After a momentous 2024, Intel launched the new year with a focus on bringing AI features to commercial PCs.
Amid a list of announcements at CES 2025, the company said it has provided the biggest upgrade in 20 years to its vPro tools for security, remote management and productivity used by IT shops to manage PC fleets across their businesses.
The company also said it is sampling Panther Lake 18A node processors and will release it in the second half of 2025. Analysts reported seeing laptops running the processor on display at CES, a source of encouragement because lags in 18A production and tepid customer acceptance were considered part of the reason former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger left the company on Dec. 1.
“2025 will be a pivotal year for Intel,” said interim Co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus in a keynote address at CES 2025 as she held an 18A aloft. “We will keep upping our game to create world class products…We will keep pushing forward to regain process technology leadership. Most importantly, we are going to keep our customers at the center of it all.”
The vPro upgrades are cloud-based and will reduce IT remediation tasks from days to minutes, according to Jim Johnson, senior vice president of Intel client computing.
He said vPro was “uniquely built” to handle cybersecurity problems like the infamous Blue Friday (July 19, 2024), when widespread outages hit Microsoft computers. The outages were traced to a faulty update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor security software. Experts have said many organizations were unprepared to handle large-scale outages, and Intel said some customers had simply not turned on vPro protections.
Customers faced the Blue Screen of Death critical error message on their desktop or laptop screens.
“All the capabilities [to protect against Blue Friday] were already built into vPro; it simply had to be activated,” Johnson said. On that Friday, “many customers were able to leverage vPro without it having to interact. Many customers were up in hours, not days.” Intel cited examples of customers such as Banorte that reported it had used vPro and handled the outages without the need to send techs onsite.
The upgrades to vPro include a faster process for activating its capabilities, reducing 24 steps to 6 steps that can be done in minutes and not days. “It was a little more complicated than it needed to be,” said Jen Larson, general manager of Intel’s commercial PC division, in an interview. A new look at its cloud based architecture will improve efficiency.
Overall, Intel said it is pushing to further the AI PC movement started in 2024. Users will be able work with 400 applications that take advantage of generative AI capabilities and more. One demonstration of a product called Canvid showed how a worker trying to create a video presentation could write a script and then allow the app to find previously recorded video and use his voice and image to illustrate the script in a kind of legitimate personalized deep fake.
Intel presence at CES was generally applauded by several analysts, including Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. “Intel’s customers have told me that 18A looks good so far but that the company’s products aren’t as competitive as they’d like and the company hasn’t listened to them enough..I think Michelle Johnson Holthaus is saying the right things in the right order and proof will be the pudding in future product competitiveness.” He explained he appreciates her focus on products, ahead of Intel’s focus on its foundry business.
Bob O’Donnell, president of Technalysis Research, said Intel is making “incremental steps to address a big portion of the market,” which includes the commercial PC market and edge customers. “The 18A systems are on display and running, which is a good sign and that’s going to be critical to getting chips customers onboard. The fact they have something (18A) that’s functional is a good sign for hitting deadlines. One priority is getting more non-Intel customers for its fab. That’s huge.”
Eventually, Intel may split off its fab business, which might be 18 months or more, he said. Overall, he said Intel’s appearance at CES was “surprisingly positive…officials are saying, hey, we have work to do. I very much got the sense they are saying we have work to do and they were very matter of fact about it although there will be a longer turnaround story than we want to hear.”
Intel is putting a “high level focus on customers and product and making sure they will have products on time, “ said Dan Rodriguez, general manager of the network and edge solutions group at Intel, speaking in an interview. “Our edge customers continue their partnership with Intel and they look forward to new edge products and where we are going. “ Prior to the CES event, he said new edge computing customers came forward to ask him how Intel could meet their needs.