Intel Corporation has further increased its energy-efficient performance lead today with the introduction of two low-voltage 45 nanometer (nm) processors for servers and workstations that run at 50 watts, or just 12.5 watts per core and frequencies as high as 2.50GHz. The Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor L5400 Series takes advantage of Intel's unique 45nm manufacturing capabilities and reinvented transistor formula that combine to boost performance and reduce power consumption in data centers.

These are the first close-up spy shots of Intel's next gen notebook Eco PC. Specs can be found in one of the pictures. All pictures of the Eco PCs are uploaded here.

Intel Smackover Motherboard Up Close and Personal

As Intel's next-gen 45nm Hi-k Nehalem CPU architecture codenamed Bloomfield is being planned for the fourth quarter of this year, it's time to see some pictures of the motherboard that will become home for these new processors. The board pictured below is an early reference sample codenamed "Smackover" (see picture 1). Smackover will be released in Q4 together with the Nehalem server parts and it will be a triple-channel DDR3 high-end workstation/gaming platform. The motherboard has single 1366-pin CPU socket, four DDR3-1333 slots, three of which being colored blue to signal the triple-channel support and two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, likely bringing CrossFire to Intel's platform. The only heatsink installed is the one covering the ICH10 southbridge while the Tylersburg NB is left "naked". The board has no IDE or floppy connectors, but only six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports.

In order to defend its entry-level notebook market, Intel is planning to launch two 65nm Merom-based processors for its Centrino 2 platform (Montevina), according to DigiTimes. The CPUs will include the Celeron 585 with a core frequency of 2.16GHz priced at US $107 in thousand-unit tray quantities, and Celeron 575 at 2GHz with price of US $86. Both will support 667MHz FSB with 1MB L2 cache and have a TDP of 31W. In related news, Intel has also set the price for its Atom N270 notebook CPU (Diamondville) which forms part of the company's Basic Mobile Platform at US$44.

Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corp. are partnering with academia to create two Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers (UPCRC), aimed at accelerating developments in mainstream parallel computing, for consumers and businesses in desktop and mobile computing. The new research centers will be located at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Microsoft and Intel have committed a combined $20 million to the Berkeley and UIUC research centers over the next five years. An additional $8 million will come from UIUC, and UC Berkeley has applied for $7 million in funds from a state-supported program to match industry grants. Research will focus on advancing parallel programming applications, architecture and operating systems software.

It looks like Intel has decided to adopt the same approach as AMD with the cache structure on its upcoming Nehalem processors, opting to go for small per-core L1 and L2 caches, with a large shared L3 cache. The new architecture will feature 64KB L1 cache per-core working in the same way as current Core 2 CPUs, but instead of a shared L2 cache each core will have 256KB of its own. All of the cores will then have access to a shared L3 cache of up to 8MB. AMD's Phenom CPUs work in a very similar manner, such as the 9600, which has 256KB L2 cache per-core and a shared 2MB L3 cache. The exclusive L2 caches give each core a pool of fast-access memory, while the shared cache acts as a buffer to trap data and instructions other cores may have requested, allowing another core to access it more quickly than using the main memory.

Intel Corporation today discussed upcoming leading edge microprocessors and technologies. Intel's 45nm high-k metal gate leading manufacturing technology is enabling the industry to move to multicore processors in all market segments, and Intel discussed future products with four, six, eight and many computing cores coming to the market.

Intel outlined plans to launch its first quad-core CPU for notebooks, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300, in the third quarter of this year with pricing set to US $1038 in thousand-unit tray quantities. While not expected to become standard in performance laptops, the new CPU will have some enviable characteristics. It will be manufactured using the company's advanced 45nm process, and have a core frequency of 2.53GHz (1066MHz FSB). Using a socket P package, the chip will include 12MB L2 cache and maximum TDP of 45W.

Although Intel has not yet officially announced its high-end X48 chipset, some first-tier motherboard makers started shipping boards in small volumes a few days ago, DigiTime reports. The report claims that both ASUSTeK Computer and GIGABYTE Technology have already started shipping their motherboards, and wide product availability is expected for this week. Manufacturers like MSI and DFI will follow soon.

Blastflow, a subsidiary of British boutique PC manufacturer Vadim Computers, just announced its latest product, the Blastflow Tidal Skulltrail SB Block: If you are worried about the heat produced by your sparkling new Skulltrail PC system, this copper cooler for the Southbridge and SLI bridges might be the solution. The new Tidal Skulltrail SB Block is manufactured using a combination of polished copper and transparent acrylic top, which provides enough cooling power for the two NVIDIA nForce 100 chips and the single ESB2 Southbridge. The watercooler weighs about 314 grams and uses standard 1/4" bsp thread connections. Pricing of the Tidal Skulltrail SB Block has not been announced.

Intel announced plans to enter the SSD market this year with vigour, eliminating the competition in the eyes of makers like Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk. At the moment, Intel offers small-capacity chip-level technology that provides end-product sizes ranging up to 16GB. But this modest line of products is about to get a big boost in the second quarter of this year when Intel will start offering 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs ranging from 80GB to 160GB in capacity, according to Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel. Currently, the fastest SSDs from companies like Samsung approach 100MB/second for reading data. "What I can tell you is ours is much better than that," Winslow said. "We will be supplementing our product line with a SATA [SATA 3 Gb/s] offering," he also pointed. Unfortunately, with this all details revealed end. The full story can be found here.

The first quad-core mobile part, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 for Montevina Platform will come along in Q3 for $1038. Intel has also added two new Celeron processors for the Montevina Value Platform: Celeron 585 and 575 based on the older 65nm Merom core. Lastly, the Atom N270 (1.66GHz/533FSB) for Basic Notebook Platform will arrive in Q2 for S$44.

A leaked PDF from Sun Microsystems' website (which has now been removed) suggests that Intel could have something quite impressive up its sleeve with its upcoming Nehalem processor. The processor was already rumoured to feature three channels of DDR3 memory per core compared to two channels of DDR2 per core on AMD's Barcelona and upcoming Shanghai CPUs, and it seems that could give the Nehalem quite a performance boost. Extrapolated figures from ZDNet based on data in the slide are shown in the graph below, and as you can see, the Nehalem on average scores twice as highly as a 2.3GHz Barcelona and almost 40% better than a 2.8GHz Shanghai in SPEC CPU tests. As always with benchmarks on unreleased hardware it's important to remember that the data may not be accurate and synthetic benchmarks don't always reflect real-world performance, but if these are at all reliable then Intel's next generation of processors could be a huge leap forward.

Following delays due to issues with the processor system bus on Intel's Yorkfield processors, it looks like the 45nm quad-core chips may finally go on sale sometime during the next few days. Industry sources are claiming that the processors have now gone into mass production, meaning the 45nm Core 2 Quad Q9300, Q9450 and Q9550 should be available from next week. The Q9550 and Q9450 will run at 2.83GHz and 2.66GHz respectively, with a 1333MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache. The Q9300 will run at 2.5GHz with an L2 cache of 6MB. Intel's official prices for the Q9550, Q9450 and Q9300 are $530, $316 and $266 respectively. The 45nm manufacturing process should allow the chips to run cooler and potentially allow more headroom for overclocking.

The Intel Atom processor will be the name for a new family of low-power processors designed specifically for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and a new class of simple and affordable Internet-centric computers arriving later this year. Together, these new market segments represent a significant new opportunity to grow the overall market for Intel silicon, using the Intel Atom processor as the foundation. The company also announced the Intel Centrino Atom processor technology brand for MID platforms, consisting of multiple chips that enable the best Internet experience in a pocketable device.

Intel is planning on serving a heaping pile of pain to AMD's revenue/stock figures again in a few months, by developing a six-core juggernaut. While AMD is still tweaking on a way to merely get four cores to work in tandem, Intel is hard at work shoving two more cores on one die. This six-core monstrosity will be succeeded by the even beefier Nehalem micro-architecture, which could have up to eight cores on one die. Most of the Dunnington project is still top-secret, but some say that Intel already has most of the hard work done.

Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year

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Oh snap, another world record in the intense world of benchmarking. MemoryExtreme Team ITALY recently nabbed the 3DMark crown in both 3DMark05 and 3DMark06. System specs and screenshots are below. Enjoy.

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 5800MHz
• ASUS P5E3 WS
• 2 x 1024 Cellshock DDR3 1800
• 2 x Radeon HD 2900XT 1250MHz/1880MHz
• Ultra X3 1600W power supply
• CPU pot MM rev3
• GPU pot Tek 9 3.0
• 80 liters of liquid nitrogen

For those who crave more performance than what four processing cores and a single graphics card can deliver today, Intel Corporation has introduced the Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform. Formerly codenamed "Skulltrail," this is one of the first enthusiast desktop platforms to support two Intel quad core processors for a total of eight processing engines and a choice of multi-card graphics solutions from either ATI or NVIDIA.

Intel is planning to rename its brand name for the upcoming notebook Montevina platform to Centrino 2 in order to clear up confusion for consumers, according to DigiTimes. Intel has used the brand name Centrino for four generations of its notebook platforms including Carmel, Sonoma, Napa and Santa Rosa. Although the technology and specifications have continued to improve, the unchanging brand name has left consumers unable to identify the differences, which has also lowered recognition in the market. The new marketing strategy should give consumers the feeling of a tangible upgrade and will hopefully spur demand for new laptops. Intel is set to launch the Centrino 2 platform in June this year at Computex Taipei 2008 along with six 45nm notebook CPUs, all with a 1066MHz FSB.

American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD's x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel's long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD's stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD's recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI's recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel's plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well. Combining this information with rumors that Intel is attempting to develop discrete graphics adapters of their own leaves NVIDIA in a possibly weakened position. However, AMD's extensive cross-licensing of x86 and other technologies with Intel would not be NVIDIA's only obstacle. They would also face possible anti-trust investigation from United States and European Union law enforcement agencies.

The San Jose Mercury News web site is reporting that at next week's Game Developers Conference a number of companies, including those that are normally fierce rivals, will be announcing a new effort to promote PC gaming. According to the article, which uses unnamed sources, the group will be called the PC Gaming Alliance and will involve a joint effort between companies like Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD as well as a number of computer companies. The story states that the PC Gaming Alliance "will keep the PC competitive with game consoles to attract key game developers" and adds that it "will coordinate and expand those efforts to improve the experience of playing games on computers." The original story is found here, while the time when we'll see if this is all true is February 18-22, 2008 in San Francisco, or the date when GDC starts.

Intel Corp. has shrunk another processor that will be incorporated into new ultrathin laptops, possibly creating competition for the processor it developed for the MacBook Air ultrathin laptop. Lenovo Group Ltd. and Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp. will include Intel's low-voltage Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV chip in laptops that are expected to hit the market soon. Like the Core 2 Duo processor specially developed for Apple Inc.'s MacBook Air notebook, Intel shrunk the new processor to make it 60% smaller than standard-size processors in its Merom family, according to Connie Brown, an Intel spokeswoman. The chip is manufactured using the 65-nanometer process, like other Merom processors. Though the size is the same, the SL7100 LV chip consumes less power and operates at a slower speed than the Macbook Air chip. It will operate at 1.2GHz, with 4MB of cache. It uses 12 watts of power, according to specs provided by Intel. The Core 2 Duo processor for MacBook Air uses 20 watts of power and operates at 1.6 to 1.8GHz. The new processor was developed independently of the MacBook Air processor, Brown said. "These [SL7100 LV processors] are similar but not identical to the Apple processor," Brown said. The MacBook Air processor was specially developed to meet Apple's needs and is also available to other PC makers, Brown said. The new SL100 LV will most likely be adopted in Lenovo's new X300 ultra portable PC.

At this point, it seems as though Intel has just about everything in the world going right for them. They're getting a lot of money, their CPUs are in just about every computer, and they have had the best products on the market for the past several months. However, AMD and the European Union don't feel like Intel got this success in a legitimate manner. And so, the European Union sent law enforcement agents to do surprise raids. The raids being sent out are searching for one thing in particular: hard evidence that Intel pressured retail stores to avoid AMD-based products. These charges are added on to similar monopoly charges already put upon Intel by the European Union.

Today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Intel Research demonstrated a "first" in wireless communication, jointly developed with Nokia R&D and Nokia Siemens Networks R&D. The researchers showed a wifi/wimax heterogeneous seamless hand-over based on 802.21. This makes it possible to run a video conferencing application, for example, on a mobile internet device and seamlessly roam between WiFi and WiMAX networks, with no viewing disruption. And better yet, no user interaction necessary to go find a new available wireless network and connect. View the demo at the Intel booth, or virtually here in a blog from Intel researcher Christian Maciocco.

In a hilarious and somewhat cruel twist of fate, market research has proven that AMD sells more when Intel really lays down the advertising. Stephen DiFranco, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at AMD, had this to say in regards to Intel's advertising.

I wish they would advertise more. I beg them publicly, please advertise more. Create more demand. Some weeks in the United States there are more AMD desktops and notebooks sold than Intel.

Granted, DiFranco later admitted that most consumers hardly know the difference between AMD and Intel. However, going from a 5% retail market share to a 50% retail market share without spending any money on advertising is pretty hard to explain any other way.