Thursday, May 26 12:00 AM ET

Intel Releases Pentium 4 with Dedicated Virus Coprocessor

Santa Clara , CA - Intel today announced they would begin shipments of the new Pentium 4 Virus Edition processor the Pentium 4VE.

Intel claims that this processor provides the most effective tool for combating the Windows virus threat so far. The Pentium 4VE processor provides hardware acceleration through a coprocessor dedicated to running viruses thus relieving the CPU of this burdensome task.

Intel Corporation CEO Craig Barrett today described how Intel is solving the biggest problem in IT today. "We are taking an innovative approach that can simply not be done with software alone," he said. "It's clear that you cannot get rid of viruses and spyware so we suggest you just run them in hardware and get the rest of your CPU back."

The new processor features a 4 GHz virus coprocessor that will provide a staggering performance of 25 Million BIPS (Bots Infected Per Second). "This is industry-leading virus performance," said Barret.

Major software vendors are getting behind the technology with Microsoft offering a new range of APIs that will take advantage of the new processor. Virus authors will be able to develop their new viruses to be able to take full advantage of the superior virus processing of the Pentium 4VE through simple API calls.

All currently circulating viruses will use the virus coprocessor immediately but for greater virus performance the new APIs should be used as they provide access to some of the more advanced features.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates was said to be "delighted" with the new chips. "Windows and Intel have led the world in security breaches, this hardware and our new APIs will widen the gap further between Windows and competitors such as Apple and Linux."