Intel wants to make tracking business CPUs as easy as tracking packages

You’ve probably tracked a package from FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service, monitoring its progress as it nears your door. Intel is launching a similar program for its processors, letting you know which countries they’ve passed through.

Correction 3/5/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that Intel’s program could track the chips in real time. Intel said that the program is an attestation of where the chip in question has actually been before it reaches the customer.

Intel announced what it’s calling the “Assured Supply Chain for Enterprises” as it unveils a ton of new commercial mobile processors for businesses, covering the Intel Core Ultra 200V, 200U, 200H, 200S, and even 200HX chips. Intel’s launch covers two separate architectures, from “Lunar Lake” to it latest “Arrow Lake” processors for laptops.

All of these processors essentially duplicate the existing processors Intel has already shipped for the consumer market, but include support for Intel’s vPro platform. Intel didn’t announce any new capabilities for the vPro platform, and didn’t provide reporters with a list of the specific commercial chips it’s announcing.

Intel

During the second half of 2025 and into early 2026, however, Intel plans to launch the Assured Supply Chain with partners that include Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

Assured Supply Chain chips will be marked with an “A” in their product number, and won’t cover all of the new commercial chip offerings. Instead, they will include “select” chips, Intel said.

Intel didn’t really dig too deeply into the reasons for the ASC program, though it’s feasible that a business might want to know where the chips were shipped as part of the manufacturing process, such as from Intel’s own foundry operations or somewhere else. According to a screenshot of the process, the ASC simply shows the customer through which countries the chip has passed through That’s important for a government agency which have to abide by specific guidelines for where their chips come from.

The ASC will provide “a digitally attestable chain of custody of each chip’s progress through the chip manufacturing process, leveraging a dedicated chip manufacturing pathway through specific Intel manufacturing locations,” Intel said.

Intel and its partners plan to ship more than 150 designs based on these new commercial chips during 2025, from over 10 separate partners, Intel said.