Besides the server-class 3.46GHz Xeon 5690 six-core LGA 1366 CPU and other Xeon and Core i7 processor choices, the 17-inch laptops include top-of-the line Nvidia Quadro, Nvidia GeForce, and ATI Radeon dedicated vdieo cards, up to 24GB of DDR3 memory, and up to 4 hard drives.

The machines start at more than $2,500 US dollars.

Source

According to the report, the chip maker is going to release this year (in Q2 and later) the eight-core AMD FX8000, six-core AMD FX6000, and quad-core AMD FX4000, all designed for use in desktops.

Also, AMD A-series “Llano” accelerated processing units (APUs) are expected to be released in early July.

x-Bit Labs | Image

Intel has released the new dual-core Sandy-Bridge processors for desktops and laptops. The lineup includes the Core i3-2100, Core i3-2100T, Core i3-2120, and Core i5-2390T desktop CPUs, and Core i5-2520M, i5-2540M, Core i7-2620M, Core i7-2629M, i7-2649M, Core i5-2537M, Core i7-2617M and i7-2657M for laptops.

Source

Intel is going to release next year the 22nm Ivy Bridge platform, which includes Maho Bay platform for desktops and its Chief River laptop counterpart.

via Source

Intel has announced the Core i7-990X six-core Extreme Edition CPU for the ultimate desktop PC enthusiasts. Their 32nm top-of-the line processor is clocked at 3.46GHz (up to 3.73GHz using TurboBoost) and uses the LGA1366 socket platform. It has 12MB of cache.

The Core i7-990x is priced at around $1,000 (Amazon).

via Intel’s Ultimate Desktop Processor Keeps Getting Better.

Source

“Athlon 64 X2 4000+, the 4200+ and the X2 4400+ will all have their prices cut. Earlier on Aug 6th, AMD has released dual-core Opteron 8222, 2222, 1222 at 3GHz/95W and Opteron 8224 SE, 2224 SE at 3.2GHz/119W and cut some of the older Opteron models prices,” the report says.

The Inquirer | VR-Zone

The new platform, codenamed Caneland, will feature four processor sockets, each able to support the companys latest quad-core chips. The systems were first demonstrated in October last year.

Source

“The Isaiah core engineering codename CN will replace VIAs Esther processor architecture, which was introduced in 2004,” Digitimes said.

Isaiah features a 64-bit architecture and will be manufactured on a 65nm process, as compared to 90nm for Esther. Other features include a V4 Bus speed of 1333MHz, up from 800MHz previously, and support for ECC error checking and correction memory and virtualization technology. The L2 Cache will also increase to 1MB from 128KB previously.

Source

Currently, AMD’s highest-end desktop processor is the Athlon 64 X2 6000. However, with its performance unable to match Intel’s upcoming Core 2 Duo E6850, AMD plans to launch the new 6400 to cover up the gap in the market, noted the DigiTimes’ sources.

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TechSpot website has reviewed the E2140 and E2160 processors.

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“Leslie Sobon – Director, Desktop Business, AMD provided us some updates on Phenom today. According to her, there is no special meaning for G, S and L. G stands for Premium where Phenom X4 will compete against Kentsfield and Phenom X2 will compete against Conroe. S stands for Intermediate while Athlon 64 X2 will compete against the Intel Pentium 2000 series. As such, there will be AMD Phenom X4 GP-7xxx, Phenom X2 GS-6xxx, Athlon X2 LS-2xxx and Sempron LS-1XXX. She mentioned that there will be both Socket 1207+ as well as Socket AM2+ Phenom FX for more platform versatility and the FX series will retain back their model naming eg. AMD Phenom FX-xx,” the report says.

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AMD Sempron 2100+ is compatible with the recently announced AMD M690T chipset, used in notebook computers. It has “the high shock and vibration specification Socket S1, offering high reliability for ruggedized computing,” AMD claims.

The chip maker also introduced 32-bit AMD Geode LX 800 @ 0.9W processor with extended temperature support.

AMD

“The industry’s only true quad-core client processors are expected to deliver the ultimate visual experience, especially when paired with AMD’s new DirectX 10 ATI Radeon HD 2000 series. AMD expects true quad-core and dual-core AMD Phenom-based desktop systems will ship in the second half of 2007,” the chip maker announced today.

AMD Phenom processors will be virtualization-ready and energy efficient and will feature resources like an integrated DDR2 memory controller, HyperTransport technology links, and 128-bit Floating Point Units, for improved speed and performance in floating point calculations.

“With the true quad-core design offered by the upcoming AMD Phenom processors, cores communicate on the die rather than through a front side bus external to the processor – a bottleneck inherent in other products that are packaging two dual-core chips to form quad-core processors. Additionally, AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture on-chip ensures that all four cores have optimum access to the integrated memory controller and integrated HyperTransport links, so that performance scales well with the number of cores. This design is also highlighted by a unique shared L3 cache for quicker data access and Socket AM2 and Socket AM2+ infrastructure compatibility to enable a seamless upgrade path.

“AMD’s quad-core processor rollout will put more computing horsepower at PC users’ fingertips,” observed Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight 64. “Quad-core innovations come at a time when many users are finding that the combination of Microsoft Vista™, multi-threaded applications and DirectX 10 no longer delivers the crisp performance they experienced on last year’s fastest systems running last year’s software. The AMD Phenom processor’s ability to deliver significantly more performance within the same power and thermal envelopes as its dual-core antecedents should make this quad-core processor a fitting follow-on to earlier AMD dual-core processor offerings,” the Company explains.

AMD

The major notebook makers have already released the first “Santa Rosa” notebooks. Intel expects the release of more than 230 Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro processor technology-based designs from PC manufacturers, resellers and integrators around the world to be released this year.

The refreshed lineup of Core 2 Duo laptop processors now include T7100, T7300, T7500 and T7700 models, designed for 965 Mobile chipsets.

Intel’s Press Release

Regarding desktop-use CPUs, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 has fallen in price to US$530 while CPUs in the Core 2 Duo E6X00-series have been cut by up to 40%. Intel has also cut the price of the Core 2 Duo E4300 from US$163 to US$113, as well as of the Pentium D 935, 925, 915 and 820 processors for 37%, 35%, 12% and 6% respectively.

Pricing for the Quad Core Xeon X3220 has fallen by 38% from US$851 to US$530 while the X3210 has been cut from US$690 to US$423. Prices for the select dual core Xeon processors have also been reduced by between 40% and 9%.

DigiTimes

The E6320 and E6420 are clocked at 1.86 GHz and 2.13 GHz and are priced at $173 and $197 at NewEgg, respectively. Both CPUs have 4MB of L2 cache and 1066 MHz front side bus speed.

The older Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 processors have the same specifications and prices as their Core 2 Duo E6320 and E6420 counterparts, except E6x00 units have smaller L2 cache of 2MB.

NewEgg: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 1.86GHz LGA 775 Processor

NewEgg: Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor

Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 is clocked at 2GHz and features 2MB of L2 cache, as well as 800MHz front side bus. Currently, it is best priced at NewEgg, where it costs $145.

The E4300 “Allendale” at 1.8GHz costs $125 at NewEgg.

Newegg.com – Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 Allendale – Retail

“The new Barcelona projections are based on the latest SPECcpu2006 benchmarks and show that AMD expects to have up to a 50 percent advantage in floating point performance and 20 percent in integer performance over the competition’s highest-performing quad-core processor at the same frequency”, AMD says.

AMD Opteron 2222 SE and AMD Opteron 8222 SE are priced at $873 and $2,149 respectively in 1000-unit tray quantities for direct AMD customers. Both new Socket F (1207) Opterons are clocked at 3GHz and feature 2MB of L2 cache, as well as 119.2 wattage. The 2222 SE model is designed for two-way systems, while the 8222 SE model is made for use in for four- and eight-way servers.

The “Barcelona’s” results, as well as the latest benchmark tests, based on AMD Opteron Model 2222 and 8222 SE processors can be found at www.amd.com/opteronperformance.

AMD

“At the moment quad core only exists on top end machines, which proportionately account for a small part of the market. However by 2009 the firm expects the processors to be common in a much larger number of cheaper machines machines. By the third quarter of 2007 the firm predicts that quad cores will appear in five per cent of mainstream desktops, increasing to reach 18 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 49 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009,” PC Retail Magazine reports.

Notebook quad core chips aren’t predicted to be part of mainstream until 2010, though they may emerge in higher price points by late 2009, reportedly.

www.pcretailmag.com

“Little is known of Skulltrail, other than it will be a dual-socket, dual-core platform due later in the year. Rival AMD has already disclosed the Quad FX (also known as “4X4″), a dual-socket platform that can hold AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 processors. Intel executives declined to comment further,” the report says.

Daily Tech says Skulltrail will sport four PCIe slots for graphics expansion.

Intel also said that it plans “hardware support” for DirectX 10 graphics, most likely the creation of an integrated or possibly standalone DX10 graphics chip, reportedly.

PC Magazine | Daily Tech

There are also expected increases of about 15 percent for imaging-related applications and 25 percent for 3-D rendering, as well as more than 40 percent faster video encoding with Intel SSE4 optimized video encoders.

“The indicators were based on pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel quad core processor running at 3.33 GHz with a 1333 MHz front side bus (FSB) and 12MB cache versus an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 introduced last week at 2.93 GHz with 1066 FSB and 8MB cache,” Intel’s press release says.

For high-performance computing (HPC) and workstation systems, senior vice present and general manager of the Digital Enterprise Group Pat Gelsinger, who provided performance indicators for “Penryn”, said to expect gains up to an estimated 45 percent for bandwidth intensive applications and a 25 percent increase for servers using Java.

These indicators for server and workstation-use “Penryn” processors were derived from pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors with 1600 MHz front side bus for workstation and HPC, and a 1333 MHz front side bus for servers versus today’s quad-core Intel Xeon X5355 processors.

Intel has announced earlier it will begin producing its next-generation “Penryn” family of processors in the second half of this year.

AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-66 has 512KB of L2 cache per core and supports DDR2-800 dual channel memory, while its thermal design power (TDP) remains at 35W.

HKEPC’ sources say that four of the existing 90nm Turion X2 will start fabricating in 65nm.

“They include: Turion64 X2 TL-64 (2.2GHz/512KB L2 x 2/35W TDP), TL-60 (2.0GHz/512KB L2 x2/31W TDP), TL-58 (1.9GHz/512KB L2 x2/31W TDP), and TL-56 (1.8GHz/512KB L2 x2/31W TDP). Besides the change in fabrication process, these models also feature an upgrade to DDR2-800 dual channel memory module support and a lower TDP at 31W,” the report says.

The fastest CPU in Turion line is currently the TL-60 with 2GHz clock speed.

HKEPC

“PC makers such as AOpen, Sony and Shuttle have used mobile on desktop (MoDT) platforms to create small form factor systems targeted primarily at noise or space sensitive environments, such as SOHO and living room PC markets. However, these systems have found difficulty in expanding sales in to the wider desktop market due to higher costs, lower performance, and lower expansion options compared to traditional desktop systems,” the report says.

According to sources, Intel will launch Santa Rosa supporting Intel T7000-series processors, which support higher 800MHz FSB speeds, in the first week of May. These will carry the processor numbers T7100, T7300, T7500 and T7700 and have 1000-unit tray quantities prices ranging from US$209 to US$530.

Digi Times

“Several products have also been discontinued including the socket AM2-based Athlon 64 FX-64, and the socket 754-based Sempron 3400+ and 3000+. Under the newly published list, socket 754 has been phased-out, while only three socket 939 units remain suggesting that this architecture will also be discontinued soon,” the report says.

You can read the table of price cuts here, and the official AMD processor pricing here.

DailyTech reports the Core 2 Extreme QX6800 is priced at $1199, but after Q3’07 price cuts will cost $999.

DailyTech

The U7600 is clocked at 1.2 GHz, while the U7500 runs at 1.06 GHz. Both have 2MB of L2 cache and a 533 MHz front-side bus, as well as TDP (thermal design power) of 10 watts.

Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 and U7500, which belong to are designed for use in ultra-portable notebooks and tablets, as well as in ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) devices.

Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs

The 2222 SE model is designed for two-way systems, while the 8222 SE model is made for use in for four- and eight-way servers.

According to AMD, benchmark tests show that Opteron 2222 SE and Opteron 8222 SE outperform corresponding Intel’s Xeon processors.

E Week

“Six Penryn family processors, including dual and quad-core desktop processors and a dual core mobile processor are all under the Intel Core processor brand name as well as new dual and quad-core server processors under the Intel Xeon processor brand name. A processor for higher-end server multiprocessing systems is also under development,” Corporation says.

Intel’s Press Release | Super-efficient Core 2 chips coming this year News – PC Advisor | heise online – Intel CPU with integrated graphics core

“With the introduction of Core 2 Duo E6x50-series processors, the entire Intel Core 2 Duo desktop lineup will fall below the $300 price point. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 takes the top spot of Intel’s Core 2 Duo lineup at $266 per processor, in 1,000 unit quantities. Intel clocks the Core 2 Duo E6850 at 3.0 GHz, higher than last year’s flagship Core 2 Extreme X6800 and it costs a fraction of the X6800’s $999 launch price,” the report says.

DailyTech

“Pentium E2160 (1.8GHz/1MB L2/800MHz FSB) and Pentium E2140 (1.6GHz/.1MB L2/800MHz FSB) will be the replacement of Pentium D 935 and Pentium D 925. The prices setting for this two are $84 and $74. Besides, the prices setting for Celeron D 440(2GHz/512KB L2/800MHz FSB) and Celeron D 430 (1.8GHz/512KB L2/800MHz FSB) are $59 and $49 respectively. According to the testing result from the market, either one could provide a better performance than Celeron 360 running at 3.6 GHz, especially for gaming purpose,” the report says.

“The technology AMD demonstrated today is just one example of how the ‘New’ AMD is changing the game for our industry,” said Dave Orton, executive vice president of visual media business at AMD. “Today, teraflop computing capability is largely reserved for the supercomputing space. But now that “Teraflop-in-a-Box” is a reality, AMD can deliver an order of magnitude increase in performance”, the Corporation says.

Platforms based on the same technology found in the “Teraflop-in-a-Box” demonstration should benefit a wide range of scientific and commercial applications, including energy, financial, environmental, medical, scientific, defense and security organizations around the world by equipping them with the intensive computing power they require to conduct research and deliver solutions significantly faster than previously possible.

The “flops” is an acronym meaning Floating Point Operations Per Second, a measure of a computer’s ability to perform floating point calculations. A teraflop is one trillion floating point operations per second. Stream processing technology helps raise the bar in this regard by leveraging sophisticated, massively parallel processors, generally used for 3D graphics applications, to solve real-world problems.

AMD’s presented platform is the response to Intel’s recent demonstration of CPU delivering Teraflop – or trillions of calculations per second – performance for future PCs and servers.

AMD

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU has 2.2GHz clock speed and 512KB L2 cache. The Athlon 64 3800+ is at 2.4GHz with also 512KB L2 cache. Both new 64-bit processors are with 2000MHz HyperTransport bus and are made for socket AM2.

The dual-core Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is a 64-bit processor at 3.0GHz with 2MB of total dedicated L2 cache, and has 2000MHz HyperTransport bus. It uses socket AM2.

AMD also added the Athlon 64 4000+ single-core processor to its pricing list. It is made using 90nm technology and features 64-bit ability, 2.6GHz clock speed, 512KB of L2 cache, 2000MHz HyperTransport bus and socket AM2 interface. It is priced at $102.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6400 (2.13GHz/1066FSB/2x4MB), Pentium dual-core E2160 (1.8GHz/800FSB/1MB) at $84 and E2140 (1.6GHz/800FSB/1MB) at $74 will be available in June.

The Intel Celeron 4xx family based on Conroe-L has a new addition of the cheapest Celeron 420 model (1.6GHz/800FSB/512KB) at $39 along with 430 (1.8GHz/800FSB/512KB) at $49, Celeron 440 (2GHz/800FSB/512KB) at $59 during June.

VR-Zone

The price cuts published on company’s website begin with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+, currently the top-end processor in the range, falling in price from US$505 to US$326, while the next highest model, the 5400+ is reduced from US$485 to US$267. The 5200+ and the two versions of the 5000+ (based on 90nm and 65nm processes) each see their prices cut by US$63, from US$295 to US$232 for the 5200+ and from US$285 to US$222 for both 5000+ models. Continuing further down the series prices fall in the range of US$14 to US$33, DigiTimes’ report says.

Additionally, two single-core models, the Athlon 64 3800+ and 3500+, have also been reduced slightly by US$8 and US$3 respectively. Also AMD has added a new low-end single-core model, the Athlon 64 3200+, which runs at a speed of 2GHz, at a cost of US$78 in both socket 939 and AM2 variations.

A recently as January 22, AMD announced similar cuts for its lower-end desktop models, and on February 7 the company slashed prices for its Opteron series server-targeted processors.

DigiTimes

The 80-core chip is claimed to be not much larger than the size of a finger nail while consuming only 62 watts – less than many single-core processors today. This is the result of the company’s ‘Tera-scale computing’ research aimed at delivering Teraflop – or trillions of calculations per second – performance for future PCs and servers.

“Tera-scale performance, and the ability to move terabytes of data, will play a pivotal role in future computers with ubiquitous access to the Internet by powering new applications for education and collaboration, as well as enabling the rise of high-definition entertainment on PCs, servers and handheld devices. For example, artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games, multimedia data mining and real-time speech recognition – once deemed as science fiction in Star Trek shows – could become everyday realities,” Intel says.

Intel has no plans to bring this exact chip designed with floating point cores to market. However, the company’s Tera-scale research is instrumental in investigating new innovations in individual or specialized processor or core functions, the types of chip-to-chip and chip-to-computer interconnects required to best move data and most importantly, how software will need to be designed to best leverage multiple processor cores. This Teraflop research chip offered specific insights in new silicon design methodologies, high-bandwidth interconnects and energy management approaches.

The Teraflop chip also features a mesh-like “network-on-a-chip” architecture allowing super high bandwidth communications between the cores, and capable of moving Terabits of data per second inside the chip. The research also investigated methods to power cores on and off independently, so only the ones needed to complete a task are used, providing more energy efficiency.

Further Tera-scale research will focus on the addition of 3-D stacked memory to the chip as well as developing more sophisticated research prototypes with many general-purpose Intel Architecture-based cores. Today, the Intel Tera-scale Computing Research Program has over 100 projects underway that explore other architectural, software and system design challenges, according to chip manufacturer.

Contrary to Intel’s concept of chip with large number of identical cores, AMD’s plans include Accelerated Processing Units, the multi-core chips that include a mix of processor cores and other dedicated cores. The dedicated cores could be used for separate physics processing or audio/video encoding for example. According to the reports, APUs may bring specific tailored processors in the future, such as office, gaming or CAD CPUs.

“AMD has expanded the breadth of its low-power solutions with AMD Opteron processor Models 1218 HE (socket AM2), 2218 HE and 8218 HE (both for socket F). Designed to offer industry-leading performance-per-watt at only 68-watt maximum thermal design power, these processors are ideal for energy-conscious customers looking to reduce power and cooling bills and to achieve greater density in the datacenter,” the company’s press release says.

Top-performing AMD Opteron processor Models 2220 and 8220 (both for socket F) at 2.8 GHz and with 2MB of L2 cache are now immediately available in the 95-watt maximum thermal design power. These new processors, along with socket AM2 Opteron Model 1220, also at 2.8GHz with 2MB of L2 cache, are designed to offer leading-edge performance-per-watt and price-performance for mainstream server and workstation customers, according to AMD.

It is announced that all of the new processors feature AMD PowerNow! technology which is designed for reduced system level energy consumption, with multiple levels of lower clock speed and voltage states that can reduce processor power consumption by as much as 75 percent during idle times.

AMD says the latest Opteron processors will complement and are designed to enable a seamless upgrade path to AMD’s native quad-core processors, codenamed “Barcelona”.

“These (Barcelona) processors are expected to feature substantial core enhancements in mid-2007 and to offer a 40-percent performance advantage over the competition’s quad-core offerings, all based on the same infrastructure and thermal envelopes customers depend on today,” AMD announced.

The Opterons designed for datacenters – the 1218 HE, 2218 HE and 8218 HE are priced at $432, $611 and $1,340 respectively. The mainstream server and workstation-use Opteron 2220 and 8220 cost $698 and $1,514. Model 1220 has $545 price tag.

The “energy efficient” AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane chip is produced using the 65nm technology.

The new CPU is designed for AMD’s socket AM2 and provides 2000MHz HyperTransport bus, according to the processors’ price list.

The 3600+ is already available at NewEgg.com with price of $115, but it must be purchased as a combo with BIOSTAR’s TFORCE 550 motherboard.

Link to NewEgg: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ 1.9GHz Socket AM2 Processor

Intel’s plans says that the first Core 2 Extreme CPU for mobile computers will be the X7800. It is clocked at 2.6GHz, has 4MB of L2 cache and a 800MHz FSB. The 64-bit capable X7800 will feature overclocking capabilities.

Another forthcoming CPU in the code-named Merom XE series will be the X7900. It has the same specifications as X7800 except the clock speed of 2.8GHz. Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 will be launched in Q4 2007.

Intel X7800 and X7900 processors, featuring socket P, are designed for use with company’s next generation laptop PC platform, code-named Santa Rosa.

The price for one thousand of Core 2 Extreme X7800 processors will be $795 per unit, the HKEPC reports.

HKEPC (in Chinese)

The breakthrough technology will be inside the next generation Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon families of multi-core processors. The company also said it has five early-version products up and running – the first of fifteen 45nm processor products planned from Intel.

Intel will use a new material with a property called high-k, for the transistor gate dielectric, and a new combination of metal materials for the transistor gate electrode.

“The implementation of high-k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s,” said Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore.

Intel explains that transistors are tiny switches that process the ones and zeroes of the digital world. The gate turns the transistor on and off and the gate dielectric is an insulator underneath it that separates it from the channel where current flows. The combination of the metal gates and the high-k gate dielectric leads to transistors with very low current leakage and record high performance.

The new AMD’s 64-bit dual core CPU, clocked at 3GHz, has a price tag of $599. Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is made for use with socket AM2 motherboards and has 1MB of L2 cache per core.

Cooling device is not included in price.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is the company’s second personal computer-use processor with 3GHz speed after Athlon 64 FX-74, which is sold in pairs for use in socket F Quad FX PCs.

More info & buy: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz Socket AM2 Processor

“Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) took an early lead against rival Intel Corp. in the 64-bit mobile computer market last year. However new data released today shows that Intel grabbed the lead in December, becoming the top 64-bit CPU provider in only four months,” the report says.

Intel Core 2 Duo mobile CPU took the 64-bit lead with a 24 percent market share compared to AMD’s Turion 64 X2 chips with a 20 percent, IBT reports according to Current Analysis market researcher’s data.

“Its is expected that growth of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor will continue in 2007 with the recent announcement of Intel’s addition of 802.11n wireless cards to its products lines and the slow but increasing awareness of 64-bit computing and the availability of 64-bit versions of the upcoming Vista operating system,” Current Analysis researcher Hans Casto noted.

International Business Times