Intel Archive

Moore's Law, as chip manufacturers generally refer to it today, is coming to an end, according to a recent research paper.

Moore's Law is alive and well, but Intel is changing its basic semiconductor recipes to make sure that it stays that way.

"A computer chip designed to run more than one operating system at a time could break Microsoft's stranglehold on PC software. Plans for the chip were announced last week by Intel, the world's largest maker of processor chips." Codenamed Vanderpool, this is sure to be high on everyone's wish list. I look forward to playing with Fedora Core, Panther, Zeta, and Longhorn -- all at the same time! Read more at NewScientist.

Intel is working on hardware to facilitate instant-on capability for PCs. It works on the same principle as the saved state functionality that OS vendors have used to eliminate the lengthy boot-up that PC users hate, but in hardware. What's really interesting about their work is that this saved state will not only work when the user shuts down the system properly, but will work even after a power outage. This has interesting application in the server space too, and eliminating the boot-up would help reduce downtime after a UPS failure, for example.

Intel on Monday released a pair of Itanium 2 processors designed for rack-mounted servers and clusters as it attempts to expand the chip family's reach. On other hardware releases, Apple released faster iMacs, bigger iPods.

With 35 years of success under its belt, Intel needs to figure out how to diversify & create new markets.

In the Windows 2003 SP1 beta, Intel says it will offer a preview of the 32-bit execution layer that will cause the Itanium 2 processors to run x86 applications at the full clockspeed rating of the processor. For example, the 1.5-GHz Itanium 2 "Madison" processors launched this week would offer that clockspeed to 32-bit applications, as well. Until now, the inability of the Itanium Family processors to run 32-bit applications without a large performance penalty has been a major shortcoming of Intel's 64-bit Itanium line that has negatively affected industry adoption.

The third member of the Itanium chip family is the company's best shot to date at taking on Sun and IBM in the market for high-end server chips. With Madison, Intel is hoping the third time's a charm. Update: Red Hat announces support for the latest Intel Itanium 2 processor.

Intel will release software later this year designed to dramatically improve how well its Itanium chips run programs written for its Pentium or Xeon processors, CNET News.com has learned.

Processors with Hyper-Threading technology can improve the performance of applications by permitting a single processor to process data as if it were two processors by executing instructions from different threads in parallel rather than serially. However, the potential performance improvement can be only obtained if an application is multithreaded by parallelization techniques. This article presents the multithreaded code generation and optimization techniques developed for the Intel C++/Fortran compiler. We conduct the performance study of two multimedia applications parallelized with OpenMP pragmas and compiled with the Intel compiler on the Hyper-Threading (HT) technology enabled Intel single-processor and multi-processor systems.

Hyperthreading moves into hyperspeed throughout 2003, with the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets forming the backbone of Intel's desktop roadmap. According to Intel roadmaps seen by ExtremeTech, Intel's desktop processors will extend up to and possibly beyond 3.6-GHz by the beginning of 2004, with Celerons cresting 2.5-GHz by the same timeframe. Await soon an article regarding hyperthreading, here on OSNews.

Intel's recent announcement that it will start shipping motherboards with built-in 802.11b sparked an interesting question in a ZD Net article: is this a sign that Intel has realized that most people don't need faster processors? If demand for 3 and 4 GHz processors is going to be mild, then the logical step for Intel is to move into other areas, like building more stuff onto the motherboard.

The Pentium 4-based Prescott processor, due in the second half of 2003, will be manufactured using 90-nanometre production technology and carry 13 new instructions aimed at specific applications including media and games. Debuting at 3.4GHz, Prescott will also carry improvements in hyperthreading and an 800MHz bus. Prescott will also feature larger caches and be scalable to 4 to 5 GHz. Intel vice president for mlogic technology development, Joe Schutz, said the company plans to be hitting the 15 to 20 GHz mark by 2010.

"Intel Corp. on Wednesday is releasing a Linux version of its technology designed to enable software developers to better analyze and optimize their applications. Using the Intel VTune Performance Analyzer 1.0 for Linux, developers should be able to determine how to get the most out of their Linux applications using Intel's Pentium 4 and Xeon chips, according to the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker." Read the short story at eWeek.