Computex 2013: Intel Demos Baytrail Tablet, Haswell Ultrabook, Ivy Bridge Passive Tablet

Subject: Processors, Mobile | June 6, 2013 - 04:01 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: computex, computex 2013, Intel, haswell, Ivy Bridge, k900, Lenovo, baytrail, silvermont, ultrabook, acer, aspire s7

Intel had a host of new technologies to show off at Computex this year, starting of course with the Haswell processor launch.  Hopefully you have read our review of the Core i7-4770K LGA1150 CPU already but thanks to some video sent our way, we have other interesting bits to share.

Below you will see Intel demonstrating four new products.  First is the Acer Aspire S7 using a Haswell dual-core platform playing back 4K content.  Next up is an Ivy Bridge tablet that is running completely fanless (passive) thus generating no noise at all while still offering impressive CPU and graphics performance.  Intel then pulls a Lenovo K900 Android smartphone out of its pocket powered by the Clovertrail+ enabled Atom Z2580 SoC.  Finally, we get a sneak peak at the next-generation of SoC designs with a look at a Silvermont-based Baytrail tablet running at 2560x1440. 

Inspur Readies Tianhe-2 Supercomputer With 54 Petaflop Theoretical Peak Performance

Subject: Systems | June 3, 2013 - 09:27 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: Xeon Phi, tianhe-2, supercomputer, Ivy Bridge, HPC, China

A powerful new supercomputer constructed by Chinese company Inspur is currently in testing at the National University of Defense Technology. Called the Tianhe-2, the new supercomputer has 16,000 compute nodes and approximately 54 Petaflops of peak theoretical compute performance.
Destined for the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China, the open HPC platform will be used for education and research projects. The Tianhe-2 is composed of 125 racks with 128 compute nodes in each rack.

The compute nodes are broken down into two types: CPM and APU modules. One of each node type makes up a single compute board. The CPM module hosts four Intel Ivy Bridge processors, 128GB system memory, and a single Intel Xeon Phi accelerator card with 8GB of its own memory. Each APU module adds five Xeon Phi cards to every compute board. The compute boards (a CPM module + a APU module) contain two NICs that connect the various compute boards with Inspur's custom THExpress2 high bandwidth interconnects. Finally, the Tianhe-2 supercomputer will have access to 12.4 Petabytes of storage that is shared across all of the compute boards.

In all, the Tianhe-2 is powered by 32,000 Intel Ivy Bridge processors, 1.024 Petabytes of system memory (not counting Phi dedicated memory--which would make the total 1.404 PB), and 48,000 Intel Xeon Phi MIC (Many Integrated Cores) cards. That is a total of 3,120,000 processor cores (though keep in mind that number is primarily made up of the relatively simple individual Phi cores as there are 57 cores to each Phi card).

Inspur claims up to 3.432 TFlops of peak compute performance per compute node (which, for simplicity they break down as one node is 2 Ivy Bridge chips, 64GB memory, and 3 Xeon Phi cards although the two compute modules that make up a node are not physically laid out that way) for a total theoretical potential compute power of 54,912 TFlops (or 54.912 Petaflops) across the entire supercomputer. In the latest Linpack benchmark run, researchers saw up to 63% efficiency in attaining peak performance -- 30.65 PFlops out of 49.19 PFlops peak/theoretical performance -- when only using 14,336 nodes with 50GB RAM each. Further testing and optimization should improve that number, and when all nodes are brought online the real world performance will naturally be higher than the current benchmarks. With that said, the Tianhe-2 is already besting Cray's TITAN, which is promising (though I hope Cray comes back next year and takes the crown again, heh).

In order to keep all of this hardware cool, Inspur is planning a custom liquid cooling system using chilled water. The Tianhe-2 will draw up to 17.6 MW of power under load. Once the liquid cooling system is implemented the supercomputer will draw 24MW while under load.
This is an impressive system, and an interesting take on a supercomputer architecture considering the rise in popularity of heterogeneous architectures that pair massive numbers of CPUs with graphics processing units (GPUs).

The Tianhe-2 supercomputer will be reconstructed at its permanent home at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China once the testing phase is finished. It will be one of the top supercomputers in the world once it is fully online! HPC Wire has a nice article with slides an further details on the upcoming processing powerhouse that is worth a read if you are into this sort of HPC stuff.

Also read: Cray unveils the TITAN supercomputer.

Revisting support the HD4000 graphics core on Ubuntu

Subject: General Tech | June 3, 2013 - 02:51 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: sandy bridge, Ivy Bridge, linux, ubuntu 13.04

The news might be heavily slanted towards Haswell right now but for Linux users improvements to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge GPU drivers are still a major focus.  As there have been updates to the drivers as well as to Ubuntu, Phoronix felt it was time to revisit the performance metrics of the graphics on a Core i3 3217U.  While they did see improvements when you compare it to previous driver versions it seems that there is still some work to do as the performance still lags behind the Win7 driver.

"After yesterday's Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Linux graphics comparison using the very latest Intel Linux graphics driver, here are new benchmarks using the latest Windows and Linux Intel OpenGL graphics driver. Facing competition this morning is Microsoft Windows 7 Pro x64 and Ubuntu 13.04 with its updated open-source stack."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Microsoft offers free keyboard covers for Surface RT @ The Register
• Benchmarking USB transfer speeds @ Hack a Day
• El Reg drills into Office365: Mass email migration @ The Register
• iPhones are vulnerable to a charger security attack @ The Inquirer
• BlackBerry stepping up purchases of parts and components, say Taiwan makers @ DigiTimes
• Microsoft's Xbox One Launch Event Replay @ NGOHQ
• Xbox One vs PlayStation 4: Upcoming Consoles Compared @ TechReviewSource
• LG may not cooperate with Google on Nexus 5 @ DigiTimes
• Computex 2013 Previen: An AMD comeback, Windows 8.1 and More Tablets @ Hardware Canucks

New Intel HD Graphics Driver Improves Game Performance

Subject: General Tech | April 8, 2013 - 03:13 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: Ivy Bridge, intel hd, Intel, hd 4000, hd 2500

Intel recently released an updated graphics driver for Ivy Bridge processors sporting either HD 4000 or HD 2500 GPUs. The new 15.31.3.3071 (or 15.31.3.64.3071 for those running a 64-bit OS) driver features several under-the-hood optimizations to reduce CPU overhead and improve the driver architecture itself.

The driver architecture improvements have also led to improved game performance. Intel claims up to 10% better performance in StarCraft II, Batman: Arkham City, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (among others).

The chip giant also notes that the new driver supports OpenCL 1.2 for GPGPU calculations. The graphics driver update is only for Ivy Bridge hardware, and is compatible with Ivy Bridge hardware and both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you are running Intel's Driver Update Utility, you should get the new driver automatically.

Otherwise, you can grab the new driver from the following link, depending on your OS.

• 15.31.3.3071 for 32-bit Windows 7/8
• 15.31.3.64.3071 for 64-bit Windows 7/8

Unfortunately, these drivers are generic Intel HD graphics drivers. If your OEM computer is running Windows with an OEM-customized version of Intel's drivers, you are out of luck. You will need to wait for your OEM to update its driver package in order to take advantage of the performance improvements.

Windows versus Linux in an OpenGL free for al

Subject: General Tech | April 8, 2013 - 01:59 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: linux, ubuntu 13.04, fedora 18, win7, opengl, Ivy Bridge

One major barrier to switching to Linux for many users is the graphical performance of the OS; Steam may be releasing a variety of games which will run on Linux but if the performance is awful there are not going to be many who think about making the switch.  Phoronix has been a close eye on the development of OpenGL drivers for Linux, this time specifically the onboard Intel graphics present on Ivy Bridge chips.  With one driver available for each OS the tests were easily set up, except for the aforementioned Steam games as there is a bug which prevents Phoronix from collecting the performance data they need.  Check out the performance differences between Ubuntu 13.04, Fedora 18 and Win7 in the full article.

"Last month Phoronix published Intel OpenGL benchmarks showing Windows 8 outperforming Ubuntu 13.04 with the latest Windows and Linux drivers from Intel. I also showed that even with the KDE and Xfce desktops rather than the default Unity/Compiz desktop to Ubuntu, Windows 8 still was faster on this Intel "Ivy Bridge" platform. The new benchmarks to share today from this Intel Ultrabook are the Windows 8 and Ubuntu 13.04 results but also with performance figures added in from Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1 x64 and Fedora 18."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Intel is sampling Avoton Atom chips ahead of IDF Beijing @ The Inquirer
• HP announces low-power Moonshot system based on an Intel Atom chip @ The Inquirer
• The Surprising SUSE Linux @ Linux.com
• AMD to fully replace FM1 with FM2, AM3 with AM3+ in 2014 @ DigiTimes
• Solar powered robot mows your lawn while you chill indoors @ Hack a Day
• Microsoft to slap 9 patches on Windows junkies on Tuesday @ The Register
• ASUS AiCloud: A Fresh Face for Networking @ Bjorn3D
• Gadget Show Live 2013 – The Public Event @ Kitguru
• DIY MultiCopter - Part 1. @ Metku.net

Recent gains in gaming on Linux

Subject: General Tech | January 28, 2013 - 12:42 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: linux, Ivy Bridge, ubuntu 13.04

Phoronix has released a pair of reviews focusing on the graphical performance changes we have seen recently when gaming on a Linux system.  The first looks at the last seven major kernel updates and how they changed the performance of Intel's HD4000 graphics core.  The news is not great, in most cases the performance remained mostly unchanged and there are a few instances where the performance gain seen by kernel 3.4 have disappeared by 3.8 and in some cases it would make sense to wait until Mesa 9.1 arrives. 

Their second article looks at the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 release and the support the OS will have for AMD's GPUs straight out of the box with no customization.  From there they move onto Intel's HD3000 graphics with good results to report.  The new OS will not be out until April, but from what Phoronix has seen not only will this kernel handle discrete and integral GPUs well, the performance is the best they've seen yet.

"With the Intel Haswell product launch coming up soon, here's a look at how the Intel "Ivy Bridge" HD 4000 graphics support has matured on the seven most recent Linux kernel releases. This benchmarking shows how the performance of the Intel DRM driver has changed between the Linux 3.2 kernel and the Linux 3.8 kernel that's presently under development when using the integrated graphics found on the latest-generation Core i7 CPU."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Gartner says Intel getting Cisco as a foundry customer is a good move @ The Inquirer
• Microsoft may be readying Outlook for ARM – or not @ The Register
• Microsoft acknowledges the long and winding road ahead @ The Register
• Why I'm excited about Microsoft's Surface Pro @ Tweaktown
• Ninjalane Podcast - Borderlands 2 Farming
• Win an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe & Asus HD7970 Matrix @ Kitguru