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Category: wintel

Windows news related blogs

  • “Pine Trail”-Intel’s next Atom CPU revision

    In the netbook manufacturing and product development industry, the next big thing is always Intel’s rev of the CPU and chipset. Cue the entry of the Pine Trail CPU and it’s partner I/O Hub chip. Only just this year has Intel shown a willingness to combine functions onto the same processor die. I am very interested to see that the CPU is combining not just the Memory Controller as is the case the top of the line i7 CPU family. Talk about a weight reduction right? The original chipset consisted of no less than 3 processors a North Bridge and South Bridge along with the CPU. Now with the coming of the Pine Trail, it’s a big CPU/GPU/Memory combo and a single I/O hub. I’m hoping the power consumption improves and comes much closer to the proposed specs of the Android based netbooks that will use Smartphone CPUs like Motorola’s or ARM based System-on-Chip custom CPUs. If Intel can combine functions and get battery life for a 3-cell unit to average 8+ hours under even heavy CPU loads, then they will have truly accomplished something. I’m looking forward to the first products to market using the Intel N450, but don’t expect to see them until after Christmas of this year 2009.

    Atom CPU and chipset
    The Intel Atom

    It should use the technology behind Pineview and would be made built on a new, 45 nanometer design that merges the memory controller and graphics directly into the processor; accompanying it would be the new-generation Tiger Point chipset, which is needed for and takes advantage of the N450 design.

    From: MacNN|Electronista

  • More word on Larrabee, the i740 of new GPUs

    Remembering that the Intel Itanium was supposed to be a ground-breaking departure with the past, can Larrabee be all that and more for graphics? Itanium is still not what Intel had hoped. And poor early adopters are still buying new and vastly over-priced minor incremental revs of the same CPU architecture to this day. Given the delays (2011 is now the release date) and it’s size (650mm^2) how is Intel every going to make this project a success. It seems bound for the the Big Fail heap of the future as it bears uncanny resemblances to Itanium and the Intel i740 graphics architecture. The chips is far too big and the release date way to far into the future to keep up with developments at nVidia and AMD. They are not going to stand still waiting for the behemoth to release to manufacturing. I just don’t know how Larrabee is ever going to be successful. It took so long to release the i740, that the market for low end graphics GPUs had eroded to the point where Intel could only sell it for the measly price of $35 per card, and even then no one bought it.

    Larrabee GPU

    According to current known information, our source indicated that Larrabee may end up being quite a big chip–literally. In fact,we were informed that Larrabee may be close to 650mm square die, and to be produced at 45nm. “If those measurements are normalized to match Nvidia’s GT200 core, then Larrabee would be roughly 971mm squared,” said our source–hefty indeed. This is of course, an assumption that Intel will be producing Larrabee on a 45nm core.

    via Intel’s ‘Larrabee’ to Be “Huge” – Tom’s Hardware.