Intel begins shipments of its Pentium 4 672/662 CPUs (3.8 GHz) delivering the industry?s first hardware virtualization support for desktop PCs.

Desktop PCs based on new processors are available today on systems being offered by Acer, Founder, Lenovo and TongFang. The Intel Pentium 4 processor 672 and 662 are priced at $605 and $401 respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

Virtualization allows a platform to run multiple operating systems or applications in independent partitions or ?containers? that can be tailored for specific needs such as IT management services and protecting networked assets.

With virtualization support, businesses can maintain full control of a portion of a PC to run security or management services without interrupting the end-user or allowing them to easily tamper with critical applications. Businesses can better protect themselves from malicious code or viruses by filtering network traffic through a separate IT partition before it reaches the user.

Configuring multiple partitions on a PC improves manageability by providing support for legacy applications while testing and adopting new operating environments.

Intel will also deliver the second phase of another premier platform innovation ? Intel Active Management Technology ? together with virtualization support on its dual-core Intel Professional Business Platform, codenamed Averill, later in 2006. Virtualization capabilities will also be extended to notebook PCs, and the company will first support this through Intel Centrino mobile technology-based platforms in 2006.

Intel announced last week that it is shipping Intel Xeon processors MP with hardware-enabled support for Intel Virtualization Technology. The company will begin shipping this same technology on Intel Itanium processor-based platforms in mid-2006.

The benefits of virtualization can also extend to home and entertainment activities. In the future, home PC users will be able to create virtual ?partitions? isolating several user environments such as dedicated Web browsing resources, personal video recorders and offering service providers access for remote diagnosis and repairs.

Additional specifications of the new Pentium 4 672/662 CPUs (90nm) include in a 2MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB speed, Hyper-Threading, Enhanced SpeedStep, and EM64T technologies.

In releated news, Intel disclosed product information about its new Intel 975X Express chipset. The chipset will support PCI Express x8?2 besides PCI Express x16?1. The supported FSB is compatible with Pentium Extreme Edition, Pentium D, Pentium 4, and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition running at 1,066/800MHz.