Intel has given the official name "Turbo Memory" to the flash memory addon to future notebooks. The technology, called Robson in the past, works as a cache to speed up every day tasks and booting of computer. A recent video shows a Turbo Memory enabled laptop finishing a series of tasks in just under 100 seconds while an identical notebook without the flash memory takes much longer to do the same task.

Intel has added two ultra low voltage Core 2 Duo processors to its product portfolio. The new 1.06GHz U7500 and the 1.2GHz U7600 models, are based on the Merom core with 533MHz FSB and 2MB L2 cache. Both CPUs will be targeting mini notebooks, tablet PCs and ultra-portable notebooks. The U7500 and U7600 are introduced as part of the currently shipping "Napa refresh" platform, but will also be available for the upcoming Santa Rosa platform with a slight change in pinout. The new Merom ULV CPUs will be replacing the Core Duo U2500 processor over the coming months. One of the first manufacturers offering the U7500/U7600 will be Gateway who said that its E-100M notebook will be available with the two processors beginning on May 3 of this year.

Under a new brand called Intel Centrino Pro processor technology, Intel Corporation today announced it will extend its innovative and popular features designed for desktop business PCs called Intel vPro processor technology into its forthcoming high-performance laptop offering. IT departments will be able to reliably manage both desktops and notebooks and deal with what plagues them most - security threats, cost of ownership, resource allocation, and asset management -- and do so wirelessly.

Four cores running at 2.93GHz on a 1066FSB will be the base for Intel's upcoming Core 2 Extreme QX6800. Advanced cooling will be required in order to get rid of the 150W this beast will most likely dissipate. This CPU was thought to be released later this month but TheInq doesn't say so. Instead this new Intel flagship will be shown world wide on this Easter Monday - at least the NDA will go up by then. Furthermore don't expect them at your local dealers so soon, even big First Tier OEMs won't get it in substantial quantities the sources say. This all sounds like a paper launch without a real threat for Intel to continue their push-strategy. Or is the upcoming K10 architecture so much better performance wise?

In the second half of this year Intel plans to cut prices of its Viiv platform chipsets in order broaden its market presence. The ICH8-DH did cost round about 5 US$ in the first and only 3 US$ in the second quarter. Its upcoming successor, the ICH9-DH will start with a 1 US$ price tag - the tag will be almost more expensive itself then.
After all Intel got some serious competition with AMD's Live! solution and won't be as successful as with the Centrino platform motherboard makers think.

Marking the next step in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel Core microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

The people at Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) managed to get another long-term contract with Intel that allows them to manufacture and sell chipsets for Intel's upcoming FSB 1333MHz quad-core CPUs. It remains to be seen how this license agreement will strengthen SiS in terms of market share in the high-end desktop segment which is right now, let's say quite inexistent. Sure they are selling notebook chipsets like crazy and since the CeBIT we know about their SiS672FX based mainboards. This time however we are talking about quad-cores, pretty advanced stuff - definitely the heavy weight league if you ask me. And while we are waiting for SiS to flex it's muscles I'll keep my fingers crossed for them that market acceptance will change in their favour as well.

Penryn is Intels next generation of the Core 2 Duo with 'Conroe'-core. Based on a 45nm process and an improved High-k dielectric together with metal gates the Penryn features the SSE4 instruction set (aka Nehalem New Instructions, NNI), and a 6MB/12MB L2-cache (Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad). Power consumption will roughly be the same, 65W TDP for the Duo and 105W for the Quad. The working frequencies will be higher than 3GHz for the top models resulting in around 20% more performance when playing games. Video-trancoding that utilizes the new SSE4 instructions will be around 40% faster Intel says.
The mobile Penryn features an additional 'deep power down'-state where both caches will be deactivated, the core-frequency and -voltage are lowered by a significant amount. Furthermore the chip is able to change both core's frequencies and voltages indepentently from one another. Let's say you are using a single threaded application for a while the second core won't have much to do it will power itself down whereas the other core could power it up to improve the performance.
In late 2008 Intel plans to release the Nehalem architecture which comes with an integrated memory controller. By then the front side bus days will be over, a serial Hypertransport-like interface called 'CSI' (Common System Interface) will replace it.

Update: AnandTech covers the story as well with a whole article dedicated to the Penryn and Nehalem.

Intel confirmed the plans to construct a factory in Dalian, northern China. It will use 300mm wafers and cost $2.5 billion. When the factory is done in 2010 it will be designated Fab 68.

For the past 15 years Intel hasn't constructed any new facilities at a new location, added to that it will also be the first fab located in Asia. China is a rapidly growing market, Intel hopes an investment in this market will better their service Asia.

On March 22 1993, Intel shipped the very first Pentium processor, the 60MHz model imaginatively dubbed the 'P60'.

Pentium was the successor to the 486 processor. Intel had originally wanted to call the chip the 586, but couldn't get a trademark on the number. Rather than let AMD use the 586 name too, the company decided to switch to a word. Pentium is obviously based on the Greek pent, which is the word for five (hence pentathalon, pentagram etc).

The brand went through a number of iterations - Pentium II, III and IV, amazingly - before being killed off in favor of the Core brand that came into play in January 2006, after years of mediocre Pentium IV performance.

The first Intel Developer Forum (IDF) of 2007 and the largest ever held in China aims to drive innovations and foster powerful collaborations through vision, training and networking opportunities. IDF Beijing, delivering most content in Chinese and English, will focus on how energy-efficient technologies and products can bring unprecedented performance to customers, transform the industry and power innovations through a mix of programs.

Most of you have probably heard of the One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC for short, project. The project aims to provide a large quantity of low price laptops for low-tech countries. Intel decided that they want a peace of the action, and hence made the Classmate PC. Their cheap family-oriented laptop uses a 900MHz Celeron M, is based off of an Intel chipset, has 256MB of RAM, and 2GB of NAND flash storage. The operating system can be either a copy of Linux, or Windows XP. This hardware is noticeably better than the OLPC laptop, which features an AMD Geode processor, however at a significant price increase. The Classmate PC can cost up to $500 USD, which would make some retail solutions a bit cheaper (and even more powerful). Regardless, Intel has a customer for this laptop...Chile.

Way back in October, we posted possible specifications of the new Intel "Bearlake" chipset. Well, Intel has finally confirmed this Bearlake chipset. There will be five variants. These are the X38, the P35, the G35, the G33, and finally the G31.

• The X38 is designed to work with Core 2 Extreme processors, works with Intel's 45nm Penryn, will use PCI Express 2.0 technology, and "performance auto-tuning", which dynamically overclocks...everything. The X38 will run at an FSB of 1333 MHz, and can handle DDR3 RAM clocked similarly.
• The P35 will handle all current generation Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors, but there is no word as to what else this thing can do.
• The G35 is just like the P35, except with integrated DX10 graphics. The integrated graphics have a built in HDCP decoder and HDMI output, so that users can plug in an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive without worry.
• The G33 is a slightly cut down version of the G35, but still has the impressive DX10 integrated graphics.
• The G31 still has the integrated graphics, but is designed for the budget minded customer.

The P35 and G33 will arrive Q2 of this year, and every other Bearlake chipset will be released in Q3.

Intel Corp has won approval to build a $2.5 billion, 12-inch wafer plant in northern China for CPU chip sets, according to a statement issued Tuesday from China's National Development and Reform Commission. The plant would use 90-nanometer technology and produce 52,000 wafers a month at full capacity, according to the NDRC, which is China's top planning group. The plan calls for the fab to be in the city of Dalian. According to sources familiar with the project, official announcement is expected from Intel in the next few weeks. At this stage, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, "We have announced no plans and will not comment on speculation of this nature". Click here if you want to read the full story.

Intels current mobile platform Napa get's a successor named Santa Rosa at the beginning of May. It comes in two versions, the PM65 and the GM965 featuring an integrated graphics core (DirectX 9.0c, up to 256MB shared memory).
The Santa Rosa platform will come with the new pin-grid array based 'Socket P' which is keyed differently than the current Socket M. Together with the Santa Rosa Intel will introduce Socket P CPUs. These special Meroms get a higher FSB (800MHz) than their Socket M counterpart but will come with frequencies as high as 2.8GHz. Sadly this Core 2 Extreme X7900 will be released somewhat later in the second half of this year.

Intel has added to the competition among solid state hard drive manufacturers with its new Z-U130 range. Based on NAND flash memory and using the USB 2.0/1.1 interface, the drive is claimed to be superior to standard flash drives because it offers faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives. Compared to standard hard drives, solid state drives have lower seek times, faster start up times, improved read times, lower power consumption, silent operation and they normally weigh less, not to mention no moving parts which allows for improved reliability. Intel will be starting out with 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB versions, however the larger densities won't be available until later in the year. Although these drives aren't yet able to compete on price or capacity, as the technology develops and more efficient production techniques are found they are likely to become the replacements for current-day spinning drives.Update: this information is now available in an Intel Press Release

Intel is reported to be planning new Pentium and Celeron processors based on the Core 2 Duo architecture. According to Chinese site HKEPC, the Pentium E2000 series will be launched on June 3rd, with the 1.6GHz E2140 and the 1.8GHz E2160. Both will feature a 1MB L2 cache with an 800MHz frontside bus, priced at $74 and $84 respectively. Whilst these two CPUs should replace the Pentium D 925 and 935, there will also be a new Celeron 400 series, with a 430 running at 1.8GHz and a 440 running at 2GHz, both of which will have a 512KB L2 cache and 800MHz FSB.

Intel is also expected to update its Core 2 Extreme range during the third quarter of this year, with the 2.66GHz QX6700 being replaced by the new 2.93GHz QX6800, which features a 1066MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache - the price is expected to remain at $999, and this processor will be replaced with a 45nm chip sometime next year.

HKEPC has info about upcoming price cuts on Intel's CPUs:One can only wonder what would make Intel cut prices so much, especially on their high end models! This move will truly bring quad-core to the masses. Is Intel scared of what AMD has in store?

Chipmaker Intel is set to launch two new processors for its quad-core range on March 12th - the Xeon L5320 and the Xeon L5310. The new CPUs require much less energy than previous quad-core models, running on just 50 watts of power, a 38% drop from the 80 watt models available now. Both will feature an 8MB L2 cache using a 1066MHz FSB. The L5320 will run at 1.86GHz, whilst the L5310 is just behind on 1.6GHz, with the processors priced at $519 and $455 respectively. The new Xeons are compatible with existing dual and quad-core Xeon processors and are designed to work in Intel's Bensley server platform, taking the company total to 11 quad-core processors.

Update: this information is now available in an Intel Press Release

Recent roadmaps from Intel have suggested that the company intends to mass produce phase change memory by the end of 2007, allowing consumers to sample this new form of storge. Phase change memory, or PCM, is expected to succeed flash memory as the major non-volatile memory, being both faster and smaller. PCM is also more reliable - flash memory can degrade after as few as 10,000 writes, whilst PCM can last for over 100 million write cycles. Intel licensed the technology from Ovonyx in 2000, with IBM, Macronix and Qimonda announcing strong developments in the technology towards the end of last year. Intel hasn't set any firm dates yet, but phase change memory could be just around the corner.

Although ATI was a respected manufacturer of chipsets for Intel-based motherboards, the merger with AMD shook up the market a little bit, leaving some doubt as to whether or not AMD would continue to supply hardware supporting its major competitor. However, AMD has revealed that it is happy for the old ATI chipset development to continue, provided that Intel is willing to have AMD producing chipsets for its processors. AMD has also admitted that it isn't planning to dominate the chipset market like Intel - its current aim is just to have a reasonable share, instead of trying to topple Intel and face a price war.

DigiTimes compiled a comprehensive chart about the latest price cuts Intel is about to announce. The source of these information is an Economic Daily News report which states Intel was forced by AMD's new low-cost chipset RS690 to slash the prices earlier than planned. So it makes quite sense that only the remains of the Desktop NetBurst microarchitecture CPUs are affected:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 28, 2007 - Members of a special United Nations group met today with Silicon Valley leaders to explore how the technology industry, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can come together to bolster development around the world.

Intel Corporation and the U.N.'s Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technology and Development (U.N. GAID) jointly organized the summit. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, who also chairs the U.N. GAID, said the meeting provided a critical platform for sharing ideas and forging partnerships among prominent members of government, the international development community and Silicon Valley's businesses, academia and the venture capital industry.

Intel Corporation today announced that it will invest $1 billion to $1.5 billion in its Rio Rancho site to retool Fab 11X for production on Intel's next generation 45 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process. Fab 11X will be the company's fourth factory scheduled to use the 45nm process, with production in New Mexico scheduled to start in the second half of next year.

Intel Corporation today announced the mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is ready to enable nurses to spend more time with patients, do their jobs on the move while remaining connected, and manage the administration of medications. Motion Computing's C5 is the first product based on Intel's MCA platform and has earned support from clinicians and nurses participating in pilot studies around the world.

As Intel's first platform built specifically for healthcare, the MCA is an important step in the company's efforts to better connect clinicians to comprehensive patient information on a real-time basis. The lightweight, spill-resistant, drop-tolerant and easily disinfected MCA allows nurses to access up-to-the-minute patient records and to document a patient's condition instantly, enhancing clinical workflow while reducing the staff's administrative workload.