AMT gives device owners remote administration of their computer, such as powering it on or off, and reinstalling the operating system.

AMT runs on the ME, but is only available on processors with vPro. The Management Engine is often confused with Intel AMT (Intel Active Management Technology). Intel's main competitor AMD has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs. This issue can be mitigated with deployment of a hardware device, which is able to disconnect mains power. The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards. The Intel Management Engine ( ME), also known as the Intel Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processor chipsets since 2008.

The ME is colloquially categorized as ring −3, below System Management Mode (ring −2) and the hypervisor (ring −1), all running at a higher privilege level than the kernel (ring 0) Privilege rings for the x86 architecture.

Management engine