Intel's upcoming mainstream consumer SSD line, the SSD 330 series, could have attractive pricing, which could catalyze further proliferation of SSD technology, according to a LaptopReviews report, citing tease-listings by online retailers and other sources. The new lineup will embrace SATA rev. 3.0 (6 Gb/s) standard, and offer performance that takes advantage of it. The 120 GB variant of the SSD 330, for example, was listed for US $149, on MacMall.com, the listing is removed. This gives it a price/GB on par with other 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs in the market, which underwent several rounds of price-adjustments to get there.

The SSD 330 series from Intel, will be available in three capacities, 60 GB, 120 GB, and 180 GB. The 120 GB and 180 GB variants offer sequential transfer-rates of up to 500 MB/s (read) and 450 MB/s (write); the 60 GB variant offers 500 MB/s (read), and 400 MB/s (write). These drives use IMFlash Technologies-made 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and offer standard feature-set that includes support for TRIM, NCQ, 256-bit AES data-encryption, and limited SMART attributes.

Intel is launching motherboards in its Desktop Board brand, based on its Z77 Express chipset this Sunday (April 8), sources told DigiTimes. The product-pages of many of these are already active, on the company website. Among the products launched, will be Extreme Series DZ77GA-70K, Media Series DZ77BH-55K, and Media Series DH77KC.

April 8 will also be the day the Z77, H77, Z75 and B75 chipsets will be formally launched, and it is expected that other PC motherboard vendors will follow Intel in launching their products based on these chips. Apart from out-of-the-box compatibility with 3rd Generation Core "Ivy Bridge" processors, 7-series chipset support new CPU features, native USB 3.0, and improved display output (select models). In related news, April 29 is still the date enthusiasts have to keep marked on their calendars, for that's when new processor models such as Core i7-3770K and Core i5-3570K, will be launched.

Intel silently enabled the product pages of several of its 7-series chipset-based LGA1155 motherboards, including three based on the Z77 Express. These include the Extreme Series DZ77GA-70K, Media Series DZ77BH-55K, and Media Series DZ77SL-50K. The DZ77GA-70K is a top-tier model that's built for built for heavily-overclocked gaming PCs. Intel paid due attention to areas such as a strong VRM, and a broad range of connectivity options. With power-delivery, we spy a 10+2 phase VRM backed by Intel's phase-shedding technology. Apart from four DDR3 DIMM slots, the LGA1155 socket is wired to two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8, when both are populated).

Other expansion slots on the DZ77GA-70K include one open-ended PCI-Express 2.0 x4, two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and two legacy PCI. To ensure there are sufficient PCIe lanes for these slots, and the plethora of third-party onboard devices, Intel implemented a PLX PCI-Express bridge chip that increases the lane budget of the board. Storage connectivity includes four SATA 6 Gb/s (two from the PCH, two from third-party controller), four SATA 3 Gb/s, and one eSATA.

Recognizing standout marketing campaigns within the Intel Inside and Intel Brand Advantage programs, Intel Corporation feted a handful of companies with the first Intel Marketing Innovation Awards.

Fujitsu took the Grand Prix for its LIFEBOOK4Life campaign, being the best all-around entry among the various award categories. Fujitsu's campaign sought to increase brand relevance and drive sales for LIFEBOOK notebooks based on the second-generation Intel Core vPro processor family. The campaign targeted IT decision-makers in SMB, enterprise and the channel in 40 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India. The campaign resulted in a 65 percent sales increase by integrating innovative social media activities via LinkedIn, Facebook, word-of-mouth, augmented reality and viral videos with standard advertising.

inXtron showed off its newest small-business NAS server at Intel Storage Forum, the Akitio MyCloud Pro. As the venue might suggest, this 2-bay desktop NAS is powered by Intel x86 architecture. inXtron even put is logic board for display, which revealed it to be driven by an Intel Atom D425 single-core (HTT-enabled) processor, with its usual NM10 chipset. The board also revealed several interesting components, such as two 2-port USB 3.0 controllers, giving out two ports on the rear panel and two for the front-panel, via a standard header.

The primary storage controller is the Intel NM10 chipset itself, the NAS uses a USB DOM (disk-on-module) it boots from, to hold its operating system. The primary network interface is a 1 GbE, driven by a Realtek-made PHY. Interestingly, the board has a vacant mini-PCIe slot, on which WLAN cards can be installed. The MyCloud Pro supports two SATA 3 Gb/s hard drives in the 3.5" form-factor. It supports all modern NAS features, such as UPnP-AV, NFS, FTP, Samba, but DLNA wasn't mentioned. The OS also includes a Bit-torrent client, and Apple iTunes-compatible music server. inXtron has apps for Android and iOS smartphones, with which you can use the phone to control the NAS. inXtron is targeting a sweet price-point under US $200, with the Akitio MyCloud Pro NAS.

Wintel (slang for Windows+Intel architecture) tablets, which launch along with Microsoft's latest Windows 8 operating system, which grab a greater market-share than WoA (Windows on ARM) tablets by the end of 2012, DigiTimes research predicts. This, despite the fact that the x86 and ARM versions of the operating system will be released simultaneously. PC majors such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUStek and Toshiba, have all pledged 1-3 models of Wintel tablets by the end of 2012. Although still an emerging market-segment, tablets will see a clash between x86 and ARM architectures, as they are wooing for the same exact class of devices for the first time in computing history. Intel has made a lot of progress in miniaturizing the Atom processor, while led by the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA, ARM processors are getting stronger.

Fueled by strong sales growth in its core chip businesses-and boosted by a major acquisition-leading semiconductor supplier Intel Corp. in 2011 attained its highest annual market share in more than 10 years, according to the IHS iSuppli Competitive Landscape Tool from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). Intel in 2011 increased its overall semiconductor market share to 15.6 percent, up 2.5 percentage points from 13.1 percent in 2010, according to the final IHS semiconductor estimate for the year. This represents the highest market share for Intel going back to at least 2001, when it reached 14.9 percent. Over the last five years, Intel's share of the market ranged from 11.9 percent to 13.9 percent.

"Intel in 2011 captured the headlines with its major surge in growth," said Dale Ford, head of electronics and semiconductor research for IHS. "The company's rise was spurred by soaring demand for its PC-oriented microprocessors, and for its NAND flash memory used in consumer and wireless products. Intel's revenue also was boosted by its acquisition of Infineon's wireless business unit. The company's strong rise helped it to stave off the rising challenge mounted by No. 2 semiconductor supplier Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which had been whittling away at Intel's lead in recent years." The table below presents the final 2011 semiconductor market share ranking from the IHS.

TYAN has launched 8 cutting-edge platforms based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family. These platforms are designed to deliver the benefits of Intel's latest processor architecture. We offer high peak performance along with outstanding power efficiency and are designed for today's HPC/GPU and general server applications. These products help channel customers build solutions for applications ranging from the largest data centers all the way down to the smallest server room implementations in a quick and efficient way.

UK PC seller Novatech has officially entered the Ultrabook club by launching the nFinity family of 14-inch machines. These mobile PCs measure 333 x 229.5 x 18 mm, they weight just 1.65 kg, and have a 1366 x 768-pixel display, a Core i3-2367M/i5-2467M/i7-2637M processor, 2/4 GB of RAM, a 64/128 GB solid state drive, an Intel integrated graphics.

The nFinity also have a 1.3-megapixel webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, a HDMI output, two 1.5 W speakers, a 3-in-1 card reader, and a 58.5 WH battery allowing for up to 7 hours of operation. Novatech's ultrabook line starts at £429.98 (~ $687).

Intel Core i7-3770K is turning out to be a monstrous overclocker, when assisted with extreme cooling such as liquid-nitrogen. One such test-bed, was overclocked close to the 7 GHz mark, and put through Super Pi (1M and 32M), and PiFast. At 6961.6 MHz, the chip ripped through Super Pi 1M, in 5.187 seconds. The same chip, clocked at 6650.1 MHz, crunched Super Pi 32M, in 5 minutes, 2.843 seconds.

In PiFast, with a clock speed of 6805.1 MHz, the chip hammered out a total computation time of 10.56 s. NordicHardware compiled a comparison table using HWBot and its own data, to reflect how much faster a ~7 GHz Core i7-3770K is, at Pi. The rest of the known test-bed consisted of ASUS ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 motherboard, and 4 GB (2x 2 GB) of dual-channel DDR3 memory, clocked at around 2652 MHz, with timings of 7-11-7-28-1T.

Imation Japan unveiled two new lines of NAS server products, the T5R desktop/tower, and R4 1U rack-mount NAS. The T5R has five 3.5" SATA HDD bays, along with one Imation RDX cardridge slot (for tape backup of vital data). The T5R comes in two variants, the T5R-5X1TB-HDD, which has five 1 TB HDDs; and T5R-5X2TB-HDD, which has five 2 TB HDDs. The R4, on the other hand, has four 3.5" SATA drive bays, and comes in two variants: R4-4X1TB-HDD with four 1 TB HDDs, and R4-4X2TB-HDD, which has four 2 TB HDDs.

There is a lot in common between the T5R and R4. Both models are driven by Intel Atom D2700 dual-core processor clocked at 2.13 GHz, with 2 GB DDR3 memory, the storage controllers support RAID 0,1,1 E, 3,5,6,10; the primary network interface is a single 1 Gbps Ethernet connection, and expansion features include two USB 3.0, three USB 2.0, and one eSATA. All modern x86 operating systems are supported. Imation did not give out pricing information.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the world's leading motherboard, graphics card, barebone system, notebook and mobile device manufacturer announces a variety of options of Thin Mini-ITX for users to meet their different demands with AIO (All-In-One) and motherboards.

To target different segments, ECS Thin Mini-ITX motherboards are not only compatible with AIO but also with small form factor PCs, offering a wide range of solutions including H61H2-TI, H61H2-G11 and CDC-TI. With the growth in popularity of AIO, acceptance of the Thin Mini-ITX platform proves to be leading standard of this new trend, allowing for future-proof upgradeability.

After asking around Taiwan, Digitimes has apparently found out Intel's SSD intentions for the rest of this year. As soon as May the Santa Clara-based chip giant is said to bring out the 300 Series ' Maple Crest' drives, as well as the 720 Series (Ramsdale). The 300s are consumer-grade solutions, while the 720s target enterprises and feature a PCIe interface.

The 720 Series SSDs will come in 400 GB and 800 GB capacities and, like the 300 Series, will utilize 25 nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory.

In Q3 Intel is set to be making the transition to 20 nm NAND and will release the 500 Series 'King Crest' models, while later on, in Q4 we should see the arrival of the 100 GB, 200 GB, 400 GB and 800 GB Taylorsville drives part of the 700 Series, and the Jay Crest and Oak Crest SSDs bearing the 300 Series banner.

Intel Corporation's board of directors has declared a 21 cents per share (84 cents per share on an annual basis) quarterly dividend on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2012 to stockholders of record on May 7, 2012.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world's computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.

Ethisphere released its latest list of World's Most Ethical (WME) companies. The list honors companies for ethical practices. In its own words, Ethisphere defines WME companies as "companies that truly go beyond making statements about doing business "ethically" and translate those words into action. WME honorees not only promote ethical business standards and practices internally, they exceed legal compliance minimums and shape future industry standards by introducing best practices today."

Sorted by industry, you will find two short sections covering computer hardware and computer software. Under the hardware section, Intel Corporation is the only other honoree than Hitachi Data Systems. Microsoft and Adobe are honorees as some of the most ethical computer software companies. Find the complete list (sorted by industry) here.

Intel has reportedly discontinued one of its "Cactus Ridge" family of Thunderbolt controllers, the L3510H. This controller has relatively high TDP of 3.4W, and a low-power part in the same family, the L3510L, already exists. The L3510L has a slightly lower TDP, at 2.8W. The difference may not seem much, but could impact notebook battery life. The L3510 "Cactus Ridge" family consists of 4-channel Thunderbolt controllers, with smaller package-size (12 x 12 mm) compared to the 82523EF "Light Ridge" controller family, with its larger (15 x 15 mm) package sizes. The final samples of "Cactus Ridge" chips will reach customers only by mid-April.

If you thought MSI made too much song and dance about the product design of its R7970 Lightning, particularly the GPU Reactor module, think again. When augmented with liquid nitrogen cooling, the card has the electrical muscle required to sustain 1.7V, and facilitate a staggering 1800 MHz core clock speed, with 1925 MHz memory (7.70 GHz GDDR5 effective), churning out a gargantuan memory bandwidth of close to 370 GB/s, all thanks to the genius of Swedish proverclocker Elmor.

This R7970 Lightning on 'roid-rage was stable enough to bag a 3DMark 11 (performance preset) score of P15035 points. The rest of the test-bed consisted of an Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition six-core chip clocked at 5207 MHz, with 4 GB (4x 1 GB) DDR3 memory clocked at 2314 MHz, and MSI Big Bang XPower II motherboard, to seat it all. Perhaps this is an indication that AMD Radeon HD 7900 can work wonders on potent non-reference designs, such as MSI's R7970 Lightning.

Today Intel announced the Intel Atom CE5300 Media Processor aimed at the next generation of set-top boxes and media gateways. Performance, graphics, power management and user interface improvements in this new product family enables service providers to deploy comprehensive and immersive connected experiences such as the new Amino Freedom Live media gateway which can deliver content seamlessly to TVs, smartphones and tablets around the home. Inside Scoop has more details about this next wave of silicon for platforms supporting the "smart TV experience." For more information, read the inside scoop on the Atom CE5300.

Several next-generation performance-segment notebook models across brands, will be driven by Intel's Core i7-3610QM, a quad-core chip based on the 22 nm Ivy Bridge silicon, clocked at 2.30 GHz (3.30 GHz Turbo), featuring 6 MB L3 cache. The chip features the complete instruction-set of Intel's third-generation Core processor family. DonanimHaber got to test a Samsung notebook that's based on this chip (which also uses NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics), the chip was put through SuperPi 1M and 2M; and Cinebench R11. The chip crunched Pi 1M in 11.66 s, and 2M in 26.67 s. It scored 6.09 pts in Cinebench, which is a higher score than that of AMD FX-8150, DonanimHaber notes.

Intel's first Pentium processors based on the 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" silicon will arrive in Q4, 2012. One of the first models in the series, is the Pentium G2120. Specifications reveal that the chip will be quite generously designed as far as specifications go. To begin with, it is a dual-core processor, with a clock speed of 3.10 GHz. It lacks HyperThreading, so 2 logical CPUs is all that the OS will see; as well as Turbo Boost, so the clock speed won't normally scale beyond 3.10 GHz. Interestingly, the chip has 3 MB of L3 cache, on par with some Core i3 dual-core chips. The instruction-set has SIMD instructions up to SSE 4.2, but lacks AVX. Further, the PCI-Express root hub only supports PCI-Express 2.0, lacking PCI-Express 3.0 support. Its TDP is rated at 65W.

Early adopters of LGA2011 "Sandy Bridge-E" platforms can take a breather, their rigs won't turn obsolete for a long time, according to an X-bit Labs report. "Ivy Bridge-E", a hypothetical successor of Sandy Bridge-E, which is an Ivy Bridge take on the LGA2011-HEDT platform won't take shape anytime soon, at least not till the second half of 2013. The likely explanation for this is the disturbance the delay in LGA1155 "Ivy Bridge" chips to the OEM channels caused to Intel's roadmaps.

Intel will be introducing its very first processors built on the 22 nm fab process, which make use of new semiconductor technologies such as space-optimized 3D-transistors. Swelling inventories of current-generation processors, coupled with fab issues caused the launches of Ivy Bridge to go off by several weeks, and this has taken a toll on the launch schedule of "Ivy Bridge-E". Instead, Intel could launch Core i7-3980X Extreme Edition a little later. This chip will be based on the existing Sandy Bridge-E silicon, it remains to be seen if the chip is a speed-bump over i7-3960X, or if Intel enables cores 7 and 8, and the remaining 5 MB L3 cache on the silicon, turning it to an eight-core Goliath.

Intel is making serious efforts to boost CPU-integrated graphics performance using homegrown architectures, without having to borrow/license any technologies from the other two major players in the PC graphics business that have technological edges over Intel, and hence make high-performance discrete-GPUs (NVIDIA and AMD). Intel's architecture that succeeds Ivy Bridge, codenamed Haswell, will be at the receiving-end of a significant advancement in GPU performance.

We know from history, that Intel carves out variants of chips using a common silicon, by toggling the amount of L3 cache available, number of cores, and even number of iGPU shaders, apart from other natural handles such as clock speeds, voltages, and feature-set. With Haswell, the highest iGPU configuration will make use of a 4th-level cache (L4 cache), that sits on the package, while not being a part of the Haswell silicon. The Haswell silicon will instead be placed on a multi-chip module (MCM) along with a separate die that holds this L4 cache. The L4 cache will serve as a fast memory for the iGPU, while reducing or completely offloading the iGPU's dependency on the system memory as a frame-buffer (UMA).

What would you do for an Ultrabook computer? That's the question Intel Corporation asks in Ultrabook Temptations, a series of six light-hearted experiments filmed in four cities across three countries and posted to YouTube today.

Sleek and stylish, Ultrabooks are a new category of computers inspired by Intel. They are the next generation of mobile computing -- thinner, lighter and more responsive than traditional laptops, yet just as powerful and secure.

"People are drawn to Ultrabooks. When you see one, you just want one," said Claudine Pache, digital marketing manager for Intel Australia and New Zealand. "We created the 'Ultrabook Temptations' to see just how far people would go to get their hands on one."

Towards the end of 2012, Intel will alter Thunderbolt specification from a copper wire-based interconnect to a fiber-optic or photonic interconnect. An analysis by DigiTimes which takes into account information by industry sources, states that Thunderbolt will become standard for PCs only in 2013, and that too the optical one. This comes even as copper wire-based Thunderbolt is beginning to feature on some high-end socket LGA1155 motherboards based on Intel 7-series chipset.

Thunderbolt will get its big push in 2013, when the port will be standard on mainstream desktops and notebooks by OEM majors such as Lenovo, and several PC motherboard vendors, such as ASUS. The optical Thunderbolt IO, apart from allowing greater cable-lengths than 6 m (a limitation of copper-wire Thunderbolt), could push bandwidth greater than 10 Gbps, as a possible incentive for the industry to facilitate the transition to the optical variant.

Even as its 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core processors and compatible 7-series "Panther Point" chipset are only taking shape, with chains of product-launches starting late-March, extending through June; there's little denying that Intel has the successor to this platform ready, and a DigiTimes report pins its launch as early as March 2013. These upcoming product lines include a new processor architecture "Haswell", and compatible "Lynx Point" chipset. We knew Haswell's March-June 2013 launch schedule from a slightly older report that cited a leaked road-map slide. This latest DigiTimes report cites sources from upstream component suppliers. Haswell processor platform will introduce a new socket, LGA1150, which is not compatible with current LGA1155 platforms.