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Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips
Friday 27 May 2005 - 11:02

Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.

Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case.

While Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM technology at its Australian launch of the new products, Intel's Australian technical manager Graham Tucker publicly confirmed Microsoft-flavored DRM technology will be a feature of Pentium D and 945.

"[The] 945g [chipset] supports DRM, it helps implement Microsoft's DRM ... but it supports DRM looking forward," Tucker said, adding the DRM technology would not be able to be applied retrospectively to media or files that did not interoperate with the new technology.

However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.

The situation presents an interesting dilemma for IT security managers as they may now be beholden to hardware-embedded security over which they have little say, information or control.

Conversely, Intel is heavily promoting what it calls "active management technology" (AMT) in the new chips as a major plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip's firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or control individual machines independent of an operating system.

Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.

"We all know our [operating system] friends don't crash that often, but it does happen," Tucker said.

Intel's reticence to speak publicly about what lies under the hood of its latest firmware technology has also prompted calls to come clean from IT security experts, including Queensland University of Technology's assistant dean for strategy and innovation, IT faculty, Bill Caelli.

"It's a dual use technology. It's got uses and misuses. Intel has to answer what guarantees it is prepared to give that home users are safe from hackers. Not maybes, guarantees".

Caelli said it was "critical Intel comes clean" about how the current DRM technology is embedded into the new CPU and chipset offering.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at press time.

...adding the DRM technology would not be able to be applied retrospectively to media or files that did not interoperate with the new technology.

Ace Pace wrote:I don't see why anyone would want to buy Intel's new processors, their hot, expensive and slower then AMD's duel core CPU's.

The DRM is just icing on the cake.

Melchior wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:I don't see why anyone would want to buy Intel's new processors, their hot, expensive and slower then AMD's duel core CPU's.

The DRM is just icing on the cake.

"Brand recognition" by the average buyer?
In this moment, how high is Intel's market share in the desktop segment?

DarkSilver wrote:File Transfer is the least of my concerns U235. I rarely do it, hell, I hadn't done any Peer to Peer stuff in the past year except for a few episodes of JLU (that's free and legal to download TV shows after they air now), the first new ep of Family Guy and iaMD Pt2.

Still, DRM tech ca, and most likely will be misused, I know a few times MS's DRM for Media player has actually screwed over media files on a computer, making them so that only Media Player can run them, not winamp, not Real Player, etc (forced me to reload my frigging porn files from a backup....pos Media Player 10....)

General Brock wrote:Hasn't Intel tried this before with the P III? I thought they were smacked down so hard they dropped it.

General Brock wrote:Hasn't Intel tried this before with the P III? I thought they were smacked down so hard they dropped it.

May 26: Computerworld Today Australia story incorrectly reported that the Intel Pentium D processor and Intel 945 Express Chipset includes unannounced embedded DRM technology.

The Intel Pentium D Processor and the Intel 945 Express Chipset family do not have unannounced embedded DRM technologies.

The DRM technology referred to in a recent report was not a secret or an embedded DRM from Intel. Intel does support various content protection technologies including DTCP-IP technology, which is publicly offered by a number of companies in the industry to enable protected transport of compressed content within a home network.

Many Intel products today support several existing copy protection or content protection technologies. These include support today for things like Macrovision and DTCP-IP, and in the second half of 2005, Intel will deliver an updated graphics driver that will also support additional content protection technologies including COPP, HDCP, CGMS-A, and others. DTCP-IP technology, which is publicly offered by a number of companies in the industry, enables protected transport of compressed content within a home network. While Intel continues to work with the industry to support other content protection technologies, we have not added any unannounced DRM technologies in either the Pentium D processor or the Intel 945 Express Chipset family.