Microprocessors

Mac OS X 10.6 showcased

Paul Mah — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:16:57 -0400

Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that the next version of Mac OS X--10.6--will be code named Snow Leopard. The focus of this new version will be more toward incremental improvements to the operating system, though a number of these "enhancements" seem pretty substantial by themselves.

For one, Snow Leopard will optimize for multi-core processors by leveraging on a new technology called "GrandCentral." Memory limit also will be raised to 16 TB, though the most interesting feature is probably the inclusion of Open Compute Library (OpenCL). OpenCL commands allow programmers to tap into the processing power of the GPU. Out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 is also quoted, but it is unclear how it will be implemented. Reports indicate that Mac OS X 10.6 is expected to ship "in about a year."

For more on Mac OS X 10.6:
- check out this TG Daily article

AMD announces 6 and 12-core CPUs

Mehan Jayasuriya — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:32:41 -0400

The quad-core race might only be heating up now, but that isn't stopping AMD from stepping its game up in the war for more core. We've reported before that 6 and 12-core chips from AMD were a distinct possibility and it looks like we were right on the money: AMD has officially added 6 and 12-core parts to their roadmap. Both the 6-core "Sao Paulo" and the 12-core "Magny-Cours" will be based on an all-new platform called "Maranello," not Barcelona. According to AMD, 12-core CPUs will be easier to manufacture, so they've decided to cancel the 8-core Barcelona and skip over that generation all together. According to the roadmap, 6-core AMD chips should be available next year, with 12-core models following in 2010.

For more on the forthcoming CPUs:
- see this New York Times article

Quad-core CPUs heating up

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:58:41 -0400

No, quad-core chips aren't heating up literally--though they do get quite hot if your case isn't properly ventilated. Rather, the quad-core CPU market is heating up, thanks to price cuts and a number of different parts on the market. Intel has sold 10 million quad-core chips since their introduction in late 2006, and AMD is expected to announce that it has sold 1 million of its quad-core parts shortly. Sure, quad-core CPUs still represent only about 3 percent of the overall market, but with more and more businesses turning to x86 servers, you had better believe that figure is going to grow. “I don’t think anyone had imagined how popular the low-cost quad core server parts were going to be at the time,” said Dean McCarron, Founder and Principal at Mercury Research.

For more on the quad-core market:
- see this ZDnet article

First look: AMD's 45nm Shanghai

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:57:26 -0400

We all knew it was bound to happen sooner or later: as the DailyTech headline proudly announces, "The Megahertz Race is Now Officially the Multi-core Race." If you're an AMD fan who felt burned by the performance and production issues that plagued the company's recent Barcelona quad, you'll be glad to hear that it's stepping its game up with a next-gen CPU, code-named "Shanghai." Like Intel's Xeon and Atom lines, Shanghai will be produced using a 45nm manufacturing process, a first for AMD. What's more, it will sport the HyperTransport 3.0 clock generator that was conspicuously absent from Barcelona. The real fun, however, comes in the core count that Shanghai will bring to the table. The first Shanghai CPU to hit the market likely will be "Istanbul," a Shanghai-derived "native six-core" chip that will face off against Intel's six-core "Dunnington." But that's not the interesting part. According to DailyTech, AMD will abandon its "native core" rhetoric a few months later, opening the door to chips with more than one core per die. That, in turn, could lead to a twin-die, 12-core Shanghai derivative. Exciting stuff, indeed. But having been burned by AMD plenty of times in the past, we have to wonder if the company will be able to get these products out on time. Will Shanghai join the ranks of previous AMD parts that were too little, too late?

For more on Shanghai:
- see this DailyTech article

Intel launches dual-core Celerons

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

Call it a sign of the times: Intel's budget-minded Celeron line has just entered the dual-core age. The new high-end Celeron, the 1.6Ghz E1200, sports 512K bytes of cache and an 800Mhz front-side bus; it's available now for $53 in quantities of 1000. While it's not quite cutting-edge (the E1200 is manufactured using a 65nm process, as opposed to the 45nm process used for Intel's high-end chips), it's definitely a big step up for the Celeron and brings all of Intel's chip lines into the multi-core era. No word yet on what the future holds for the rest of the Celeron line, though more dual-core CPUs seems like a safe bet at this point.

For more on the Celeron E1200:
- see this PC World article

Intel: Penryn delays, Montevina in May

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

See folks, AMD isn't the only chipmaker that has trouble fabricating CPUs. Looks like Intel has run into some issues with its just-announced T9500, T9300, T8300 and T8100 mobile Penryns. According to an email sent to Lenovo resellers, a thermal sensor issue is preventing Intel from pumping out as many mobile Penryns as they'd like and supply could be short into February. While this tidbit has yet to be confirmed by Intel, we wouldn't be too surprised, as manufacturing for new chips often kicks off with a rocky start.

In other Intel CPU news, the company is rumored to be launching its next-generation Centrino platform in May, which is currently going by the codename "Montevina". The new chipset will house 45nm Penryn CPUs, sport optional built-in WiMAX support and will be 40 percent smaller than the current hotness, the Santa Rosa mobile chipset. According to Digitimes, Intel will unleash a total of 15 new mobile CPUs in the month of May, with eight of them being spec'd for ultraportable/subnotebooks. Given the fact that Intel's initial lineup of mobile Penryns was leaked--and that the leaks turned out to be 100 percent accurate--I would put quite a bit of stock in this one.

For more on Intel's mobile Penryns:
- see this Engadget article on the delays
- and this Digitimes article on Montevina

AMD Phenoms delayed

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

No matter what they do, the folks at AMD just can't seem to catch a break these days. Not too long after Barcelona shipments were delayed due to manufacturing problems, AMD has announced that its Phenom 9900 and 9600 CPUs--which were scheduled to ship this quarter--have been pushed back to Q2. This was first reported by Ars Technica yesterday and has since been confirmed with AMD by CNET. According to CNET, a company representative "strongly denied that the delays were in any part related to the TLB errata discovered in December that is screwing up AMD's launch plans for its Barcelona server chip and Phenom, which is based on a similar design." It's not all bad news, however: to make up for the delays, AMD has announced that it will push up release dates for two energy-efficient Phenom parts while focusing the bulk of its energy on triple-core chips this quarter.

For more on the delays:
- see this CNET article

New Penryn MacPros get benchmarked

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:59:57 -0500

Now this is more like it. Earlier this week, we had to settle for the benchmarking figures published by Apple but today, the folks at Primate Labs (developer of the Geekbench benchmarking app) have a series of independently-conducted benchmark tests for us to drool over. Though they only sprang for the eight-core 2.8Ghz model (as opposed to the high-end, 3.2Ghz monster), their series of comparisons to an older, eight-core 3.0Ghz model demonstrates that the overall improvements to the MacPro's architecture offer a significant performance boost. "I'd expected that the new Mac Pro would make a respectable showing, but would still be slightly slower than the old Mac Pro, since the new Mac Pro's processors run at a lower clock frequency," the developer wrote. "So I'm surprised that the new Mac Pro is faster in almost every area (floating point performance being the exception) than the old Mac Pro." Given that the new MacPros are quite a bit cheaper than comparable older models, it sure sounds like they offer a better bang for your buck.

For the full benchmark results:
- see this post on the Primate Labs blog

Intel: 2008 Penryn details emerge

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

Yesterday, we told you that Intel was launching 16 new 45nm CPUs, essentially doubling the size of its bleeding-edge Penryn lineup. Today, we've got the full scoop, with details on all the newly-confirmed parts. Without further ado:

Mobile Penryns (800Mhz FSB)

Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8 GHz, 44W, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo T9500 2.6 GHz, 35W, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5 GHz, 35W, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4 GHz, 35W, 3MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1 GHz, 35W, 3MB L2 cache

Desktop Penryns (1333Mhz FSB)

Core 2 Quad Q9550, 2.83Ghz, 12MB L2 cache
Core 2 Quad Q9450, 2.66Ghz, 12MB L2 cache
Core 2 Quad Q9300, 2.50Ghz, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo E8500, 3.16Ghz, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo E8400, 3Ghz, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo E8200, 2.66Ghz, 6MB L2 cache
Core 2 Duo E8190, 2.66Ghz, 6MB L2 cache

Server-class Xeons (1333Mhz FSB)

Quad-core Xeon, X3360 2.83Ghz, 12MB L2 cache
Quad-core Xeon X3350, 2.66Ghz, 12MB L2 cache
Quad-core Xeon X3320, 2.5Ghz, 6MB L2 cache
Dual-core Xeon E3110, 3.0Ghz, 6MB L2 cache

Holy cow, that's a whole lot of CPUs. While we've been expecting most of these parts for a while, thanks to leaked roadmaps and other info, its still quite exciting to see them all in the flesh. While the Core 2 Quad and Quad-core Xeon parts are delayed until later in the quarter (it seems that someone is hogging them all), the rest of these CPUs should be available later this month. Also, on the mobile side, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced during his CES keynote that the company's Menlow UMPC platform will be available in Q1 of this year and that devices using the platform will start showing up during the second quarter.

For the full details on the new chips:
- see this Ars Technica article

Intel announces mobile Penryns

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:59:58 -0500

We all saw it coming but it's still exciting to see Intel get official with their mobile Penryn lineup. At CES today, Intel announced 16 new 45nm Penryn CPUs--five of them mobile--as has been expected for some time. From the looks of it, the announcement is pretty much on par with the leaked info that we saw last month. Still, Intel has yet to provide specific info on the model numbers and clock speeds of the chips (hopefully we'll have that soon), though two of the mobile Penryns have since been confirmed in a Toshiba press release regarding upgraded laptops. For the time being, here are the earlier leaked details:

X9000 2.8 GHz, 44W, 6MB, $851
T9500 2.6 GHz, 35W, 6MB, $530
T9300* 2.5 GHz, 35W, 6MB, $316
T8300 2.4 GHz, 35W, 3MB, $241
T8100* 2.1 GHz, 35W, 3MB, $209

*Confirmed by Toshiba

Only the coming days will tell whether or not we're five-for-five on this one.

For more on the new Penryns:
- see this press release
- and this Engadget article