Intel Launches 6th-Gen Core vPro to Spur Workplace Transformation

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Intel today announced the availability of its sixth-generation (“Skylake”) Core vPro processors for businesses looking to jumpstart their workplace transformation initiatives.

According to said Tom Garrison, vice president and general manager for Intel’s Business Client unit, organizations are kicking off workplace transformation projects to improve collaboration and security while finally cutting the cord with wireless productivity solutions. Businesses experience a boost in employee productivity and worker satisfaction is increased, even if they rarely or ever set foot in the office.

At Intel, the move to a more wireless workplace is already having an impact on the bottom line. The chipmaker calculated the cost per employee per square foot for its research and development division and before kicking off its workplace transformation project, it rang up to $240.

“After our workplace transformation completed, the cost was down to $150 per employee per square foot,” Garrison revealed during a gathering of technology press in New York City last week. “That’s a substantial, hard-cost savings,” he added, noting that “the employees like the environments better.”

Having a processor and accompanying chipsets that can handle the demands of always-on, real-time collaboration and data security can help enterprises accelerate their own workplace modernization projects, he asserted.

“Sixth-generation Core is a big jump in performance,” Garrison said. “This is not your typical platform performance increase.

Compared to a five-year-old PC, systems built around the newer chips are not only thinner, lighter and more pleasing to the eye, they offer 2.5 times the performance. In terms of on-screen visuals, users can expect a 30x improvement in graphics capabilities. Intel estimates that users will see a 3X improvement in battery life and 4X speedier startup times that “are a blink of an eye now, ” Garrison said.

On the desktop front – Garrison reminded that the fifth-generation launch of Intel’s business platform “was specific to mobile” – users can expect performance increases of 60 percent compared to fourth-generation systems. Intel’s sixth-generation Core vPro processors also pave the way for quad-core systems at mainstream price points as well as the first Xeon for mobile workstations.

Also on Jan. 19, Intel announced a preview of its Intel Authenticate technology, which uses the new Core vPro chips to provide policy-based multifactor authentication above and beyond username and password pairs. “If you look at the major attacks that are out there – and not even the major [attacks], just the breadth of attacks that are out there – more than half of those are due to lost or stolen or misused credentials,” said Garrison, before noting that “there’s more than 750 million clients out there with this classic vulnerability.”

Intel Authenticate captures, stores, encrypts and authenticates biometric logins, PINs and other keys in hardware, keeping them out of the reach of hackers, keyboard loggers, screen scrapers and other malicious code. Since those functions are “not visible to software,” malware and other software-based avenues of stealing credentials and using them to launch attacks on a corporate network have little chance of success.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.