Intel Corporation today introduced Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel GPA) 2012, the latest version of a powerful tool suite to optimize performance of gaming, media and entertainment applications. Expanding upon Intel's mobile momentum, Intel GPA 2012 will support mobile applications for Ultrabook devices and Android-based smartphones and tablets for the first time.

Previously available only on PC platforms, Intel GPA helps developers improve the experience of game and media applications by accessing powerful tools to analyze and optimize performance on Intel Core and Intel Atom processor-based platforms. The tool suite enables developers to enhance application performance on smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and PCs. Developers can also optimize Web content for browsers that support hardware-accelerated rich media, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

A prominent retailer started quoting prices for bundles of next-generation "Ivy Bridge" Core processors and motherboards based on Intel 7-series chipset. The table below reveals prices in Singapore Dollars (SGD) of a large number of board+processor combinations. The table includes current-generation "Sandy Bridge" Core processors and 6-series chipset motherboards, too, as the platforms are inter-compatible (you can run Ivy Bridge processors on 6-series chipset motherboards, and Sandy Bridge processors on 7-series chipset motherboards).

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the world's leading motherboard, graphics card, barebone system, notebook and mobile device manufacturer is honored to launch the brand new G24 All-In-One computer. The smart and stylish G24 enables you connect to the Internet and media directly, making your digital experience extremely versatile.

Equipped with a larger, but thinner, elegant edge-to-edge 23.6' touch panel, Full HD 1080p display. Supporting HDMI-IN compatibility and with a high BTO (Build-To-Order) capability, the Thin Mini-ITX motherboard can be interchanged with Intel H61 Express Chipset and is also compatible to support next generation processors.

Today novero announced the introduction of Solana, a lightweight, 10-inch laptop/tablet hybrid with a flip-rotating design at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Designed to deliver the best combination of everyday business computing and mobile entertainment, Solana offers optimal flexibility and state-of-the-art features in one unique device.

Whether converting between laptop and tablet mode with just one flip of the screen, or switching between the two operating systems Genuine Windows 7 (Windows 8 ready) and Android within seconds, or staying seamlessly connected through high-speed 3.5G (HSPA+), WiFi or Bluetooth, Solana is the premium lifestyle mobile device built to work, watch, listen, play and connect in multiple ways. Its capacitive sensing multi-touch panel, built-in video camera, stereo loudspeakers and six row full QWERTY keyboard all support the requirements of today's mobile life.

A fresh (and funky?) new version of CPU-Z has today been released and it brings support for Intel's incoming Ivy Bridge processors, as well as for the Core i5 2550K, 2450P and 2380P, the Xeon E3, the Z77 platform, and for AMD's FX-8140, FX-4150 Bulldozers. Moreover, there's Windows 32/64-bit info in the About tab, and preliminary support for the Piledriver-powered Trinity APUs (from AMD).

To get CPU-Z 1.60 check out this page.Thanks to stasio for the heads up.

Intel confirmed specifications of what could be its entire 3rd Generation Core processor family, based on the "Ivy Bridge" silicon, slated for Q1~Q2, 2012. These include details of its desktop Core i7, Core i5 processor models, notebook Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and their corresponding ULV variants, and so on. Specifications include model numbers, clock speeds, Turbo Boost 2.0 speeds, and basic features such as Built-in Visuals (integrated graphics), caches, HyperThreading, and fab process. These details are meant for retailers and distributors to update them on the upcoming product lineups, so they could fine-tune their inventories.Notebook lineup details follow.

Eurotech announces the CPU-111-10, a rugged, high-performance 6U VPX (VITA 46) Single Board Computer (SBC) featuring a quad-core Intel L5408 Xeon processor and integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch to support full-mesh backplane data layer interconnectivity for up to eight SBCs integrated into a single chassis.

Available in air cooled or conduction cooled formats, the CPU-111-10 conforms to the OpenVPX (VITA 65) payload module profile MOD6-PAY-4F2T-12.2.2.4 with four fat pipes (10 GBase-BX4) and two thin pipes (1000Base-T).

Intel Capital today announced a $100 million investment fund to help accelerate innovation and the adoption of new technology and services in the automotive industry. Intel Capital is the first global technology investment organization headquartered in Silicon Valley to announce a dedicated focus on automotive technology innovation.

The Intel Capital Connected Car Fund will be invested globally over the next 4 to 5 years in hardware, software and services companies developing technologies to promote new, compelling in-vehicle applications and enable the seamless connection between vehicles and any connected device, including mobile devices and sensors.

Even as there's quite some buzz around Microsoft's next major version of Windows, there are reports such as one from Bright Side of News citing "multiple sources close to Microsoft, or inside [it]," revealing the tentative launch schedule of the two main branches of Windows: for x86 platforms (client and enterprise), and ARM (for tablets and compact computing devices). Windows 8 for clients and enterprise (x86 architecture), will get up to 5 months' head-start over the much hyped ARM version for tablets. It is expected to be launched some time in Q4 2012, while the ARM version, some time in Q2 2013.

Intel and AMD can rub their hands as they both have extremely compact x86 processors fit for the tablet form-factor planned, and can woo tablet designers to opt for their solutions and get Windows 8 tablets instead of waiting for the ARM version of the operating system. Tablet vendors with mature ARM-based designs can always opt for Google's Android operating system, which will see no major competition for the greater part of this year.

Intel Corporation and Micron Technology, Inc., today announced that the companies have entered into agreements to expand their NAND Flash memory joint venture relationship.

The agreements, which are designed to improve the flexibility and efficiency of the joint venture, include a NAND Flash supply agreement for Micron to supply NAND products to Intel and agreements for certain joint venture assets to be sold to Micron. Under terms of the agreement, Intel is selling its stake in two wafer factories in exchange for approximately $600 million-the approximate book value of Intel's share. Additionally, Intel will be receiving approximately half of the consideration in cash and the remaining amount will be deposited with Micron, which may be refunded or applied to Intel's future purchases under the NAND Flash supply agreement. The agreements also extend the companies' successful NAND Flash joint development program and expand it to include emerging memory technologies.

SGI, the trusted leader in technical computing, announced today that with over 60 miles of InfiniBand cabling in place at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., a scientist was able to utilize 25,000 SGI ICE Intel Xeon processor cores on Pleiades to run a space weather simulation.

One particular area of study is magnetic reconnection, a physical process in highly conducting plasmas such as those that occur in the Earth's magnetosphere, in which the magnetic topology is rearranged and magnetic energy converted to kinetic or thermal energy. This field of research is critical, as these disturbances can disable wide scale power grids, affect satellite transmissions and disrupt airline communications.

Visa Inc. and Intel Corporation today announced a strategic agreement to develop mobile commerce solutions tailored to consumers in developed and developing countries. During a press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the companies outlined plans to collaborate to ensure consumers enjoy a consistent, streamlined, secure mobile commerce experience across Intel Atom-based smartphones and tablets.

"Visa's agreement with Intel paves the way for financial institutions around the globe to offer their account holders mobile payments and financial services using innovative mobile devices and technologies designed by Intel," said John Partridge, President, Visa Inc. during the press conference. "This is another example of how Visa is making mobile payments broadly available across devices and operating systems and is ensuring that mobile commerce applications are aligned with existing technology and security standards established by the global payments industry."

Citing issues with the 22 nm manufacturing process, Intel postponed the release of its 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core processor family by as much as 10 weeks. There still seems to exist some confusion surrounding this launch, which SweClockers sought to clear with its latest article containing important dates related to the launch.

• 8 April, 2012: This was supposed to be the day "everything" (all CPU models slated for April, compatible motherboards) launched. Instead on this day, motherboard vendors will launch their products based on Intel Z77, Z75, H77, and B75 chipsets. System builders (you) will have to use existing "Sandy Bridge" processors, which are very much compatible with those motherboards. You will not be able to buy "Ivy Bridge" processors from anywhere on this day.
• 29 April, 2012: This is when Intel will launch quad-core Core i5, Core i7 "Ivy Bridge". On this day, the media will be able to post reviews of the new processor platform. It's not clear if you'll be able to buy these chips on this day, either. Perhaps you might.

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In mid-February, it was reported that Intel was delaying availability of its upcoming "Ivy Bridge" Core processor family, at least to Notebook ODMs, to June, in a bid to help digestion of inventories of current-generation "Sandy Bridge" Core processors. Intel confirmed this delay. The company expects its next-generation chips to go on sale eight to 10 weeks later than initially planned, according to Sean Maloney, executive vice-president of Intel and chairman of Intel China. Maloney told Financial Times that sales of machines (notebooks, pre-built desktops) have been pushed back from April to June. "I think maybe it's June now," he said. More interestingly, Maloney shifted the blame for this delay from inventory-adjustments to the 22 nm fab process.

GUN'G'STAR of TeamRussia successfully achieved an overclocking record of 5.666 GHz for the quad-core Intel Core i7-3820 processor; a feat that validates the LGA2011 i7-3820 of being a generally good chip for overclocking, despite being "Limited Unlocked" (BClk multiplier being unlocked only to a few notches above its stock setting). GUN'G'STAR achieved a clock speed of 5,665.99 MHz using a BClk speed of 131.74 MHz, a multiplier value of 43x, and core voltage of 1.6V. The chip was assisted with GeIL-made DDR3-1600 memory sitting on all four channels, and ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard. Only 2 out of 4 cores of the i7-3820 were enabled for the feat, HyperThreading was disabled. Extreme cooling was used. The CPU-Z validation can be accessed here.

Regardless of whether you'll be able to get an "Ivy Bridge" Core processor till the second week of April, motherboards that are compatible with it out of the box, based on Intel's Z77 chipset (successor to Z68), will start selling in early-April. Sources told OCWorkbench that most motherboard vendors have in fact begun shipping orders to their distributors, while some are waiting for the green light. Motherboards based on the Z77 chipset feature LGA1155 CPU socket, are compatible with today's "Sandy Bridge" Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors; and tomorrow's "Ivy Bridge" ones, out of the box. The new chipset offers features such as some native USB 3.0 ports, and support for certain Ivy Bridge-exclusive features, beyond which they're functionally identical to 6-series. Enthusiasts might not find the need to upgrade their motherboards to use Ivy Bridge, if their current motherboards have BIOS updates that let them support the new processors.

Eurocom Corporation announces support for Intel's new high performance 520 Series of Solid-State Drives inside their Mobile Workstations and Mobile Server solutions.

The addition of the Intel 520 series of SSDs to Eurocom's extensive list of storage drives gives customers an even greater choice when customizing their purpose built systems. Customers have a myriad of choices between Hard Disk Drives, Solid State Drives and Hybrid Drives.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for Q4'11.

We found that shipments during the fourth quarter of 2011 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, the new seasonality that has developed since the economic crash of 2008. Prior to that shift, Q4 was a seasonally up quarter, since 2008 it's been a seasonally low to down quarter-and this year it was down the most since 2008. A lot of it was blamed on the floods in Thailand, but general economic malaise still permeates the industry.

Intel was reportedly planning to limit mass-shipments of its third-generation Core processors (codenamed: "Ivy Bridge") to notebook ODMs, to help in digestion of swelling inventories of current-generation "Sandy Bridge" Core processors. Only a few models (those targeting Ultrabooks and mainstream notebooks) are expected to face delays till June, performance desktop retail processors will most likely not be affected, their launch is on-course for April.

To make up for the delay, Intel will might lower prices of its Ivy Bridge chips by as much as $70 a piece. The lower prices would ease transition between the two generations of processors without causing a price-shock to ODMs, when they then have to transfer to the end-users. Intel already attractive pricing for its Sandy Bridge CPUs to help clear inventories. The result of all this would be Ivy Bridge-powered notebooks being not much more expensive than current-generation Sandy Bridge-powered ones, on launch.

Hiroshige Goto, contributor for PC Watch that is known for detailed schematics of dies estimated the layout of Ivy Bridge silicon. Ivy Bridge is Intel's brand new multi-core processor silicon built on its new 22 nanometer silicon fabrication process. The four core silicon, which four configurations can be carved, will be built into packages that are pin-compatible with today's Sandy Bridge processors. The die area of Ivy Bridge is 160 mm², it has a total transistor count of 1.48 billion, compared to the Sandy Bridge silicon, which has 1.16 billion transistors crammed into a die 216 mm² in area, built on the 32 nm process.

Ivy Bridge has essentially the same layout as Sandy Bridge. The central portion of the die has four x86-64 cores with 256 KB dedicated L2 cache each, and a shared 8 MB L3 cache, while either sides of the central portion has the system agent and the graphics core. All components are bound by a ring-bus, that transports tagged data between the four CPU cores, the graphics core, the L3 cache, and the system agent, which has interfaces for the dual-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, the PCI-Express controller, and the DMI chipset bus.

Intel is reportedly working on a new Atom "Cedar View" processor model for low-power static computing devices such as entry-level PCs and nettops, the Atom D2550. This new model retains most of the specifications of the Atom D2500. Its two x86 cores are still clocked at 1.86 GHz, featuring HyperThreading technoloy, 512 KB L2 cache per core, even the TDP stays at 10W. The D2550, however, brings slightly faster integrated graphics. Its graphics core is clocked at 640 MHz, compared to 400 MHz on the D2500. Intel will be taking orders for the new chip from ODMs starting some time in March.

Tabula Inc., advancing programmable logic solutions for network infrastructure systems, today confirmed previous speculation that it is implementing a family of 3PLD products manufactured by Intel using its advanced 22 nm manufacturing process featuring 3-D Tri-Gate transistors and co-optimized packaging technology. This is made possible by a manufacturing access agreement between Tabula Inc., and Intel Custom Foundry, a division of the Technology and Manufacturing Group of Intel Corporation.

The 3PLD family will be based on Tabula's 3D Spacetime architecture and will deliver high-performance, cost-effective solutions for network infrastructure systems requiring high-bandwidth data flows such as Switches, Routers, Packet Inspection appliances, and other high-performance systems. The combination of process and architecture will allow Tabula to produce high-performance programmable circuits that consume significantly less chip area than circuits implemented with traditional FPGA fabrics.

The TMEIII is the next evolution of the hugely successful TherMax Eclipse CPU cooler series. The increased number of heat-pipes combined with a higher number and density of dimpled fins and crowned with two (2) high airflow, Nano Bearing DC fans for extreme cooling performance. Five (5) U-shaped 8 mm all-copper heat-pipes are in direct contact with the CPU heat-spreader (heat source), rapid heat transfer to the 45 aluminum dimpled fins providing a larger surface area for optimum heat dissipation.

The TME III is supplied with two (2) 12 cm BlackStar 7 blades, high quality precision Nano - Bearing DC fans, providing high airflow and sufficient cooling. These fans are PWM controlled to provide the best sound / cooling ratio possible. Compatibility is guaranteed with multi-platform mounting for all current Intel and AMD micro-processors. The TME III brings cooling power to an all-new level. Another amazing product from Spire - Powered by Innovation.

According to a fresh report, April will not 'only' see the launch of the Ivy Bridge processor family, as Intel is also preparing the arrival of some new solid state drives specifically designed to be used in SSD/HDD storage setups (made possible by the Smart Response Technology).

The incoming SSD Caching drives are known as the 313 Series (they will replace the 311 Series aka Larson Creek), they come in 2.5-inch (7 mm thick) and mSATA form factors, and make use of 25 nm SLC (single-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips (the 311 models pack 34 nm NAND). The 313 Series SSDs have a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface and will be available in 20 GB ($99) and 24 GB ($119) capacities.

The world's leading brand, Team Group Inc. has made headway and gone on to another record breaking OC memory products. The newly unprecedented introduction of dual-channel Xtreem LV DDR3 2800 CL11 module is the highest standard of its kind on the market today, refreshing a new history in OC memory's market!

Team Group's Xtreem LV series have always been praised, not only OC memory products come with excellent cost-effective value and have been well received by all sectors. Following the publication of quad-channel Xtreem LV DDR3 2600 CL10, Team Group has once again led the industry and released the world's limited dual-channel Xtreem LV DDR3 2800 CL11. As it adopts strictly selected chips from original factories and has to pass through stringent tests and verification procedures, it is able to enhance even further its support capabilities after teaming up with the latest Intel XMP V1.3 version. In addition, it is also collocated with eight-layer PCB in order to increase its stability performance by up to 8GB (4GB*2) large capacity. Its built-in ultra-high clock design is able to allow the computer operation to reach an unimpeded speed.