Intel has bought McAfee, the computer and software security company. The all cash deal is worth $7.68 billion, or $48 per share. The deal will allow better hardware security in processors as well as tighter integration between chips and software

McAfee, with double-digit, year-over-year growth and nearly 80 percent gross margins last year, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel, reporting into Intel’s Software and Services Group.

McAfee is one of the largest security technology companies in the world and saw $2 billion in revenue in 2009.

What is this merger all about?

Some think it’s all about mobile, giving Intel a leg up over Android and ARM chips. Other think it’s cars and Meego, with vehicle security paramount with in-car information systems. Others think it’s just another tool to enhance their position relative to AMD. Intel already has an 80% market share for processor chips.

The number of connected devices is expected to grow from 1 billion to 50 billion by 2020. This explosive growth of Internet and IP-enabled devices (e.g. Internet enabled TV, IP addressable cars, ATM machines, medical devices) is fundamentally reshaping communication. McAfee also offers smartphone security software, through the recent acquisitions of Trust Digital and TenCube. Intel and McAfee plan to address all those segments.

Intel’s president and CEO Paul Otellin called security the “third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences,” behind energy-efficient performance and connectivity.

In other recent Intel news:

• GE and Intel will form a 50/50 joint venture to create a new healthcare company focused on telehealth and independent living. The venture builds on the GE-Intel healthcare alliance announced in April 2009 around independent living and chronic disease management. GE Healthcare and Intel will contribute assets in remote patient monitoring, independent living concepts and assistive technologies, such as the Intel Health Guide, Intel Reader and GE Healthcare’s QuietCare.
• Intel this week announced it will buy Texas Instruments’ cable modem product line. Intel plans to combine Texas Instruments’ Puma product lines with the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) standard and Intel SoCs to deliver advanced set top box, residential gateway and modem products for the cable industry.
• Last year, Intel bought Wind River for $884 million, giving it a software maker with a presence in the consumer electronics and wireless markets.
• GE teamed with Intel on one of the first U.S. smart-grid pilot programs. GE’s WiMAX-based smart meter works on the WiMAX wireless network platform. The GE Nucleus is a wall-plug device designed to work with utility smart meters that have Zigbee technology. It will be able to poll a home’s smart meter and any “smart-grid enabled” appliances for energy consumption data and display it on desktops and smart phones.

View full post on dailywireless.org

When Intel decides to take on a technological challenge, it doesn’t arse about. Nope, it crushes the problem with military force.

However, with Intel’s might also comes a lumbering clumsiness. On occasion, you can see the massive bureaucracy struggle to change direction in response to events. So it was with Intel’s early SSDs, which suffered from rapidly degrading performance.

More recently, Intel made it known that owners of its first generation drives wouldn’t receive the update to support the TRIM command. Not cool.

The next generation

This second generation 160GB X24-M drive did, of course, get the TRIM update. In the mean time, the X25-M’s established strengths in terms of random read and write performance remain.

For proof, observe the solid 4K benchmark numbers and competitive real-world app results. Despite the relatively lowly sub-100MB/s sequential write performance, this is still a quick drive and one that performs very well in our overall value, performance and capacity index.

The results are even more impressive when you consider that our test drive isn’t box fresh.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more storage reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

The Federal Trade Commission and Intel announced on Wednesday that they have agreed to settle charges of anticompetitive behavior, reports the NY Times.

The settlement (pdf) prohibits Intel from the practice of paying customers to buy its computer chips exclusively or to refuse to buy chips from other manufacturers. It also prohibits Intel from redesigning its chips purely to harm a competitor. Intel also agreed not to retaliate against computer makers if they do business with non-Intel suppliers.

Intel is also required to maintain for at least six years a feature that will not limit the performance of graphics processing chips made by others, and to disclose that its computer compilers might discriminate between its chips and those of other companies.

No fine was levied, as the FTC only has the authority to force companies to change their behavior; the agency can only levy fines if an order is violated. Penalties are assessed on the order of $16,000 per violation.

“Nvidia supports the FTC’s action to address Intel’s continuing global anticompetitive conduct,” Nvidia said in a statement. “Any steps that lead a more competitive environment for our industry are good for the consumer. We look forward to Intel’s actions being examined further by the Delaware courts later this year, when our lawsuit against the company is heard.”

The FTC says the settlement is more significant than the similar civil settlement between Intel and AMD. This settlement covers Intel’s actions with the industry at large, FTC officials said.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Fancy Intel’s second generation X25-V SSD tech at a third the price of its flagship 160GB? Yes please.

After all, Intel’s current controller chipset technology is one of the few proven to maintain decent performance over time. In fact, our test X25-V drive has been knocking about PCF towers for some time.

But, courtesy of support for the Windows 7 TRIM command, not to mention a quick buff-and-format treatment prior to testing, it’s not far off box-fresh performance. It still churns through the sequential read test at nearly 200MB/s, for instance.

Likewise, the 4k random read and write numbers are impressive for a budget drive, which bodes well for real-world workloads. Sequential write performance of less than 50MB/s is less competitive, but with fewer channels than a full-fat Intel drive, raw write throughput has never been the X25-V’s strong point.

Value for money

No, the real problem for Intel’s value-orientated 40GB drive is, well, value. It may be less than a third the cost of the 160GB Intel X25-M, but it’s also much less than one-third the capacity when formatted.

What’s more, despite the promising synthetic performance results, it’s a bit of stinker in our application tests. It’s the second slowest drive in both our file decompression and software installation benchmarks.

When you factor in everything including performance, price and capacity, our all-round index places it second from last. That doesn’t quite tally with our experience of the X25-V, but it’s hard to ignore such poor results.

It’s actually our favourite of the sub-50GB drives. Still, Intel’s third generation SSDs can’t come too soon.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more storage reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

Lasers will replace copper connections in everything from supercomputers to servers to PCs, according to Intel researchers who demonstrated 50-Gb/s optical transmitter and receiver chips that the company plans to scale up to terabit-per-second speeds prior to commercialization, reports EE Times.

“This is the first completed photonic link with integrated lasers,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technical officer, during a conference call. The optical fiber output on the receiver chip was filtered into separate colors, then diverted by waveguides into four separate photodiodes, each of which recovered one of the four separate 12.5-Gbit per second channels.

Intel said that its efforts were different from its “Light Peak” technology, which also uses a short length of optical cable combined with a transceiver at each end. Light Peak is designed to “bring a multi-protocol 10Gbps optical connection to Intel client platforms for nearer-term applications,” Intel said. In the case of the 10-Gbit/s transceiver, Intel said, the goal was to bring it to “an even broader set of high-volume applications”.

Intel’s announcement comes about 50 years after the introduction of the laser, Rattner noted. The laser was patented by Bell Labs in 1960.

View full post on dailywireless.org

The Extreme Edition CPUs from Intel are the real performance daddies of the desktop world. Costing over £800 for a little slab of silicon though they really should be. So what is it about these Extreme chips that makes them so damned fast? It’s the unlocked multipliers that allow the extreme tweakers to overclock the nuts off these processors.

It’s also a feature that would be trivial for Intel to add to any of its current CPUs. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have the unlocked multiplier in a more affordable chip? In fact, you already can if you go for one of AMD’s competitively priced Black Series CPUs.

And perhaps it’s the AMD Black chips that explain the arrival of Intel’s new special K pairing. Yup, Intel has released a couple of cut-price processors with unlocked multipliers that are aimed squarely at performance enthusiasts.

Say hello, therefore, to the new Core i5-655K. The new K-series chips are closely related to existing processors in Intel’s desktop range. The 655K clocks in with the same stock frequencies as the existing Core i5-650 model.

So, that’s a base clockspeed of 3.2GHz and a maximum Turbo frequency of 3.46GHz. In all other regards, the spec is as per the 650 model. Thus, we’re talking two cores, each with support for a pair of software threads, a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, 4MB of L3 cache and a 73 Watt TDP.

The 650 and the new 655K are both Clarkdale chips, of course. That means you’ll actually find two chips inside if you crack open the CPU package (not something we advise!). The first packs the pair of processor cores and the cache memory and is hewn from Intel’s latest 32nm silicon.

The second is on Intel’s 45nm production processor and contains the memory controller, I/O and integrated graphics core. Like it or loathe it, this kind of CPU-GPU ‘fusion’ architecture is the future.

But what about the pricing, you ask? We’re still struggling to come to terms with the amount Intel asks for all versions of the dual-core Clarkdale processor. Depending on how you look at it, therefore, the £189 655K is either reasonable value for £30 more than the 650 or just silly money given that you can have a quad-core Bloomfield chip for the high-end LGA 1,366 socket for the same price.

There’s one final factoid you probably won’t find Intel advertising. Both chips are based on the same silicon stepping as their multiplier-locked brethren. Thus it’s a C2 stepping for the 655K. That’s important if only because of the expectations it raises regarding outright overclocking prowess. On the face of it, you wouldn’t expect either to significantly out-clock existing models. Well, not unless Intel has hand-picked these chips for overclocking prowess. There’s only one way to find out.

Not only can you adjust the Turbo settings per core. In other words, you define how many steps Turbo increases the multiplier when anywhere from one to four cores are under load. You can also fettle the wattage and amperage cut-off points for Turbo mode, theoretically giving the chip more headroom. But to cut a long story short, ditching Turbo and going global tends to give the better results.

For the record, you can also do all of the above via Intel’s Control Center app for Windows. It’s basically Intel’s answer to AMD’s Overdrive. Or at least it would be if it was any good.

But it requires a reboot to apply most of the important overclocking settings and it only works with a small selection of own-brand Intel boards. So, it’s not. It’s rubbish.

As for the Core i5-655K, lifting the CPU voltage to 1.375V allows a maximum frequency of 4.2GHz. The result is immensely impressive performance for a dual-core processor.

The problem, of course, is that you can have a quad-core chip that will clock very nearly as high for the same money. Any quad-core Core i5 or Core i7 chip running at or near 4GHz blows this plucky little dualie away.

What we’d much rather have, therefore, is an unlocked K variant of our old favourite, the i5-750. An Intel Core i5-755K? Now that would really be something.

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

The Extreme Edition processors from Intel always have been and always will be overpriced irrelevancies. What else can you say about a series that typically cost upwards of £800?

The problem isn’t just pricing, either. In outright performance terms, Extreme Edition chips are often no more than 15 to 20 per cent faster than CPUs costing a third or less the price. Value for money they most certainly ain’t.

Of course, the latest Extreme is a bit special thanks to offering more cores than any other Intel processor. But with more mainstream six-core chips pencilled in for later this year, even the Core i7-980X will soon resume the Extreme Edition’s traditional rip-off role.

Despite all this harshing on Intel’s flagship CPU line, however, there’s one aspect of the Extreme family we’ve always loved: the unlocked CPU multiplier. It’s a feature that makes for idiot-proof overclocking and takes memory out of the equation.

It’s also a feature that would be trivial for Intel to add to any of its current CPUs. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have the unlocked multiplier in a more affordable chip? In fact, you already can if you go for one of AMD’s competitively priced Black Series CPUs.

And perhaps it’s the AMD Black chips that explain the arrival of Intel’s new special K pairing. Yup, Intel has released a couple of cut-price processors with unlocked multipliers that are aimed squarely at performance enthusiasts.

Say hello, therefore, to the new Core i7-875K. The new K-series chips are closely related to existing processors in Intel’s desktop range. The 875K lines up next to the Core i7-870.

The base clockspeed is 2.93GHz with a top Turbo of 3.6GHz, theoretically anyway. In our experience, you won’t always see a full return on that Turbo promise.

Anyhoo, the 875K is a Lynnfield processor and thus a quad-core 45nm specimen with two threads per core, a dual-channel memory controller, 8MB of L3 cache and a 95 Watt TDP. Again, all of the above is shared with the plain old 870.

Beyond those headline specs, there’s not all that much to know. The K-series chips drop into the LGA 1,156 socket and come boxed and branded with a big silver flash reading “Unlocked”. More significantly, they also come sans CPU cooler. That’s not a huge vote of confidence in Intel’s stock heat sinks. Nevertheless, it’s the right call. Most overclocking enthusiasts would prefer to choose their own cooler.

More intriguing is that Intel has positioned the 875K £100 below the 870.

That’s right, the 875K has identical clockspeeds and cache, adds the unlocked multiplier but will typically sell for £310 to the 870′s £420. Admittedly, we always felt the 870 was seriously overpriced. Yet this topsy-turvy positioning from Intel seems completely bonkers. But then, Intel’s marketing is madness all round at the moment.

How else can you explain the fact that Intel introduced a new branding scheme in the Core i3, i5 and i7 monikers that was supposed to add clarity but only confuses. There’s no way of telling from those brands how many cores you’re getting or even which socket a CPU drops into.

Out of the box, the 870 and 875K are unsurprisingly very close when running at default settings. Slightly disconcertingly, it’s actually our dusty old 870 that has the slight edge.

The fact, for instance, that it’s one frame per second faster in the X264 HD video encoding test isn’t much of a worry. It’s close enough to be statistically insignificant. But the 870′s five Watt power consumption advantage, both under load and at idle, doesn’t bode well. Chips that clock up well also tend to be chips that use less power.

Time, then, to unleash those clocks. With the 875K, you have plenty of options. Like any Lynnfield chip, you can give the baseclock, set to 133MHz as standard, a twiddle. The problem with that, of course, is that you’ll take the memory clocks with you. You’ll definitely end up with your memory running at some funky non-standard frequency and at some point you will have to step in and knock the dividers down a notch or two.

Much better, therefore, to avail yourself of the 875K’s unlocked multipliers. Here you essentially have two options. You can either go old school, switch off the Turbo function and ramp up the global multiplier setting for all cores. With the 875K, the multiplier range extends from nine to 63. The latter works out at 8.4GHz, so let’s just say you have plenty of scope. The other option is to bring Turbo mode into the equation.

Not only can you adjust the Turbo settings per core. In other words, you define how many steps Turbo increases the multiplier when anywhere from one to four cores are under load. You can also fettle the wattage and amperage cut-off points for Turbo mode, theoretically giving the chip more headroom.

But to cut a long story short, ditching Turbo and going global tends to give the better results. Even with the Turbo wattage and amperage ceilings raised, the 875K won’t run consistently at overclocked Turbo speeds.

Unfortunately, what it also won’t do is run any faster than the old 870. Both chips top out at 4GHz with the CPU voltage upped to around 1.35V to 1.375V, the latter being a range we’re comfortable with regards long-term reliability. Unsurprisingly, there’s little to choose between the two in our overclocked benchmark results.

Given that the 875K is much cheaper than the 870, the new K series offering is still a no-brainer. But it’s still disappointing to find the unlocked multiplier doesn’t translate into at least a little more oomph.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more processor reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

Intel announced a new six-core Core i7 processor, while also cutting the prices of some chips by up to 48 percent.

View full post on Macworld

The development of “smart TVs” is also leading, not surprisingly, to the creation of a smart remote as well, thanks to Intel.

View full post on Macworld

Despite years of investment in its Symbian operating system, Nokia has picked the Linux-based MeeGo instead to go head to head with Apple’s iPhone and other higher-end smartphones, reports C/Net. Nokia will continue to use Symbian on inexpensive phones, a Nokia spokesman explained.

The Nokia N8 will be the last of the flagship N-series smartphones to use Symbian, Nokia told CNET Australia, and confirmed the move in a Reuters interview. “Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo,” said the Nokia spokesperson.

Nokia’s N8, which won’t be available until the third quarter, has a 12 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touch screen and retails for 370 euros ($493). Nokia has four smartphone product families. The C series is focused on personal social networking. The E series phones are for business users. The X series for youth and music, and N series for the most advanced models.

Nokia bought full Symbian control from other partners, then released it as open-source software. But it wasn’t sufficient to make the operating system a top-end competitor, notes C/Net. Developers, mobile operators and manufactures have been moving to the “free”, open-source Android platform, instead.

MeeGo hopes to be in handhelds, tablets and nettops, although the Android SDK (software development kit) has first mover advantage & backing from Google.

MeeGo was announced in 2010. It combines two earlier Linux efforts, Nokia’s Maemo (which works on ARM processors) and Intel’s Moblin (which works on Intel’s Atom processors). MeeGo enables Atom-powered smartphones and tablets.

Meanwhile, Intel plans to ship a fully native x86 version of Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ to developers in the next two months, reports APC. That means Intel’s hardware partners will be able to use Atom processors inside tablets, netbooks and smartphones running the Android operating system.

Android 2.2, running on PC-standard x86 architecture, may be MeeGo’s biggest competitor. Android originally only ran on devices that used ARM-family processors. But ARM processors are used in most smartphones, as well as many anticipated tablets and “smartbooks”.

“Our expectation is that (native x86 Android) will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers” Renee James, Intel’s senior veep for software and services, told APC.

Meanwhile, Nexus One users started receiving Google’s Android 2.2 upgrade over-the-air on their devices Wednesday night. User reports indicate the updates appear to be hitting phones in various parts of America, on both T-Mobile and AT&T.

Sprint expects to launch Android 2.2 in the near future. The EVO 4G WiMAX phone will receive the 2.2 update, Samsung Moment and HTC Hero will not. Future devices launching with 2.1 also will be updated to 2.2. Android 2.2 is coming to Droid in late July, with Droid X expected in late August.

Code-named FroYo (from frozen yogurt), Android 2.2 is the latest Google’s OS named after a desert, following Eclair (2.0/2.1), Donut (1.6), and Cupcake (1.5).

The six major smartphone operating systems include Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian/Meego, Microsoft’s Phone 7, RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Palm’s (now Hewlett-Packard’s) WebOS. But it’s Apps that add value. Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market are the ones to beat.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Intel and the FTC asked to suspend trial proceedings while they consider a settlement.

View full post on Macworld

According to Light Reading, Intel says the increasing pressure from LTE is “not a nail in the coffin” of WiMax, and that those operators looking to shift investments away from WiMax and toward LTE are doing so only for unique spectrum reasons.

Speaking in a conference session here in Singapore, Ramprakash Alluri, business development director, South Asia, at Intel’s Wireless Program Office, says the WiMax ecosystem — around 588 service providers, more than 20 infrastructure suppliers, and about 90 device/client developers globally — is strong, stable, and growing.

He claimed that WiMax is offering better wireless data performance than 3G in many markets, including Japan, for lower monthly fees, and that further technology developments, including the availability of enhanced 802.16e (additional MIMO antenna, improved modulation and fractional frequency re-use) later this year, and 802.16m (or WiMax 2) in 2012 or 2013, will further strengthen the technology’s appeal.

Some vendors are even predicting 2011 availability for WiMax 2, which, as it will conform to the ITU’s requirements for IMT-Advanced specifications, will be a proper 4G technology. (See Samsung Targets WiMax 2 in 2011.)

But TD-LTE is now on the front burner. Enthusiasm for Mobile WiMAX appears to be cooling down (see Dailywireless: India’s Broadband Auction: It’s Done).

• India’s spectrum winners are going with TD-LTE deployments, with Infotel and Qualcomm winning major spectrum and cellular providers expected to follow along.
• Russia’s Yota is abandoning WiMAX for LTE.
• China’s Mobile is looking towards TD-LTE in their future rollouts.
• Clearwire wants freedom to choose between LTE and WiMAX going forward.

But Intel’s Alluri denies that this amounts to any sort of trend, and says each of those instances is because of “unique” situations in terms of the type or amount of spectrum held by the operators. “Yota is still a poster child for WiMax,” he says.

Some poster.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Ugh, I hate posting stuff like this, but please, if you have any information. Contact the Multnomah County Sheriff at 503-261-2847

[via OCC]

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Intel Engineer’s Son Goes Missing

View full post on Google Android News Android Forums

It was only a matter of time before we saw Intel jump into the mobile processing arms race, and it seems that they are showing off what they intend to do with their new Moorestown chips at Computex in Taiwan this week.  Engadget is only too kind to share their hands-on experience with the prototype unit.

Intel had several devices built just for the show for demo purposes, most of them running other operating systems, but they had a handful that were running Android 2.1.  Reports were that the units had no internet connection, nor any cellular data streaming into them, so it was hard to put them through their paces.  The reporter did say that the unit ran pretty well, nothing spectacular and certainly not speedier than any of the snapdragons we have seen so far on the market.

Check out the videos below to see these in action on an Aava Mobile-built reference design, courtesy of Engadget.  For more on Aava Mobile, check out our previous post.

Win one of seven Motorola droid handsets being given out! Click here to see how it works!

NOTE: Intel Using Android 2.1 to Demo New Moorestown Chips originally appeared on AndroidGuys. If you are reading this elsewhere, it was done without the consent of the author.

• T-Mobile Betting Heavily on Android with 3 Vendors in ‘09
• Documents To Go 2.0 with PowerPoint and PDF Support
• Sony Ericsson ‘Shakira’ is X10 Sized for Goldilocks

View full post on AndroidGuys

Intel introduced today low-voltage Core processors for the ultrathin laptops.

The new processors, including the Core i3-330UM, Core i5-540UM, Core i7-660UM, and Pentium U5400 are 32 percent smaller than standard processor packages, and use less juice.

One-inch-thick Apple MacBook Air and Dell Adamo use Intel processors that draw relatively little power, but are pricey, custom designs. Intel is targeting these processors to ordinary, price-conscious consumers.

“It will fit the consumer system price point. Very affordable systems,” Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, said during a video conference Monday morning. Though Eden refrained from citing specific prices, the consumer laptop segment typically ranges from about $500 to $1,000.

Intel expressed confidence that eventually all major PC makers will bring out laptops based on these processors. Intel says the Acer Aspire 1830, Asus UL80, Lenovo U160, and MSI X350 will include the new processor. Systems will be available from some vendors starting next month.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Apple’s 17-inch MacBook Pro is the Rolls-Royce of the MacBook Pro range. For many users it’s overkill. Not everyone needs the power and versatility it offers, and at a hundred pounds shy of two grand (possibly more, if you choose customisation options on the Apple online store), it certainly isn’t within everyone’s price range.

Yet for high-end users such as video editors and graphic designers, who need the extra screen space and processing power, this top-of-the-range 17-inch MacBook Pro 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 could well prove worth the asking price of £1,899.

The mid-2010 refresh brings a series of exciting new technologies. Automatic Graphics Switching means you no longer have to open your System Preferences to switch between integrated graphics for better battery life or the discrete chip, which is more powerful but heavier on the battery.

The new Core i5 processor introduces Hyper Threading, which gives the chip four virtual cores. Turbo Boost shuts down idle cores and increases the power to active cores, and an integrated memory controller speeds data processing. Physically, it’s identical to the previous model of 17-inch MacBook Pro, retaining its unibody construction.

The 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros introduced with the mid-2010 refresh include a new feature called Automatic Graphics Switching. For routine tasks such as surfing the internet, checking email or using office applications, graphics processing is handled by the Core i5 processor’s built-in Intel HD Graphics, which lacks power but saves battery life.

When more graphical power is needed, such as when editing video or running advanced 3D games, graphics processing switches to the 17-inch MacBook Pro’s discrete GPU, an Nvidia GeForce GT 330M. This offers more power and greater energy efficiency than the GeForce 9600M GT used before. In the previous release of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, switching between the integrated and discrete graphics processor was a manual task achieved through System Preferences.

Not so now. Instead, graphics processing automatically switches to the discrete chip when a running application triggers an advanced graphics framework such as Core Graphics, OpenGL or Quartz Composer. No user intervention is required. When the discrete processor is active the integrated chipset shuts down, again saving energy.

If you wish to use the discrete GPU exclusively, you can switch off the 17-inch MacBook Pro’s Automatic Graphics Feature in System Preferences, forcing the notebook to use the more powerful chip at all times. Somewhat puzzlingly, there’s no option to restrict it to using integrated graphics, which could be useful if your battery was almost drained and you were prepared to sacrifice performance for extended use. Perhaps this feature will be introduced with the next system upgrade.

Thankfully, greater energy efficiency gives the 17-inch MacBook Pro a battery life of eight to nine hours, so the problem shouldn’t arise often. Like all modern MacBook Pros, the battery is housed inside the unit and is not user-serviceable.

But as the space saved by dropping the connectors and hatches required by a removable one has allowed Apple to incorporate a bigger, better battery. It’s expected to last around 1,000 charges or about five years, which is three times as long as a standard battery, making it more cost effective as well as more powerful.

features

The new Intel Core i5 2.53GHz processor brings a couple of new features not present in the Core 2 Duo chips used in the previous 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Hyper Threading allows two threads to run simultaneously on each of the processor’s two cores, giving a total of four virtual cores. This allows tasks to be spread more evenly for faster performance. And if your application doesn’t use all available cores, the processor’s Turbo Boost technology shuts down those that are unused and transfers the power to active cores.

The 2.53GHz processor used here can run at up to 3.06GHz when only one core is used. The new architecture also includes an integrated memory controller, connecting system memory directly to the processor and eliminating the need for a separate I/O controller, for faster data access and an improved operating speed.

It’s been claimed that the 2.66GHz Core i7 version of the 17-inch MacBook Pro (available as a custom option on the Apple online store) runs insanely hot when the processor is maxed out, reaching temperatures of over 100°C. Not so here.

Using a distributed computing application to take processor use up to almost 100% and iStat Pro to measure the CPU temperature, we found it barely rose above 80°C. This is still pretty hot, but it wasn’t causing problems for running applications. Impressively, the MacBook Pro ran silently, even after 15 minutes of running the processor at maximum.

Outwardly, the 17-inch MacBook Pro remains the same. It’s still built around a sturdy unibody design milled from a single piece of aluminium, it still has a backlit keyboard that illuminates as the light dims and it remains the only machine in the MacBook Pro range to retain the ExpressCard slot, which was dropped in favour of an SD Card reader in the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models. On the downside, there’s still no Blu-Ray drive.

The mid-2010 refresh represents a very significant upgrade for the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Although its form factor is identical to the previous generation, the switch to the new Core i5 chip brings new technologies that greatly improve its performance. As a result, this 2.53GHz Core i5 chip is substantially faster and more powerful than the 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo used in the last generation of 17-inch MacBook Pros, a fact that was borne out in our benchmarking tests. The new graphics processor is also a significant step up.

We liked

Automatic Graphics Switching is a splendid feature that greatly improves on the manual switching method used before.

CPU features such as Hyper Threading and Turbo Boost get the most out of the Intel Core i5 processor, and attention has been paid to energy efficiency throughout. As a result, the internal battery lasts for eight or nine hours of normal use, up from seven hours in the previous release. That’s a whole day on your laptop on a single charge!

The unibody design, by which the 17-inch MacBook Pro is milled from a solid block of aluminium, means it’s surprisingly light and portable for a 17-inch notebook.

We disliked

There isn’t much to dislike here. Obviously, the 17-inch MacBook Pro is expensive, but you’re getting a lot for your money. One thing you’re not getting is a Blu-Ray drive, which is a shame. It really is time for Apple’s optical drives to take a step up.

You can’t restrict the MacBook Pro to using integrated graphics to save on power either, but this may come with a future system update.

Verdict

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro is expensive, but as it’s only £10 more than the previous model, it’s still good value for money. Welcome new processor and graphics technologies make this release a very significant upgrade.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more laptop reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini, in his opening remarks at the Intel investor meeting on Tuesday, said tablets are expected to eventually grow “at 73 to 88 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate)” and annual shipments should hit 50 million to 60 million units in the coming years.

Intel Vice President Mooly Eden, who heads the chipmaker’s client group, showed a thin reference design using their newly announced dual-core Pineview-class Atom CPU.

“Stay tuned for Computex [June 1-5],” warned Eden.

CTL, the maker of those Classmate PCs is showing off a Windows 7 tablet it hopes to have out by this June for $499. It’s not unlike the ill-fated HP Slate.

The CTL machine features 10-inch capacitive touchscreen slate, a 1.6GHz Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM, two USBs and a 2-megapixel webcam.

The Atom Z6 processor series (pdf) will “open the door” for Intel chips in the smartphone market, said Pankaj Kedia, director in the Ultra Mobility Group. The Atom Z6 supports Android and Moblin/Meego, but not Microsoft Windows (yet). Intel says it’s faster than ARM competitors.

View full post on dailywireless.org

When the first Bloomfield Core i7 chips initially cropped up it was the usual, frighteningly expensive parts that hit the floor running. We were aghast at the sight of eight threads running on a single-CPU machine and the hole that it was going to leave in your pocket.

Then came the incredi-chip, the Core i7 920. At £200 it was the cheapest Core i7 around, but packed one hell of a wallop in its unassuming silicon innards, thanks to its impressive overclocking performance. The next stepping of the chip, the 920 D0, only served to further improve its prospects.

But now there’s the Core i7 930, a chip charged with being the best value X58 i7 CPU around. So, what’s different with this new pretender then?

Well the first thing to notice is the stock speed: at 2.8GHz it’s clocked slightly higher than its elder brethren, giving superior performance straight out of the box. The real key to this new chip though, is the higher CPU multiplier that the 930 is sporting under the hood. It’s only slightly bigger than the 920′s 21x at 22x, but that extra should make all the difference when tweaking the clocks.

And that’s exactly what this CPU, like the i7 920 before it, is for. This is a cheap(er) chip for the overclockers that want the sort of performance you get from significantly more expensive CPUs. With the upped multiplier, and the stability that comes from an already established design and manufacturing process, this chip is all set to top the incredible overclocking performance that the 920 achieves.

To this end, we plumbed the 930 into our test bench with the new Rampage III Extreme (R3E) overclocker’s board from Asus. At stock speeds it rolls much as you would expect from a slightly speedier version of the 920. It’s several seconds faster in the Cinebench rendering test and only a little faster in World in Conflict (WiC) and the X264 encoding test.

Clock it up

So, to the overclock. And here, typically, it’s a little more complex. The R3E board is already best buds with the 920, and as such unlocks all its chip-chomping options in the BIOS, including the CPU level up – and the auto-voltage settings that entails. Because of this, we could hit a rock-solid 4.1GHz on air-cooling without turning the chip into bubbling molten slag.

Unfortunately the 930 isn’t so well recognised on the Asus board, which meant that we had to do the overclocking the hard way: by ourselves. Still, it shows just what an overclockable chip this is by virtue of the fact that without any voltage tweaks on our behalf, and still on air-cooling alone, we managed to hit a stable 4.23GHz clockspeed with our i7 930.

Only in WiC though did this translate into serious performance gains over the 920, being only a second faster in Cinebench and hitting parity in the X264 encode. But is it worth the extra £40- odd you’ll be dropping on the 930 over the i7 920?

In real-world terms you’ll hardly notice the performance difference between them, but the extreme tweakers out there will be able to post superior numbers with some judicious voltage management. For the rest of us mortals though, the 920 is still the X58 bargain chip of choice.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more processor reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

Intel revamps Atom platform for smartphone push
By Tarmo Virki, European technology correspondent

Read more on Reuters via Yahoo! Singapore News

Intel on Tuesday reported strong earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2010, with the company calling it the “best first quarter ever.”

View full post on Macworld

Intel has ported Google’s Android to Atom-based smartphones, said Renee James, general manager of Intel’s software and services group, at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.

The move is part of Intel’s aim to further drive its Atom microprocessors into smartphones. Currently chips from competitor Arm dominates the mobile device world and Intel wants in, explains PC World.

The Moorestown shrink of Intel’s Atom processor will play on smartphones, tablets, nettops and netbooks. The new MeeGo OS is probably Intel’s operating system of choice for future mobile devices.

MeeGo merges the ARM-centric Nokia Mameo and the Atom-centric Intel Moblin into a single OS that runs on both Arm processors and Intel Atom processors. ARM CPUs are not made by Intel. They include NVIDIA’s Tegra and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

OSUOSL will provide hosting, infrastructure, and distribution support for the MeeGo production environment and server infrastructure. Hosted at Oregon State University, the lab is home for dozens of important open source communites like the Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation, Drupal, Debian Linux and others.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Intel will ship systems with the experimental 48-core chip in a few months.

View full post on Macworld

Intel and Nokia’s MeeGo Opens Up to Developers
Intel and Nokia have opened the doors on their combined open source MeeGo mobile operating system..and expects an initial release in May.

Read more on Digital Trends

Intel, Nokia let MeeGo come outside to play
Developers got their first look at MeeGo on Wednesday, with the release of key components of the as-yet unfinished operating system. Meego is a mobile version of Linux that will merge Intel’s Moblin OS with Nokia’s Maemo OS. It’s designed to be used in…

Read more on San Francisco Chronicle