Home
Intel

A lot of little Phi coprocessors lightens the load

Subject: General Tech | August 31, 2012 - 02:43 PM |
Tagged: Intel, xeon, Xeon Phi, hot chips, larrabee

The Xeon Phi is not Larrabee but it does give a chance to remind people that Intel did at one time swear we would be seeing huge results from a lot of strung together Pentium chips.  Nor is Many Integrated Cores the same as AMD's Magny-cours, although you can be forgiven if that thought popped into your head.  Instead the Xeon Phi is a co-processor that will have 50 or more 512-bit SIMD architecture based processors, each with 512KB of Level 2 cache.  These cores are comparatively slow on their own but have been designed to spread tasks over dozens of cores for parallel processing to make up for the lack of individual power.  Intel sees Phi as a way to create HPC servers which will be physically smaller than one based solely on traditional Xeon based servers as well as being more efficient.  There is still a lot more we need to learn about these chips; until then you can check out The Inquirer's article on Intel's answer to NVIDIA and AMD's HPC cards.

Xeon_Phi_PCIe_Card.jpg

"CHIPMAKER Intel revealed some architectural details of its upcoming Xeon Phi accelerator at the Hotchips conference, saying that the chip will feature 512-bit SIMD units."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: The Inquirer

Podcast #216 - GTX 660Ti Roundup, AMD Steamroller Details, Multi GPU Graphics Card Rumors and more!

Subject: General Tech | August 30, 2012 - 04:22 PM |
Tagged: zotac, Steamroller, ssd, revodrive, podcast, ocz, msi, MARS III, Intel, galaxy, evga, asus, arm, ARES II, amd, 7990, 690, 660ti

PC Perspective Podcast #216 - 08/30/2012

Join us this week as we talk about our GTX 660Ti Roundup, AMD Steamroller Details, Multi GPU Graphics Card Rumors and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 1:01:56

Program Schedule:

  1. Introduction
  2. PCPer moving to pcper.com/live
  3. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  4. http://pcper.com/podcast
  5. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:02:15 GeForce GTX 660 Ti Roundup
    2. 0:16:00 AMD Steamroller details from HotChips
    3. 0:27:30 ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A Review
  2. 0:29:45 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:30:25 EVGA 1500 watt power supply
    2. 0:34:30 Powercolor HD 7990 Devil 13 graphics card
    3. 0:37:26 AMD releases FX-4130 and lowers prices
    4. 0:39:24 Synology refreshes DiskStation
    5. 0:40:50 ASUS MARS III GTX 680 - dreamers only
    6. 0:43:17 EVGA Mini ITX Z77 motherboard
    7. 0:45:15 NVIDIA shows Unreal Engine 3 on Tegra 3
  4. Closing:
    1. 0:51:11 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2
      2. Jeremy: Something to vie for your upgrade budget
      3. Josh: Can never have enough space
      4. Allyn: Kingston HyperX Genesis 32GB DDR3 1600
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro

 

Source: PC Perspective

Wireless Charging Technology – One Step Closer to Reality

Subject: General Tech, Mobile | August 29, 2012 - 07:44 PM |
Tagged: wireless power, wireless charging, wireless, Intel, Integrated Device Technology, charging

The wireless transfer of power, in order to recharge your mobile devices has been something that has fascinated the staff at PC Perspective for a while now.  You can get toothbrushes which charge via inductance and even as far back as 2010 there were projects underway to allow cellphones to recharge without needing a wire and more importantly without needing the correct plug!  More recently, the Wireless Power Consortium was a presenter at CES 2012, where they showed Matt their Qi, a coil-based charging solution capable of delivering up to 5W at a distance of 5mm, not enough to charge your phone in pocket but certainly reasonable for a charging mat.  They are working on a 10W model and hope to extend it up to 120W which would be enough to power a low end PC.  

Today Intel released information on their long standing wireless power technology and their new development partner, Integrated Device Technology, Inc.  They intend to develop this technology on chipsets, so that a cellphone placed next to an Ultrabook would begin to wirelessly recharge without input from you.  One assumes that this would not apply to a system running off of a critical battery, though the idea of being able to drain power from an unsuspecting user could lead to some interesting pranks.   Check the full release below.

Picture2-300x204.jpg

Even Captain Kirk would have raised an eyebrow at the prospect of wireless charging on board the Enterprise, and he probably would have given Scotty a raise! But today it’s a step closer to reality for all of us not zipping around the universe at warp speed. Demoed by Intel Labs for the first time way back in 2008, Wireless Charging Technology (WCT) by Intel literally lets you charge your smartphone wirelessly from your notebook PC. That’s right — no cables, no power cords. Of course Intel is no stranger to wireless technologies, launching Centrino mobile technology nearly a decade ago. Imagine a coffee shop without Wifi today?

Today Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT) – a technology company with specialized expertise in wireless charging - announced it will develop and deliver chipsets for Wireless Charging Technology by Intel. IDT’s product is important and new because it leads to a solution that isn’t limited to inductive charging and ‘smartphone on a charging mat’ usage. Size and cost reductions are key to IDT’s solution, as is their differentiated “resonance wireless charging technology” that simplifies the way the PC charges the phone wirelessly. Intel is working with companies like IDT, peripheral vendors (from smartphone cases to printers and cameras), OEMs, and other ecosystem partners to deliver a cost-effective and simpler path to wireless charging.

Although we are not yet giving out timeframes for consumer products with WCT enabled, IDT has stated they will be delivering their full chipset solution for reference design work in early 2013. The ecosystem is already excited about this technology so we assume there will be a race to the finish line for sure.

Imagine, for example, this wireless charging solution in an Ultrabook of the future. How would it work? You are low on juice on your phone — you simply start the WCT detection software and place the smartphone close to your Ultrabook (about an inch or so). Coupling takes place between the two devices and energy begins to seamlessly and wirelessly flow from the Ultrabook to the smartphone. Within an hour, you have recharged your smartphone sufficiently to make it through the afternoon. No more wires or chargers.

Intel will be discussing specific plans and timelines at a later date, so stay tuned for more details on this innovation that’s one step closer from the labs to your home.

 

Source: Intel

Check out the how your CPU will change your gaming experience

Subject: General Tech | August 29, 2012 - 06:25 PM |
Tagged: xfx, Intel, hd 7950, gaming, amd

The Tech Report wanted to explore the effect that modern CPUs have on your gaming experience and so they took an XFX Radeon HD 7950 Double Dissipation 3GB with Catalyst 12.3 drivers and paired it with a variety of builds.  In order to cover the wide variety of processors available today, they built systems on five different motherboards with 8 different AMD chips and 11 different Intel processors.  Then, not only did they test the performance of these various systems while gaming, they also replicated some tests with a video transcoding task in the background to test their multitasking abilities.  You can skip to the end of the review and check out the price versus performance graphs but with all the work they put into it you should read the whole article.

TR_fx-socket.jpg

"We bring our signature latency-focused game testing methods to bear on the latest crop of desktop CPUs. In the process, we learn a some things and shatter a few popular myths."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

Source: The Tech Report

Podcast #215 - NVIDIA's GTX 660 Ti, MSI ZPower Z77 Motherboard, AMD GPU Price cuts and more!

Subject: General Tech | August 23, 2012 - 02:35 PM |
Tagged: Voodoo3, podcast, nvidia, Intel, HAF, coolermaster, amd, 7970, 7950, 660ti, 660

PC Perspective Podcast #215 - 08/23/2012

Join us this week as we talk about NVIDIA's GTX 660 Ti, MSI ZPower Z77 Motherboard, AMD GPU Price cuts and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout Josh Walrath, Allyn Malvantano and Steve Grever

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 0:53:31

Program Schedule:

  1. Introduction
  2. PCPer moving to pcper.com/live
  3. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  4. http://pcper.com/podcast
  5. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 00:01:45 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review
      1. Live Review Recap with Tom Petersen
    2. 0:15:00 Cooler Master HAF XM Case
    3. 0:16:00 Building a PC with Legacy Hardware
  2. 0:19:35 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:20:40 Hey, about OnLive...
    2. 0:22:10 Synaptics Touchpads and keyboards
    3. 0:25:30 Live Review Recap: MSI Z77 MPower
    4. 0:30:07 AMD Price cuts on GPUs yet again
    5. 0:34:00 Windows 8 upgrade pricing for OEM machines, $14.99
    6. 0:36:27 Catalyst 12.8
  4. Closing:
    1. 0:41:40 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: New Video Card!!
      2. Jeremy: What about $45, would you upgrade then?
      3. Josh: A Mumford and Sons box set
      4. Allyn: Give Windows 8 a shot
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro

 

Source: PC Perspective

Hot Chips is coming and IBM has already spilled its beans

Subject: General Tech | August 21, 2012 - 03:27 PM |
Tagged: IBM, power7+, Intel, amd, hot chips

While it doesn't get the news coverage that Intel and AMD's chips do, IBM's Power series has been with us for a while and they seem really excited about the new Power7+ chip that they are about to drop.  They are so excited that they didn't even wait for the Hot Chips conference where many manufacturers will be revealing their new silicon.  For instance, the new chip will carry 32MB of L3 cache, AES and SHA-2 acceleration and models running from a modest 4 cores at 3GHz, a 4GHz 8 core model and a possible 4 core model topping 5GHz if The Register got their maths right.  Check it all out here; with more likely to come at Hot Chips next week.

elreg_ibm_power_roadmap_circa_2011.jpg

"The Hot Chips 24 conference hosted by Stanford University is next week, and IBM, Oracle, Advanced Micro Devices, Fujitsu, and Intel are expected to talk tech relating to just-announced or impending processors. But Big Blue seems unable to contain its enthusiasm for the Power7+ chip that it will talk about alongside its next-generation zNext processors for its System z mainframes."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: The Register

Intel's new HD2500 on Linux

Subject: Processors | August 20, 2012 - 04:07 PM |
Tagged: linux, Ivy Bridge, Intel, i5-3470, hd 2500

The new Ivy Bridge processors introduced a new member of Intel's graphics processor called the HD 2500, which has received less than positive reviews as the previous HD 3000 outperforms it.  However those tests were for Windows applications and games, whereas the testing at Phoronix specifically pertains to the performance under Linux.  They compare the i5-2400S, i5-2500K, i5-3470, and i7-3770K together in a series of benchmarks to not only test the performance but also their compatibility with Linux.  It seems that perhaps the performance of the HD3000 and HD2500 are much closer in Linux than they were running under Windows, though both still lose out to the HD4000.

PH_linux_3740.jpg

"Since the launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors earlier this year there have been many benchmarks of the Intel Core i7 3770K with its integrated HD 4000 graphics and then more recently have been Linux testing of the Intel Core i7 3517UE from the CompuLab Intense-PC and Intel Core i7-3615QM as found on the Apple Retina MacBook Pro. The newest Intel Ivy Bridge chip to play with at Phoronix is the Intel Core i5 3470, which bears an Intel HD 2500 graphics core. In this article are benchmarks of the Intel HD 2500 Ivy Bridge graphics with the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

Source: Phoronix

Podcast #214 - 2 GTX 670 Cards, AMD's HD 7950 with Boost, Microsoft Surface rumors and more!

Subject: General Tech | August 16, 2012 - 06:39 PM |
Tagged: powertune, podcast, Intel, HD7950, gtx 670, amd, 7950, 670, 660ti

PC Perspective Podcast #214 - 08/16/2012

Join us this week as we talk about two GTX 670 Cards, AMD's HD 7950 with Boost, Microsoft Surface rumors and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath and Allyn Malventanto

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 1:06:12

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:01:45 AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB Boost Review
    2. 0:15:30 MSI GeForce GTX 670 Power Edition
    3. 0:24:55 Galaxy GeForce GTX 670 GC 4GB
    4. 0:28:10 Samsung Series 5-550 Chromebook Review
  2. 0:29:34 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:32:30 MS Surface to be $200??
      1. Lenovo Thinkpad/Ideapad Windows 8 Pro and RT tablets
    2. 0:37:30 Corsair Acquires Raptor Gaming
    3. 0:39:30 NVIDIA Fiscal reports
    4. 0:44:00 Random videos:
      1. UT2004 LAN Party
      2. Crytek 3 Tech Demo
    5. 0:47:50 GTX 660 Ti shows up for sale at CompUSA
    6. 0:49:00 Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Core SoC. ARM Cortex A15 CPU and ARM Mali T604 GPU
    7. 0:51:20 Intel RST Windows 8 compatibility
  4. Closing:
    1. 0:53:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: Diamond VStream Wirless USB to HDMI
      2. Jeremy: Wireless power for the price of a penny
      3. Josh: 512 GB SSD for cheeeeeap. Or sorta cheap.
      4. Allyn: iPazzPort 2.4GHz Mini Wireless Fly Air Mouse Keyboard with IR Remote
      5. Tim: Skydrive UI rehaul
      6. Scott: FEDEX tracking info sucks...
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper and http://twitter.com/joshdwalrath
  4. Quakecon coverage at pcper.com/workshop. Hope to see you there!
  5. Closing/outro

Source: PC Perspective

Intel's take on the all-in-one PC

Subject: Systems | August 13, 2012 - 05:13 PM |
Tagged: SFF, mini-itx, Intel, DH61AG, all-in-one

Intel's thin Mini-ITX is the same length and width as a regular mini-ITX board at 6.7" x 6.7" but it sports a thinner port cluster and horizontally stacked SO-DIMM memory slots to allow it to slip into a smaller place, perfect for an all-in-one build.  That is why when you look at the system you will be hard pressed to see the case, as the motherboard is built right into the monitor.  Unlike some other all-in-one systems, this one is user serviceable and to an extent is also upgradeable.  If you are wondering how it performs then all you have to do is check out The Tech Report and all will be revealed.

TR_inside-bare2.jpg

"Today, we're going to be spending some quality time with an all-in-one PC based on Intel's Thin Mini-ITX standard. The individual parts are all available at retail, and the resulting machine is slim, slick, and surprisingly straightforward to put together."

Here are some more Systems articles from around the web:

Systems

Source: The Tech Report

Intel brings skulls back to the motherboard with the DZ77GA-70K

Subject: Motherboards | August 13, 2012 - 04:26 PM |
Tagged: lga 1155, Intel, DZ77GA-70K

The DZ77GA-70K is not exactly the rebirth of Intel's SkullTrail series but it certainly does bear similar branding.  Instead it is a high end Z77 based board which features integral Bluetooth and WiFi, 8 USB 3.0 ports, three PCIe 3.0 16x slots, a pair of PCIe 1x slots and even two PCI slots.  [H]ard|OCP liked the UEFI BIOS that Intel has included, though they feel it is lacking in the overclocking settings you would expect from an 'Extreme Motherboard'.  They have only good things to say about the stability of the board, so if you need a rock solid system with a lot of expansion capabilities more than you need a good overclocker, this might be the board for you.

H_dz77ga-70k.jpg

"We'll be taking a look at one of Intel's motherboards today, specifically the Intel DZ77GA-70K which is part of its Extreme Motherboard series. How can you tell it's an extreme motherboard? Why it has a skull on it of course! All kidding aside there is more to the DZ77GA-70K than just marketing."

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

Source: [H]ard|OCP

PC Perspective
Upcoming Events
  • 5/22 @ 7:00pm PDT / 10:00pm EDT
    PC Perspective Podcast
  • 5/23 @ 6:00pm PDT / 9:00pm EDT
    This Week in Computer Hardware