Intel may delay shipments of Ivy Bridge processors

Subject: Processors | February 16, 2012 - 03:47 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: Intel, Ivy Bridge, delay

Some unfortunate news is making the rounds today surrounding a potential delay of the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processor. A story over at Digitimes is reporting that due to an abundance of inventory on current generation Sandy Bridge parts, Intel will start to trickle out Ivy Bridge in early April but will hold off on the full shipments until after June.

If Intel is indeed delaying shipping Ivy Bridge it likely isn't due to pressure from AMD and with the announcement by top brass there it seems likely Intel will retain the performance lead on the CPU side of things from here on out. With the release of Windows 8 coming in the fall of 2012 Intel's partners (and Intel internally) are likely going to be using that as the primary jumping off point for the architecture transition.

If ever there was a reason to support AMD and competition in general, this is exactly that. Without pressure from a strong offering from the opposition Intel is free to adjust their product schedule based on internal financial reasons rather than external consumer forces. While we will still see some Ivy Bridge availability in April (according to Digitimes at least) in order to avoid a marketing disaster, it seems that the wide scale availability of the Intel design with processor graphics performance expected to be double that of Sandy Bridge won't be until the summer.

Source: Digitimes

Intel Haswell Processors To Launch In First Half of 2013

Subject: Processors | February 12, 2012 - 06:57 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: shark bay, Intel, haswell, cpu

Intel's Ivy Bridge processor, the upcoming "tick" in Intel's clock-esque world domination strategy, has yet to be released and we are already getting rumors and leaked information coming in about the "tock" that will be Ivy Bridge's successor in the 22nm Haswell processors (as part of the Shark Bay platform). Ivy Bridge processors will bring incremental performance improvements and lower power usage on the same 1155 socket that Sandy Bridge employs.

Haswell; however, will move to (yet another) socket LGA 1150 on the desktop, and will bring incremental improvements over Ivy Bridge. Improvements include much faster integrated processor graphics and the AVX2 instruction set. Unfortunately, Intel will be returning to an increased TDP (thermal design power) with Haswell compared to the lower TDP from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge.

According to Domain Haber, who claims to have gotten their hands on a leaked road map, Intel will be launching Ivy Bridge through the end of this year, and then will debut their Haswell processors in the first half of 2013. The alleged road map can be seen below.

What I found interesting about the road map is that there is no mention of an Ivy Bridge-E or Haswell-E processor. Instead, the current Sandy Bridge-E chips are shown occupying the high end and enthusiast segment through at least the first half of 2013 and the launch of Haswell. Whether enthusiasts will continue to choose the Sandy Bridge-E processors for that long will remain to be seen, however. Also strange is that, according to VR-Zone, Intel will have three tiers of integrated graphics performance with GT1, GT2, and GT3. They will then place the fastest graphics core in the mobile chips and leave the slower graphics cores in the desktop chips. Discrete cards are not dead yet, it seems (unless you're rocking an AMD APU of course).

Have you invested in a Sandy Bridge-E setup, or are you still holding onto an older chip to wait for the best performance upgrade for your money? If you have bought into SB-E, do you think it'll last you into 2013?

Source: VR-Zone

Podcast #188 - Featuring David Hewlett - White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers and more!

Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 04:08 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: wireless, whitespace, ssd, podcast, nvidia, mdt, intel 520, Intel, gpu, APU, amd

PC Perspective Podcast #188 - 02/09/2012

Join us this week as we talk about White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers 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 David Hewlett

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:44:27

Program Schedule:

Introduction
1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
http://pcper.com/podcast
http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
0:01:30 Introduction with David
1. Okay, seriously, how nerdy are you really?
2. What kind of hardware systems and specs do you have?
3. What games are you playing today?
0:13:25 AMD Processor and GPU Roadmaps Through 2013
0:28:30 Galaxy MDT GeForce GT 520 Graphics Card Review
0:32:00 Intel 520 Series SSD Full Review - SandForce on Steroids?
0:43:00 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
0:45:05 White Space Wireless Discussion
1. Links for reference: - Wikipedia, US Radio Spectrum Chart (2003),
0:56:00 Increased Hard Drive Write Speed and Density - Using Frickin' Lasers
1:02:00 An academic collaboration leads to a GPU/CPU collaboration
1:07:25 AMD shows 18mm thin reference ultrathin notebook based on Trinity
1:11:05 Tablets / Ultrabooks in Schools
1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577209142710109710.html
1:16:45 NVIDIA Kepler Graphics Cards Lineup Leak To Web
1:22:30 PC Perspective Office Tour - Feb 6th, 2012
1:26:40 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
1. Ryan: Just in time for Valentine's Day...
2. Jeremy: Now that's how you make a contest!
1. Josh: Just got one for the wife. For great justice.
2. Allyn: ioSafe SoloPRO
3. David: Samsung Flexible Displays
1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
http://pcper.com/podcast
http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
Closing

Source:

Collision alert! ARM, AMD and Intel are all headed for the same market

Subject: General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 12:07 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: arm, Intel, amd, atom, low power, cortex, Medfield, hondo

To revive an old buzzword some of you may have forgotten, ubiquitous computing is the current holy grail of the computing industry. If AMD, Intel, ARM and to a lesser extent NVIDIA, can get the market to prefer one of their low power processors over the competitions there is a lot of money to be made in the mobile market. The way that they are approaching the market is very different however. In Intel's case they pride themselves on the general computation power of their upcoming Medfield processor though that comes at the cost of power consumption and less graphics capabilities. AMD. like Intel, are trying to reduce the power consumption of their chips and though they lag behind in general CPU performance the graphics capabilities are generally considered superior.

Then there is ARM, which is striving to overcome its reputation of providing chips low in power, both electrically and computationally. Their latest Cortex processors are certainly display a vast improvement in performance compared to previous generations. The power consumption may have increased but not to the levels of consumption of the Intel and AMD chips. Intel and AMD need to continue lowering their power consumption without sacrificing power while ARM needs to increase performance without impacting the power consumption before anyone can be considered a clear winner. There is another consideration which DigiTimes points out; right now ARM is winning the price war which could be every bit as important as power consumption or computational power.

"While Intel and AMD have been making efforts to develop low power processors for use in smartphones and tablet PCs, they cannot compete with solutions from ARM in terms of price, according to notebook makers."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: DigiTimes

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em; Intel goes Sandforce

Subject: Storage | February 6, 2012 - 01:12 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ssd, SF-2281 controller, sandforce, Intel, 520 Cherryville, 25nm

While the Intel 320 Series did hold the top spot for quite a while it has been a while since Intel refreshed their SSD line and has fallen behind new controllers in performance. As of today that changes for the 520 Cherryville series has arrived and it is using none other than SandForce's SF-2281 controller. Using such a popular controller leaves Intel with a bit of a problem, how do they stand out in such a crowded market? One way that they have chosen is their home made 25nm synchronous NAND flash; Intel designs and fabs their own which gives them the opportunity to ensure the best flash chips make it into their drives. The other way they've chosen to differentiate themselves is with a 5-year warranty for owners of this new drive. Read how they did performance-wise at The Tech Report or else head straight to Al's review right here.

"Intel's newest solid-state drive pairs a SandForce controller with custom firmware and 25-nm NAND. We've tested the 60 and 240GB models to see how they fare against more than two dozen SSDs, hybrids, and mechanical drives."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: The Tech Report

Intel 520 Series SSD Full Review - SandForce on Steroids?

Author: Allyn Malventano

Date: February 6, 2012

Subject: Storage

Manufacturer: Intel

Tagged: ssd, series, sandforce, Intel, 520

Introduction, Specifications, and Packaging

Introduction

Today we take a look at Intel's newest 6Gb/sec SATA SSD - the 520 Series. This is the second non-Intel controller to appear in one of their products. The first was the Marvell controller, which appeared in the 510 Series last March. This time around, Intel has gone with SandForce. This should leave at least one SATA 6Gb/sec model to be released. Taylorsville is the code name for the next SATA 6Gb/sec native-Intel controller, which has been on their roadmap since mid-2010 but has yet to actually materialize. While Taylorsville development continues, Intel has stop-gapped the 6Gb/sec slot with the 510 and now the 520 Series. Intel seemingly worked wonders with the stock Marvell firmware, and while the Marvell controller was much improved over stock, it still lagged far behind other higher performing SATA 6Gb/sec solutions. The SandForce was one of the much more capable controllers eating the 510's lunch, but how much further could Intel improve upon the SandForce firmware?

I guess a good question to answer up front is - What took them so long?!?! The answer is a bit complicated. Intel has actually been working on getting the 520 out the door for over a year now. They had to start with the same base SandForce firmware but accomplish two things for their version to be successful:

Optimize to perform better than other equivalent SandForce models (from competitors).
Pass Intel's stringent validation testing.

They didn't say so directly, but I can only imagine Intel's process was plagued by multiple 'back to the drawing board' moments. Trying to one-up competition like OCZ can't be easy as they've been tweaking SandForce firmware since the very beginning. There's also those nasty bugs that would cause random BSOD's or even permanently brick the drive. Such failures have no place in an Intel SSD. Intel's upper limit for each SSD line is a 0.75% annual failure rate, and we've seen SandForce SSD's failing at a higher rate than that this past year.

With each tweak made, Intel would have to once again pass their drives through another round of full validation testing. This is no small task for Intel. As an example: It took Intel just a couple of weeks to recreate and correct the long-term performance issue I discovered back in 2009, but despite mounting pressure, they could not release the updated firmware until it had successfully passed their validation a full three months later. Intel takes this testing very seriously, and that's what leads people to trust their reliability.

Read on for the full review!

Podcast #187 - Our thoughts on Ultrabooks, the Radeon HD 7950, ASUS DirectCU GTX cards, and more!

Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 2, 2012 - 03:11 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, sandforce, radeon, podcast, patriot, nvidia, Intel, gtx, arm, amd, 7950

PC Perspective Podcast #187 - 02/02/2012

Join us this week as we talk about our thoughts on Ultrabooks, the Radeon HD 7950, ASUS DirectCU GTX cards, 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 Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 58:02

Program Schedule:

0:00:40 Introduction
1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
http://pcper.com/podcast
http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
0:01:20 Ultrabooks: Intel Knows What's Good For You
0:08:30 Patriot Pyro and Wildfire SSD Review - IMFT Async vs. Toshiba Toggle-mode Flash
0:14:20 AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB Graphics Card Review
0:25:50 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
0:26:38 Asus DirectCU II Roundup: ENGTX560, ENGTX570, and ENGTX580 Review
0:40:35 Raspberry Pi Linux Computer Will Have Fast GPU For The Price
0:44:20 If you thought Intel did well wait until you see ARM
0:47:00 AMD 7700 and 7800 Release Dates Leak To Web
0:51:20 Live Blog: AMD Financial Analyst Day
0:52:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
1. Ryan: Radeon HD 7950 Cards
2. Jeremy: I'm giddy as a schoolgirl, albeit a very mercenary one
1. Josh: And it is on sale! $770 off!
2. Allyn: Corsair Force 3 - very good pricing.
1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
http://pcper.com/podcast
http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
Closing

Source:

If 7 new Sandy Bridge processors arrive and Intel says nothing, does anyone know they exist?

Subject: General Tech | January 31, 2012 - 03:13 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: core i5, core i3, celeron, sandy bridge, Intel

With absolutely no fanfare, Intel has released seven new Sandy Bridge processors of which two lack a graphics core. Three quad-core Core i5 arrived, the Core i5-2550K is a normal chip running at 3.4GHz, while the i5-2380P and i5-2450P lack GPU cores; all are rated at a 95W TDP however so don't expect power savings from those two chips. On the low powered end the dual core Celeron B720 and single core B815 will both sport TDPs of 35W and for mobile users the Celeron 797 and 867 will both have a TDP of 17W. The Inquirer picked up this information from Intel's newly release price list; one which does not feature a single drop in the price of a CPU.

"CHIPMAKER Intel has quietly released seven Sandy Bridge processors, with two of the chips not having built-in graphics cores.

Intel's Sandy Bridge range is already packed but that didn't stop Chipzilla from releasing seven chips, three of which are branded as Core i5 and two featuring a new 'P' suffix. According to our man at Intel the suffix denotes chips that do not come with Intel's integrated graphics core."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: The Inquirer

Intel Adds Seven New Sandy Bridge Processors To Their Lineup

Subject: Processors | January 31, 2012 - 01:01 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: sandy bridge, Quick Sync, P-series, Intel, i5-2550K

According to this article over at Anandtech, Intel has rather quietly launched seven new processors based on their Sandy Bridge architecture. The most interesting aspect about the new CPUs is not new features or more performance. Rather, it is the lack of features that caught my attention as three of the new additions will not have a functional graphics core.

The three processors without useable IGPs have a "P" moniker in there names which has been stated by VR-Zone to mean that they do not have a graphics core. On the positive side of things, the processors are a bit cheaper than their counterparts with functional GPUs. Such a SKU would compliment P67 motherboards that would not allow users to use the Quick Sync technology with a discrete card present anyway.

The new processors include three Core i5 Sandy Bridge desktop processors and four mobile Celeron chips. On the desktop side of things, we have the new i5-2550K quad core CPU with 6 MB of cache running at 3.4 GHz and a $225 tray price while the i5 2500K MSRP remains at $216 and runs at 3.30 GHz. VR-Zone further reported that this new "K" model would be unlocked but was also one of the three processors that would not have a functional graphics core. Moving down the performance line, the i5 2450P is a quad core part running at 3.2 GHz for $195 and provides a $10 cheaper alternative to the current multiplier locked i5 2500. Last up is the i5 2450P, which will be the IGP-less alternative to the i5 2400 at $184. This part is also a quad core; however, it is only clocked at 3.1 GHz and will sell for $177.

The new Intel Celeron chips are all mobile parts and include two standard voltage and two ultra low voltage (ULV) processors. The Celeron M B815 is a dual core chip running at 1.6 GHz for $86 and the Celeron M B720 is a single core CPU running at 1.7 GHz for $70. The ULV processors are the Celeron M ULV 867 and ULV 797. The ULV 867 is a dual core part at 1.3 GHz for $134 while the ULV 797 is a single core part running at 1.4 GHz for $107.

Are you still running a P67 motherboard interested in eschewing Intel's Quick Sync in a Z68 board for a bit more stock performance and a cheaper price? I think that these new "P" series chips will be something that OEMs will like though I think enthusiast interest will depend on what kind of overclocking headroom they end up having as they aren't all that much cheaper than their current graphics core packing counterparts.

Source: Anandtech

A 71 CPU 2011 round up (the year, not the socket)

Subject: Processors | January 30, 2012 - 04:51 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Intel, amd, sandybridge, llano, bulldozer, Sandy Bridge E

If you are looking for a quick way to contrast the processors that were released this year then iXBT Labs has a review for you. They've added their CPU/APU reviews for the past year together and compiled some rather lengthy charts which reflect the comparative performance of a few older chips as well as the majority of chips released this year. Both Intel and AMD desktop and server chips are included, mobile users will need to look elsewhere to compare chips designed specifically for laptops. Their benchmarks range from 3D modelling to 3D gaming as well as compression, office suites and raster graphics processing so no matter what purpose you will be putting these chips to you should be able to get an idea what chips to be on the look out for.

Told you it was big, visit iXBT Labs if you want the readable version.

"The year 2011 has ended, so it's high time to sum up the results and see the general picture. If you're looking to upgrade, we hope this will make choosing a processor easier."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

Source: iXBT Labs

Subject: Processors | February 16, 2012 - 03:47 PM | Ryan Shrout Tagged: Intel, Ivy Bridge, delay

Subject: Processors | February 12, 2012 - 06:57 PM | Tim Verry Tagged: shark bay, Intel, haswell, cpu

Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 04:08 PM | Ken Addison Tagged: wireless, whitespace, ssd, podcast, nvidia, mdt, intel 520, Intel, gpu, APU, amd

Subject: General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 12:07 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom Tagged: arm, Intel, amd, atom, low power, cortex, Medfield, hondo

Subject: Storage | February 6, 2012 - 01:12 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom Tagged: ssd, SF-2281 controller, sandforce, Intel, 520 Cherryville, 25nm