Intel Archive

Intel is showing off a future technology called Robson that could cut that annoying boot-up time. With Robson, a PC pulls data and applications off an add-in flash memory card and Intel software, rather than the PC's hard drive. Flash reacts more quickly than hard drives, thus cutting down the time it takes to launch an application. Potentially, notebook users could experience a longer battery life because the hard drive, which is spun by a motor, wouldn't have to work as hard.

"As of Intel's launch on Monday, the dual-core Xeon's are finally here. Can Dell start rejoicing, now that they can put out a dual-core offering to compete with Opteron-based systems? Not exactly. The dual-core Xeon is big, hot, and really expensive. It's also, by Intel's own admission, destined to have a really short tenure at the top of the Intel x86 processor heap."

Chip firm Intel said it is developing an ultra low power version of the 65 nanometre process technology specifically for notebooks and other small devices. The firm said that with transistors on some chips over the billion mark, it has developed tech which it claims will cut down leakage by 10 000 times.

"Last week in Part I, we took a look at the AMD dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4800's performance on 64-bit Windows. As it turned out, Windows XP Pro X64 ran most 32-bit applications just fine on the X2 4800, and 64-bit code showed a few modest performance gains." This week, they focus on Intel.

Intel, happy with its success launching the Centrino brand, on Wednesday introduced a new brand called VIIV for entertainment PCs. One feature of VIIV will be automatic transcoding--ensuring that audio or video encoded in one format can be translated into one the user's computer can actually handle without user intervention. Another feature will be instant shutdown and start-up that will work as fast as it does in consumer electronic devices such as DVD players.

Intel said that it plans later this year to offer test versions of software tools aimed at allowing Mac developers to improve the performance of programs that run on its chips. The software maker said that later this year it will offer beta versions of both its compiler and its performance libraries, which contain code optimised for both digital media and scientific computing tasks.

The Register notes that due to Intel's developer conference going on this week, and its excellent public relations capabilitites, we'll be seeing a lot of good news about Intel in the press over the next few days. Don't be fooled. Things aren't quite as rosy for the chip giant as they'll make it seem.

"At next week's Intel developer forum, the firm is due to announce a next generation x86 processor core. The current speculation is this new core is going too be based on one of the existing Pentium M cores. I think it's going to be something completely different."

Intel will unveil its next-generation processor architecture in just under two weeks' time, the chip giant said today. Due to ship in H2 2006, the architecture will result in "processors that are high-performance, energy-efficient and multi-core", the company said. "New form-factors" for PCs will be enabled, it promised. The beans will officially be spilled on 23 August.

The Extensible Firmware Interface, which could speed the boot-up process for PCs, has been handed over to a group that will promote and standardize it.

Although Apple hasn’t announced which Intel chips will power the upcoming Mactel systems, the most likely suspects are microprocessors that have been dubbed Yonha, Celeron D 3515, Conroe, Woodcrest, Smithfield and Merom. For the rest of the week, we’ll offer a look at the chips and what they might mean to Mac users.

Intel released a 64-bit processor for mainstream/cheaper PCs on Monday, putting the company a month ahead of rival AMD, which is expected to come out with a chip for the same market in July.

PC makers rolled out their first dual-core processor desktop PCs on Monday as expected--and they aren't cheap.

Moore's Law has helped keep the IT industry riding along on ever faster and more complex hardware for 40 years, but its author now says the software side of the equation needs some serious work.