Intel Archive

Intel's forthcoming 'Montecito' member of the Itanium processor family will consume 100 watts, a significant drop from the 130 watts of current models and an advantage in an era when power consumption is a top enemy. Intel spokesman Scott McLaughlin confirmed the figure at an Itanium Solutions Alliance meeting here. The change means Itanium will have about 2.5 times the performance per watt of the current Itanium 2 9M model.

The 45-nanometer process is right on time, according to Intel. The chip giant has created test chips made on the 45-nanometer process and will likely begin shipping processors, flash, and other chips based on that process in the second half of 2007, according to Mark Bohr, director of process architecture and integration at Intel.

With the next Itanium chip, Intel has abandoned a feature it once banked on but that never proved successful. Circuitry to let Itanium run software for x86 chips, such as Pentium and Xeon chips, is not present in the forthcoming 'Montecito' processor, according to the 176-page reference manual (.pdf) for the chip published this week. Update: El Reg has more on this story.

The VP of Intel's digital enterprises group told the INQ this morning that the Itanium microprocessor is starting to make waves in the corporate enterprise market. Kirk Skaugen, of the servers platform group, showed a slide which claimed the Itanium processor was eating into Sun and IBM Power shares, based on "customer revenues". He also said that since the fourth quarter of 2003, applications for the Itanium family had grown to 5900 by the end of 2005.

"Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, outlined plans to bring a wide range of content, from sports to first-run movies, to anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a remote control using its new Viiv PC platform, during a Thursday night keynote at the 2006 CES. While it incorporates new hardware and software, including Intel's latest Core Duo and Pentium D 900 series chips, Viiv represents the company's larger effort to bring together a variety of content and display it on a range of devices, including televisions and handhelds." In addition, Intel teamed up with Google to provide video content for the Viiv platform.

"Intel has started shipping its 65nm dual-core mobile Pentium processor, Yonah, along with Centrino bundles based on the new processor. The five processors are clocked at 2.16GHz, 2GHz, 1.83GHz, 1.66GHz and 1.66GHz (single core), and operate on a 667MHz frontside bus, connecting across a FCBGA6 or FCPGA6 pin-out. All processors sport 2MB of L2 cache." In addition, "Intel has debuted its latest dual-core desktop Pentium D processors. The chip giant this week added four models to its price list; all containing 4MB of L2 cache split into two 2MB chunks, one for each of the two cores in the chip package. All four operate on an 800MHz frontside bus. The CPUs are clocked at 2.8GHz, 3GHz, 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz."

"The world's biggest chipmaker said on Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo and well-known tagline as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products. The original Intel logo featuring a lowered 'e' will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company's name." Here is an interview with Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO.

AnandTech has published part II (part I discussed here on OSNews) of their performance preview of Intel's upcoming Yonah. "We've updated the benchmark suite considerably, including modern day games and a few professional-level applications hopefully to get a better perspective on Yonah's performance. We've also included an Athlon 64 X2 running at 2.0GHz, but with each core having a full 1MB L2 cache, making the Yonah vs. X2 comparison as close to even as possible (not mentioning the fact that AMD has twice the advantage in this round, with both a larger L1 cache and an on-die memory controller, but it should make things interesting)."

Intel's chairman chided plans by rival AMD and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a $100 laptop for the developing world. At a press conference in Sri Lanka on Friday, Craig Barrett said that potential computer users would scoff at the computer's lack of features. Barrett also said the device isn't worthy of being called a laptop. "I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget'," he mused. "The problem is that gadgets have not been successful."

"We recently got in touch with a few Intel partners and learned that the much anticipated processor from Intel, codenamed Yonah, is expected to debut early next year on January 6th. Intel's Yonah is a dual-core chip based on the 65nm fabrication process. Yonah will also mark the first launch with Intel's new strategy in place - performance per watt."

"Although we didn't consider it as such here today, Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks. The thought of having such a cool running dual core processor in a notebook is honestly amazing, and the performance difference (especially for multitaskers) over what we have today will be significant. The other thing to keep in mind is that when you go from a single core to a dual core Pentium M notebook, you won't be giving up anything at all. On the desktop side, you normally give up clock speed for dual core support, but Yonah will be running at very similar frequencies to what Dothan is running at today. In other words, you won't be giving up single threaded performance in favor of multi-threaded performance - you'll get the whole package."

Intel's Hyperthreading Technology is being blamed for server performance problems. With both SQL Server and Citrix Terminal Server installations, HT-enabled motherboards show markedly degraded performance under heavy load. Disabling HT restores expected levels, according to reports from within the IT industry.

LXer received a document from an anonymous source with the message "I read your article on linuxJournel about countries growing use of Linux. The attached article was posted in Intel's intranet site." It reveals that Intel expects to sell hundreds of millions of Linux-based computers in rural China. If Intel can sell a Linux computer in rural China.

Intel has delayed by months the release of the next three major versions of the Itanium processor, a new blow for the processor family. But the chipmaker also plans a change it said will boost the performance of its more widely used Xeon line.