Intel today announced new technology that allows antivirus software to utilize the integrated GPU on Intel processors. The technology is called Accelerated Memory Scanning. According to the chip-giant it should decrease the impact of antivirus scans on system performance and lower power consumption.
Antivirus software can have a large impact on system performance which is for some users a reason to disable the scanner temporarily.
“Early benchmarking on Intel test systems show CPU utilization dropped from 20 percent to as little as 2 percent,” according to Intel's Rick Echevarria, general manager of the Platforms Security Division. Microsoft has added support for Accelerated Memory Scanning in its Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection. It's unknown if other antivirus vendors will follow.
Accelerated Memory Scanning is part of Intel Threat Detection Technology which it also announced today. Besides Accelerated Memory Scanning, this technology also consists of Intel Advanced Platform Telemetry which uses platform telemetry and machine learning algorithms to protect against advanced threats. The first company to utilize this technology will be Cisco which plans to add the functionality to its data center security and cloud workload protection software.
Intel also announced Intel Security Essentials, which is a collection of hardware based security measures for Core, Xeon and Atom processors.
