It has been a couple of years since I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure of attending an IDF, but I remember the experience well. While I had been in the technology industry for many years and was familiar with major tradeshows like Comdex, Interop, CeBit, etc, I recall being amazed that a single company could be the catalyst for such a huge event. But as I experienced it, it made more sense: after all, Intel sells a very broad line of products to a huge array of customers. And our products are among the most technologically advanced and complex in the world—yet they are only critical components to solutions that require a wide range of complementary parts—system boards, test tools, compilers, software, BIOS and integrators—to name just a few. And IDF is the critical venue to galvanize this huge and surprisingly efficient cadre of fellow travelers that will help build upon and deliver our technologies to the world. It is where we educate, communicate and differentiate, and it is a great showcase for Intel.
This year, I’m excited to be able to participate. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I’m looking forward to being able to use this showcase to help establish Intel’s focus on server security. We’ve got a couple of key new features—Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Advanced Encryption Standard new instructions (AES-NI) for encryption processing—that promise to make secure processing for servers more complete and efficient. You can get a glimpse of what Leslie Xu and Michael Kounavis will cover for AESNI. I’ll be working with Mahesh Natu and some friends in the fellow traveler community to help introduce TXT for servers. Like many others, we’ll be using this opportunity to: conduct training for developers (session ECTS002); show the technology in action in a really cool Server Zone demo (Booth #517), and generally help build awareness for TXT and security in general. I’m really looking forward to the demo. It is one thing to offer a cool feature, but it is a whole new level of anticipation when one can so clearly visualize how this technology can be deployed to make users’ environments better.
I know that we’re eager to share our enthusiasm and engage the developers and customers that will make our technologies a success. I’m also keen to get to see other great things coming out of Intel and our fellow travelers. What are you eager to see and hear about at IDF?
