Though basic features of the new chip around which Intel is maintaining a tight veil of secrecy are not known, Intel has modified the user-identification features in the chip to make it Internet secure.

Intel had planned to embed a revolutionary computer user identification feature in the new chip which will be available to the user on request. An identification number will be in-built in the chip to help link users with specific machines. The idea is to bolster security for E-commerce. It sees a major opportunity in E-commerce and predicted one billion connected users of E-commerce within next three years.

``Our vision is a trusted virtual world and hardware is much more tamper-proof than software,'' said Intel Corporation South Asia director Atul Vijaykar on the sidelights of Nasscom-Mait-CII IT Asia '99. P-III will allow electronicestablishment of user identity by MIS managers to ensure trusted transactions, he added. In addition to this, Intel is working on an ambitious programme for a common CDSA architecture with several of its business partners, including IBM.

Though Vijaykar did not discuss other features, Intel P-III is expected to provide much higher capacity to the user and a host of new pioneering features as compared to the P-II versions. The shipping of the chips is expected to begin by March-end.

Though the identification feature can be switched off unless turned on by users, western IT experts have said that the technology can have wide-ranging ramifications. User identification, for example, will allow websites to control access to movies or chat rooms, while making it difficult for unauthorised people to tap into personal financial data stored on these sites and is a much-advanced hardware variant of the existing `cookies' feature in web software.