Intel Archive

You may not realise it, but today one of the most important pieces of technology celebrates its 40th birthday. In November 15, 1971, a company called Intel released its Intel 4004 processor - the first single-chip microprocessor, and one of the most important milestones in computer history.

With the Xeon 7600 line, Intel is finally using the 'R' word: RISC. It's targeting the mission-critical market dominated by Sun SPARC and IBM Power with the new chips, a first. Can the Xeon E7 processor deliver Intel's final blow to the RISC market, which includes its own Itanium?

Intel has just announced its new line of processors, called Ivy Bridge, which uses a new type of transistor to reach the 22nm production process as well as maintain Moore's Law. They call it the 3D transistor, and in all honesty, this stuff goes way over my head. Even the incredibly cheesy n00b-video from Intel doesn't really make any lightbulbs appear in my head. So...

"Intel has confirmed that it has received the Android 3.0 Honeycomb code from Google, and that it is 'actively' working on porting the tablet-centric platform to run on x86 chips like its Atom processors."

"Intel is pleased to announce the BIOS Implementation Test Suite, a bootable pre-OS environment for testing BIOSes and in particular their initialization of Intel processors, hardware, and technologies. BITS can verify your BIOS against many Intel recommendations. In addition, BITS includes Intel's official reference code as provided to BIOS, which you can use to override your BIOS's hardware initialization with a known-good configuration, and then boot an OS."

Apple has just updated its line of MacBook Pros. Usually, this isn't anything to get particularly excited about, but this time around, they've got a genuine treat: Thunderbolt. Apple is the first to use this new connection technology, developed at Intel and believed to be the copper version of Lightpeak. It's pretty impressive.

Intel says its Medfield chip, designed for low-end smartphones, is in production and will ship later this year. Tablets using Intel's Oak Trail chips will ship this year, before Medfield will appear in products. According to Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, Medfield will have the fastest processor on the market, the same standby time as chips from competitors and the longest active power use time of any chip.

"Intel just announced that it has identified a bug in the 6-series chipset, specifically in its SATA controller. Intel states that 'In some cases, the Serial-ATA ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives'. The fix requires new hardware, which means you will have to exchange your motherboard for a new one. Intel hasn't posted any instructions on how the recall will be handled other than to contact Intel via its support page or contact the manufacturer of your hardware directly."

"Intel's chief technology officer says the chip maker is developing a technology that will be a security game changer. Justin Rattner told Computerworld on Tuesday that scientists at Intel are working on security technology that will stop all zero-day attacks."

Intel expects the next version of Google's popular mobile software, Android 3.0, or Honeycomb, to be ready for use with its Atom microprocessors.

On a Windows Vista or Vindows 7 disk, all versions of the operating system are present, from Starter to Ultimate, and everything in between. So, if you want too upgrade to a more capable version of Windows down the road, all you need to do is pop the Windows disk in, let Windows Anytime Upgrade do its thing, and you're done. It seems like Intel is experimenting with a similar technology... For its processors.

"Intel kicked off the second day of its developers conference by officially launching its app store and rolling out new Atom processors. The chip maker's AppUp center, which went into beta early this year, went live today, Renee James, an Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, said during the morning's first keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. The AppUp center is a consumer-centric store that focuses on free and paid apps for entertainment, productivity, networking and gaming. The apps are optimized for netbooks in terms of screen size and mobility, according to Intel. Intel also launched a new Atom chip that was formerly known as Groveland. Doug Davis, vice president of Intel's architecture group, took the wraps off the Atom CE4200, which is designed for smart TVs."

"Intel Corporation announced an important advance in the quest to use light beams to replace the use of electrons to carry data in and around computers. The company has developed a research prototype representing the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today's copper technology; up to 50 gigabits of data per second. This is the equivalent of an entire HD movie being transmitted each second."

Chalk this one up on the 'uh, what?'-list of acquisitions. Intel announced today that it has acquired Mcafee, the security and antivirus company we all know and love. The press release is a bit vague on why, exactly, Intel made this rather odd acquisition.