Intel Archive

Intel will release software later this year designed to dramatically improve how well its Itanium chips run programs written for its Pentium or Xeon processors, CNET News.com has learned.

Processors with Hyper-Threading technology can improve the performance of applications by permitting a single processor to process data as if it were two processors by executing instructions from different threads in parallel rather than serially. However, the potential performance improvement can be only obtained if an application is multithreaded by parallelization techniques. This article presents the multithreaded code generation and optimization techniques developed for the Intel C++/Fortran compiler. We conduct the performance study of two multimedia applications parallelized with OpenMP pragmas and compiled with the Intel compiler on the Hyper-Threading (HT) technology enabled Intel single-processor and multi-processor systems.

Hyperthreading moves into hyperspeed throughout 2003, with the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets forming the backbone of Intel's desktop roadmap. According to Intel roadmaps seen by ExtremeTech, Intel's desktop processors will extend up to and possibly beyond 3.6-GHz by the beginning of 2004, with Celerons cresting 2.5-GHz by the same timeframe. Await soon an article regarding hyperthreading, here on OSNews.

Intel's recent announcement that it will start shipping motherboards with built-in 802.11b sparked an interesting question in a ZD Net article: is this a sign that Intel has realized that most people don't need faster processors? If demand for 3 and 4 GHz processors is going to be mild, then the logical step for Intel is to move into other areas, like building more stuff onto the motherboard.

The Pentium 4-based Prescott processor, due in the second half of 2003, will be manufactured using 90-nanometre production technology and carry 13 new instructions aimed at specific applications including media and games. Debuting at 3.4GHz, Prescott will also carry improvements in hyperthreading and an 800MHz bus. Prescott will also feature larger caches and be scalable to 4 to 5 GHz. Intel vice president for mlogic technology development, Joe Schutz, said the company plans to be hitting the 15 to 20 GHz mark by 2010.

"Intel Corp. on Wednesday is releasing a Linux version of its technology designed to enable software developers to better analyze and optimize their applications. Using the Intel VTune Performance Analyzer 1.0 for Linux, developers should be able to determine how to get the most out of their Linux applications using Intel's Pentium 4 and Xeon chips, according to the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker." Read the short story at eWeek.

The folks at Linux Journal used a time machine to post an article from the future about Intel's compiler for Linux, and specifically about the optimizations they used to beat gcc on benchmarks. The increasing acceptance of Linux among developers and researchers has yet to be matched by a similar increase in the number of available development tools. The recently released Intel C++ and Fortran compilers for Linux aim to bridge this gap by providing application developers with highly optimizable compilers for the Intel IA-32 and Itanium processor families.

Intel's next Itanium2 processor likely will run at 1.5GHz, a 50% increase from its predecessor and an indication the company is getting better at meeting development goals for its high-end chip family. Read the report at ZDNews.

Too hot to handle: Intel aims to launch the P4 3.6 GHz in mid-2003. For this exclusive report, Tom's Hardware Guide tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations. The article also tests against the future AMD AthlonXP 3000+ and 3400+. Update: More information on Intel's plans and technogies for the future.

Intel will uncork the company's nanotechnology strategies at its developer conference next week in San Jose, Calif., shedding some light on the future of its chips.

While the first generation of Itanium left many people dissapointed about its performance (mostly because people were trying to run and benchmark 32-bit code, while the CPU only shines when running native 64-bit code), it seems that Intel is back with a vengeance. The new Itanium2, ready to ship in a few months, scores some very good results in the CPU/compiler intense, industry standard benchmark, SPEC. While its integer capabilities are average to good, its floating point ones is the best thing out there today, scoring even better than the IBM Power4 (which includes a whopping 128 MB of cache). What's very interesting in the results is that both the Power4 and the Itanium2 score poorly on MesaGL, Perl and gzip tests but they are adequate on the gcc test. This is possibly because they're optimized for heavily streaming operations, big matrices. For a short commentary on the results check here. AMD Opteron SPEC results are not available yet.

"Here's a riddle: What's a little bigger than a Wheat Thin, has more transistors than the adult population of the United States, draws as much power as a small vacuum cleaner, and costs as much as a top-quality HDTV? Give up? It's Intel's 64-bit McKinley CPU, soon to be released as Itanium 2. McKinley is the newest member of the IA64 processor family." Read the article at MCPMag.

With rival AMD showcasing its Opteron systems and its new 2200+ AthlonXP, Intel Corp. released new details of its Itanium 2 chipsets within the U.S. Read the article at ExtremeTech.

From ActiveWin: "Intel has today released to the world new USB 2.0 drivers for Windows XP (1.08 MB). These new USB 2.0 are built around Microsoft reference drivers and carry the build number 5.1.2600.41. Note that before installing these drivers you need the Microsoft hotfix Q312370."