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Forget that six-core Gulftown Core i7. There’s a new Intel Xeon chip on the way with a whopping eight cores of processing goodness. Surely you can utilize eight cores in your home system, right? Well, maybe not, but the Nehalem-EX chip is likely to spice things up in the server sector when it launches later this month.
The Nehalem-EX will be a Xeon part built on Intel’s 45nm process technology. The chip will have hyperthreading, meaning up to 16 threads per processor. Clock speed is currently unknown. Being a server part, scalability is important and the Nehalem-EX won’t disappoint here. Thanks to the 4QPI links per chip, the new part will be scalable to eight sockets. So that’s 64 physical cores, or 128 threads. We’re pretty sure the benefits for Crysis 2 drop off around 48 cores or so.
Intel is promising big performance gains over the previous generation of Xeons, with nine times the memory bandwidth of the old chips. The part seems aimed at holding back AMD’s Magny-Cours six-core server parts due out soon. One way or another, servers are about to get a lot faster.
According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, Intel plans to beef up its entry-level Celeron notebook processor line with the introduction of its Celeron P4500 processor.
Due out in the second quarter of this year, the P4500 will supplant the T3300. Unlike most other Celerons, however, the P4500 is built around Intel’s 32nm Arrandale platform. It will come clocked at 1.86GHz per core, while the graphics will cruise along at 500MHz. You won’t find any Turbo Overclocking on the P4500, though the graphics can be juiced to 667MHz.
Other features include DDR3-1066 support, 2MB of cache, and a 35W TDP. By comparison, the T3300 comes clocked slightly higher at 2GHz, but has half the amount of cache at 1MB.
Image Credit: Intel
It’s a pretty good question, and we really don’t have a ton of ideas. There might not be a lot of real world use cases for a 48-core setup, but maybe you could come up with a few if the price was right. Like for instance, if AMD would give you those 48 cores if you came up with a good one. Well, that’s just what they’re doing.
AMD wants people to submit essays, videos, or blog posts explaining how they’d use a monster 48 core server to “make the world a better, more interesting place”. The contest is seemingly meant to promote the upcoming Magny-Cours based Opteron CPUs AMD will be releasing this quarter. If you can come up with the best idea, AMD will provide you with four new AMD Opteron 6174 12-core CPUs, a TYAN S8812 motherboard, and a copy of Windows Server 2008.
So what’ll it be? Super powered Folding@home box to cure cancer? Rendering farm for underprivileged, inner-city video producers? Check out the full rules here before you formulate any plans. Anyone planning on submitting an entry? Drop us a line if you win…
Wasting very little time, Gigabyte today announced what it claims is the first AMD 6-core CPU-ready motherboard, the socket AM3 GA-890GPA-UD3H.
This is the first board to feature AMD’s 890GX chipset paried with the new SB850 southbridge, resulting in native support for SATA 6Gbps, up to six devices in all. The southbridge also allows for SATA 6Gbps RAID support, another industry first according to Gigabyte.
"Giving users power over their high definition content is really at the heart of what the GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H is all about," commented Tim Handley, Deputy Director of Motherboard Marketing at GIGABYTE Technology Co. Ltd. "Not only does the GA-890GPA-UD3H deliver the industry’s highest performing integrated graphics solution with flawless HD video playback, but enabling SATA 6 Gbps with RAID functionality, USB 3.0 support and GIGABYTE 3x Power Boost means that users are able to spend less time waiting for their content to transfer, and more time to actually enjoy it."
Other features include USB 3.0 support, integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics with 128MB DDR3 sideport memory, two PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphics slots, dual-channel DDR3-1866+ support, 3X USB power delivery, HDMI, and a few other odds and ends.
No word yet on price or availability.
Image Credit: Gigabyte
MSI this week beefed up its "Classic Series" notebook line with a trio of new 15.6-inch models built around Intel’s Arrandale platform, and one 16-inch model with Nvidia graphics.
The CR620-030US and CR620-033US — both 15.6 units — sport a Core i3-330M processor and a 320GB hard drive, while the former also comes with a DVD burner and the latter a Blu-ray reader. The last of the 15.6-inch models — CR620-031US — ups the hardware ante with a Core i5 430M CPU and 500GB hard drive, though no Blu-ray option. All three models boast Intel’s Arrandale HD graphics and 4GB of DDR3-1066 memory.
The 16-inch CR600-234US notebook switches gears to a Pentium dual-core T4500, 3GB of DDR2 memory, 320GB hard drive, DVD writer, and Nvidia’s GeForce 8200M G graphics.
All four models are available now for $$630 (CR620-030US), $700 (CR620-033US), $730 (CR620-031US), and $530 (CR600-234US).
Image Credit: MSI
The Highlander battle among chip manufacturers has started anew. This time it’s among the makers of chips that run smartphones. Besides initiating a new round of cutthroat competition, this battle suggests that computing is undergoing a substantive conceptual shift–from units that are all powerful to ones that are strategically powerful.
The objective is to make more powerful chips that consume less energy, and take up less space, with the intent of creating products that are smaller and less functional than their PC brethren, but are more in-tune to the particular needs of their users. The big players include the well known, such as Intel, ARM, Samsung, AMD, and Apple, and the lesser known, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Microelectroincs, and GlobalFoundaries. The money being spent in this competition totals in the tens of billions.
These chips are prevalent in smartphones, and they are working their way into netbooks, tablets and eReaders, where the current PC processor OS restriction doesn’t apply. This means that a whole new world of computing potential will be showcased as this little war plays itself out. It also means there will be some multi-billion dollar casualties along the way.
Suggested by this is the concept of computing shifting to address the particular, rather than the general, needs of users. If this market becomes economically attractive it might lead to a decrease in attention to the higher end, which in turn could mean slower development of the ‘hot’ technology that currently drives the market.
Image Credit: Apple Computer
Some attentive Web surfers yesterday managed to dig up information about Lenovo’s upcoming X-series refresh, details of which were found inside the OEM’s official maintenance manual for the ThinkPad X201. Lenovo probably would have preferred to wait a little bit before letting the cat out of the bag, but given the circumstance, the company has now confirmed it will launch the ThinkPads next Tuesday on February 23.
"While most mobile workstations only go to 10… ours go to 11 – http://twitpic.com/13snrn," Lenovo Press wrote on its Twitter feed.
That’s all the details Lenovo’s willing to cough up at this point, but given what the maintenance manual revealed, it’s believed the refreshed lineup will tap into Intel’s 2010 mobile chips, including the Core i3, i5, and i7. If so, look for more than just an external makeover on the revitalized laptops.
Image Credit: Lenovo
It hasn’t been that long since Intel released their updated Pine Trail Atom chips, but already there are some indications they may be refreshing the Atom platform. The word is that Intel’s new core is called “Oak Trail”. These new chips would replace the ailing ultra low-power Atom Z series. These are the Z5xx chips we’ve seen in the likes of the Sony Vaio P and Asus Eee PC T91MT tablet.
Atom N450 and N470 are the most common versions of the Pine Trail chips, most often found in netbooks. The Atom N series chips are higher power and not in danger of being replaced. The Oak Trail chips are said to consume much less power, but still remain capable of running a Windows device. Still no firm details, but it’s probably still safe to buy products running the N series Atom chips.
Targeting the value segment, MSI this week announced four new additions to its C-series (Classic series) notebook line. The new models consist of the 16-inch CR600 and 15.6-inch CR620-030, CR620-033, and CR620-031.
All three 620-based models are built around Intel’s Arrandale platform and tout either a Core i3 or i5 processor. Each one also comes equipped with 4GB of DDR3 memory, and either a 320GB or 500GB hard drive. Those who opt for the CR620-033 will also get a Blu-ray DVD combo drive.
The CR600 comes with Nvidia’s GeForce 8200M graphics, and like the rest, it also boasts 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, HDMI out, 1.3MP webcam, a raised chiclet keyboard, and Windows 7 Home Premium.
All models are available now at Newegg with pricing starting at $530.
Image Credit: MSI
Sure, you could buy that boring old Core i7. You could be like all those other sheep that shop for “released” and “fully tested” parts from Newegg. Or if you’re just the right mix of bold and rich, you can try buying a leaked 12-core AMD CPU from Ebay. The Opteron server chip is code-named Magny-Cours, and a set of four can be had for the low price of $7,700. The unreleased chip runs at 2.2GHz.
If you aren’t the do-it-yourself type, the same seller has a deal for you as well. They are selling a four socket server running the Magny-Cours processors. The server also packs 64GB of RAM. The going price is $20,000, but with 48 processing cores, that’s only about $416 per core. It’s not that unreasonable.
The Magny-Cours architecture doubles the core count on AMD’s current Istanbul Opteron chip. Power optimization was apparently paramount for AMD as the Magny-Cours is expected to use no more power than the Istanbul chips. We’re not going to encourage the purchase of these chips, but if you by them drop us a line, okay?
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