This week at Intel, we will host several thousand of the world's foremost software and hardware developers in San Francisco at our triannual Intel Developers Forum. It is an event that requires months of planning, years of product development and countless debates within our company. For many of us, Intel Developers Forum is a culmination of our lives work and committment to technology innovation. Intel has been hosting this event for 11 years and over those 11 years we have remained committed to providing the best venue possible for our colleagues in the industry. Each year we announce new technologies, introduce new products, technology usage models and provide our opinion on the direction of the technology industry. As an Intel employee this event serves as a tremendous source of pride for the hardwork and imagination of our engineers, manufacturing geniuses and executive leadership. It also provides us with a chance to continue to learn from the rest of the industry. I would also like to point out it is an opportunity for our customers, colleagues and developers to let us know when we have missed the mark.

Too much communication and collaboration is NOT always a good thing.

What continues to strike me (humble me as well) is the continued drive of the technology industry to innovate, problem solve and deliver the best products the world has ever seen, regardless of the profit motive. I would hope other industries would embrace a similar model of rewarding innovation and ingenuity....

As the world (and Intel) tranforms our technology infrastructure from static, immobile, expensive and exclusive to mobile, collaborative, inexpensive and inclusive it becomes critical for all of us in the industry to define architectural transitions that take advantage of this paradigm shift. Virtualization can certainly play a key role in enabling more mobile application deployments, more collaborative operating system environments, faster time to production for applications and better use of energy resources. It also has the potential to be a new frontier of collaborative innovation. Utlizing more compute, I/O and storage resources across a broader range of applications in a reduced carbon footprint. Reducing our mutual dependencies on any single source of software, hardware and carbon emitting suppliers. With time, it may even allow us to share compute resources with our suppliers and/or colleagues seamlessly and securely. From mobile phone to mobile internet devices to desktop to servers to mainframes and a host of additional embedded applications (think ATM, Food Dispensers, Checkout stands, Gas Pumps, etc), Virtualization with secure authentication could facilitate an interesting array of application usages for all consumers in the Global economy. It is not a Panacea, to heal all wounds of the industry, but merely a facilitating technology capable of providing a collaborative underpinning for the technological world we have become. What is possible and what is here today are obviously not always aligned in time or execution. Yet, I am always excited when any technology (from anyone and particularly Intel) has the ability to bring us more efficient use of our limited carbon footprint, limited time on the planet and sets the table for a world of autonomic continuity in which servers, desktops or devices don't "die"....they are simply retired.

I can only hope our former Chairman, the illustrious Andy Grove, was mistaken when he coined the term "Only the paranoid survive". I am of the opinion that survival is not enough, it is thriving and innovation which move us forward, breeds new ideas, new usages, new applications and new languages for us all to enjoy.

I welcome your comments, thoughts and ideas....

Admin Note: This is a repost on behalf of Ravi Subramaniam.

This is the first video in a 3 part series - In this video series, I touch upon the topics that are in the news - Virtualization, Grid computing and cloud computing - each have had their day as or are the current hot/hyped topic. In this first video, I focus on virtualization.

I am looking forward to an interesting dialogue on these videos and the topics and to learn from your insights as I hope you will from mine. I would really like to get your feedback/thoughts and other topics/considerations that would be relevant and important here.

The intent here is to try and demonstrate these topics are in some way inter-related though the implementations/embodiments are distinct and relevant to solving the problems in their respective topic/domain. By understanding the connections, my hope is that, one can visualize new solutions/products (to solve new or higher order problems) that may be created through some appropriate compositions or by novel (re)organizations of the implementations and technologies in these respective topics. Well... I am getting ahead of myself here ...

To stimulate discussion for this blog I would like to add/highlight a few points/questions ...

• Virtualization (at least for me) is a broad concept and as, highlighted in the video, has many modes, facets or aspects - many of the topics of current interest are sort of related by the application of some aspect of virtualization. For the sake of time/brevity, I choose to briefly mention the broader aspects and relate quickly to the notion of virtualization that most accept i.e. what I would call 'machine virtualization'. Do you agree with the broad view of virtualization? An elaboration on your response (for or against) will be much appreciated.

• Virtualization implies a relationship to the entity (physical or virtual) that the virtualization virtualizes - the ability to bind, manipulate and manage these relationships is what helps realize virtualization benefits like agility, consolidation, right sizing etc. The foil in the video "How to create virtualization?" describes some of the relationships (i.e. creating a virtualization establish the relationship describing the mode of creation). Do the ideas in "How to create virtualization?" section of the video make sense - do you agree - thoughts? Are there additional relationships (modes of construction) one may need to consider in the context of virtualization? Are there any product/product area that Intel could enhance by adding one of these virtualization modes/relationships i.e. that would solve (or improve solution of) a problem that you have (say emulation for example)?

• Machine virtualization - is currently SW based with HW assists for performance and security. What do you see as the next inflection for machine virtualizations? Is there an increased role for HW (as different from the current role of enhancing SW solutions)? Are there any models for virtualization that you see that are better suited for implementation in silicon rather than SW?

Working in High Tech means that most of us don't ever slow down - if we do, we risk falling behind. As a result, I usually find myself more more stressed than relaxed (just ask my peers or my wife).

So when I find good humor, I like to share. I found this video snippet about virtualization at www.talesofitutopia.com and it put a smile on my face. It is a little scarry that i can relate to more than one of the characters (the boss, the IT guy and even to some extent the JINX). Which character do you relate to?

Virtilization anyone?

Energy consumption and energy efficiency issues are becoming more prevalent in the datacenter. This short podcast hosted by the Register provides some insight on topics that IT manager should consider to improve energy efficient performance in the datacenter.

http://www.podtech.net/home/5116/energy-consumption-in-the-data-center

Using some data from our own IT group, we developed a simple ROI calculator. This tool provides an estimate of performance and IT cost savings of refreshing older servers with new ones. Below is a screen shot of the calculator that is now available on our new server tools section of the Server Room. Give it a try and let us know if these assessment tools are helpful?

One trend that is really starting to take shape in the server industry is that big servers are back! That doesn't mean big servers ever disappeared off the map. Historically bigger servers with 4 or more processor sockets have been 7-8% of the server market from a volume perspective. And bigger servers have always been used for scalable, data-demanding enterprise applications which IT values for it's performance, headroom and reliability. What we're seeing now is a greater shift in popularity towards these servers as IT invests more and more in this direction.

So, why is that? Well, check out this video and then let me know if you agree or disagree. After you watch it I'd also be curious to learn more about what you value as the most important buying criteria when you go big.

I have visited a number of customers recently. The discussions are usually straight forward where I provide them with a download of our current products, I tell them about things that we are doing in the future and along the way I ask them some questions about trends that they are seeing with their businesses. It will come as no surprise that enterprises are trying to keep up with their current requirements while also squeezing out increasingly flat or dwindling budgets to do something new. Many are turning to virtualization as a way to do more.

So who cares? CFO's care. I went out to visit a leading Fortune 500 company based on the West Coast of the US. Keep in mind I am planning to discuss our server platforms, why I believe they are leadership on performance and power and also all of the great new virtualization features we have recently introduced or will intro in the future. Before we get started they proudly walk me through their new datacenter and I stop in front of a rack that has two servers in it. Two 2U two processor servers. It is right next to another rack that has four servers in it. I inquire as to why both racks are only partially full and I receive a response that says one is owned by Finance, one is owned by a business unit. IT just manages them. You can look at this two ways. The glass half empty way would be that they are wasting an incredible amount of datacenter space and they are hopeless. The glass half full way would be that this is a great opportunity to really deliver value to this company's bottom line by first convincing them that physical consolidation (full up their racks) is important, then showing them a path toward application consolidation and finally sharing a vision of datacenter virtualization that includes compute, storage and networking. Their CFO will care.

IT employees care. One theme that seems to be coming through loud and clear is that people who drive some form of virtualization are usually considered as innovators or leading edge thinkers within their company. I have heard the term "IT Hero" to refer to someone who has delivered on a high ROI project, usually these days through the use of virtualization. I have met a number of IT folks at conferences and during visits and it is uncanny how many are trying to dig for more product information and how eager they are to hear about what new features we're putting into CPUs, chipsets, networking devices. A quick search of Youtube found this case study (here) that sums up the sorts of things I have heard.

It is also increasingly important that all of this stuff works well with the software, VMM and OS vendors product offerings. I know we are working closely with all of the ecosystem players because if we come out with an amazing new feature in our components it would be wasted if the VMM, OS or software didn't take advantage of it. There is some interesting banter here (here) about some of the pros and cons with virtualization. We are busy working on features that improve the performance and simplify the experience end users have when they virtualize. Why do you care about virtualization? What are you doing today that you couldn't do a year or two ago that has been made possible because of virtualization related technology?