pentium

Intel's Sandy Bridge processors aren't just for Apple MacBooks and elite Windows laptops anymore. The latest and greatest Intel chip technology is now landing in sub-$400 lappies from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.

To wit, behold HP's $349 Pavilion g4-1104dx. In addition to goodies like a 14-inch LED display, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard disk drive, a multiformat optical drive, a Webcam, and integrated Ethernet, you get a Pentium processor B940 with integrated Intel graphics silicon.

No, that's not the Pentium processor of yore. The new Pentium is a bona fide Sandy Bridge processor, which … Read more

While Intel updated its price list with a number of new mobile processors over the weekend, a few didn't show up on the list.

Intel on Sunday added new mobile Core i5 and i7 processors prominently to its price list, among other new mobile chips, but didn't cite a new mobile Core i3 processor, a Core i5 variant, and two mobile Pentium chips.

Why? "These SKUs are considered transactional, which means they are targeted at retail and SMB (small- and medium-size businesses) and are subject to terms and conditions with (PC makers) that target those markets. We … Read more

Intel may be opening a can of worms with a pilot program that asks consumers to pay an extra $50 to make a processor, hobbled by design, whole again.

So, here's the deal. Intel is conducting a retail pilot program that introduces desktop PCs with an Intel Pentium G6951 processor that has certain features turned off--namely, part of the cache memory and a function called hyper-threading. Cache memory is critical, very-high-speed memory built into the chip, while hyper-threading allows a processor to use, on some applications, virtual cores, essentially doubling the number of physical processing cores.

If consumers decide (based on an in-store offer from Intel) that they want the extra performance, they pay $50 to unlock those features by either having the retailer (Best Buy, in this case), do the upgrade or downloading code by themselves.

What's the can of worms? In addition to possibly irritating customers by notifying them that they have a hobbled chip, the program spotlights Intel's, otherwise perfectly legitimate, processor marketing strategy. (And I would submit that it doesn't matter how inexpensive the hobbled pilot program processor is, the scheme will still get under consumer's skins.)

First, some background. Though Intel brands the chip as a Pentium (a brand originally introduced back in the early 1990s), certain Pentium processors are in fact based on a cutting-edge design called Westmere, a chip package that contains a 32-nanometer processor core and a 45-nanometer graphics chip.

And the Westmere line includes Intel's best-selling Core i7, i5, and i3 processors. An imperfect though instructive analogy can be made between the pilot program and the Core i3.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--More than a decade ago, Intel ran into an issue trying to deliver what was to be the world's top-ranked supercomputer: it looked possible that its new Pentium Pro processors at the heart of the system might not arrive in time.

As a result, the chipmaker made an unusual move by paying Hewlett-Packard $100,000 to evaluate building the system using its PA-RISC processors in the machine, said Paul Prince, now Dell's chief technology officer for enterprise products but then Intel's system architect for the supercomputer. Called ASCI Red and housed at Sandia National Laboratories, it … Read more

Select processors from Advanced Micro Devices do not support Windows 7 "XP mode" though, like Intel, the vast majority of shipping processors do support XP mode.

Microsoft describes XP mode on its Web site as follows: "As part of the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate milestone, Microsoft will release a beta version of Windows XP Mode, which allows users of Windows 7 Professional and above to launch many older Windows XP productivity applications directly from their Windows 7 desktop. The Windows XP Mode stand-alone feature is specifically designed to help small businesses that are using Windows XP … Read more

Updated on May 6 at 6:35 p.m. PDT with additional comments from Intel.

A small brouhaha is erupting over Windows 7 and Intel processors. The hubbub is centered on which Intel processors will not support "XP mode" in Windows 7 and, by extension, which PCs will not support XP mode. Retail laptops may be one of the most prominent segments affected.

What is XP Mode? Here's how Ina Fried of CNET News describes it: "XP mode consists of two things, the Windows Virtual PC engine and a licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack … Read more

Some researchers claim that Intel has a serious chip bug on its hands. But that all depends.

Security experts who are into the arcana of chip security may find "CPU cache poisoning" riveting and serious stuff. Others, however, may simply scratch their heads and move on.

But let's not move on too quickly. First, a quote from an abstract of the paper (PDF) that has some of the chip world abuzz. "In this paper we have described practical exploitation of the CPU cache poisoning...This is the third attack on SMM (system management mode) memory our … Read more

Updated on January 19 at 8:15 a.m. PST with additional information throughout.

On Sunday, Intel instituted broad price cuts on processors, spanning the Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium dual-core, Celeron, and Xeon product lines.

Some of the cuts are in response to Advanced Micro Devices' recently-introduced Phenom II "Dragon" desktop platform. AMD's Phenom II X4 940 (3.0GHz), for instance, is priced at $275.

Intel cuts were concentrated on quad-core chips like the Q9650 (3.00GHz), reduced 40 percent, to $316 from $530, to counter AMD's Phenom II. But Celeron processors received … Read more

Intel announced on Monday that it will be presenting a paper at Siggraph 2008 about its "many-core" Larrabee architecture, which will be the basis of future Intel graphics processors.

The paper itself, however, has already been published, and I was able to get a copy of it. (Unfortunately, as you'll see at that link, the paper is normally available only to members of the Association for Computing Machinery.)

The paper is a pretty thorough summary of Intel's motives for developing Larrabee and the major features of the new architecture. Basically, Larrabee is about using many simple x86 cores--more than you'd see in the central processor (CPU) of the system--to implement a graphics processor (GPU). This concept has received a lot of attention since Intel first started talking about it last year.

… Read more