Intel builds software engine to shrink laptops and mobiles

By Phil Manchester [More by this author]

10th April 2008 17:28 GMT

Intel has given a glimpse of the software its building so mobile computers can detect and communicate with a variety of devices, reducing the size of machine you need to lug about.

Lester Memmott, a senior architect in Intel's software pathfinding and innovation group, has revealed the existence of an experimental context-aware computing engine that could provide the framework for this next generation of mobile devices and applications.

Memmott said his team has built a running prototype with a plug-in architecture that can accept data from a variety of different sources. The data schema is extensible so third-party developers can add further data sources. The context-aware computing engine prototype includes a data collection mechanism (called an aggregator) and a programmable analyzer that can take decisions based on the context data.

The idea is that if you walked into a coffee bar that has WiFi access and there's an HD screen then your mobile device could detect the screen and format data such as pictures to suit, and that you'd then be able to transmit and display these pictures.

ntel's so-called Carry Small, Live Large vision for mobile computing is built on context-aware concepts that have been developed during the last decade, and that it hopes will drive the idea of small yet powerful portable devices capable of working with keyboards, mice, audio systems, high-definition televisions and other external digital resources. Intel used last week's Intel Developers Forum in Shanghai, China, to describe CSLL.

Elsewhere, Intel is exploring a concept called Dynamic Composable Computing to enable mobile devices to link to available resources easily.

The big worry is that some folk might use this technology as a modern equivalent of the slide projector and bore us all stupid with their holiday snaps in bars and restaurants.

© The Register.

AMD makes big gains in graphics

By Tony Smith [More by this author]

7th April 2008 09:19 GMT

AMD did a rather better job of selling graphics chips in Q4 2007 than it did in the previous quarter. But then so did its arch rival, Intel, market watcher Jon Peddie Research said last week.

According to JPR's latest figures, AMD took 22.8 per cent of GPU sales in Q4 2007, up 3.7 percentage points from 19.1 per cent in Q3. AMD's share of the market was just over half of what Intel achieved: 41.1 per cent, up from 38 per cent in Q3.

The two chip makers' gains came partly at Nvidia's expense - its market share fell from Q3's 33.9 per cent to Q4's 31.8 per cent, a fall of just 2.1 percentage points - but mostly from the remaining top-five vendors: VIA and SiS.

Fifth-placed SiS saw is share fall from 2.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent quarter on quarter, but VIA took the biggest hit, falling from a Q3 share of 6.63 per cent to just 2.3 per cent in Q4.

Nvidia's share dip marks a slight pause in an upward trajectory that saw it pass AMD in Q3 2006 and, a year later, come within striking range of Intel's lead. Indeed, in Q4, it pretty much matched Intel's share of desktop graphics, both firms taking around 37.1 per cent of the market.

ntel continued to dominate the mobile GPU arena, though AMD took second place, knocking Nvidia into the number-three slot, a space the latter hasn't occupied since Q1 2007.

The top-three vendors all saw their shipments rise quarter on quarter, but both VIA and SiS experienced a dip in shipments, JPR's numbers show.

The graphics market as a whole saw shipments rise 8.7 per cent to 106.37m units.

© The Register.

AMD vs. Intel: power efficiency in the server room rests on RAM

Late last year, AMD responded to Intel's "Clovertown" Xeon launch by touting the differences between the power efficiencies of platforms based on its Opteron versus those based on Intel's dual-core "Woodcrest" Xeons. AMD did not (and still doesn't) have a quad-core answer to Clovertown, so the company played to its strengths by (rightly) emphasizing the performance per watt of Opteron-based systems viewed as a whole. Tech Report was one site that looked into AMD's claims and found that in spite of Intel's clear lead over AMD in CPU performance per watt, AMD's server platform has a substantial lead over Intel's when it comes to system-level power efficiency under certain significant types of load conditions. What this means is that when power is measured at the wall socket instead of at the processor socket, Opteron systems can give better performance per watt than Woodcrest systems.
full article

Intel v. AMD: The joy of blood feuds

Intel v. AMD: The joy of blood feuds - CNN Money
"Since servers are where the most money (and industry glory) is made in the processor business, this was a very big deal. Meanwhile, Intel embarked on a painstaking process of imitation and by last year, after much internal Sturm und Drang, the company concocted product that matched much of what AMD achieved with Opteron. "

AMD: The Lies About Power Consumption Start Here

With Intel doing the same thing for ages this story shouldn't even have been printed and your LIE shouldn't have been told. Talk about irresponsible reporting. As long as we know BOTH TDP and ACP numbers who cares? Intel has been lying about theirs with avg numbers for years (I'm reminded of the stink of Dell Optiplex SFF machines with P4's above 2.4ghz...LOL. Presshots anyone?). Why is it a story when AMD does the same?


As you can see they sound like they're saying it's about time AMD did this. They even say they like it but don't care because they'd test the chips themselves any way. Which is exactly what all review sites should do. They call it "justifiable". "This move may be controversial, but personally, I think it's probably justifiable given the power draw profiles we've seen from Opterons." Is there a problem with them wanting to be compared accurately to their rival? Most websites totally leave out the differences between Intel's TDP version and AMD's. What you get is AMD's are higher and must suck. I'm not saying they're better than Intel (I just bought a core2 myself a few months back thanks to 1.8's running at 3ghz on air so easily - and mine runs cool even without my koolance...LOL) but review sites have been doing this for ages. I don't blame them for wanting to fix this problem especially with their profits tanked. They should have done this 4 years ago. Instead their stupid marketing dept decided it was best to tell people the max TDP of any cpu that they might not ever produce in a particular product family. When they said 89w for A64's a few revs back it was for the whole family. Don't tell me you think a X2 3800+ is the same as a X2 5400+. Yet all of these were quoted at 89w. Look at Anand's chart here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

All AM2 chips show 89w. I've always thought they were stupid for allowing this. Review sites didn't help by making people believe they put off 89w. Usually forgetting to say it's so far off its ridiculous. AMD shot themselves in the foot by starting this MAX crap NOT by fixing it now. Why is it a LIE to tell the truth about their cpus? It's quite clear they LIED before by saying they were all 89w when they were really more like 40-89w. My old 3800x2 was cold with retail heatsink at 2.4ghz (400mhz oc per core, no heat). Their marketing dept should be fired. YES (and Ruiz too...Bring back Jerry!). But AMD correcting their marketing mistakes should not be attacked. Your previous story was the equivalent of me saying I saw you murder someone and I get you convicted with no proof. The following day (after the damage is done for anyone who doesn't come back to read a correction story) DNA proves you innocent and you get off. Don't I owe someone an apology here? You called them outright liars in the title. You even stated in the article that it may be a mistake in their docs. Isn't liar a bit conclusive knowing you might be completely off base? Is tomorrows article going to be called "The LIES START WITH DAILYTECH!"??? BTW core2 rocks and AMD is getting KILLED. Fanboys from both sides can just jump off a cliff :) That doesn't change the fact that AMD is having their chops busted for nothing here.

K10 Family ACP and TDP
Processor	TDP Whitepaper 1	TDP Whitepaper 2	ACP Whitepaper 1	ACP Whitepaper 2*
Quad-core AMD Opteron SE	120 W	137 W	105 W	105 W*
Quad-core AMD Opteron	95 W	115 W	75 W	75 W*
Quad-core AMD Opteron HE	68 W	79 W	55 W	55 W*

Look at those numbers closely. The first thing to notice is that TDP measurements are significantly higher than ACP. When AMD compared its power consumption figures to Intel's TDP, ACP measurements significantly underestimate power consumption. TDP differed between the two versions of the white paper by as much as 20 W, which is a 21% increase in the case of the quad-core Opteron. AMD did not increased its ACP estimates, emphasized in bold, despite the TDP increase.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13176
Read "The nuts and bolts of the quad-core Opterons" section.

Intel With Core 2 Duo At 3.3Ghz - Great Overclocker

Great Overclocker
Intel has won this round of the processor wars, but does not want to sit down and watch AMD. Instead, Intel has made up its mind that its going to continue to hammer (... pun intended) at AMD with better processors. Intel will be releasing a 45nm based Core 2 Duo working at 3.33Ghz on the codename-Wolfdale architecture in the next few weeks. Intel already has these in production and you can expect these sometime in Q2 2008.

The model number for these processors is E8600 and will have a total cache of 6MB. These processors will be manufactured on 45nm and are likely to have a TDP of 65W, which is something of an achievement considering these are 3.3Ghz processors. A 65W TDP ensures that there is enough potential for this processor to overclock and the processor won't mind a little more heat that overclocking causes.

By the looks of it, the E8600 is expected to be a good buy since Intel is pricing it lower than the quad-cores. Intel will also be releasing a few mainstream quad cores in March and hence the E8600 will have great price-performance ratio. AMD is going to struggle again to sell its Phenom Tri-Core and Quad-Core chips in Q2 with the E8600 around!!

AMD gives unreleased Opteron 2352 to Isohunt

AMD is about to release its bug-free quad-core processors in a few days and has been providing these unreleased processors to a few people for testing. Among the people who received these is http://isohunt.com. Isohunt.com is thanking AMD for providing it with pre-released processors for testing and has "2 pre-production engineering samples" of the Opteron 2352.

Isohunt is supposed to have installed these processors on their primary database servers and have been running them without any problems. The TLB bug which affected the previous Opteron 2350 has been a major headache for AMD and thus has caused delays in production of these chips. The Opteron 2352 runs at 2.1Ghz and has an L2 cache of 2MB.

Isohunt has been on the target of a lot of piracy talk and MPAA and RIAA have already tried their FUD stunts with these guys. Isohunt is a very busy P2P site with a lot of traffic on its torrent trackers. Thus, it seems like a nice place to test your processors in the real-world applications. AMD has given its processors to a nice place and hopefully AMD will work faster in the future.

A yahoo store is selling it at $650 at the moment (but I'm wondering how??)

The CPU Specs as listed by isohunt.com is as below:

Processor:	0
Vendor_id:	AuthenticAMD
CPU family:	16
Model:	2
Model name:	Quad-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2352
Stepping:	2
CPU Mhz:	2100.089
Cache size:	512 KB
Physical id:	0
Siblings:	4
Core id:	0
CPU Cores:	4
FPU:	yes
FPU_execution:	yes
CPUid level:	5
wp:	yes
Flags:	fpu, vme, de, pse, tsc, msr, pae, mce, cx8, apic, sep, mtrr, pge, mca, cmov, pat, pse36, clflush, mmx, fxsr, sse, sse2, ht, syscall, nx, mmxext, fxsr_opt, rdtscp, lm, 3dnowext, 3dnow, constant_tsc, pni, monitor, cx16, lahf_lm, cmp_legacy, svm, cr8_legacy
Bogomips:	4209.90
TLB size	1024 4K pages
Clflush size:	64
Cache_alignment:	64
Address sizes:	48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Power management:	ts ttp tm stc [6] [7] [8]

AMD Releases Browser & Media Player

What is AMD LIVE!

The AMD LIVE!™ brand represents a suite of products, software, and services that offer a simple and secure way to access, manage and share entertainment experiences virtually anytime, anywhere.

At the heart of any AMD LIVE! entertainment system is an AMD LIVE! PC. These powerful computers are built with multi-core processors and state-of-the-art graphics capabilities for rich entertainment experiences. All the power you need to fill your home with HD movies and all the music you love. Plus unique features that help you store, stream, protect, and safely access your content when you hit the road.

AMD which is known for making processors has released a set of software tools for its Live platform. The AMD Live is the product package from AMD to sell multimedia computers with software that can enable you to bring the computer to the living room. Intel also has a similar product and is called the ViiV. Don't they rhyme well!!

Today, AMD released a new piece of software known as AMD Live Explorer which is a software package built over Vista components. AMD will be shipping it free of cost along with its CPUs and Live machines. AMD recommends Phenom processors, but I'm sure you just need an AMD Live PC.

The AMD Live Explorer is a software suite with Image gallery, Web browsing (using IE7 engine), Audio player (using WMP 11) and TV viewing. AMD Live Explorer is actually a UI over the Vista software components. I liked the look of the interface overall, especially the 3D video (just like the NorthFace demo which Microsoft had shown before Vista launch) and the video rendering was pretty good. It is in the beta testing and hence AMD asks users to give feedback for the software.

Download the beta of AMD Live Explorer from here.

Download the demo video which AMD created.

The AMD LIVE!™ brand represents a suite of products, software, and services that offer a simple and secure way to access, manage and share entertainment experiences virtually anytime, anywhere.

At the heart of any AMD LIVE! entertainment system is an AMD LIVE! PC. These powerful computers are built with multi-core processors and state-of-the-art graphics capabilities for rich entertainment experiences. All the power you need to fill your home with HD movies and all the music you love. Plus unique features that help you store, stream, protect, and safely access your content when you hit the road.

Intel To Release Hex-Core Processors

According to Maureen O'Gara from sys-con.com, it seems that Intel is all set to release a processor with Six cores. Yes, you heard me right...six. I think Intel understands that if AMD can start making tri-cores then may be six cores isn't a very bad idea.

The six core or hexacore processor goes by the codename "Dunnington" and has been designed at the Intel Design Center at Bangalore. It is a successor to the Harpertown processors of the Xeon-line of server processors from Intel. It is again supposed to be a sandwich of 3-dies, but this time its 3 dual-core processors that have been stitched together. The cores are sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Like other Penryns, Dunnington still uses a front-side bus. Dunnington is supposed to come at different clock speeds, with a total power consumption of less than 120W.

Intel will be releasing these just before the Nehalem are out and should be an interesting development. AMD on the other hand is just struggling with speed of the processors as well as the manufacturing and releasing of its products. Intel seems to be double of whatever AMD wants to do. AMD Tricore Vs Intel HexaCore.

AMD Working With Intel

As odd it may seem, the story holds ground and is one of the useful steps for the Centrino 2 platform of notebooks. Fuad Abazovic of Fudzilla claims that AMD is working hard with Intel to develop switchable graphics in future Centrino laptops. AMD is doing this in the notebooks with Puma and wants to have similar technology in notebooks with Intel chips and ATI/AMD graphic cards.

The thing about switchable graphics is that when your laptop is connected to the power unit or had good battery, it will use the graphics card. When the battery is low, it will switch to the onboard graphics. This will save power and make your battery life increase a little. Its generally close to 5-10% improvement, we heard the last time. But for the dying moments of laptop battery, I have experienced that you always remember the important work.

If you look at the image above, you'll see that the plus sign is red, just like red-cross... That's because it's one of the good things being done on the battlefield between Intel and AMD. This news makes you think how bitter rivals AMD and Intel are working together?? But actually its ATI which is working with Intel and I'm sure AMD has told its engineers not to look, talk, have lunch or discuss anything with Intel engineers. They just make faces when they meet and exchange some white documents with each other... Infact, news is that some even show the "middle-finger" to each other :))