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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…
ASRock recently stated it wanted to start targeting the enthusiast crowd, and making good on that intention, the company will start slapping a new UCC chip onto its motherboards.
So what’s the big deal? UCC stands for Unlock CPU Core, and as you might have guessed, it’s designed to make easy-work out of turning AMD’s triple-core processors into unlocked quad-core parts. All you do is go into the BIOS, enter one of the options, and if the parts play nice together, you’ll be sitting pretty with four cores where previously there were three.
The best part about this is ASRock said it intends to plop the UCC chip onto entry-level motherboards too. This tactic of putting high-end features onto lower-priced parts has helped ASRock build a following, and something like this could go a long way in upping the company’s geek cred.
Image Credit: Fudzilla
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
The Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is showing up in all manner of mobile devices all of a sudden. We’ve recently seen the 1GHz chip in the likes of the Google Nexus One, HTC HD2, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, and the Toshiba TG01. Now Qualcomm looks to be pushing the industry to see the Snapdragon as more than a mobile phone processor with their new “Snaptop” prototype.
The Snaptop is a touchscreen tablet with a nifty kickstand to prop it up on a table for use as more of a laptop replacement. It has a slim wireless keyboard with integrated trackball. The device is currently running a modified version of Android 1.6.
Much like the Lenovo U1 with its detachable Snapdragon-powered screen, this product is really just a concept. We have no indication that you’ll be able to buy one of these at all. If you could though, would you?
An ARM-based netbook running Ubuntu could be in your future with the newest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Much like Windows, the popular Linux distro did not previously have support for ARM processors. This meant you’d only see Ubuntu on Atom-based netbooks, a category dominated by Windows. With the anticipated flood of ARM packing “smartbooks” expected to materialize, the devs got to work rewriting Ubuntu.
According to Ubuntu’s Jamie Bennet, the problem was that Ubuntu Netbook Edition required 3D graphics drivers that didn’t exist for ARM chips. They got around this by employing 2D Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to fake a 3D interface. We’re hearing that you won’t be able to tell the difference in the interface. If true, that’s a big win for smartbooks and Ubuntu.
This may be the space that Ubuntu specifically, and Linux in general, can succeed in. Windows is completely locked out of the smartbook game until such time as Redmond gets around to adding ARM support. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Is an Ubuntu smartbook something you’d buy?
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
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