Intel is one of a number of hi-tech companies to join the USB 3.0 Promoter Group to create a faster version of the Universal Serial Bus connection technology.

The future standard aims to increase energy efficiency while boosting bandwidth by a factor of 10. USB 3.0 will support copper and optical wiring while maintaining backwards compatibility with current USB standards.

Pat Gelsinger, general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group, said in a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum that companies backing the initiative include HP, NXP and Texas Instruments.

Gelsinger spent a considerable portion of his presentation talking up virtualisation, reiterating his points from last week's keynote at the VMworld conference where he touted the technology as the data centre operating system.

In a series of smaller announcements, Gelsinger also unveiled the next version of Intel's vPro enterprise desktop platform codenamed McGreary. The platform is scheduled to ship in the second half of 2008.

McGreary offers better management and security for business users in an effort to cut back on the number of costly site visits by IT support staff.

The current Weybridge version of the platform supports only dual-core processors, but McGreary will expand this to dual-core and quad-core processors.

The platform will also introduce version 5.0 of Intel's Active Management Technology, and a new chipset codenamed Eaglelake.

Eaglelake features an integrated Trusted Platform Module, and is currently a separate component in vPro systems.

Intel chief executive Paul Otellini revealed earlier that Intel has sold about five million units of the vPro platform since it was launched in September last year. The chipmaker had not previously released sales data.