Science and technology news blog

AMD’s Barcelona processors are going to re-ignite the processor wars. AMD’s entire future depends on the performance of its new Quad-core range of processors. Since the launch of Intel’s Core processors, AMD has taken a huge beating and all its market share gains in the last few years has been evaporated thanks to Intel’s superior processors. However, come August and AMD will launch its counter-attack with its “native” quad-core processors.

AMD calls it quad-core processors native because it has 4 cores on one die. Intel’s quad-core offering at the moment is two dual-core processors joined together, or in AMD’s words “Stitched” together. On paper it would seem that having 4 cores on a single die would quite obviously be better than having 2 dual-core processors. However, in real world applications its all a different story. AMD seems to be a victim of its own theory. For years, Intel has always had the edge when it came to clock speed, but AMD always had the edge in performance. This time around though its Intel that has the edge in performance in the dual-core products from both the companies.

AMD’s Barcelona processors are going to re-ignite the processor wars. AMD’s entire future depends on the performance of its new Quad-core range of processors. Since the launch of Intel’s Core processors, AMD has taken a huge beating and all its market share gains in the last few years has been evaporated thanks to Intel’s superior processors. However, come August and AMD will launch its counter-attack with its “native” quad-core processors.

AMD calls it quad-core processors native because it has 4 cores on one die. Intel’s quad-core offering at the moment is two dual-core processors joined together, or in AMD’s words “Stitched” together. On paper it would seem that having 4 cores on a single die would quite obviously be better than having 2 dual-core processors. However, in real world applications its all a different story. AMD seems to be a victim of its own theory. For years, Intel has always had the edge when it came to clock speed, but AMD always had the edge in performance. This time around though its Intel that has the edge in performance in the dual-core products from both the companies.

Intel will demonstrate on Monday an experimental computer chip with 80 separate processing engines, or cores, that company executives say provides a model for commercial chips that will be used widely in standard desktop, laptop and server computers within five years.

The new processor, which the company first described as a Teraflop Chip at a conference last year, will be detailed in a technical paper to be presented on the opening day of the International Solid States Circuits Conference, beginning here on Monday.

While the chip is not compatible with Intel’s current chips, the company said it had already begun design work on a commercial version that would essentially have dozens or even hundreds of Intel-compatible microprocessors laid out in a tiled pattern on a single chip.

The chip’s design is meant to exploit a new generation of manufacturing technology the company introduced last month. Intel said that it had changed the basic design of transistors in such a way that it would be able to continue to shrink them to smaller sizes — offering lower power and higher speeds — for at least a half-decade or more.

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AMD announces availability of new AMD Opteron processor models in both highly efficient and mainstream thermal envelopes. AMD has expanded the breadth of its low-power solutions with AMD Opteron processor Models 1218 HE, 2218 HE and 8218 HE. Designed to offer high performance-per-watt at 68-watt maximum thermal design power, these processors are suited for energy-conscious customers looking to reduce power and cooling bills and to achieve greater density in the datacenter. AMD Opteron HE processor models now include three 1000 Series models, bringing the benefits of reduced thermals over previous AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors to entry-level server customers while preserving the enterprise reliability they value.

All of the new processors feature AMD PowerNow! technology which is designed for reduced system level energy consumption, with multiple levels of lower clock speed and voltage states that can reduce processor power consumption by as much as 75 percent during idle times.

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Researchers have created an ultradense memory device the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over. The accomplishment represents an important step toward the creation of molecular computers that are much smaller and could be more powerful than today’s silicon-based computers.

“It’s the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year 2020,” said James R. Heath, the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and co-author of a paper on the research. “But at the moment it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions.”

The 2020 date assumes the validity of Moore’s law, which states that the complexity of an integrated circuit will typically double every year. Current memory cell size is .0408 square µm, so Moore’s law assumes that the electronics industry will achieve a device density comparable to the Heath team’s memory circuit in about 13 years. Manufacturers currently see no way to extend the miniaturization beyond the year 2013, according to reports.

Heath’s group manufactured the memory circuit in a cleanroom facility in their labs at Caltech, and the molecular switches were prepared by J. Fraser Stoddart, the University of California, Los Angeles’ Fred Kavli Chair in Nanosystems Sciences, and his group. Stoddart and Heath are pioneers in molecular electronics—using nanoscale molecules as key components in computers and other electronic devices.

“Using molecular components for memory or computation or to replace other electronic components holds tremendous promise,” said Stoddart, who also directs the California NanoSystems Institute.

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Toshiba is confident that it will beat Sony to market with consumer electronics devices packing the powerful Cell microprocessor, the head of its consumer electronics business said Thursday.

The Cell chip was developed with a budget of several billion dollars by Toshiba, Sony and IBM for a variety of applications. Much of the initial focus has been on its place in the PlayStation 3 games console. But both Toshiba and Sony have been harboring plans to deploy the powerful chip in a wider range of products. Its power makes it well suited to handle high-definition digital video and possible uses could be in televisions and video recorders. (more…)

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) showed a laboratory version of its promised “Barcelona” quad-core Opteron 8000 server chip to analysts gathered in Berkeley, Calif. on Thursday, and said it plans to begin selling the product in the second quarter of 2007.

AMD will pitch the chip to users of high-end, commercial workstations and servers. Customers could see performance improvements of up to 70% in database applications and 40% in floating-point applications, when compared to AMD’s dual-core “Rev F” Opteron, the company said.

The demonstration was AMD’s second effort Thursday to show that it is keeping up with quad-core chips from rival Intel Corp. AMD also launched its “4×4” Quad FX Platform, a motherboard with two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series chips intended for the desktop gaming market.

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HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam—Intel Corp. could have selected any country to build its largest chip assembly and testing plant. But the world’s biggest semiconductor company decided to make the $1 billion investment in a relative newcomer to the high-tech game—Vietnam.

Intel announced earlier this month it would more than triple its initial investment to expand the planned factory in southern Ho Chi Minh City from 150,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet. It is expected to begin operations in 2009 and could employ up to 4,000 workers.

Vietnam’s first semiconductor facility represents the country’s biggest single foreign investment. And Intel officials say the decision ultimately came down to Vietnam’s people.

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Apples new Core 2 Duo is receiving rave reviews, with the unit outperforming the older Core Duo models. But if youre a serious gamer or want to run Vista at the same time, youll need the MacBook Pro.

Seduced by the thought of getting a brand new portable Mac so you can run Mac OS X and Windows Vista at the same time? Then dont get a MacBook, get a MacBook Pro.

Thats a shame, because the MacBook is a beautiful machine. But thanks to a 2Gb memory limit, and the use of an integrated graphics system, AKA the Intel GMA 950, serious computer users wanting maximum performance will find a MacBook Pro is better suited to their needs.

This is because the MacBook Pro has an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics chip with far more graphical grunt than Intels integrated solution. They also have their own dedicated memory, rather than sharing the 2Gb of memory the MacBook can handle.

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Intel launched its first microchips with four processing cores on Tuesday in an effort to slow the momentum of its smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices.

Intels quad-core chips will be featured in servers and workstations under the Xeon brand and in a gaming PC with the Core 2 Extreme moniker. AMD plans to introduce quad-core chips during the middle of 2007.

Both companies want to expand the number of processing engines on their chips to help them process information faster and more efficiently.

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Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, lifted the lid today on its much anticipated quad-core processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. The new chip, codenamed Kentsfield, has four physical processing cores, making it capable of advanced multitasking at extreme speeds.Although Intel has made the chip available to computer manufacturers and developers for testing, the processor will not be widely available until November 14.

The Core 2 Extreme runs at a clock speed of 2.66 GHz, the same as a Core 2 Duo E6700, but it packs two Core 2 Duos together on a single chip, resulting in two 4-MB caches, totaling 8 MB.

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Tests show that Intel’s first quad-core chip, the 2.66-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700, should bring impressive speed boosts to complex video-editing and 3D-rendering work. But while you might think that since two cores are good, four cores will be twice as good for all your computing tasks, our exclusive tests of the new chip tell a different story.

Although PCs with the new quad-core chip (formerly code-named Kentsfield) offer plenty of speed, our tests reveal that many users will get more bang for their buck by sticking with Intel’s other Core 2 Extreme chip, the 2.93-GHz, dual-core X6800. For the same $999 price, the X6800 chip offers just a bit more clock speed than the 2.66-GHz QX6700 does, and with few mainstream applications tuned to take advantage of four or more CPU cores, the extra clock speed provides a real performance advantage on most tasks. Systems with the new chip should be available this month.
Graphics Speed

We looked at a preproduction QX6700 chip in a reference system with a preproduction D975XBX2 motherboard and our standard set of components, including 2GB of DDR2 memory, a pair of SATA hard drives configured in a striped array, and an nVidia GeForce 7800GT-based graphics card. We also looked at three high-end, fully decked-out commercial systems—the Alienware Area-51 7500 ($4479), CyberPower Gamer Infinity 1950 ($3599), and Xi MTower IGE ($4149)—equipped with the quad-core processor. We then compared these systems with previously tested reference PCs as well as with an Extreme X6800-based CyberPower Gamer Infinity SLI Ultra and a 2.67-GHz Core 2 Duo E6700-based Dell XPS 700 (click the icon below to see our complete chart).

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Chipmakers AMD and Intel are locked in a fight to the death, but will AMD’s acquisition of ATI, longstanding maker of high-performance graphics chips, give it an edge?The answer, according to experts at some of the largest research firms, is maybe—with a promising outlook for AMD.

Perhaps most promising is AMD’s Fusion program, which will combine AMD’s CPUs with ATI’s GPUs (graphics processing units) in a single, unified processor.

Fusion products are expected to debut in late 2007 or early 2008, according to AMD.

Power Promise

Samir Bhavnani of Current Analysis noted that Fusion might cut down on computers’ power needs. “One of the biggest benefits to combining the CPU and GPU on a single chip is not only better overall system performance, but, importantly, more energy efficiency,” said Bhavnani.

As companies strive to reduce the heat factors and high energy costs in data centers, chips that consume less energy (and, correspondingly, fewer dollars) might prove attractive to corporate buyers.

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Intel Corp., the world’s top chip maker, shipped 5 million of its new dual-core processors in the first two months of its sales, amid signs of strong demand for laptop PCs this quarter, company executives said on Monday.

Intel reached the sales mark for its new Core 2 Duo chipsets, which use a pair of chips at their core, within the first 60 days of their going on sale on July 27, Thomas Kilroy, vice general manager of the digital enterprise group, said at a developers’ forum hosted by Intel in Taipei.

Intel gave the sales figure as other executives forecast a strong fourth quarter for notebook PCs, despite some concerns about possible shortfalls due to a string of recent recalls involving batteries from Sony Corp.

“We believe that notebooks will be strong in the fourth quarter,” said Mooly Eden, general manager for Intel’s mobile platforms group.

“The overall perception is that we will have a strong fourth quarter,” he said, citing data from industry tracking groups and Taiwan firms that make most of the world’s laptop PCs, such as Compal Electronics Inc. and Quanta Computer.

Despite some reports of shortages and rising prices following the recall of Sony laptop batteries by the likes of Toshiba, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, Eden added his company was not feeling a major fallout from the issue.

“Regarding the battery recall, I don’t see yet any shortage or any cancellations due to it,” he said.

Intel is in the midst of a major overhaul, including price and job cuts and new product roll-outs, as it tries to stave off recent advances by rival Advanced Micro Devices, which has gained steady market share in the last few years.

The new dual-core processors, and future generations of chipsets that use multiple chips in a single processor, are part of its new product strategy to take back share from AMD.

In September, Intel announced it would cut 10,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, following a three-month top-to-bottom review of operations.

Analysts have said the firm needs to take drastic action to reverse sliding profits and halt steady market share erosion.

Highlighting Intel’s recent difficulties, market research firm iSuppli said last month the firm’s share of total microchip industry revenue hit a four-year low in the second quarter.

The wait is almost over for those wanting to get their hands on Intel’s Core 2 Duo laptop processors with systems based on the new microarchitecture expected to be announced over the next few days.

Starting at just US$209 for the T5500 (2MB cache) and scaling up to US$637 for the T7600 chips (4MB cache) (in 1000 quantities), the mobile version of the Intel Core 2 Duo processors should quickly become the industry standard for business laptops.

That is certainly what Intel willbe hoping as it tries to drive yet another nail into AMD’s laptop coffin. The chip cements Intel’s position as the leading mobile processor. Combined with aggressive pricing, the Core 2 Dup release is likely to force competitor AMD into even more of a corner than the Core Duo (Conroe) processors did earlier this year.

Intel says more than 200 mobile designs from PC manufacturers, resellers and integrators are already scheduled for release.

“In just one year we’ve taken extraordinary leaps in mobile and desktop computing with the launch of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor,” said David (Dadi) Perlmutter, senior vice president of Intel’s Mobility Group.

“For laptops the new processor has doubled the performance, giving consumers and businesses an immersive mobile experience while keeping power consumption and battery life unchanged,” he said.

“The dual-core processing power of the Core 2 Duo processor helps people handle the toughest of multi-tasking scenarios no matter where they are.”

Like the already familiar Core Duo processors, the Intel Core 2 Duo processors have two processing cores to handle multiple tasks in less time with less power.