intel

Ever since Intel showed off its 80-core prototype processor, people have asked "Why 80 cores?"

There's actually nothing magic about the number, according to Jerry Bautista, co-director of the Tera-scale Computing Research Program at Intel, and others. Intel wanted to make a chip that could perform 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, known as a teraflop. And 80 cores did the trick. The chip does not contain x86 processing cores, the kind of cores inside Intel's PC chips, but cores optimized for floating-point (or decimal) math.

Other sources at the company pointed out that 80 cores … Read more

It's taken 27 years to reach 1 billion PCs in use, and market researchers say it will take only five to reach the next billion.

Forrester Research is set to release a report Monday titled, "Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast to 2015," saying that many of those next billion will be used by first-time PC users in emerging nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China. At least 775 million new PCs will be in use in those countries by 2015, according to Forrester.

Not only is access to computers beneficial to those users, it also will represent a … Read more

Apple announced Tuesday that it has updated its high-end MacBook Pro laptops with faster processors, better graphics, and more memory.

The laptops are still available in three models: two 15.4-inch versions that retail for $1,999 and $2,499 and a larger 17-inch edition that costs $2,799. But with Tuesday's update, the lower-end 15-inch model is now equipped with 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors (previously, it had a 2.16GHz chip); the higher-end 15-incher and the 17-incher now come with 2.4GHz processors, up from 2.33GHz. These new processors are indeed Intel's latest Centrino (… Read more

Hugo Chávez, the combative leader of Venezuela, wants to come out with his own PC that he would then distribute to citizens in the region, according to sources in the PC industry who have been contacted by Venezuelan officials.

The PCs would be part of Chávez's strategy of winning friends in the region through gifts paid for through Venezuela's oil industry. Cuba, Bolivia and other nations have all been recipients of gifts from Chávez. The PCs would likely cost little or could even be given away. Venezuela has been contacting companies in … Read more

Buying a PC is always confusing, and chip companies aren't doing as good a job with some important customers as they might like, according to a new survey from In-Stat.

Even early adopters of technology are having trouble associating the right brand with the right company, said Ian Lao, an analyst with In-Stat and author of the report. Some brands, like Via's Eden, are only recognized by half of early adopters, he said. (I'd actually say that's pretty good for a company as tiny as Via).

The most well-recognized brand is still Intel's Pentium brand, … Read more

Sunday night's 60 Minutes, usually a show at the tail end of the technology bell curve, weighed in on a surprisingly relevant topic--Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative. If you've been following the MIT professor's story, you'll know he set out several years ago to develop a cheap laptop for children in third-world countries, featuring a low-power AMD chip, flash memory instead of a traditional hard drive, and even built-in Wi-Fi and a Webcam.

Closer to $175 than the originally projected $100, the systems are being rolled out in small test markets. We actually … Read more

Apparently, this world isn't big enough for two low-cost PC projects.

Nick Negroponte, founder and leader of the One Laptop Per Child project, told 60 Minutes Sunday night that he would have 3 million orders for the $100 laptop (at this point, really $175) if not for Intel's "shameless" business practices.

"Intel has hurt the mission enormously," Negroponte said. How? By apparently distributing marketing materials questioning the features of the One Laptop (it's really called the XO) and by giving away an Intel-designed laptop called the Classmate PC to poor nations around the … Read more

Today's platform announcement from Intel may have left you scratching your head, and rightly so. After all, the company is replacing its Centrino Duo platform with a whole new platform called...Centrino Duo. And then there's Centrino Pro. Both of which, up until this morning, were called Santa Rosa (and will probably still be referred to by that moniker for the next few months). Confused yet?

Fortunately, we've had some time to wade through the marketing buzz and technical specs to figure out the whole story. Boiled down, it's this: the new Centrino Duo platform includes a handful of new Core 2 Duo processors; a new chipset with a faster front-side bus and an optional dedicated memory cache; a new graphics solution with a larger allocation of memory; and a new wireless card with support for Draft-N wireless.

Centrino Pro, meanwhile, has all those new features, plus additional remote management technologies designed for businesses. Essentially a mobile version of the vPro technology found on desktops, the Centrino Pro enhancements let IT managers upload configuration changes to a PC over a network. Centrino Pro also allows for asset management and remote diagnostics independent of the laptop's operating system, meaning the machine doesn't have to be on for IT workers to access it.

As with every iteration of notebook technology, all this is supposed to add up to better performance and longer battery life (which, thus far, it more or less has--see our first few reviews of Santa Rosa systems). While the changes aren't revolutionary, we do think they're worth seeking out if you're already in the market for a new laptop. After the page break you'll find our rundown of all the new Centrino features and what they mean to you.… Read more

Every major PC manufacturer is announcing a lineup of new laptops this morning. These systems are all part of Intel's new Santa Rosa platform, which to the laptop-buying public means they'll have either a Centrino Pro or Centrino Duo sticker on them somewhere.

Our colleague Michelle Thatcher will go into further detail on the Santa Rosa specs later today, but for the most part, it involves having one of several new mobile Intel CPUs (From the T7000-series), support for Wireless N networking, Intel's new 965 chipset, and some additional onboard memory--Intel calls it Turbo Memory--for faster booting. … Read more