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Let's welcome this new year 2010 with renewed hope for a brighter future!

Let's welcome this new year 2010 with renewed hope for a brighter future!

Gulftown Core i7 980X To Start Selling In March

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We got a few additional details on Intel's first desktop six core CPU codenamed Gulftown. This is Intel's first six-core developed in 32nm Westmere architecture and it will be clocked at 3.33GHz. This is the same frequency as Core i7 975 and even the Turbo clock on these two CPUs is same, as Core i7 980X will overclock to 3.6GHz.

To big accounts

We got a few additional details on Intel's first desktop six core CPU codenamed Gulftown. This is Intel's first six-core developed in 32nm Westmere architecture and it will be clocked at 3.33GHz.

This is the same frequency as Core i7 975 and even the Turbo clock on these two CPUs is same, as Core i7 980X will overclock to 3.6GHz. Its QPI speed is set to a well known 6.4GB/sec and the CPU can take care of twelve threads via its support for Hyperthreading.

We already wrote that good old socket 1366 should be enough to fit this six core CPU and one disappointing part of the spec is that triple channel memory is again limited to 1066MHz memory, at least officially.

The CPU has 12MB of cache and a TDP of 130W. According to the latest information we got, it should debut in Intel's March price list for $999.

Despite being listed for the price list in March, it doesn’t mean that end users will be able to get one.

More here: Fudzilla

Incomming New Intel Core i3 & i5 32nm CPUs In Photos

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It's no big secret that Intel is cooking up 32nm chips for new computers next year, but now the chip giant has announced formally that it'll be unveiling its new offering on January 7, 2010 at CES.

Intel Core i3, i5 Arrandale and Clarkdale in Photos
Intel to debut new Core i3, i5 CPUs at CES 2010

It's no big secret that Intel is cooking up 32nm chips for new computers next year, but now the chip giant has announced formally that it'll be unveiling its new offering on January 7, 2010 at CES.

This means that at CES we'll be seeing a slew of new laptops and desktops using the latest Nehalem architecture with its integrated, on-chip graphics processor. While only time will tell how OEMs decide to package their systems with a discrete GPU, today we can marvel at what the chip looks like both on wafer and in package.

Clarkdale desktop CPU:

Arrandale mobile CPU:

Westmere die shot:

Westmere wafer:


Source: TomsHardware

AMD 12-Core Server CPU To Launch In March

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Advanced Micro Devices will launch its twelve-core AMD Opteron “Magny-Cours” central processing units (CPUs) for high-end servers in March, 2010, sources close to the company revealed. AMD plans to unveil a broad family of twelve- and eight-core chips for multi-processor machines with different performance and thermal design power points.

AMD to Launch 12-Core Server Microprocessors in March – Sources.
Basic Specifications of Next-Gen AMD Opteron “Magny-Cours” Transpire

Advanced Micro Devices will launch its twelve-core AMD Opteron “Magny-Cours” central processing units (CPUs) for high-end servers in March, 2010, sources close to the company revealed. AMD plans to unveil a broad family of twelve- and eight-core chips for multi-processor machines with different performance and thermal design power points.

The mainstream line of twelve-core AMD Opteron 6000-series processors will consist of three chips operating at 1.90GHz, 2.10GHz and 2.20GHz. Besides, AMD will also release highly efficient (HE) and special edition (SE) AMD Opteron 6000 microprocessors with twelve processing engines functioning at 1.70GHz and 2.30GHz, respectively. In addition, AMD plans to launch three standard-voltage eight-core chips at 2.0GHz, 2.30GHz and 2.40GHz frequencies along with two HE eight-core processors at 1.80GHz and 2.0GHz clock-speeds. In order to ensure maximum stability, all AMD’s twelve-core processors will come with reduced clock-speed of integrated memory controller and L3 cache (1.80GHz) compared to six-core and quad-core products.

Even though clock-speeds of AMD Opteron 6000-series processors are not high, AMD will still increase thermal design power of Maranello server platform. Based on preliminary information, AMD G34 (1944-pin) CPUs will have 85W, 115W or 140W TDP, which is somewhat higher compared to TDPs supported by existing multi-processor platforms.

The company hopes that its next-generation servers will still offer great performance-per-watt despite of higher power consumption of twelve-core and eight-core chips thanks to increased amount of cores and other innovations of the next-gen platforms. In particular, the new processors will have HyperTransport bus speed increased to 6.4GT/s, which will increase performance scalability, as well as Cool Speed and C1E technologies to reduce power consumption. In addition, it can be expected that Globalfoundries 45nm silicon-on-insulator process technology will improve a bit by the end of Q1 2010.

AMD Opteron “Magny-Cours” processor will be the first chip for the AMD G34 “Maranello” platform designed for Opteron processors 6000-series with up to 16 cores, quad-channel memory interface, 2 or 4 sockets, up to 12 memory modules per socket and some server and enterprise-specific functionality. Magny-Cours microprocessors feature two six-core or quad-core dies on one piece of substrate.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Source: XbitLabs

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9500 2.83GHz About To Launch

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Back in August, we wrote that Intel’s Core 2 Quad lineup is still kicking strong and that the company intends to launch new models within the series even at the start of the new decade. The Yorkfield-based 45nm processor taking the spotlight is yet another socket LGA 775 model targeted at the midrange consumer market.

Core 2 Quad Q9500 2.83GHz to launch January 17th
Successor to Q9400 2.66GHz

Back in August, we wrote that Intel’s Core 2 Quad lineup is still kicking strong and that the company intends to launch new models within the series even at the start of the new decade. The Yorkfield-based 45nm processor taking the spotlight is yet another socket LGA 775 model targeted at the midrange consumer market.

The Core 2 Quad Q9500 runs at 2.83GHz and is the planned successor of the Core 2 Quad Q9400 at 2.66GHz. As with every CPU in this particular family group, it features a 1333MHz FSB and a 95W TDP along with Intel VT-d and Intel TXT support. However, the L2 cache on this model is reduced to only 6MB unlike the Q9550 2.83GHz with 12MB of L2 cache.

This CPU will be launched on Sunday, January 17, 2010 at the same $183 price point of the Q9400. At the same time, this will also serve as the launch date of Intel’s fastest 45nm Wolfdale-based dual-core known as the Pentium E6600 2.93GHz.

Source: Fudzilla

Intel Gulftown 6-Core Is Core i7 980X

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For the past few months, Intel has been reluctant to supply its enthusiast and enterprise markets with a naming scheme for the upcoming Westmere-based 32nm six-core chips (codenamed “Gulftown”) that it has planned for its high-end processor segment in 2010. Many journalists, analysts and consumers have been speculating the possibility that the company would retreat from the “Core i7” naming scheme for two particular reasons.

Gulftown 6-core is officially named "Core i7 980X"
Intel to stick with i7 naming for its 32nm high-end




For the past few months, Intel has been reluctant to supply its enthusiast and enterprise markets with a naming scheme for the upcoming Westmere-based 32nm six-core chips (codenamed “Gulftown”) that it has planned for its high-end processor segment in 2010.

Many journalists, analysts and consumers have been speculating the possibility that the company would retreat from the “Core i7” naming scheme for two particular reasons. Due to the nature of 32nm manufacturing process exhibiting fabrication improvements over 45nm, it was initially anticipated that Gulftown chips were to be labeled under the “Core i9”identifier. The second and perhaps more reasonable theory assumed that the products would be labeled “Core i9” because they carry a higher core count than the current high-end offerings (see: “Core i7 + 2” analogy) and an increased 12MB cache design. In addition, they feature inclusion of the new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-NI) instruction set and a sustained 130W TDP, allowing for an incredible 21.7W per core with exceptional overclockability.

Today, all popularly prevailing rumors of the six-core behemoth’s naming strategy can be disregarded, and we are now pleased to present the official details without making any more assumptions. In fact, we wrote in September that the only retail fact we were able to confirm were images of the stock heatsink that Intel will include with its new flagship, brute-force solution to Moore’s Law. Nevertheless, it should be noted that we apologetically regret the fact that we inappropriately labeled the processor as belonging to the “Core i9” family. Sources within Intel’s product marketing sector have stated that the company intends to continue its current trend of using “Core i7” as its high-end product identifier, and we suspect this will not change over the course of the next year, at least not until the 22nm Sandy Bridge microarchitecture arrives.

Without further ado, the official name of Intel’s flagship 32nm desktop chip is Core i7 Extreme 980X. News of the confirmation comes from Chinese-based site PCOnline.com.cn which claims to have an official revised Intel roadmap in its hands. Judging by the image, the roadmap does seem valid and official with an “Intel Core i7” logo slapped above the X58 architecture layout image. On another note, the site states that the new flagship desktop chip will run at 3.33GHz, which basically makes it a Core i7 Extreme 975 with all the quirks of the 32nm Westmere family architecture and two additional cores.

As an Extreme Edition chip, the Core i7 Extreme 980X 3.33GHz will likely be priced at $999. This is not unexpected in any way, as Intel has stated many times over that it intends to reserve the X58 chipset and more broadly, the LGA 1366 platform, for its flagship high-end processors. In other words, it could likely mean that the socket will migrate toward being catered for the reality of “Extreme Edition-only,” but this assumption has yet to be confirmed.

With the advent of six cores in the desktop space and significantly improved headroom for overclocking with the 32nm manufacturing process, it has been difficult trying to get our heads around the idea of quantifying real-world performance improvements with the Core i7 980X. In fact, coming up with a list of multi-core intensive games in the 21st century that can utilize more than two cores is a scientific achievement in itself. We were thinking something along the lines of “Intel Core i7-980X Optimized for Nintendo 64 emulation.” but even an application like that would make the chip stagger along without a mild overclock.

All sarcasm aside, we wanted to leave our enthusiast die hardreaders with a new speculative theory to get excited about. Despite the statements that the Core i7 Extreme 980X chip based on 32nm Gulftown has been delayed until Q2 2010, several sites have stated that the flagship desktop processor will be launching in March 2010, otherwise known as late Q1 2010. In brief perspective, we can conclude that Nehalem-based Core i7 processors lived a long and successful life, as the Core i7 Extreme 965 will have lived sixteen months from November 2008 to March 2010 should this release date theory receive confirmation.

More here: Fudzilla

Intel Will Speak With Regulators On Pricing

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Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy has confirmed to Reuters that the company will speak with regulators from the FTC on their chip pricing: "We will likely talk to regulators about ... pricing schemes and AMD is free to make their view known to regulators," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

Intel will speak with regulators on pricing

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy has confirmed to Reuters that the company will speak with regulators from the FTC on their chip pricing:

"We will likely talk to regulators about ... pricing schemes and AMD is free to make their view known to regulators," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
"We will not agree with AMD on pricing," said Mulloy, noting that it would be a violation of antitrust law for rival companies to set prices together.

Despite the AMD settlement last month, Intel's still potentially facing charges from the FTC. Already regulatory agencies in Korea, Japan, and Europe have found Intel abused their dominant position in the CPU market to stifle the adoption of AMD CPUs. By going ahead and speaking with the FTC now, Intel's hoping to avoid running into issues with the FTC.

Of course, they haven't settled with NVIDIA, who has complained openly about Intel's Atom pricing -- Intel sells the CPUs for significantly less if they're purchased with the chipset -- hurting NVIDIA's ION platform for Atom. NVIDIA also feels Intel's pushed them out of the Intel-based chipset business for Nehalem CPUs.

With the FTC looking into their business practices, and the NVIDIA suit expected to go to trial next year, Intel may want to settle their issues with NVIDIA as soon as possible. Of course, at the same time I don't think Jen-Hsun will settle cheap like AMD did. NVIDIA can afford to hold out as long as needed, AMD execs must've felt differently when they chose to settle w/Intel for $1.5 billion.

Source: FiringSquad

Intel 6-Core Xeon Westmere Gulftown Sold At Price Of $1,200

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The Intel Gulftown chip with its six cores, expected to be called the Core i9, isn't even close to being ready for the market. But somehow engineering samples have been leaking out into the hands of testers.

Intel Core i9 Gulftown Chip Sold on Ebay, Forum
Get your Gulftown in the grey market.



The Intel Gulftown chip with its six cores, expected to be called the Core i9, isn't even close to being ready for the market. But somehow engineering samples have been leaking out into the hands of testers. Just last week, we saw benchmarks of an early engineering sample of Gulftown, which impressed with its six cores.

Such engineering samples are sent out from Intel to a very exclusive crowd, all of which are bound by explicit non-disclosure agreements. Break such agreements almost always burns bridges, so you'd think that seeing a Gulftown processor on the public market for sale would be impossible. But shockingly, one such Gulftown engineering sample found its way to Ebay.

A listing on Ebay described the product as a "Intel 6-Core Xeon Westmere Gulftown 2.4GHZ LGA1366 ES Processor" and qualified itself as tested and working sold at a final price of $1,200. The chip was pictured in the listing without any of it identification marks blurred, meaning that Intel will be able to track which one of its chips ended up on Ebay.

The seller of the chip lists the item as being located in Taiwan, which leads us to believe that it could be an engineering sample leaked out from one of Intel's chipset partners – but we'll likely never know for certain.

Gulftown engineering samples in the wild aren't limited to just Taiwan, however, as Nordic Hardware reports that an even faster chip was sold on the OCTeamDenmark forums (Google cache version here) for around $850.

What do you make of this – crazy deal, or just downright crazy?

Source: TomsHardware

Futuristic Prototype Intel Chip With 48 Cores

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Intel announced that company researchers demonstrated an experimental, 48-core processor--dubbed the "single-chip cloud computer"--that will supposedly pave the way for future generations of processors. According to the company, the "concept chip" is aimed at scaling on-chip performance, communication, and power consumption.

Intel Demos Single Chip with 48 Cores
Intel's latest prototype could eventually see what you're doing while dancing in front of the monitor.



Intel announced that company researchers demonstrated an experimental, 48-core processor--dubbed the "single-chip cloud computer"--that will supposedly pave the way for future generations of processors. According to the company, the "concept chip" is aimed at scaling on-chip performance, communication, and power consumption. The new prototype also offers 10 to 20 times the processing engines found in today's Intel Core processors.

Despite its many cores, Intel says that the futuristic prototype chip will consume the same amount of energy as two standard household light bulbs thanks to newly invented power management techniques. Even more, Intel claims that the processor could eventually become sophisticated enough to let PCs use "vision" to interact with people.

"Imagine, for example, someday interacting with a computer for a virtual dance lesson or on-line shopping that uses a future laptop's 3-D camera and display to show you a "mirror" of yourself wearing the clothes you are interested in," the company said. "Twirl and turn and watch how the fabric drapes and how the color complements your skin tone. This kind of interaction could eliminate the need of keyboards, remote controls or joysticks for gaming. Some researchers believe computers may even be able to read brain waves, so simply thinking about a command, such as dictating words, would happen without speaking."

Intel also said that it deemed the prototype as the "single-chip cloud computer" because of its similarities with data centers organized in a group to create a "cloud" of computing. The prototype's 48 cores seemingly mimics the configuration of a cloud server system, however casts aside the physical distance and is reduced down to a piece of 45nm, high-k metal-gate silicon "about the size of a postage stamp."

To learn more about the prototype processor, head here.

Source: TomsHardware

Intel To Match AMD Cheap CPUs

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Everyone's favorite underdog, AMD, had better look to its laurels next year as Intel goes for the jugular with a bunch of cut-down, low cost desktop chips. AMD's traditional playground, the value sector, will see Core i3 chips appearing with the 'turbo' overclocking mode of the i5 and i7 parts disabled, according to detailed roadmaps leaked on a Japanese site.

Intel takes on AMD at the cheap end

Everyone's favorite underdog, AMD, had better look to its laurels next year as Intel goes for the jugular with a bunch of cut-down, low cost desktop chips.

AMD's traditional playground, the value sector, will see Core i3 chips appearing with the 'turbo' overclocking mode of the i5 and i7 parts disabled, according to detailed roadmaps leaked on a Japanese site.

Low-power 'S' versions of the 32nm quad core i5-750 and i7-860 will run at 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz respectively, using 82W of power. They'll both feature 8MB of L2 cache. According to the roadmap, the i5 will increase to 3.2GHz and the i7 chips to 3.46GHz.

Core i3 will arrive in both 2.93GHz and 3.06GHz versions with 3MB of L2 cache.

The first dual-core Core i5 will debut at 3.46GHz, ramping to 3.73GHz, while the Core i5-660 comes in at 3.33GHz, rising to 3.6GHz. The i5-650 starts at 3.2GHz, rising to 3.46GHz. All have 4MB of L2 and use 73W.

At the high-end, the i9 Gulftown chips are set for a launch next Spring, according to the leaked document.

Source: TGDaily