IDF 2011 Otellini Keynote: Haswell, Solar, X86 Android

Mr. Otellini also brought out Candice Worley from McAfee to speak a bit about the partnership between the companies. Worley mentioned that traditional threat detection relies almost completely on software solutions, but future products would leverage both hardware and software to better detect and block zero-day, unknown exploits. The demo showed a beta release of an upcoming McAfee product that would leverage hardware in Core i3 / i5 / i7 processors called DeepSAFE that would prevent kernel more rootkits from infecting a system.

The next couple of demos revolved around Intel’s Connected Application Framework. The demos showed a number of mobile devices and desktops seamlessly interacting with each other. The framework enabled Intel’s “Pair and Share” technology, which does just what its name implies.

Devices can be securely paired and content can be shared easily between them. While the demo was cool, one of the more interesting tid-bits to come from the talk was that Intel Architecture-optimized versions of Android were coming to a number of devices. During the talk a Medfield platform-equipped tablet running Android “Honeycomb” was shown along with a Toshiba Ultrabook based on Ivy Bridge.

 

 
Intel demos Medfield platform running Android Honeycomb
All future versions of Android will be X86 optimized

Later on in the keynote, Otellini also brought out Andy Rubin of Google who disclosed that all future versions of Android will be optimized for Intel’s architectures. Otellini went on to show a Medfield-based smartphone running Android as well (it was actually the phone used on the “Pair and Share demo). It looked like a traditional candy-bar form factor, but details weren’t disclosed. We tried to get shots of the phone, but it was unfortunately moved off-stage at the end of the keynote.

More to come from sunny San Francisco, as our IDF 2011 coverage continues tomorrow!