Intel buys McAfee
Intel's deal with McAfee sees the chip giant spending nearly $7.7 billion - but why?
Announced in a press release yesterday, the news took the tech world by surprise: Intel is, after all, primarily a hardware company, and has never shown an interest in the anti-virus market sector before.
Intel top dog Paul Otelini claimed in a statement that "in the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences," and explained that Intel wants to be at the forefront of that new wave.
The move doesn't mean that Intel will be turning into a software house, however: Intel's Rene James' reference to "hardware-enhanced security [that] will lead to breakthroughs in effectively countering the increasingly sophisticated threats of today and tomorrow" provide a clue as to where Intel is hoping to take McAfee's technology - but there are other rumours circulating, too.
Alex Vallecillo, a fund manager at PNC Capital Advisors, is quoted over on BusinessWeek as pondering whether Intel's purchase - combined with its recent attempts to push its new, lower-power Atom processor models - represents another facet of the company's assault on the smartphone market. McAfee's chief executive Dave DeWalt appears to partially confirm that particular theory, in a blog post - quoted by InfoWorld - which suggests the overall aim of the merger is for the company to be able to provide "end-to-end" mobile security.
The main point that appears to be confusing analysts is the valuation: at a 62 percent premium of McAfee's last traded stock price, the value of the deal appears way overblown with TechMarketView analyst Anthony Miller telling PC Pro that the high valuation suggests that "Intel very much wanted [McAfee] and was prepared to pay full price to get it."
Should the merger result in hardware-accelerated security packages - whether for smartphones or otherwise - Intel could get a head start into a market in which other companies are already starting to show an interest. Back in 2009 graphics card manufacturer Nvidia revealed that it was working on a CUDA-based anti-virus that would harness the power of your GPU to provide full protection without burdening the CPU, while long-time McAfee rival Kaspersky holds a patent on "a hardware-based antivirus system that effectively combats rootkits."
Whether you agree with Intel's valuation of McAfee or not, one thing seems certain: anti-virus technology is set to make the move from software to hardware, and fast.
Do you think that Intel will be able to make good use of its latest acquisition, or has the company just sunk a vast quantity of money in unreliable technology? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAnti-virus software has caused more grief with games than anything else. DO NOT WANT.
(i swear AV uses up more processor cycles than anything else on my system)
I agreee that antivrus software can cause havoc with games, but so can firewall software. And most (if not all) of us have introduced a hardware firewall to our systems in the last 5 years.
This also causes a bit of a pain with some games, but its quite a simple procedure to get it working.
It interests me though that even though we all have a hardware firewall, many people (myself included) don't fully trust them, and still have a software firewall as well.
Intel will have to accept that even if they make an excellent hardware antivirus, it will take a lot to convince people to drop their software antivirus cover.
What if your hardware gives you a false-positive? How can you recover?
I also believe they don't need updating as often because they are looking for unusual activity rather than specific files. If a new virus comes out that is entirely new, but behaves in a similar way to an existing one, then the hardware AV will recognise the viral activity even if it doesn't recognise the file itself.
Or am I missing the point?
Intel CEO: “We need antivirus, can someone buy me McAfee?”
Employee: [Few hours later] “Done.”
Intel CEO: “Great, which version?”
Employee: “Version … ?”
I lolled.
Have some rep.
Now doesn't anti-virus play hell up on all forms of downloads/games, imagine trying to update your BIOS now >.< EXPLOSION!
Yeah m8, I saw it on twitter. It had to be shared in this thread though... it's very funny
I myself have no idea what to think of this... I'll just sit back and wait, as usual.
Time for you to upgrade. I've never had any problems with games caused by anti virus software.
Anyway this is potentially good news for some people as McAfee recently bought Tencubed, who make WaveSecure.
hmm, which games?, First time I ever heard Anti-virus software recking games(never experienced one), McAfee Antivirus from 1998 perhaps?hehe,
Just three days ago I get called up by a cousin to cure a virus problem, get to his PC and see that McAfee is installed and ready, but doing f*** all to fix it. A quick system restore took care of the virus. Can't say I've ever had a decent experience with McAfee, but that was easily the worst. Maybe their encryption services are decent and Intel can use them otherwise I envision a wasted $7.7 billion.
B) Wouldnt implementing hardware AV being anti-competitive? I know Microsoft got sued up the ass when they wanted to have built in AV which would prevent the rest of the market from being able to sell what they offered.
and C) well I dont have a C other then this doesnt feel right lol.
Awesome, as for the person who said AV crashes games maybe hes only use to playing with Pirated games? lol.
Plus, with software you have a choice. You can't just swap out bits of chips etc though.
I think this is the key point. I don't think this is about anti-virus software, but rather about hardware accelerated encryption. In fact, I can well see Intel killing off ar maybe selling the AV business in a few years, but keeping the encryption / data security parts of McAfee.
I know that there have been add on encryption accelerator cards on the market for a long time and Intel may be looking to create a hybrid hardware - software encryption system aimed at the server market.
To me this feels like a possible expansion of the HDCP concept. In addition to being able to encrypt and decrypt large quantities of data in real time, I can see this also being developed into a content control model similar to what Adobe does with Acrobat.
I know I'm probably not making a full lot of sense here, but I think that anti-vurus software is the least of what Intel was after.
Now avast is something I can get behind. Also, free.
but surly there's AES encryption (built in to all new Intel and AMD CPUs) that can operate at up to 1 gigabyte a second and is commonly used to send top secret information.
but I do agree with the rest of what you said