Digital rights management embedded in Intel chips

UNFORTUNATELY we missed the London Intel press conference yesterday when the firm once more introduced its Pentium D 820, 830, 840 and the 945 chipset that supports it.

Although many of the details of these processors and chipsets were heralded by Intel as long ago as February, Digit Mag has picked up on an interesting part of the announcement.

The magazine said Intel has enabled digital rights management (DRM) for these products, but an Intel rep confirmed the 945 would help implement Microsoft's DRM at a chip level, although he wouldn't discuss the details.

It will get worse before it gets better, according to your point of view, because Intel continues behind the scenes to push hard on the trusted computing modules and Microsoft's future OS is expected to implement these features in full.

Corporations which buy PCs will probably like these features, but such things come at a cost, and third party manufacturers of mobos and the rest might find the additional items in the bill of materials a little hard to bear.

You can find the Digit Mag story here. µ