We promised to bring you some more details on Intel's future SSD family when IDF kicks off, and now that time has come. In San Francisco Intel demoed X18-M, the 80GB SSD model we talked about on Saturday here. X18 is the mainstream SSD from Intel based on the second generation SATA 3GB/s interface. The heart of X18 is made out of ten 8GB NAND flash chips, five on each side of the PCB. Intel promises read and write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 70-170MB/s respectively for this drive. Again no details on the price and the release date were disclosed. Please note that on the second picture, the controller chip of X18 is actually removed to prevent the drive from making its way into competitors' hands.

After Intel's Nehalem platform is no secret anymore, it's time to start looking at the motherboards that will support the new Socket 1366 buddies. One of them is ASUSTeK's upcoming P6T Deluxe mainboard based on Intel's yet-to-be-released X58 Express, the first chipset to power the Socket 1366 Core i7 Nehalem processors. As part of the whole platform, the P6T Deluxe has a total of six DDR3 slots intended for triple-channel mode and three PCI-Express x16 slots with support for dual and triple video card configurations. It's too early to say which one, ATI's CrossFire, NVIDIA's SLI or both combos. Expect further information when the time comes. Meanwhile if you want to take a closer look at the motherboard please click here.

During the ongoing Intel Developer Forum (IDF) event, Intel has announced its first 6-core processor codenamed Dunnington. It will be branded as the Xeon X7460 and is expected to become available in servers beginning next month. Intel claims that systems using this chip already broke performance records, including an 8-socket 48-core IBM System x3950 M2 server, which became the first platform to break the 1 million tpmC barrier on the TPC-C benchmark.

Intel has also shed some light on the upcoming fleet of processors based on the Nehalem architecture. The first wave would only include quad-core, HyperThreading-enabled processors based on the Bloomfield core, also said is that they are planning to manufacture a second server derivative designed for the expandable server market (Nehalem-EX). Later, desktop processors based on the Havendale (dual-core) and Lynnfield (quad-core) processors, while the notebook/mobile platform will be offered the dual-core Auburndale and Lynnfield quad-core parts.

IBM and its chip development partners announced today that they've developed the first functional 22nm silicon fabricated SRAM cell. This puts them ahead of Intel, which had announced its technological entry into the 32 nm domain in September, 2007. SRAM is usually the first semiconductor device a chip-maker tests a new fabrication-process on, before working on microprocessors. These devices were developed and manufactured by AMD, Freescale, IBM STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE). They were built in the conventional 6-transistor design and on a 300 mm wafer. This level of miniaturization made the SRAM cell shrink to a mere 0.1 sq. μm, compare this to the SRAM cells that go into making caches on the 45 nm Intel processors, 0.346 sq. μm.

With the entry of the Core i7 Bloomfield series processors this September thru October, the computing world will witness the entry of a new motherboard processor socket, the 1366-pin Land Grid Array (LGA-1366). FrostyTech demystified the new socket in respect to the way coolers are to be designed to be compatible with it, which will have implications on a vast segment of DIY consumers since LGA-1366 is meant to be a high-performance flagship computing platform. There are two key factors at play:

• The layout and cooler-retention mechanism of the socket
• The area of contact between the cooler and the processor's integrated heatspreader (IHS).

It's been a few weeks since Intel launched its latest chipset with integrated graphics, the Intel G45. Among other things, Intel claimed this chipset accelerated HD video formats such as Blu-ray, where the integrated graphics logic is supposed to off-load the CPU of processing the video. Such as it is, Intel's integrated graphics processors (IGP) have been hugely reliant on the CPU for its functions.

Aaron Brezenski, a product engineer for Intel at its Chandler, Arizona US facility. In his recent blog entry (read here), he writes about the G45 not exactly achieving what it set out for, in other words, it was "still imperfect". He mentions about AMD hosting a demo booth where it was publicly demonstrated that a G45 based notebook made by HP failed to accelerate Blu-ray playback, the processor tipped 100% load throughout the playback which isn't what G45 is intended to bring about.

Trying to keep up with the competition in the eyes of Micron and its recently introduced RealSSD drives, Intel declared readiness to debut new SSDs too during IDF next week. With the SSD market heating up, Intel's new storage agents will offer bumped read/write speeds and double the SSD storage capacity we're used to see. The drives will be available in 1.8" and 2.5" format factors and offer a bandwidth of 240 MB/s read and 70-170 MB/s write. Capacities will range from 32GB and 64GB to the rather unusual 80GB and 160GB. No pricing information is available, but big toys always come with a price so don't expect them to be cheap.

Intel Corporation announced a collaborative animation project to produce a computer-generated animated short film for theatrical release. The Mass Animation Project, presented by Intel, will be open to established and aspiring animators.

Intel is sponsoring the development and promotion of a Facebook Page where animators will be able access a collaboration application built on the Facebook Platform, and will work together to create the animated short film. Starting this fall, artists around the world will be able to contribute by animating small pieces of a 5-minute, professional-quality animated short film. The start date will be announced soon.

"This is a great opportunity to bring together computer graphics with the creativity of both Hollywood and the Facebook community," said Michael Hoefflinger, general manager of Intel's Partner Marketing Group. "The power of Intel high-performance processor technology makes it possible for content creators to design, animate and innovate. Intel processor performance and Facebook communication and sharing tools enable large numbers of people around the globe to collaborate on a single creative endeavor."

Part of the series of published slides by French website CanardPlus on slides part of the IDF event shows a picture of Quake 4 run with ray-tracing enabled on Intel's upcoming GPU codenamed Larrabee. The slide shows the advantages of ray-tracing, being accurate shadows, reflections, and the image looking more natural that what conventional shaders can achieve in bringing about.

French website CanardPlus published slides from Intel covering its future plans and product evolution model called the "tick tock" model in which an architecture is released every time frame and improvised following it, where the fabrication process is shrunk and some features added. Les nouveaux CPU suivront donc le schéma de développement « The new CPU release will follow the pattern of development "Tick-Tock", ie a new architecture every two years (Tock), followed by a die shrink (Tick) to increase the fine print.

Five months into using 'Centrino Atom' to name its ULPC platform, Intel decided to drop the name. The first release of Centrino Atom codenamed Menlow consisted of the Intel Atom processor, a single-package core-logic (chipset), and was meant to serve as a unified branding much like the rest of the Centrino brand.

A company spokesperson for the company, Nick Jacobs has been quoted saying "Basically, we are simplifying and coalescing our efforts around 'Atom' as the single brand for Internet devices,".

It was believed that use of 'Centrino' was confusing and in a way even diluted the brand since Centrino Atom served into UMPC / ULPC netbooks. Part of the reason also was that netbooks that made it to the marked brandished Centrino Atom while using a chipset outside its specifications, in many cases a two-chip i945 + ICH7.

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 in support of the USB 3.0 architecture, also known as SuperSpeed USB. The xHCI draft specification provides a standardized method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack.


Interoperability among devices from multiple manufacturers is important for consumer adoption of SuperSpeed USB products. The Intel xHCI draft specification revision 0.9 supports compatibility among various implementations of USB devices and will make it easier to develop software support for the industry.

Following the release of two variants of dual and quad core processors (CPU) this Monday last (covered here), A new set of CPUs are lined up for release by the end of this month. Here's a quick round-up of things to come according to industrial sources:


Product Additions

• A cost-effective Core 2 Quad, model Q8200 with 4 MB of total L2 cache, 2.33 GHz of clock speed, price of US$224 in thousand-unit tray quantities
• A value segment Pentium Dual Core E5200, 2.50 GHz priced at $84
• Another value segment 65nm Conroe-L-based Celeron 450 CPU at 2.20GHz and price-tag of $53

Ibex Peak is the name of the system core logic platform that runs the LGA 1160 socket processors that are expected to release later next year. It is peculiar as to being a single-chip design, where the northbridge (NB) + southbridge (SB) design that Intel has been having for all these years paves way for a single chip that handles both their functions. This level of integration is possible with a huge chunk of machinery for the memory controller being transferred to the CPU, with the chipset left to perform all functions of the ICH and also hold a PCI-Express switch. This design methodology has been adopted by NVIDIA almost five years ago with some of the nForce chipsets for the AMD platform coming in single chip designs for the very same reason. Only in cases where large PCI-E switches were used, the chipset was split up into SPP and MCP (NB and SB), such as the nForce 590 SLI, with the SPP and MCP holding smaller PCI-E switches each to total the x16, x16 lane count.

Back to 2008 and Ibex Peak, apart from the Calpella mobile platform where mobile variants of these chips are used, three new desktop/enterprise platforms emerge:

We continue our Monday news list with another Intel story that brings to our attention information concerning the company and more specificly its 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550 chips that will move from the current C-1 to the newer E-0 stepping. The updated chips will start selling on August 22nd, featuring the following changes:

• New SSpec and MM numbers for the converting products
• CPUID will change from 0x10677 to 0x1067A
• Package change to Halide free package

Apart from that, the new stepping CPUs will not include any other changes. Of course, like most new stepping parts a BIOS update will be needed.


Product Change Notification 108663 - 00

Intel plans to put forth a new set of value/business segment desktop core-logic (chipset), the B33. This comes as a nomenclature change for the Q series chipsets (predecessors being Q33 and Q35), aimed at cost-effective business stable desktop platforms for the Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) segment, primarily OEMs get to built motherboard solutions that go into making branded business PCs. The successor would be named B43. Highlights include several security and management features, integrated graphics processor that is Microsoft DirectX 10 compliant called the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500, boards could feature dual outputs via DisplayPort, other output standards such as DVI are in the stash as well. The MCH supports DDR2 800 MHz or DDR3 1066 MHz memory, it will be accompanied by a "business-stable" ICH10D southbridge.

Following the official name scheme confirmation of the Nehalem processors, Intel today also slashed the price of its Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83 GHz) CPU by a massive 40% from $530 to $316 in 1000-unit tray quantities. In addition Intel introduced today four new CPUs, confirming the Sunday information posted on our site here:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz 3MB L2 cache - $133
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz 6MB L2 cache - $266
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 (45nm) 2.66GHz 1333MHz FSB 6MB L2 cache - $266
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (45nm) 3.0GHz 12MB L2 cache - $576

Later on, Intel will release a third Core 2 Quad processor, the Q8200 CPU working at 2.33GHz.

Intel Corporation announced today that desktop processors based on the company's upcoming new microarchitecture (codenamed "Nehalem") will be formally branded "Intel Core processor." The first products in this new family of processors, including an "Extreme Edition" version, will carry an "i7" identifier and will be formally branded as "Intel Core i7 processor." This is the first of several new identifiers to come as different products launch over the next year.

Intel will release four mid-thru-high range desktop processors tomorrow. These CPUs will be based on the 45nm Yorkfield and Wolfdale cores. Two new Core 2 Quad models, the performance segment Q9650 and the mainstream segment Q9400 are dressed up. The Q9650 has identical parameters to the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 barring the locked FSB multiplier of 9x. The Q9400 is an improvement over the current Q9300. It has a 2.66 GHz core clock speed with a total of 6 MB L2 cache and an FSB multiplier of 8x.

With the Core 2 Duo, there is a top of the line dual core chip, the E8600 which comes with 3.33 GHz core speed, 6 MB of L2 cache and an FSB multiplier of 10x. There's also a mid-range offering, the E7300 that comes with 2.66 GHz core speed, 1066 MHz FSB and an FSB multiplier of 10x. It has 3 MB of L2 cache.

According to the guys over at Expreview, Intel is naming its new Nehalem range of processors "Core i7".

There will be 3 Bloomfield to enter PC market later this year, and the 999USD top-of-the-line Bloomfield is the only Core i7 Extreme Edition processor current revealed.

All i7 processors and i7 Extreme Edition processor will be officially announced in Aug 11st, launch date set to Q4 this year.

DigiTimes published today information on what's believed to be Intel's next generation notebook platform Calpella.

Intel's next-generation notebook platform (Calpella) is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2009. As with other Nehalem generation products, Capella will abandon the current northbridge and southbridge chipset arrangement and transfer many typical northbridge components to the CPU package. A single integrated chipset codenamed Ibex Peak-M will coordinate other features on the motherboard, according to sources at notebook makers. Ibex Peak-M will support Intel's next-generation notebook CPUs (Clarksfield and Auburndale), both of which include an on-die DDR3 memory controller. Auburndale will also have a graphics core integrated in the CPU package. The Calpella platform will support Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (Puma Peak) or WiMAX (Kilmer Peak) wireless modules.

Intel Corporation is presenting a paper at the SIGGRAPH 2008 industry conference in Los Angeles on Aug. 12 that describes features and capabilities of its first-ever forthcoming "many-core" blueprint or architecture codenamed "Larrabee." Details unveiled in the SIGGRAPH paper include a new approach to the software rendering 3-D pipeline, a many-core (many processor engines in a product) programming model and performance analysis for several applications.

It has been said that Intel is preparing to launch its latest Core 2 Quad processor, the Q8200 on August 31st. The forthcoming processor features four 45nm Penryn cores, 2.33GHz core clock, 4MB of shared L2 cache, a 1333MHz front-side bus, and a suggested price tag of just $203. Specs may be right, but consider the other information a rumor, at least until further info is available.

Intel Prepones Nehalem Launch

Although the introduction of Intel Bloomfield, the next-generation processor from Intel was slated for November later this year, sources at motherboard companies report that Intel could prepone its launch to September along with the X58 system chipset platform. However it is known that motherboard vendors will not be in a position to bring LGA-1366 socket based motherboard into retail channels until early October. This might not cause internal-competition between Intel's products.

With wide-spread news about AMD integrating a graphics controller on a CPU, the AMD Fusion, the concept of "Small is Big" is being redefined. Fusion may look like a step in the right direction but is merely prelude to another computing methodology, the SoC (system on a chip). Fusion could be confined to consumer desktop/notebook central processing with graphics thrown in, but a concrete step taken by Intel into this which is more of targeted to the enterprise, embedded systems and consumer electronics is the EP80579 integrated processor. HotHardware spoke with Gadi Singer, Vice President of Intel's Mobility Group, and Doug Davis, Vice President of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. Intel's brand new product line targeted at security, storage, communications, and industrial applications, basically embedded computing were discussed. The EP80579 integrated processor was central to this conversation. The need for this product came about by Intel as a preparation of the company for the impending onslaught of smart, Internet-connected devices and appliances predicted to arrive over the next few years.