At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show today, Intel announced the release of its new series of processors, code-named "Sandy Bridge." Loaded with features catering to people hungry to play games and watch video, the new processors reflect the fact that consumers are responsible for 66 percent of Intel's revenue, a reversal from 2000, when enterprise customers provided 71 percent of revenue.

With Sandy Bridge, which is intended to replace its current line of processors, Intel has integrated a high performance graphics processor directly alongside the two-to -four general-purpose processor cores that are found on each chip. Apart from offering HD video capabilities without the need for a separate graphics card or chip set on the PC's motherboard, locating the graphic processor on the chip has allowed Intel to offer new features. One of these is QuickSync, which allows the system to rapidly transcode between two different video formats, to cater to customers who wish to download a movie on their PC and then later transfer it to a mobile device such as an iPad. Currently, converting videos can be time consuming. The new Intel feature will allow, for example, a 4 minute HD clip to be converted for iPod viewing in 16 seconds.

The ballooning market for on-demand video is also behind another new feature called Intel Insider: Intel has developed this in partnership with a number of Hollywood (and Bollywood) movie studios that have previously been reluctant to offer online HD versions of their movies because of a fear of piracy. It enforces Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the chip hardware, which makes unauthorized playback of the file impossible, rather than simply trying to prevent copying. The technology is believed to be so secure that studios may allow viewers to download movies in advance of their official online release date, preventing playback until the movie is officially released, which would allow viewers to start watching immediately instead of congesting networks by trying to download it at release time. Of course, there have been previous schemes for DRM that have been hailed as unbreakable, so it will be interesting to see what hackers make of this technology in the months to come.

Christopher Tarnovsky, who operates the California-based consulting firm Flylogic Engineering, must strike dread into the heart of anyone working on secure computer chips.

At the Black Hat DC, a computer-security conference in Washington, DC, Tarnovsky gave an impressive demonstration of how even the most secure system will fall under a sustained, determined attack.

Tarnovsky says that he spends almost every waking moment hacking chips. He even owns a focused ion beam work station--a secret weapon for chip hackers. Such a machine costs a quarter of a million dollars, used.

The target in Tarnovsky's demonstration was the family of chips used for trusted platform computing, and for controlling access to the Xbox 360, GSM SIM cards, and satellite television transmissions. After six months of intense work, Tarnovsky says he developed a technique that allows him to break one of these chips in a matter of hours.

That's not to say that the chip's security is poor. Tarnovsky speaks of its design with great respect. When he describes what he had to do to get into it, it's easy to see why: the device is loaded with encryption, dummy data, light sensors that destroy the chip if they detect a signal, and a complex coating of mesh that will also kill the chip if it's mishandled.

"It's a really nice design," Tarnovsky says, "but it's not as secure as they claim it is." This turns out to be the message he wants to get across. Since this chip is rated with extremely high security, Tarnovsky has identified improvements that he believes should be made to protect it further.

However, he acknowledges that few people have the skill and equipment needed to break the chip. In this case, announcing that he's broken the device won't mean a flood of copycat hackers. Instead, it just shows that nothing is invulnerable.