View Full Version : This begs the question why?
green granite
19th Aug 2010, 17:57
The world's biggest chip maker, Intel, has agreed to buy the security technology firm, McAfee.
Intel will pay $7.68bn (£5bn) in cash.
Under the terms of the deal, Intel said it would pay $48 per share in cash for McAfee, almost 60% higher than its closing price on Wednesday.
Through buying McAfee, a leading security technology firm, Intel intends to build security features into its microprocessors which go into products such as laptops and phones.
Full article: BBC News - Intel in $7.68bn McAfee takeover (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11025866)
If Intel chips are going to come with McAfee built-in, then I'm going to be buying shares in AMD.
Yep- how to kill a product.
batninth
19th Aug 2010, 20:40
Hmm, the US press around this story is suggesting that Intel will be building processors aimed at delivering security applications, not that McAfee will be integrated into Intel cores in general - try this analysis (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/intel-to-acquire-mcafee-for-768-billion-cloud-security-becomes-key-priority/38213?tag=mantle_skin;content).
That would make much more sense to me, we're seeing a big move towards "Appliance" based processing, where you buy a specialised piece of kit to perform a function, for example a database appliance or a data deduplicating appliance. In this paradigm, a security appliance makes a lot of sense
Of course, those of us "of a certain age"(*) may look at this appliance based computing & say something like "Didn't mainframes work like this when we were young?"
(*) A euphanism for "Grumpy old b*****r"
The Nr Fairy
20th Aug 2010, 06:29
I have an interest in this - because McAfee compete with my mob in an area or two. Will be interesting to see what happens to the bits of McAfee which don't easily plug in to microprocessors.
mixture
20th Aug 2010, 16:26
we're seeing a big move towards "Appliance" based processing, where you buy a specialised piece of kit to perform a function
No.
Appliances are for SMEs.... easy to deploy and support.
I reckon pigs will fly before you see Oracle, SQL, Exchange et. al. in appliance format.
My money is on Intel branded McAfee IP based ASICs on Intel desktop/laptop chipsets.