Intel has increased its focus on cloud computing. On Thursday, the chip maker revealed new chips targeting the segment and also announced new alliances to reduce or eliminate the concerns of companies hesitating to try this technology trend. The chip maker has expanded its Xeon line with new performance-boosting models.
New chips are more powerful and secure
Though Intel has gained largely by the cloud services of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, it aims to carry forward its growth by tapping smaller cloud providers and other companies looking to try cloud-like technology in their data centers.
At an event in San Francisco, the chip maker highlighted built-in features to boost the security of cloud computing jobs. Also the chip giant announced a partnership with startups CoreOS and Mirantis. Such collaborations will make it easier for the companies to transfer computing jobs between competing cloud services or between their own data centers and the cloud.
Intel’s senior vice president, who also heads its data-center group, Diane Bryant, said, “Any business is going to use multiple clouds,” the “concern is, ‘please don’t lock me in.’”
Intel’s new chips use the latest technology to get circuitry on each piece of silicon. The new Xeon E5-2600 v4 family chips have been equipped with 22 calculating engines, compared to a maximum of 18 in the earlier models. These chips are also capable of encrypting data more quickly than previous models. Intel’s new chips will be used in Dell’s, HP’s and Cisco’s new servers.
Intel to make cloud easy for others
Intel uses two open source programs to promote cloud computing. The first is OpenStack, which comes in commercial versions and is seen as a dashboard for operating resources in a data center. The second is containers. Intel’s collaboration with CoreOS and Mirantis will assist the companies in using both these technologies easily without any need for a separate cluster of computers, said Bryant.
Chad Arimura, chief executive of San Francisco-based startup Iron.io, which offers related software tools, believes many companies will benefit from Intel’s partnership “unless you think that Amazon is the one true cloud.” Moreover, to tackle other technical issues related to cloud computing, Intel and VMware agreed to set up “centers of excellence” to assist customers in testing cloud techniques without moving jobs to cloud service vendors or purchasing new technology.
