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Intel Sheds McAfee
Intel has sold the Intel Security business for $3.5bn less than it paid for it six years ago.
Intel Security, previously and better known as McAfee, has been sold to private equity firm TPG for $4.2bn, despite Intel paying $7.7bn for it in 2010.
The chip firm will receive $3.1bn in cash as part of the transaction and retain a 49 per cent minority stake. TPG will take control with a 51 per cent stake, and will invest $1.1bn in the company.
Intel Security is based on the McAfee business and was renamed two years ago. The company will revert to the better known McAfee brand, despite John McAfee reportedly suing Intel over the use of his name.
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, and Chris Young, general manager of Intel Security Group, will become CEO of McAfee.
Young described TPG in an open letter to stakeholders as a “seasoned technology investor” that was “attracted to our current momentum and long-term potential”.
He claimed that McAfee currently protects “more than a quarter of a billion endpoints” and more than 200 million consumers, and is present in two thirds of the world’s 2,000 largest companies.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich claimed that, despite the sale, security “remains important in everything we do at Intel”.
“We will continue to integrate industry-leading security and privacy capabilities in our products from the cloud to billions of smart, connected computing devices,” he added.
Bryan Taylor, a partner at TPG, said that the company had “long identified the cyber security sector, which has experienced strong growth due to the increasing volume and severity of cyber attacks, as one of the most important areas in technology”.
Intel’s acquisition of McAfee Security in 2010 was intended to enable the company to beef up security around PCs and sell McAfee antivirus and other security software around its core business.
However, the combination never worked as the money to be made in the security business became increasingly focused on the data center and cloud computing.
Courtesy-TheInq
Is Intel Going To Dump McAfee
Intel has run out of ideas about what it is going to do with it its security business and is apparently planning to flog it off.
Five years ago Intel bought McAfee for $7.7bn acquisition. Two years ago it re-branded it as Intel Security. There was talk about chip based security and how important this would be as the world moved to the Internet of Things.
Now the company has discussed the future of Intel Security with bankers, including potentially the outfit. The semiconductor company has been shifting its focus to higher-growth areas, such as chips for data center machines and Internet-connected devices, as the personal-computer market has declined.
The security sector has seen a lot of interest from private equity buyers. Symantec said earlier this month it was acquiring Web security provider Blue Coat for $4.65 billion in cash, in a deal that will see Silver Lake, an investor in Symantec, enhancing its investment in the merged company, and Bain Capital, majority shareholder in Blue Coat, reinvesting $750 million in the business through convertible notes.
However Intel’s move into the Internet of Things does make it difficult for it to exit the security business completely. In fact some analysts think it will only sell of part of the business and keep some key bits for itself.
Courtesy-Fud
More Details Uncovered On AMD’s ZEN Cores
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Our well informed industry sources have shared a few more details about the AMD’s 2016 Zen cores and now it appears that the architecture won’t use the shared FPU like Bulldozer.
The new Zen uses a SMT Hyperthreading just like Intel. They can process two threads at once with a Hyperthreaded core. AMD has told a special few that they are dropping the “core pair” approach that was a foundation of Bulldozer. This means that there will not be a shared FPU anymore.
Zen will use a scheduling model that is similar to Intel’s and it will use competitive hardware and simulation to define any needed scheduling or NUMA changes.
Two cores will still share the L3 cache but not the FPU. This because in 14nm there is enough space for the FPU inside of the Zen core and this approach might be faster.
We mentioned this in late April where we released a few details about the 16 core, 32 thread Zen based processor with Greenland based graphics stream processor.
Zen will apparently be ISA compatible with Haswell/Broadwell style of compute and the existing software will be compatible without requiring any programming changes.
Zen also focuses on a various compiler optimisation including GCC with target of SPECint v6 based score at common compiler settings and Microsoft Visual studio with target of parity of supported ISA features with Intel.
Benchmarking and performance compiler LLVM targets SPECint v6 rate score at performance compiler settings.
We cannot predict any instruction per clock (IPC improvement) over Intel Skylake, but it helps that Intel replaced Skylake with another 14nm processor in later part of 2016. If Zen makes to the market in 2016 AMD might have a fighting chance to narrow the performance gap between Intel greatest offerings.
Courtesy-Fud
Intel’s Security Exec Jumps Ship
Michael Fey has left Intel Security Group to become chief operating officer at Blue Coat. Blue Coat is apparently not the traditional garb of a British Holiday Camp entertainer, but apparently a privately owned network security company.
Fey was one of the few top McAfee managers to stay with the company after it was bought by Intel in 2011. McAfee is now part of Intel Security Group, where Fey had been chief technology officer. Fey said that his role at Blue Coat would be “very similar” to his old job but he was allowed to focus on the cloud and the advanced threats space more.
“Blue Coat had tremendous growth behind the scenes and now I get to focus on taking that growth and trying to get it to the billion-dollar revenue mark,” he told Reuters.
Since the $7.7 billion acquisition by Intel, McAfee has lost senior managers and key talent in technology development, research and sales. At Blue Coat, Fey will replace David Murphy, who will stay on as a strategic adviser to the board.
McAfee’s Biometric Software Coming Soon
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A McAfee security product that will use biometric technology to authenticate users will be available for download by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, last week.
“Your biometrics basically eliminate the need for you to enter passwords for Windows log in and eventually all your websites ever again,” Skaugen said.
Further product details were not immediately available. But one of the major inconveniences in using PCs and tablets is remembering passwords, which biometrics can tame.
An average user has about 18 passwords and biometric authentication will make PCs easier to use, Skaugen said.
Biometric authentication isn’t new. It’s being used in Apple Pay, where fingerprint authentication helps authorize credit card payments through the iPhone or iPad. Intel has been working on multiple forms of biometric authentication through fingerprint, gesture, face and voice recognition.
McAfee is owned by Intel, and the chip maker is building smartphone, tablet and PC technology that takes advantage of the security software. Intel has also worked on biometric technology for wearable devices like SMS Audio’s BioSport In-Ear Headphones, which can measure a person’s heart rate.
Intel also wants to make PCs and tablets easier to use through wireless charging, display, docking and data transfers. Such capabilities would eliminate the need to carry power brick and cables for displays and data transfers. Such capabilities will start appearing in laptops next year with sixth-generation Core chips code-named Skylake, which will be released in the second half.
Can Intel Go Wireless?
July 17, 2014 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
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Intel wants to lead the drive into a less wired world by pushing standards, drive down the cost, and make these technologies ubiquitous.
At Computex, Intel demonstrated WiGig wireless docking and simultaneous wireless charging of a laptop, smartphone, headset and tablet with a pad placed under a tabletop. The company said that it would deliver reference designs for systems that use the technology in 2016 as part of a future Core processor family known as Skylake.
WiGig trades range for speed and operates in the 60GHz spectrum, compared with 2.4- and 5.0GHz for WiFi. It can transfer data at speeds of up to 7Gbps, compared to a maximum speed of a little more than 1Gbps for 802.11ac.
WiGig can be used to stream video from a mobile device to a TV or monitor, replacing HDMI and DisplayPort cables, but is being seen as a way of carrying out networking and wireless docking. It means that you can put your laptop on your desk and it automatically connects with your monitor, keyboard and mouse, printer and other peripherals without cables.
Intel plans to make its own WiGig chips. The outfit said it will have silicon for both transmitters and receivers in production by the end of this year, and available in products in the first half of 2015. Intel also wants to push Rezence for wireless charging.
Chipzilla has added that it will contribute some of its own IP to expand the standard to support wireless charging of laptops (which requires at least 20 watts) and that Rezence will be part of a Skylake reference design by 2016. This means that the world could be wirelessly networked soon after that.