Intel Revives Centrino Brand Name for Montevina platform

Intel

Intel is planning to rename its brand name for the upcoming notebook Montevina platform to Centrino 2 in order to clear up confusion for consumers, according to sources at notebook makers.This new platform will be launched at Computex 08 which will be held in June in Taipei.

This new launch will mark the transition of Intel’s notebook processors to a 45nm platform, with the launch of 6 new CPUs all running at a 1066 MHz FSB. The core-speeds for each of these processors will range from 2.0 GHz to 3.06 Ghz. These will be further followed up by the release of an astonishing, seven SFF (small form factor) 45nm processors similar to the one that have been used in the Macbook Air.

source:digitimes 

Intel, STM Delivers innovative memory technology

Intel-ST

Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics reached a key industry milestone today as they began shipping prototype samples of a future product using a new, innovative memory technology called Phase Change Memory (PCM). The prototypes are the first functional silicon to be delivered to customers for evaluation, bringing the technology one step closer to adoption.

The memory device, codenamed “Alverstone” uses PCM, a promising new memory technology providing very fast read and write speeds at lower power than conventional flash, and allows for bit alterability normally seen in RAM. PCM has long been a topic of discussion for research and development, and with “Alverstone,” Intel and STMicroelectronics are helping to move the technology into the marketplace.

“This is the most significant non-volatile memory advancement in 40 years,” said Ed Doller, chief technology officer-designate of Numonyx, the new name for the pending STMicroelectronics and Intel flash memory company. “There have been plenty of attempts to find and develop new non-volatile memory technologies, yet of all the concepts, PCM provides the most compelling solution – and Intel and STMicroelectronics are delivering PCM into the hands of customers today. This is an important milestone for the industry and for our companies.”

The technology is still experimental, but the companies marked another step in its evolution, delivering samples of the new chips to device makers. Proponents say that phase-change memory (PCM) is more reliable than flash memory, and that it will offer faster data transfer speeds and be more durable.

source:intel 

Intel Unveils Silverthorne

Intel Silverthorne processor

Intel will offer a first look at technical details of its low-power Silverthorne processor during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this week, setting the stage for a concerted push into the market for ultraportable devices.

“This is the first detailed technical presentation on Silverthorne,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer and director of the company’s Corporate Technology Group.

Silverthorne is the first x86 chip designed by Intel specifically for small, portable computers. Until now, the company has taken older processors originally designed for notebooks and adapted them for use in portable devices. For example, Intel’s existing A100 and A110 processors designed for these devices are based on the Celeron M chip.

Intel’s ISSCC presentation on Silverthorne was anticipated. The conference program contained a presentation abstract that described an unnamed 45-nanometer, low-power Intel processor designed for mobile Internet devices. That description is the same that Intel used to describe Silverthorne, although the company earlier declined to confirm or deny if the chip was in fact Silverthorne.

Unlike other processors in Intel’s current product line, Silverthorne uses an in-order processor design, akin to a factory with a single assembly line capable of processing one operation at a time. The chip is the first in-order processor released by Intel since it began shipping the Pentium Pro in 1995. Other Intel processors use an out-of-order design.

Out-of-order chips work like a factory with multiple assembly lines. They can process several operations at the same time and generally offer better performance than in-order processors. Silverthorne will make up some of this difference by using Hyperthreading, a technology that allows the processor to work on two instruction threads at the same time.

Using an in-order design for Silverthorne struck the best balance between performance and power efficiency, Intel said. But don’t expect Silverthorne to match the performance available from Intel’s mobile Core 2 processors, even though Silverthorne consumes less power. The performance of the new chips will be roughly equivalent to the Pentium M processors found in the first version of Centrino, released in 2003, Rattner said.

Intel declined to comment on what clock speed Silverthorne will run at or how much power it will consume when it hits the market in the coming months. But the ISSCC program abstract said the chip will have 512K bytes of cache and use a 533MHz front-side bus.

Observers had expected Intel to offer dual-core and single-core versions of Silverthorne, but Rattner said Silverthorne will have one core.

Over the life of the Silverthorne processor, Intel expects to make a 2GHz chip available and plans to offer a version that consumes 1 watt, Intel said, suggesting these will not be features of the processors set for release in the months ahead.

When Silverthorne hits the market, it could face competition from Via Technologies’ Isaiah processor, a low-power chip that is set for release at around the same time and is designed for the same portable devices makers that are Silverthorne’s target market. Isaiah processors use an out-of-order design, a faster front-side bus, a twice as much cache, which could give the chips an edge over Silverthorne. But an accurate comparison of the two chips won’t be possible until they are released and can be benchmarked by independent observers.

Even if Isaiah outperforms Silverthorne, Via must still compete with Intel for orders and that may prove difficult.

Via is tiny by comparison to Intel and cannot offer the same level of support to its customers in terms of marketing muscle. Via will also need to keep Isaiah’s price relatively low to be competitive with Silverthorne, which is the smallest chip produced by Intel over the last 15 years or so.

“The 486 was a bit smaller,” Rattner said.

The small size of Silverthorne means Intel can produce 2,500 chips on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer. That keeps unit production costs low and will allow Intel to sell Silverthorne at a relatively low price, as well. It also means Intel can produce Silverthorne without diverting too many manufacturing resources from its flagship Core 2 and Xeon products.

source:pcworld 

Intel MacBook Air Chip on Offer

Intel-mac

Seems Apple’s recent launch of its ultra-thin “MacBook Air” has gotten other PC makers into a tizzy. They’ve obviously set themselves an agenda of coming up with a design as innovative if not more than the MacBook Air.

Especially so after Intel announced that its special Core 2 Duo chip — so far used only in the MacBook Air — will now be offered to the rest of the PC industry if interested. The company said that most of the technology used in this chip would become part of mainstream offerings after introduction of the Montevina platform later this year.

It’s now learnt that PC makers the likes of Lenovo and Fujitsu are already in the process of developing systems based on Intel’s special chip. While these laptops are expected to be available shortly, there’s no word on the specifications yet.

Meanwhile, in case of Lenovo’s existing ThinkPad notebooks and Fujitsu’s LifeBook notebooks, these typically deploy ultra-low voltage versions of Intel Core 2 Duo chips so as to fit into the tight spaces afforded by their ultra-portable designs. Intel’s special Core 2 Duo processor is expected to work around this problem and reduce the load on processing power.

Intel’s chip — that was designed on request by Apple while they were putting together a blueprint for their MacBook Air — fits into a package considerably smaller than the packages typically used by Intel in its notebook chips.

The chip is meant especially for notebooks of the ultra-portable (weighing less than 3 Pounds) variety, and consumes less power than Intel’s standard Core 2 Duo processor.

source:techtree 

High Speed NAND Flash Introduced

NAND

Yesterday, Intel Corp and Micron Technology unveiled a new high-speed NAND flash memory technology that can greatly enhance data access and transfer in devices that use Silicon for storage.

The technology is jointly developed by Intel and Micron, and manufactured by the companies’ NAND flash joint venture (JV), IM Flash Technologies (IMFT). It promises five times the speed of conventional NAND, allowing data to be transferred in a fraction of time for computing, video, photography, and other consumer applications.

he new high-speed NAND promises speeds up to 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) for reading data, and 100 megabytes per second for writing data — thanks to the new ONFI 2.0 specification and a four-plane architecture with higher clock speeds.

In comparison, conventional single level cell NAND is limited to speeds of just 40 megabytes per second for reading data and less than 20 megabytes per second for writing data.

Speaking at the occasion, Frankie Roohparvar, vice president (NAND Development) of Micron said the company looks forward to unlocking newer possibilities with high-speed NAND. That they are working with an ecosystem of key enablers and partners to build and optimize corresponding system technologies that take advantage of its improved performance capabilities.

Pete Hazen, director (Marketing) of Intel NAND Products Group, said the computing market is embracing NAND-based solutions to accelerate system performance through the use of caching and solid-state drives. At up to five times the performance over conventional NAND, the high speed NAND from Intel and Micron will enable new embedded solutions and removable solutions that take advantage of high-performance system interfaces, including PCIe and upcoming standards such as USB 3.0.

source:techtree 

Heat probs reported for Intel E8400s

Intel

A HEAP of heat problems with Intel’s E8400 microprocessor are being reported on a host of hardware forums.

Users are claiming that the sensor diodes aren’t up to scratch and that’s causing the overclockers to get overheated themselves.

That’s not something Intel is admitting. A response from an Intel techie to a user over at OC Forums claims it has nothing to report on sensor problems but that just seems to be adding fuel to an already crackling blaze.

A search on Saint Google reveals there’s plenty of heated discussion raising people’s temperatures around the world.

source:theinquirer