Apple Has 1,000 Engineers Working On Chips For The Post-PC Era

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As we ponder what will happen to Apple without Steve Jobs, I keep coming back to a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs. This was just after Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple. We got to talking about why Apple is so well-positioned in the post-PC era, and this executive zeroed in on something you don't hear too often. "Steve Jobs told me he has 1,000 engineers working on chips," he said. "Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything."Not only are Apple's processors extremely power efficient, but Apple is also removing the hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. It's not just iPhones and iPads, the MacBook Air's memory is also flash. All of Apple's products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, "form factor no longer becomes an issue," explained the Silicon Valley CEO. ]]>

Intel's next-generation Itanium chips detailed

Intel has released more details on its next-generation high-performance and enterprise server Itanium chips, codenamed Poulson.

A blog post by Intel's data center group general manager Pauline Nist sheds light on the new processors, which were revealed during the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University.

The cores on the chip have been doubled to eight over its predecessor, codenamed Tukwila. A 32nm manufacturing process has been employed over Tukwila's 65nm process.

In addition, the transistor count has been upped from a meagre 2.046 billion in Tukwila to 3.1 billion in Poulson.

Pipeline dreams

Three key area features were announced. Intel Instruction Reply technology uses a new pipeline architecture to capture errors in execution and correct them immediately. This is far faster than the current architecture, which completely refreshes the pipeline in the event of an error.

Improved hyper-threading technology enables independent front and backend pipeline execution to improve multi-thread efficiency.

Finally, new integer operations, expanded software prefetch and thread control mean that the Itanium architecture can "grow with future needs", according to Nist.

Although it's unlikely that the new technology will make its way into the hands of consumers, Nist notes that features "often waterfall down to subsequent generations of Xeon CPU chips", which power non-consumer servers and workstations.

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Intel chips get new logos, star treatment

Intel presented new and more seeing together logos for their processors of consumer-level and combos of processor-cum-play of chips, with a system to hold the first role-estimate which can produce of more than trouble than councils.

The new logos comprise the logo familiar of Intel above the names sale the core i7, core 2, Centrino, Centrino 2, atom, Celeron, and Pentium, with the small copy below the qualifiers of list such as the end, the duet, the quadruple, and the vPro.

The corner upper-right of the logos show that a section of a piece die inside piece-like colors for the families of core and Centrino, but - curiously - in blue for the others.

A logo of first order does not have any family name, interior slogan just devoted Intel. All the other logos include the limit interior in the corner low-right.

While the rectangles round-bordered of occupied-glance can not gain any reward for the simple design, when slapped on the bodies of the laptops and the desktop machines on the tight racks of the best purchase of Circuit City they will provide foragers of PC of information on the actuating processor they of a purchase 'about considering.
Intel 'new logos of processor of S

Intel 'family wide of S, all in new clothing

The new system to hold the first role-estimate, however, can finish being in rise more trouble than its value.

These rows divide the offers of desktop machine and book of Intel into five groups in the order ascending of the capacity, with Will conceal a star clinging to the lower level and the core signal-flight i7s and the core 2s being held to trust on the higher level five stars.

While the system to hold the first role-estimate is a noble goal, it has a straw mortal. The processors will inevitably slip in bottom of the scale. And when they make, their rows can change at Intel �department of sale of S, but not necessarily on racks of store or salesfolks � of the spirits.

When this first round of the rows expires at the end of September 2009, confusion will start. In early - October, wait even those strongly qualified, better whip-smart associates of sales of purchase to flummoxed while trying to explain why yesterday 'laptop of S with a mobile processor of three-star duet of core 2 is also able as laptop which arrived after the mobile of duet of core 2 Re-was held the first role to two.

The atoms, moreover, aren 't to hold the role-arranged first, thus put 't intend to see netbooks with such stickers any time soon. Asylum of Xeons 't however be new-logoed or to hold the role-evaluated first.

What is very well. The purchasers of Netbook have little reason to compare the execution, and the purchasers of Xeon put the 'need for T the assistance. �