year later, after privacy groups said the serial number threatened to make anonymous Web surfing and Internet transactions impossible.
Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, said LaGrande appeared to give users more control over the information revealed about themselves than the processor serial numbers. His group is meeting regularly with Microsoft and others to monitor their intentions.
''A lot of what's decided is going to be on the policy side, not the technical side,'' he said.
Seth Schoen, staff technologist for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Palladium and LaGrande could create a computing environment that is safer for publishers and their content, but less safe for computer users looking to maintain their privacy.
By protecting vaults of data and the pathways that transfer them within the PC, LaGrande will prevent viruses from infecting central parts of the computer, make it harder for hackers to take over computers remotely, and allow for more secure e-commerce transactions, Otellini said in a speech at Intel's twice-yearly developer forum yesterday.
But, he added, the chip maker learned from the processor serial number debacle. In ''creating a safer computing environment,'' he said, Intel is working with privacy groups ''to ensure that we do it in ways that are acceptable to the norms of privacy today.''
Intel used its developer forum to announce other new technologies and show off designs of the future. Demonstrations included an experimental Pentium 4 chip that designers ratcheted up to 4.7 gigahertz, nearly twice as speedy as the fastest chip on the market, a 2.8 gigahertz chip. They also showed a sneak preview of a chip code-named Madison, which is the next iteration of Intel's Itanium line of server chips.
Finally, Intel said it would move a new technology, currently being used in server chips, into top-of-the-line desktop computers this year. The 3.0 gigahertz Pentium 4, due this quarter, will include a feature known as hyper-threading, which improves performance as much as 30 percent with some software applications by making one processor act like two.
