Tech Link (Roadmap): Intel Pulls Yorkfield Extreme Edition Into 2007

Looks like better days are coming for the true and faithful FanBoys. The newer products are going to launch earlier than originally sceheduled. It bodes well for those planning an upgrade, or just want to get their hands wet with the latest and greatest. Ready your wallet boys and girls (image from VR-Zone).

Intel has brought forward the launch of Yorkfield Extreme Edition from Q1 2008 to Q4 2007 bringing pressure to AMD Phenom FX slated for launch later this year. Intel has not determined the final clock speed of Yorkfield Extreme Edition but it will be at least 3.33GHz/1333FSB with 2 x 6MB shared L2 cache. Yorkfield and Wolfdale schedule remains unchanged at Q1 2008 and there are 2 SKUs for Yorkfield and 4 SKUs for Wolfdale.

Source:Intel Pulls Yorkfield Extreme Edition Into 2007

Tech Link: Intel talks future chips, power, efficiency and mobility

nordichardware has a scoop on Intel's future chips and other things on the roadmap. The article is not that comprehensive, but it's an interesting one as it gives bits and info on future products from chipzilla. Expand to read the article...

Last week Intel held a press event at its main quarter office in Santa Clara, California. Intel displayed its 1 Teraflops chip whose 80 core design has been discussed in earlier reports. Except from the mighty multithreading monster code-named "tera-scale silicon prototype", there was also a lot of talk about power consumption and efficiency. That the performance increase with every generation is a given, but how the power consumption and power efficiency evolves is not as predictable. Intel is continuously working on new technology to improve the efficiency of the circuits, thus lowering the power consumption and it revealed some of its newest progress at the event.

"A prototype of the technology was demonstrated in a PCI Express card with a chip that consumed one-tenth the power of a card with today's chip technology, or 2.7 milliwatts versus 20 to 30 milliwatts. Reducing power consumption is critical, given that using today's technology to power a PCI Express card with a bandwidth of a terabit per second would require 100 watts of energy, Casper said."

The basic idea is that Intel wants every chip to use precisely the amount of power necessary to perform a given task. Intel has been looking at wireless circuits and been able to reduce the power consumption by up to 50% to 70% by shutting off the Wi-Fi circuits when it's not needed.

Over at InformationWeek there is a longer report on Intel's press event where they also bring up the UMPC concept and other ventures.

Source:Intel talks future chips, power, efficiency and mobility

Tech Link (Processor): Intel says new chips about 40 pct faster

Wow, reuters* posted a scoop about the performance of the upcoming processor from Chipzilla. According to the article, as much as 40% performance increase can be expected from Penryn. If you are a hardcore FanBoy, you'll know how powerful they can be. It'll be interesting to finally wait for them invade the desktop arena. Expand to read the full article....

Tue Apr 17, 2007 2:51AM EDT
BEIJING/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. said a new line of computer processors due out later this year will be about 40 percent faster than current chips when running computer games, videos and other heavy workloads.

The world's biggest microchip maker, which powers about 75 percent of computers, said the new Penryn processors will have the same basic design as current ones, but the circuitry will be 30 percent thinner -- just 45 millionths of a millimeter wide.

"In high-performance computing and bandwidth intensive applications ... there will be up to a whopping 45 percent performance increase," said Patrick Gelsinger, the general manager for Intel's digital enterprise group.

The Penryn would be the world's first 45 nanometer processor, Gelsinger said at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on Tuesday. The new processors will hit the market later this year, but Gelsinger did not provide a timeline.

In a prototype Penryn chip with four processing cores, that translated into 40 percent faster performance in computer games and video processing, while more mundane tasks such as image processing ran about 15 percent faster, Gelsinger said.

Intel held the forum in China just a month after saying it would build a $2.5 billion microchip plant in the mainland, underscoring the growing importance of the country in the global electronics manufacturing food chain.

The successor to Penryn, a family of chips known as Nehalem, will make their debut in 2008 with an overhauled design and featuring up to eight processing cores, double that of current top-of-the-line chips, he said.

Intel also reiterated plans to build graphics capabilities into Nehalem processors, a sign that it is mounting a challenge to AMD chips scheduled to come out in early 2009.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s plans to integrate graphics into its processors -- a project known as "Fusion" -- is one result of its $5.4 billion purchase of Canadian graphics chip maker ATI last year.

Intel currently offers graphics integrated into its chipsets, the cluster of secondary chips and interfaces that surround a central processor and make it work with various parts of a computer.

The bulk of personal computers -- especially laptops -- are sold with such integrated graphics, and analysts have said the move to include such functions in processors themselves could put pressure on the market for separate graphics cards made by Nvidia Corp. as well as AMD's ATI division.

Nvidia has said it is not worried about integrated graphics, saying that the high-end graphics capabilities needed in areas such as games and medical imaging will sustain demand for its more powerful dedicated graphics chips.

Source:Intel says new chips about 40 pct faster

Press Release: Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Chipzilla finally unleashes the official statement about its upcoming processor (Penryn) and upcoming microarchitecture (Nehalem). I'll post more on this later on, right now, check out the official Press Release (I'll format it later on)...

Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Marking the next step in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

Intel has more than 15 45nm Hi-k product designs in various stages of development, and will have two 45nm manufacturing fabs in production by the end of the year, with a total of four in production by the second half of 2008 that will deliver tens of millions of these processors. Below are many of the details of the Penryn processor family and a glimpse into some of the key features of Intel's future generation of processors, codenamed Nehalem.

PENRYN FAMILY MICROARCHITECTURE INNOVATIONS

• A Range of Products -- Six Penryn family processors, including dual and quad-core desktop processors and a dual core mobile processor are all under the Intel Core processor brand name as well as new dual and quad-core server processors under the Intel® Xeon® processor brand name. A processor for higher-end server multiprocessing systems is also under development. As previously noted, Intel already has a total of 15 45nm products scheduled.


• Technical Marvel -- 45nm next-generation Intel® Core™2 quad-core processors will have 820 million transistors. Thanks to our high-k metal transistor invention, think of 820 million more power efficient light bulbs going on and off at light-speeds. The dual-core version has a die size of 107mm2, which is 25 percent smaller than Intel's current 65nm products - and quarter of the size of the average U.S. postage stamp - and operate at the same or lower power than Intel's current dual core processors.


• Deep Power Down for Energy Savings, Improved Battery Life -- The mobile Penryn processor has a new advanced power management state called Deep Power Down Technology that significantly reduces the power of the processor during idle periods such that internal transistor power leakage is no longer a factor. This helps extend battery life in laptops. This is a major advancement over previous generation industry leading Intel mobile processors.


• Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology Enhanced Performance for Single Threaded Apps -- For the mobile Penryn processor, Intel has enhanced the Intel® Dynamic Acceleration Technology available in current Intel Core 2 processors. This feature uses the power headroom freed up when a core is made inactive to boost the performance of another still active core. Imagine a shower with two powerful water shower heads, when one shower head is turned off, the other has increased water pressure (performance).


• Speeding Up Video, Photo Imaging, and High Performance Software -- Penryn includes Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4) instructions, the largest unique instruction set addition since the original SSE Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This extends the Intel® 64 instruction set architecture to expand the performance and capabilities of the Intel® Architecture.


• Other Technical Features to Improve Performance
  
  
  
  • Microarchitecture Optimizations -- Increases the overall performance and energy efficiency of the already leading Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more instruction executions per clock cycle, which results in more performance and quicker PC responsiveness.
  
  
  • Enhanced Intel® Virtualization Technology -- Penryn speeds up virtual machine transition (entry/exit) times by an average of 25 to 75 percent. This is all done through microarchitecture improvements and requires no virtual machine software changes. Virtualization partitions or compartmentalizes a single computer so that it can run separate operating systems and software, which can better leverage multicore processing power, increase efficiency and cut costs by letting a single machine act as many virtual "mini" computers.
  
  
  • Higher Frequencies -- Penryn family of products will deliver higher overall clock frequencies within existing power and thermal envelopes to further increase performance. Desktop and server products will introduce speeds at greater than 3GHz.
  
  
  • Fast Division of Numbers – Penryn-based processors provide fast divider performance, roughly doubling the divider speed over previous generations for computations used in nearly all applications through the inclusion of a new, faster divide technique called Radix 16. The ability to divide instructions and commands faster increases a computer's performance.
  
  
  • Larger Caches -- Penryn processors include up to a 50 percent larger L2 cache with a higher degree of associativity to further improve the hit rate and maximize its utilization. Dual-core Penryn processors will feature up to a 6MB L2 cache and quad-core processors up to a 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. Larger and faster cache sizes speed a computer's performance and response time.
  
  
  • Unique Super Shuffle Engine -- By implementing a full-width, single-pass shuffle unit that is 128-bits wide, Penryn processors can perform full-width shuffles in a single cycle. This significantly improves performance for SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4 instructions that have shuffle-like operations such as pack, unpack and wider packed shifts. This feature will increase performance for content creation, imaging, video and high-performance computing.
  
  
  
  

NEHALEM MICROARCHITECTURE

After Penryn and the 45nm Hi-k silicon technology introduction comes Intel's next-generation microarchitecture (Nehalem) slated for initial production in 2008. By continuing to innovate at this rapid cadence, Intel will deliver enormous performance and energy efficiency gains in years to come, adding more performance features and capabilities for new and improved applications. Here are some new initial disclosures around our Nehalem microarchitecture:

• Dynamically scalable for leadership performance on demand with energy efficiency
  
  
  
  • Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces and power
  
  
  • Leverages leading 4 instruction issue Intel® Core microarchitecture technology
  
  
  • Simultaneous multi-threading (similar to Intel® Hyper-threading technology) returns to enhance performance and energy efficiency
  
  
  • Innovative new Intel® SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions
  
  
  • Superior multi-level shared cache leverages Intel® Smart Cache technology
  
  
  • Leadership system and memory bandwidth
  
  
  • Performance enhanced dynamic power management
  
  
  
  


• Design scalable for optimal price/performance/energy efficiency in each market segment
  
  
  
  • New system architecture for next-generation Intel processors and platforms
  
  
  • Scalable performance: 1 to 16+ threads, 1 to 8+ cores, scalable cache sizes
  
  
  • Scalable and configurable system interconnects and integrated memory controllers
  
  
  • High performance integrated graphics engine for client
  
  
  
  

Click here to download this fact sheet as in PDF format. [PDF, 48KB]

Click here to listen to an audio interview with Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel Corporation's Digital Enterprise Group.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

Source:Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Tech Link (Memory): Intel to sample phase change memory in 1H 2007

I missed this news from EETimes so I am posting it now. This isn't your typical sub-cooling thingy so don't mistake it for that. Anyway, if you're insterested about this technology, expand for more. I haven't really read up much about this, but the advantage is huge (compared to FLASH memory with 10,000 writes vs 100 million writes for PCM) since it's Intel driving it. And when I say Intel, it means "mass production", and mass production means affordable pricing for most usage.

Intel to sample phase change memory in 1H 2007
Peter Clarke
(03/06/2007 12:44 PM EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197800524

LONDON — Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) is preparing to sample a 90-nm 128-Mbit phase change memory to customers in the first half of 2007. Mass production could begin before the end of 2007 the chip giant said.
The memory is being introduced as a drop-in replacement for NOR flash non-volatile memory although its perfromance characteristics means it could be used it a greater range of applications and come to replace in DRAM in some systems, Intel said.

Brian Harrison, vice president of the flash memory group (FMG) at Intel and Ed Doller, chief technology officer of FMG, revealed the move at a meeting for analysts and press held in California on Tuesday (March 6).

Intel has been a licensee of chalcogenide-based phase change memory technology from Ovonyx Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (Rochester Hills, Mich.), since about 2000. Over this period Intel has been actively researching the technology even though Energy Conversion Devices has been touting the technology, without commercial success, for more than 30 years.

Intel and European chip maker STMicroelectronics NV announced they had teamed up their research on chalcogenide-based phase-change memory as a likely successor to flash as a non-volatile memory, in June 2006.

Interest in phase-change and other non-volatile memory technologies has increased markedly in the last five or six years as there are increasing concerns that flash memory may struggle to scale. Qimonda AG, formerly the memory operation of Infineon Tecnologies AG, is researching phase-change memory technology with IBM Corp. and Macronix of Hsinchu, Taiwan.

At the ISSCC in February 2007 Renesas Technology Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. discussed a phase-change non-volatile memory module for integration on microcontrollers used in embedded systems.

Doller told the meeting that Intel's 128-Mbit phase-change memory had demonstrated 100 million read-write cycles of endurance and a capability for much greater than 10 years data retention. "The phase-change memory gets pretty close to Nirvana," Doller said. "It will start to displace some of the RAM in the system."


Doller added that the samples that would be going out to customers were designed to be a drop-in NOR flash replacement. "We're going to be using this to allow customers to get familiar with the technology and help us architect the next generation device," said Doller. "That dialog is happening right now."

Doller added that the technology was showing good robustness against temperature: "We don't see any issue meeting industrial [temperature range]..."

When asked when the phase change memory would go into mass production Doller said: "We're hoping we can see production by the end of the year, but that depends on the customers."

Source:Intel to sample phase change memory in 1H 2007

Tech Link (Industry): Tech Gloves come off in Intel and AMD chip wars

vnunet has posted an article about the heated war going on between Intel* and AMD*. I will not be posting the full news, but do expand to check out the source.

After a relatively quiet period in the competition between AMD and Intel, AMD has once again lashed out against its chip rival.

AMD is accusing Intel of making outdated and skewed comparisons between the chips of the two companies.

Source:Gloves come off in Intel and AMD chip wars

Press Release: OCZ Technology Announces the Extremely Versatile and Easy-to-Install OCZ Vindicator Premium CPU Cooler

Dang, OCZ is really expanding. They used to be doing some "dominator" cooler thingy, they even have a water-cooling system planned that went the way of the dodo (I'll find the link later), and they have power supply, video card, and not just memory. I wonder if they'll OEM nVidia 680i mobos as well *yay*. Expand to read the full press release.

Sunnyvale, CA—February 20, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the OCZ Vindicator CPU cooler, an enthusiast-grade thermal solution for the latest high performance processors. The Vindicator can be used as a passive or active cooler depending on the needs of the enthusiast.

The OCZ Vindicator can effectively cool some CPUs passively thanks to a pure copper base plate and six copper heat pipe design that rapidly transfers heat away from the processor up to the dense, high-stacked fin array where the thermal load is quickly dissipated. In fanless mode, the Vindicator efficiently, yet silently offloads heat. For extreme overclocking, enthusiasts can simply attach the included 120mm fan on any of the four sides of the Vindicator to aggressively cool the CPU.

“We are excited to expand our thermal solutions with the introduction of a CPU cooler designed specifically for hardcore gamers and enthusiasts,” said Jacky Huang, VP of Product Management, OCZ Technology. “The Vindicator’s six copper heatpipes and high-stacked fin array push the envelope when it comes to superior cooling while overclocking, and give enthusiasts increased flexibility with the passive or active fan configuration.”

The versatile OCZ Vindicator CPU cooler is compatible with sockets AMD 754/939/AM2 and Intel 775. Because no motherboard back plate is required, the hassle-free Vindicator is installed quickly and easily. With no need to remove your motherboard to install the cooler, the OCZ Vindicator will have your CPU cooled in no time.

Light-weight and quiet, the OCZ Vindicator manages to provide superior and reliable cooling thanks to a unique and state-of-the-art design for enthusiasts looking to upgrade their generic or inadequate coolers.

For more information on the OCZ Vindicator, please visit our product page here.

Source:OCZ Technology Announces the Extremely Versatile and Easy-to-Install OCZ Vindicator Premium CPU Cooler

Tech Link (Technology): Intel Says 45 Nanometer Microprocessors Due Later This Year

I just stumbled upon this link after a friend directed me to it. It's a very nice video, providing a lot of information about the 45nm technology from Intel. I have embedded it here in my Blog, but I also provided the true source of this link. I really love the "documentary"-style video, and I hope more will be made in the future. Enjoy (and ensure you have good broadband).

Intel announced that it will begin making 45 nanometer chips, code-named Penryn, in the second half of the year. The new microprocessors are the culmination of years of R&D using new materials to improve the efficiency and performance of silicon-based semiconductors.

The company says the new chip technology maintains Moore's Law, the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the late 1960s that the number of transistors doubles on chips every two years. Intel scientists say that transistors are now so small that more than 300 can fit on a human red blood cell.

In a recent earnings announcement, Intel officials said they expect to rebuild a lead in the computer chip market through innovation and manufacturing efficiency. Intel's current line of microprocessors includes the Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, and Core2Quad.

In this video podcast, PodTech's Jason Lopez visits Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon research facility and fab.

Related Stories: IntelMooresLaw

Source:Intel Says 45 Nanometer Microprocessors Due Later This Year

Press Release: Intel Research Chip Advances 'Era Of Tera'

This is so exciting, Intel just released another wonderful research to the wild and "wow" the world yet again. It feels good to finally discuss this in the open, well, at least the early information posted on the official website.

Imagine such powerful computing power, so massive, so advance, so futuristic. Welcome "Polaris", I am wating with anticipation. Expand to read the official Press Release.

Intel Research Chip Advances 'Era Of Tera'
80-Core Programmable Processor First to Deliver Teraflop Performance with Remarkable Energy-Efficiency
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 11, 2007 - Intel Corporation researchers have developed the world's first programmable processor that delivers supercomputer-like performance from a single, 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a finger nail while using less electricity than most of today's home appliances. This is the result of the company's innovative 'Tera-scale computing' research aimed at delivering Teraflop -- or trillions of calculations per second --performance for future PCs and servers. Technical details of the Teraflop research chip will be presented at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this week in San Francisco.

Tera-scale performance, and the ability to move terabytes of data, will play a pivotal role in future computers with ubiquitous access to the Internet by powering new applications for education and collaboration, as well as enabling the rise of high-definition entertainment on PCs, servers and handheld devices. For example, artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games, multimedia data mining and real-time speech recognition - once deemed as science fiction in Star Trek shows - could become everyday realities.

Intel has no plans to bring this exact chip designed with floating point cores to market. However, the company's Tera-scale research is instrumental in investigating new innovations in individual or specialized processor or core functions, the types of chip-to-chip and chip-to-computer interconnects required to best move data and most importantly, how software will need to be designed to best leverage multiple processor cores. This Teraflop research chip offered specific insights in new silicon design methodologies, high-bandwidth interconnects and energy management approaches.

"Our researchers have achieved a wonderful and key milestone in terms of being able to drive multi-core and parallel computing performance forward," said Justin R. Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer. "It points the way to the near future when Teraflop-capable designs will be commonplace and will reshape what we can all expect from our computers and the Internet at home and in the office."

The first time Teraflop performance was achieved was in 1996, on the ASCI Red Supercomputer built by Intel for the Sandia National Laboratory. That computer took up more than 2000 square feet, was powered by nearly 10,000 Pentium® Pro processors, and consumed over 500 kilowatts of electricity. Intel's research chip achieves this same performance on a multi-core chip that could rest on the tip of a finger.

Also remarkable is that this 80-core research chip achieves a teraflop of performance while consuming only 62 watts - less than many single-core processors today.

The chip features an innovative tile design in which smaller cores are replicated as "tiles," making it easier to design a chip with many cores. With Intel's discovery of new and robust materials to build future transistors and no immediate end in sight for Moore's Law, this lays a path to manufacture multi-core processors with billions of transistors more efficiently in the future.

The Teraflop chip also features a mesh-like "network-on-a-chip" architecture allowing super high bandwidth communications between the cores, and capable of moving Terabits of data per second inside the chip. The research also investigated methods to power cores on and off independently, so only the ones needed to complete a task are used, providing more energy efficiency.

Further Tera-scale research will focus on the addition of 3-D stacked memory to the chip as well as developing more sophisticated research prototypes with many general-purpose Intel® Architecture-based cores. Today, the Intel® Tera-scale Computing Research Program has over 100 projects underway that explore other architectural, software and system design challenges.

Intel is presenting eight other papers at ISSCC, including one which will cover the Intel® CoreTM micro-architecture and its use in dual and quad core processors spanning laptops to desktop PCs and servers, using both 65nm and revolutionary 45nm process technologies. Other papers cover such topics as a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader transceiver chip, a low power cache for mobile applications, a reconfigurable Viterbi accelerator, as well as novel circuits for on-die supply resonance suppression, on-chip phase-noise measurement and adaptive techniques for variations and aging.

Click here to visit the Press Kit.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

Source:Intel Research Chip Advances 'Era Of Tera'

Tech Link (Industry): Intel Readies Processor with Integrated Memory Controller, I/O Functions

According to a news post over at XbitLabs, Chipzialla is getting geared up with a processor that contains integrated memory controller for a very affordable system. It's got a basic I/O as well, so if this comes to fruition, we'll see single CPU system without a NB and SB, which will translate to really value system. While it is nice to see NetBurst uA with IMC just for the heck of it, I think Banias/Dothan uA or Core uA will benefit the most. Expand to read the full news.

Intel Readies Processor with Integrated Memory Controller, I/O Functions.
Intel Tolapai with Built-In North and South Bridges to Emerge in 2007

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 02/05/2007 | 04:36 AM ]


Intel Corp. the world’s largest maker of x86 microprocessors, reportedly plans to introduce a chip for low-cost systems with integrated memory controller and built-in input/output (I/O) functionality. The introduction of such processor may redefine the market of very affordable systems and may pose some threat to companies like Via Technologies.

Slides, which are presumably from Intel roadmap, indicate that Intel Tolapai system-on-a-chip (SoC) will include a Pentium M-like microprocessor with 256KB L2 cache, integrated dual-channel DDR2 memory controller that supports PC2-3200 (400MHz), PC2-4200 (533MHz), PC2-5300 (667MHz) and PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory modules, PCI Express controller as well as I/O bridge that features support for Serial ATA, USB, Gigabit Ethernet and so on.

The x86 processing engine on the chip will operate at 600MHz, 1.06GHz or 1.2GHz clock-speeds and its thermal design power varies from 13W to 25W.

The new processor, according to HKEPC web-site, will come in 1088-ball flip-chip ball grid array (FCBGA) form-factor and will be mainly aimed at embedded, small form-factor and low cost systems. For example, it is possible to assemble a very low-cost computer based on the Tolapai processor and accompanied by a graphics adapter, a hard disk drive, an optical drive and a monitor, which may be an interesting option for developing countries.

Currently Advanced Micro Devices and Via Technologies offer their Geode and C7 families of products to emerging markets and another rival targeting the same market segment with its offering will indisputably redefine the market of low-cost PCs. Intel once attempted to enter a highly-integrated platform code-named Timna, but cancelled the plan in the late nineties.

In addition to targeting emerging markets, Tolapai may also be the first highly-integrated chip of its kind with roadmap extending to central processing units with integrated graphics capabilities.

Tolapai client’s reference board is set to be available in Q2 2006 and the final product is projected to ship in late 2007.

Source:Intel Readies Processor with Integrated Memory Controller, I/O Functions

Tech Link (CPU): Conroe E6850 on Air, stability test with Ultra_Low_Volt. ^_^

XS member VictorWang has posted an early benchmark of this amazing CPU. This is an unreleased CPU from Intel and according to the screenshot, this CPU will run at 3GHz. Noticing the max multiplier on CPU-Z, it is easy to deduce that PSB (processor system bus) will be at 333MHz (1333MHz QPB).

It looks like this processor is already validated on Asus motherboard because Asus released a BIOS for their Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard last week of January, with description that reads:

P5B Deluxe Release BIOS 1004
**Please update AsusUpdate to V7.09.02 or later prior making this update.**
**This BIOS does not support roll back to older BIOS**
1 Enhance memory compatibility
2 Support CONROE E0 CPU(FSB 1333)

It is interesting that this processoe runs at a very low voltage, further testament to Intel's commitment to making processors faster yet consuming less power than their previous generation uA. And the high FSB seems to suggest that it'll attain insane FSB overclocks, higher than we've seen from E6000 series. Looks like it's going to be even more interesting this year.

been tooo busy these days, finally got some time playing with new chips.
Conroe E6850es
Stepping 9 = E0

all my E6850es in hand don't like much volts.
defult vcore=1.22~1.24v
< 1.48v maybe the best for E6850.
but...seems overclks better.
max fsb on Air = 533~570.
can we say: E6850 is better than E6600 ?

test results bellow are not the same chip
mobo=asus p5b-deluxe wifi/ap no mod, bios=1004
cooling=coolermaster fujin with 2*1700rpm 12cm fan.
ambient=14c

Source:Conroe E6850 on Air, stability test with Ultra_Low_Volt. ^_^

Tech Link (Technology): Intel's Penryn Core

If you want to know more about Penryn and the existing articles posted on well-known sites doesn't satisfy your hunger, then LostCircuits has an article posted for your viewing pleasure. Expand this article to read up MS' summary.

Summary

On January 26, 2007, Intel went public with the demonstration of their first processor core - codename Penryn - manufactured on a 45 nm dry lithography and running several operating systems at roughly over 2 GHz core speed. The manufacturing process - P1266 - has been working since January 2006 for the manufacture of the highest density SRAM cell array in the industry and is based on bringing back metal gates into the transistors while replacing the (SiO2) insulator with a precision-manufactured hafnium alloy High-k substrate using ALD technology.

The 45nm process-technology promises to put an end to leakage current runaway and allows the placing of roughly twice as many transistors per area compared to the hitherto used 65 nm (1264) process. Yield analysis is good at this point and the A0 silicon running is no small accomplishment. What else has Intel in stock for the next few months?

And what are IBM / AMD saying to all of this?

Source:Intel's Penryn Core

Press Release: Intel's Transistor Technology Breakthrough Represents Biggest Change to Computer Chips In 40 Years

I posted yesterday the on-slaught of Penryn-related articles and links, and now that I have official word from Intel, I am posting the full press release and other relevant information.

You'll see that Intel actually made more and more announcements publicly and officially since last year of November (though they have been mentioning it way earlier than that). And just this month, prior to this current announcement, they've made one earlier announcement making the computing world really excited of what Intel can do and what Intel can offer now and in the future. So enough of my blabbering, expand for more.

Intel's Transistor Technology Breakthrough Represents Biggest Change to Computer Chips In 40 Years
Intel Producing First Processor Prototypes With New, Tiny 45 Nanometer Transistors, Accelerating Era of Multi-Core Computing
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 27, 2007 – In one of the biggest advancements in fundamental transistor design, Intel Corporation today revealed that it is using two dramatically new materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of its 45 nanometer (nm) transistors. Hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors – or switches – will be inside the next generation Intel® Core™ 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon® families of multi-core processors. The company also said it has five early-version products up and running -- the first of fifteen 45nm processor products planned from Intel.

The transistor feat allows the company to continue delivering record-breaking PC, laptop and server processor speeds, while reducing the amount of electrical leakage from transistors that can hamper chip and PC design, size, power consumption, noise and costs. It also ensures Moore's Law, a high-tech industry axiom that transistor counts double about every two years, thrives well into the next decade.

Intel believes it has extended its lead of more than a year over the rest of the semiconductor industry with the first working 45nm processors of its next-generation 45nm family of products – codenamed "Penryn." The early versions, which will be targeted at five different computer market segments, are running Windows* Vista*, Mac OS X*, Windows* XP and Linux operating systems, as well as various applications. The company remains on track for 45nm production in the second half of this year.

Intel's Transistors Get a "High-k and Metal Gate" Make-Over at 45nm
Intel is the first to implement an innovative combination of new materials that drastically reduces transistor leakage and increases performance in its 45nm process technology. The company will use a new material with a property called high-k, for the transistor gate dielectric, and a new combination of metal materials for the transistor gate electrode.

"The implementation of high-k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s," said Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore.

Transistors are tiny switches that process the ones and zeroes of the digital world. The gate turns the transistor on and off and the gate dielectric is an insulator underneath it that separates it from the channel where current flows. The combination of the metal gates and the high-k gate dielectric leads to transistors with very low current leakage and record high performance.

"As more and more transistors are packed onto a single piece of silicon, the industry continues to research current leakage reduction solutions," said Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow. "Meanwhile our engineers and designers have achieved a remarkable accomplishment that ensures the leadership of Intel products and innovation. Our implementation of novel high-k and metal gate transistors for our 45nm process technology will help Intel deliver even faster, more energy efficient multi-core products that build upon our successful Intel Core 2 and Xeon family of processors, and extend Moore's Law well into the next decade."

For comparison, approximately 400 of Intel's 45nm transistors could fit on the surface of a single human red blood cell. Just a decade ago, the state-of-the-art process technology was 250nm, meaning transistor dimensions were approximately 5.5 times the size and 30 times the area of the technology announced today by Intel.

As the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years in accordance with Moore's Law, Intel is able to innovate and integrate, adding more features and computing processing cores, increasing performance, and decreasing manufacturing costs and cost per transistor. To maintain this pace of innovation, transistors must continue to shrink to ever-smaller sizes. However, using current materials, the ability to shrink transistors is reaching fundamental limits because of increased power and heat issues that develop as feature sizes reach atomic levels. As a result, implementing new materials is imperative to the future of Moore's Law and the economics of the information age.

Intel's High-k, Metal Gate Recipe for 45nm Process Technology
Silicon dioxide has been used to make the transistor gate dielectric for more than 40 years because of its manufacturability and ability to deliver continued transistor performance improvements as it has been made ever thinner. Intel has successfully shrunk the silicon dioxide gate dielectric to as little as 1.2nm thick – equal to five atomic layers – on our previous 65nm process technology, but the continued shrinking has led to increased current leakage through the gate dielectric, resulting in wasted electric current and unnecessary heat.

Transistor gate leakage associated with the ever-thinning silicon dioxide gate dielectric is recognized by the industry as one of the most formidable technical challenges facing Moore's Law. To solve this critical issue, Intel replaced the silicon dioxide with a thicker hafnium-based high-k material in the gate dielectric, reducing leakage by more than 10 times compared to the silicon dioxide used for more than four decades.

Because the high-k gate dielectric is not compatible with today's silicon gate electrode, the second part of Intel's 45nm transistor material recipe is the development of new metal gate materials. While the specific metals that Intel uses remains secret, the company will use a combination of different metal materials for the transistor gate electrodes.

The combination of the high-k gate dielectric with the metal gate for Intel's 45nm process technology provides more than a 20 percent increase in drive current, or higher transistor performance. Conversely it reduces source-drain leakage by more than five times, thus improving the energy efficiency of the transistor.

Intel's 45nm process technology also improves transistor density by approximately two times that of the previous generation, allowing the company to either increase the overall transistor count or to make processors smaller. Because the 45nm transistors are smaller than the previous generation, they take less energy to switch on and off, reducing active switching power by approximately 30 percent. Intel will use copper wires with a low-k dielectric for its 45nm interconnects for increased performance and lower power consumption. It will also use innovative design rules and advanced mask techniques to extend the use of 193nm dry lithography to manufacture its 45nm processors because of the cost advantages and high manufacturability it affords.

Penryn Family Will Bring More Energy Efficient Performance
The Penryn family of processors is a derivative of the Intel Core microarchitecture and marks the next step in Intel's rapid cadence of delivering a new process technology and new microarchitecture every other year. The combination of Intel's leading 45nm process technology, high-volume manufacturing capabilities, and leading microarchitecture design enabled the company to already develop its first working 45nm Penryn processors.

The company has more than 15 products based on 45nm in development across desktop, mobile, workstation and enterprise segments. With more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core, the Penryn family of 45nm processors includes new microarchitecture features for greater performance and power management capabilities, as well as higher core speeds and up to 12 megabytes of cache. The Penryn family designs also bring approximately 50 new Intel SSE4 instructions that expand capabilities and performance for media and high-performance computing applications.

Click here to go to Intel's 45nm Transistor Technology Virtual Press Kit

Source:Intel's Transistor Technology Breakthrough Represents Biggest Change to Computer Chips In 40 Years

Tech Link (Industry): Penryn, technology, rumors, and preview

I have a bunch of links, all of them came from a fellow forumer, ame, about this new technology process for the upcoming processor. Aside from the process shrink, new technology used for such process such as high-k, the more mundane but very attractive to the enthusiasts is the rebirth of HT (hyper threading).

While I'll list all the other links, I'd really like you to go visit bit-tech for their nice article, which I'll quote here. Expand to read more and check out other resources.

On top of the new instructions, there are also new power management features, higher clock speeds and larger cache sizes. The dual-core Penryn processors will have up to 6MB of L2 cache, while the quad-core Penryn processors will come with up to 12MB of L2 cache – that’s a 50% increase over the Conroe and Kentsfield cores that come with 4MB and 8MB of L2 cache respectively.

Source:Intel 45nm technology overview

::Other Resources::
AMDTech: Intel Demonstrates new 45nm Transistors and Conroe's Successor
PCPer: Intel Demos 45nm Up an Running

Tech Link (Industry): Eat this, Quad FX: Here's an 8-core desktop!

THG, or TGDaily has posted a coverage of Intel's Clovertown eight(8)-core monster. I have posted my own Eight-core monster here, and even posted my own early benchmark, unfortunately, that's the only benchmark I am able to post due to work and other tasks (from trivial to weird stuff). They posted a score of 3DMark06 CPU score with a whoopin 61% lead over the competitor's QuadFX (and you'd still think Intel doesn't know how to benchmark?). Expand to read more from THG...
_{Image owned by THG}

Las Vegas (NV) - You didn't think that Intel would leave all that dual-socket fame for itself, did you? At CES, Intel showed off an 8-core desktop system build on a 2P workstation board with two quad-core processors. Intel claims that the system trumps AMD's fastest Quad-FX by 61% in one key benchmark. And yes, we do have pictures of this beast.

Technically, Intel's dual-socket prototype PC isn't that unusual and there are may be many enthusiasts who have built systems using a similar approach in the past. However, this specific PC takes the multi-core theme to the edge and shows what is possible today.

The PC uses a 2-processor workstation board with an Intel 5000-series (Blackford) and chipset supporting FSB1333. The board carries two Xeon 5300 series (Clovertown) processors. Intel also built four 120 mm side panel-mounted fans, which we heard were just for drama and not really necessary to cool the system. 4 GB of FB memory and an Nvidia GeForce 8800 card complement the computer.

The system was the brainchild of Francois Piednoel, an engineer with Intel's benchmarking team. He wanted to show how simple it was to make an 8-core workstation with regular parts. "We're not marketing it, but if you want it and need it, it's available."

Piednoel added that the parts weren't "crazy expensive" and could easily be purchased through online retailers like Newegg or Gamepc.com.

Before we mention the performance, let us drop a word on power consumption. AMD's Quad FX system was heavily criticized for its shameless hunger for power. While we did not hear anything from Intel about the power consumption of this 8-core monster, we do know that the two Clovertown processors are rated at a maximum power consumption of just 80 watts - compared to the 125 watts of each FX processor in the dual socket AMD system.

Performance-wise, Intel ran the 3DMark 2006, along with some other tests, on its system and the CPU portion of the benchmark was said to have achieved 6089 points in a test run and came in at 6065 when we pushed the button. The 3.0 GHz dual-socket dual-core system from AMD (FX-74) came in at 3764 points in Tom's Hardware's benchmarks, which gives the Intel system at least theoretically a lead of 61%.

Theoretically, because we can't compare those two system due to the different environments and different setups. In any case, this Intel prototype hints to exciting enthusiast computers that may be in our future. Not just at Intel, but AMD as well: The AgenaFX quad-core is due in mid-2007 and will be available as a drop-in upgrade for current QuadFX computers.

Source:Eat this, Quad FX: Here's an 8-core desktop!

Press Release: New Intel Processors Expand Quad-Core PC, Server Line-Ups

It is now official, Intel finally unleashed new mainstream quad core processor targetted for high end computing at a mainstream price, relatively speaking. Don't get any impression that this lower-clocked quadcore is cheap, while the word expensive might come to mind, it is important to remember that this isn't targetted for everyone, only for those who have a need for quad core computing, whether business or benchmarking or plain pimping. Expand to read the full press release...

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processor Jump Starts Digital Applications, Software and Devices; Two More Server Quad-Core Products Introduced
INTERNATIONAL 2007 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, Las Vegas, Jan. 8, 2007 –Intel Corporation formally introduced three more quad-core processors, including the first to carry the Intel® Core™2 Quad processor brand name that begins the expansion of quad-core PC sales to mainstream buyers. Intel now offers a total of nine quad-core processor versions in the desktop and enterprise market segments.

The Intel Core 2 Quad processor packs four brains in every PC and delivers the immense speed and responsiveness that is increasingly required to process today's most demanding media-intensive applications. This processor is available in PCs and in the reseller channel immediately. Intel also announced two quad-core processors for single-socket servers. Today's announcement builds on the company's revolutionary Intel Core 2 Duo and quad-core microprocessor families, with 29 dual and quad-core processors for sale in the desktop PC, laptop and server market segments.

"Today Intel delivers another breakthrough—quad-core technology for anyone's PC," said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. "The performance once requiring a supercomputer is now on the desktop, allowing you to do new and amazing things."

Intel's multi-core processors are designed to enhance the computer user's experience from start to finish. These microprocessors, which are based on the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture, target performance desktop and gaming PCs and will benefit from highly threaded software applications that target these market segments. Intel is actively working with software developers on threading applications and next-generation games that will be able to take advantage of quad-core microprocessors. The four cores make quad-core based computers the ideal choice for processor intensive, highly threaded applications such as Adobe After Effects*, Premiere Pro 2.0*, Windows Media Encoder*, Snapstream* and Win DVD*. Combined with the availability of Microsoft Windows Vista*, this launch marks a rare occurrence in which new processors and a new operating system hit the market about the same time.

In addition to new levels of performance, these products bring consumers multitasking capabilities that enhance the way they create, experience and enjoy digital entertainment. Computers with the Intel Core 2 Quad processor are excellent for high-definition video entertainment and are multimedia powerhouses for demanding software applications run simultaneously. With four compute cores, the processor is uniquely designed for running multiple digital streams throughout the home – making it the ultimate entertainment engine for Intel® Viiv™ technology-based PCs.

New Quad-Core Server Processors
Intel also introduced today the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 3200 series for single-socket servers. Built on the Intel Core microarchitecture, these products will bring new levels of energy-efficient performance to entry server applications such as e-mail, Web, file and print. Two new processors are available today with clock speeds of 2.4 and 2.13 GHz with a 1066 front side bus and 8 MB of L2 cache.

Intel has made this next step in the computer's ongoing evolution as fast and easy as possible through continued investment in silicon process and manufacturing technology. Intel's advanced processes can help reduce the amount of energy required to run computers and "shrink" a processor's make-up to place multiple cores inside one product at more affordable prices.

Pricing and Availability
The new Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q6600 (2.4GHz) has been announced and is currently being demonstrated at CES. It is available now at $851 in 1KU quantities. Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor pricing includes the X3220 (2.4GHz) at $851 and the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X3210 (2.13GHz) at $690.

Source:New Intel Processors Expand Quad-Core PC, Server Line-Ups

Tech Link (Industry): Intel Invests into Multi-GPU Technology Firm

XbitLabs has a news posted claiming that Intel has invested lots of money for developing Multi-GPU supporting technology, ala NVIDIA* SLI or ATi* Crossfire. However, unlike SLI* or Crossfire* which requires properietary drivers (i.e. you can't use Crossfire or SLI if two GPUs belong to the different GPU manufacturer), the technology being developed is actually more like a concentrator or multiplexer, or an intelligent load-balancer across multiple discrete GPUs. While this is just my own guess, it does makes sense if this becomes a reality and becomes mainstream. Here is Lucid's own take of their technology:

Overview
LUCID is developing the first PC Scalable Graphics Hub (SGH).

LUCID's SGH technology consists of a high-performance chipset and
architecture that enable traditional graphic processing cores,
graphic processing chips and graphic cards to turn into an
unmatched, scalable and powerful visualization and gaming
solution.

ADVANTAGES:
* The first solution intended for PCs.
* The first and only technology to achieve a linear increase in performance among multi graphics processors.
* Best performance/cost ration.
* Technology is seamless for application and graphics h/w vendors.

According to EE times, Lucid is expecting to support up to four(4) GPUs, and is expecting to release the product by end of 2007, and already working with major motherboard manufacturers like Asus*, Gigabyte*, and Leadtek, as well as system builders such as Dell*, HP*, and Alienware*. Expand to read XBitLab's News posting...

Intel Capital, a venture capital arm of Intel Corp., the world’s largest maker of x86 microprocessors, has reportedly invested millions of dollars into a company that is developing a technology that is expected to enable “seamless” multi-GPU arrays which will deliver great performance scalability without the need of special driver tailoring.

Startup company Lucid Information Technology has raised a $12 million round of funding from Intel Capital, Giza Venture Capital and Genesis Partners, a report from EETimes web-site claims. The company raised $4.5 million in its first round in 2005, having started up in August 2003 with $500 thousand from Maayan Ventures.

Intel Corp., which is already the largest supplier of graphics components with its chipsets that contain graphics cores, has been rumoured to re-enter the market of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs) for several quarters now and as market leaders ATI (now a division of Intel’s arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices) and Nvidia actively promote multi-GPU technologies, it is crucial for Intel to have one in its possession too.

Herzlyia, Israel-based Lucid Information Technology aims to develop high-performance system-on-a-chip (SoC) and parallel architecture that turns off-the-shelve graphic cards, graphic processor units (GPU) and graphics cores into powerful and scalable visualization solutions, transparently to the applications. While the exact details of the technology are unclear, it is known that Tensilica Inc. has provided Lucid a license to use its Diamond Standard 212GP general-purpose processor core for a scalable multi-GPU chip design project.

Modern multi graphics processor (multi-GPU) solutions, such as ATI CrossFire or Nvidia SLI rely on in-house developed hardware and software technologies to make graphics processors work in parallel. Even though both technologies have been around for quite some time now, their scalability sometimes deserve to be better, whereas scalability of Nvidia’s 4-way SLI (quad SLI) turned out to be rather disappointing. Lucid Information Technology is going to change that and two and four graphics chips to deliver 200% and 400% performance improvements over single-processor designs.

Lucid is looking at the personal computer (PC) market as the primary target for its technology and claims that it would be seamless to applications and graphics hardware vendors. The technology, however, would still include both hardware and software components.

Both ATI/AMD and Nvidia yet have to comment whether it is possible to improve performance of their products using third-party hardware and software.

Source:Intel Invests into Multi-GPU Technology Firm

Tech Link (Industry): Intel’s Affordable Quad-Core Chip for Desktops Due in Days – Rumours

XBitLabs posted a news/rumor about the upcoming QuadCore from Chipzilla. As per the said article, the quadcore will be "affordable". Hmm, sounds like great news for the FanBoyz! Expand this if you would like to read the full scoop.

Intel Quad-Core Core 2 Quad Q6600 Set to Be Released in January

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 12/27/2006 | 11:55 AM ]


Intel Corp., the largest maker of x86 microprocessors on the globe, is expected to release its new quad-core processor for desktops in days, at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. The release of chip will allow Intel Corp. to further increase its competitive advantage over arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 chip is expected to run at 2.40GHz, come with 8MB L2 cache and use 1066MHz processor system bus. The new microprocessor is projected to cost $851, which is much higher than that of premium dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo 6700 chip, which costs $530, but is still lower compared to $999 the chipmaker charges for its “extreme” versions of its Core 2 microprocessors with two or four cores.

The 40th Consumer Electronics Show will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from 8th to 11th January, 2007. The exact release dates of the launch are unclear, but, according to a report from IDG news-agency, the chip will be formally unveiled at the show.

The new microprocessor, which rivals not only dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 central processing units (CPUs), but even the high-end platform called Quad FX that includes AMD Athlon 64 FX chips, will be yet another example of Intel’s competitive advantage over its main rival AMD.

Still, the popularization of quad-core chips does not mean that Intel will cease to improve its dual-core microprocessors. Intel is projected to release Intel Core 2 Duo processors with E6850, E6750 and E6650 model numbers with 3.0GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.33GHz clock-speeds respectively and 1333MHz processor system bus in Q3 2007, when appropriate code-named Bearlake-series chipsets become available. The new chips will support TXT technology.

Due to pretty high prices of the quad-core microprocessors, their share among Intel’s desktop shipments will be only 3% in 2007, according to some information.

Source:Intel’s Affordable Quad-Core Chip for Desktops Due in Days – Rumours

Tech Link(Industry): Bloomfield To Hit > 4GHz & Has 8MB Cache

VR-Zone has a nice info for the upcoming Chipzilla products. These featurs isn't a slouch, with a mouth watering 8M of L2 cache, getting it at speed higher than 4GHz is just amazing. Check it out, now!

Based on the 45nm Nehalem architecture, Intel aims to bring Bloomfield clock speed above 4GHz in 2008. It is a speed that Intel never get to hit with their previous generation of processors where the highest clock speed reach is 3.8GHz with their Pentium 4 570 & 670. Bloomfield will contain 8MB of shared L2 cache which is smaller overall in comparison to Yorkfield 2x6MB L2 cache. As we have previously reported, Bloomfield is Socket B based, quad core and is capable of 8 threads. It is still within the 130W thermal envelope.

Source:Bloomfield To Hit > 4GHz & Has 8MB Cache

Tech Link (Storage): Samsung's Solid State Disk Drive Unveiled

Wohooo, this is just so nice. I can't help but drool over these technologies. It's so nice to have such ultra super fast storage system. I'm lovin' it already, well, I just hope the price is lovable too.

In May 2006, Samsung was the first to come out with a consumer 32 GB flash-based solid state drive for mobile PCs, opening up the category for other solid state drive manufacturers. This article explores the solid state drive technology that might replace our aging hard drives in only a couple of years.

Source:Samsung's Solid State Disk Drive Unveiled