Intel to launch four new Core 2 Duos

INTEL plans to release four new Conroe based CPUs. It looks like it plans to do it on the 21st of January.

The slowest and cheapest one will be branded as E4300 is already listed by some European etailers. You can check it here. it sill run at 2x1.8 GHz will have 2 MB of cache memory, socket 775 and will cost $163 at launch. The faster E6400 will end up with 2 GH clock but we don’t have the price for this part.

Intel has two new parts branded as E6320 and E6420 - the only difference between these and the ones without 20s in the name is the cache size. The 20s one will feature 4MB of cache memory.

It doesn’t looks like Intel plans to release E6320 and E6420 before Q2 2007 but it has them on the list. Intel also dropped a product from the list. It was supposed to launch a E4200 clocked at 2x1.6 GHz but it changed its mind. It also decided to dropthe E6390 which was suppose to be 2.13 GHz part without VT marchitecture inside. A lot of changes in the last five weeks
Source:theinquirer

ASUS Unveils External Graphics Card

ASUS introduces the world's first external graphics card for notebook users

ASUS today introduced a dedicated external graphics card for laptops -- the XG Station. The XG Station is an external graphics card that allows laptop users to enjoy high end graphics performance while plugged in. As the XG Station is an external graphics it can be unplugged when portability is needed.

The XG Station connects to any notebook’s ExpressCard slot and provides a PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards. Since ASUS has opted to equip the XG Station with a standard PCI Express x16 slot, the station can be equipped with any PCI Express based graphics card: AMD, NVIDIA or even Matrox. ASUS launched the default XG Station with an NVIDIA 7900GS powered graphics card.

The XG Station is powered externally. A separate power brick plugs directly into the adaptor.

An integrated LCD display and control also grace the XG Station. The display is customizable and can display information such as frame rate, fan speed, GPU temperature and more while the control knob can change various settings of the XG Station such as the core and memory clocks.

Expect ASUS to release the XG Station in Q2'07 this year. Pricing of the XG Station is unknown at the moment.

The XG Station adaptor only interfaces with ExpressCard interfaces at the moment, but will work with with PCIe ExpressCard interfaces installed in a desktop PC.

POWER6, Intel's 80-core chip, and more at ISSCC '07

The program for the 2007 International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in early February is out, and Stephen Shankland over at CNET spotted it before I did. You might have seen his article a few days ago, so here's my own take on the program's highlights.

POWER6 and Cell

The short description for IBM's POWER6 session (quoted below) doesn't really tell us much about the processor that we didn't already know:

5.1 Design of the POWER6^TM Microprocessor

J. Friedrich, B. McCredie, N. James, B. Huott, B. Curran, E. Fluhr, G. Mittal, E. Chan, Y. Chan, D. Plass, S. Chu, H. Le, L. Clark, J. Ripley, S. Taylor1, J. Dilullo, M. Lanzerotti

The POWER6^TM microprocessor combines ultra-high frequency operation, aggressive power reduction, a highly scalable memory subsystem, and mainframe-like reliability, availability, and serviceability. The 341mm2 700M transistor dual-core microprocessor is fabricated in a 65nm SOI process with 10 levels of low-k copper interconnect. It operates at clock frequencies over 5GHz in high-performance applications, and consumes under 100W in power-sensitive applications.

This session will probably reveal long-awaited details of the POWER6 microarchitecture. We should finally be able to solve the long-standing riddle of how close POWER6 is to the POWER4/5/970 lineage, and how close it is to the PPE architecture that powers parts of Cell and the Xbox 360. We might also learn more about how IBM managed to combine a clock frequency north of 5GHz with such a low power envelope (100W in some applications) on a 65nm process.

Note that there are some implications here with respect to The Switch, but any musings about POWER6's apparently miraculously high clockspeed/watt ratio, Jobs' claims about reasons for moving to Intel, and what Jobs knew about POWER6 when he made the decision to switch are all academic at this point. This is especially true in light of what Bootcamp has done to the Mac vs. Windows switcher equation. Mac marketshare is up, and many current Windows users are now considering the Mac because if they decide they don't like OS X, they can always install Windows on the machine.

The program also contains a session on a new version of Cell that's clocked at 6GHz and fabbed on a 65nm process. High-performance computing buyers of Cell will be happy to have that options, but the impact on Sony is less clear. Basically, IBM could downclock this chip so that it runs at the same speed as the PS3's current processor, thereby saving on power consumption. This would make the PS3 cheaper, because you could get rid of some of the elaborate cooling apparatus.

Note that the same would be true of a 65nm Xbox 360 chip from IBM, though no such chip is mentioned in the program.

PA Semi to unveil 2GHz dual-core PowerPC chip at 25W max

Speaking of PowerPC and stunning clockspeed/watt numbers, PA Semi will host a session on their heavily anticipated dual-core 2GHz PowerPC chip. You may recall this chip from earlier reporting, as it was announced shortly after The Switch and it blew everyone's mind. The specs are worth repeating, because they're so out of control for a laptop-capable chip:

• Two 64-bit, superscalar, out-of-order PowerPC processor cores with Altivec/VMX
• Two DDR2 memory controllers (one per core!)
• 2MB shared L2 cache
• I/O unit that has support for: eight PCIe controllers, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet controllers, four Gigabit Ethernet controllers
• 65nm process
• 5-13 watts typical @ 2GHz, depending on the application

This looks like a great SoC, and it would've made for a fabulous Apple portable. Oh well; life goes on.

Anyway, this chip will probably see use in markets from embedded all the way up to HPC. With all of that per-chip I/O bandwidth and at 25W (max) a pop, you can go nuts ganging these together in a blade chassis.

(As with POWER6, David Kanter at RWT has the in-depth scoop on this chip, if you're looking for more details.)

Intel touts Terascale research chip, AMD opens up quad-core Opteron

When news of Intel's 80-core, floating-point-centric, "Terascale" prototype chip broke, it was pretty clear that this was a research project that wasn't intended for market anytime soon. I suppose the project is going well enough that Intel is doing a session at ISSSC on it, a fact that may up the likelihood of this thing becoming a reality.

For my part, I wonder if this has any relation to the whole Intel GPGPU skunkworks project that the Register has been on about recently. If Intel uses the Terascale chip's TSV (through silicon via) interconnect technology to stack a bunch of fast SRAM onto a cutting-edge GPU design, they may eat everyone's lunch.

On the AMD side of the fence, the quad-core Opteron gets its own session. Hopefully, AMD will release even more microarchitectural details on the new design, so that we can get a better sense of how it stacks up to Woodcrest.

Source: arstechnica.com

AMD’s next-generation Star supports DDR2-1066 & SSE4A

In the 4-year life time, AMD’s K8 processors have put AMD to its high. Not until the launch of Intel Core processors, these K8 processors were said to be the leader of performance. Of course, AMD is unwilling to pass the leading position to Intel. In the fore coming Q3 2007, AMD’s next-generation Star processors will be put into the market and fight with Intel’s Core. To prepare this war, besides the improvement of its microarchitecture, AMD is persuading JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) to put DDR2-1066 as the standard, letting the faster memory be officially supported in Star.

The new Star family includes quad-core Agena, mainstream dual-core Kuma, entry dual core Rana, and single-core Spica. In addition, the old K8 architecture has been renamed to Cities. The new Star microarchitecture has lots of improvements includes : Hyper-Transport 3.0 (from 2GT/s to 5.2GT/s), 32B Instruction Fetch, more precise Branch Prediction and Out-of-Order Load Execution, 4 Double Precision FLOPS/Cycle, Dual 128Bit SSE calculation, and Load per Cycle. At the same clock speed, the new microarchitecture would further push the performance to another high. It should be noted that AM2+ and AM2 is compatible to each other. For example, Altair can work in the existing Socket AM2 main board, the only need is BIOS upgrade. Yet Hyper-Transport will get only 2GHz in Socket AM2 main board as ver. 2.0. Furthermore, AM2+ main board is also designed to support AM3, according to AMD’s AM2r2 specification.

In the previous plan, AM3 processors with build-in DDR2/3 memory controller are the direct successor of the existing AM2 processors. Yet AMD has decided to postpone AM3 as they reviewed the market trend of DDR3 memory, estimated that DDR3 will only be put into common until 2009. The decision is good to both consumers and AMD, such that AMD can simplify its design to lower the cost as well as making more time to AMD to prepare the upcoming DDR3 era.

So far, JEDEC has only recognized DDR2-800 as the highest standard of DDR2, DDR3 would be the next-generation high-speed memory. Regarding with the memory performance, DDR2-800 seems too weak to compete with DDR3-1066 which supported by the upcoming Intel’s Beaelake platform. For this reason, AMD is persuading JEDEC to also put DDR2-1066 as the standard, letting the faster memory can be officially and natively supported in Star.

Regarding with the 48 SSE4 to be added into Intel’s next-generation 45nm products, AMD has announced last week that Star will have SSE4A, a derivative edition of SSE4 in which those Intel 64 instructions are not available. Instructions include graphic, video encoding, 3D calculation, multimedia related are all compatible in Star.

In the first quarter of its launch, AMD estimated that Star would share 10% of the total shipment for entry and above market. When single-core Rana is released in Q4 2007, this figure rise to a double of 20%; while in Q1 2008, Star would increase to 60%, crossing over with the old models.

Microsoft Offers One-Year Warranty for Xbox 360

When a new video game platform comes out, there are problems. Whether the issue is games freezing, sound problems, Internet connection or compatibility issues, gamers and consumers can spend hours sorting out these difficulties. Now, Microsoft appears to have taken a step in the right direction to lessen these issues for users of its Xbox 360. On Dec. 22, the Redmond, Wash., company announced that it will change the Xbox 360's warranty from 90 days to one year from the date of purchase in the U.S. and Canada.

By expanding its warranty offer from 90 days to one year, Microsoft will give its North American customers the same guarantees and hardware protection the company already offers to Xbox 360 users in other parts of the world.

Microsoft officials could not be immediately reached for comment about the announcement. The company has said that there have been ongoing issues and problems with some of the hardware used in the Xbox 360.

AMD's new 65-nanometer chips sip energy but trail Intel

Several reviews are in for Advanced Micro Devices' latest microprocessors, and while the new chips don't bridge the gap between AMD and Intel's latest chips, they do run cooler than the company's previous offerings.

AMD's 65-nanometer chips, which started to trickle out of its factories earlier this month, are basically just a smaller version of its dual-core 90-nanometer chips. AMD did not introduce any major new features to improve performance along with its 65-nanometer chips, but the new manufacturing technology does allow it to build chips that use less power and are smaller. Smaller chips mean that AMD can yield more working chips from the silicon wafers produced by its chipmaking equipment, helping to reduce the incremental cost of building a chip.

The new chips are rated for a thermal design power of 65 watts of power, according to a review by the Tech Report. That's the same number attached to Intel's Core 2 Duo chips, although the companies measure power consumption in slightly different ways. In a basic sense, it's the number that system builders should take into account for the processor when designing the cooling systems for their PCs.