Intel Touches Up on Nehalem, Features Turbo Mode

During Pat Gelsinger's keynote this afternoon, he touched on many different areas around computing that Intel is playing a large role in, in the coming years, one of which was Nehalem. Pat touched on some of the workstation aspects of the upcoming processor, but we are more interested in the desktop segment, which we will see products for in the coming months.

I will cover all of the Nehalem findings more in depth later in an article, but what was new here was talk about the chip's use in the high-end desktop, mainstream client and thin and light notebook. After the launch, Intel will be wasting very-little time before their Clarksfield mobile counterpart, primarily due to the fact that the benefits to be had are clear, including better battery-life, better performance and better design.

One newly-discussed feature is Turbo Mode (sadly, no special button on the chassis will be required), a hands-off transition that the processor will make during states of core inactivity. If one, two or three of the cores are deemed not necessary, they will shut off completely into a near-powerless state. From that point, extra voltage will be routed into the primary core, essentially increasing performance. This won't apply to just one core, but two or possibly even three. If two cores are inactive, the other two cores could have boosted performance.

Another feature is the 3x memory bandwidth, which Intel is seriously touting, and perhaps for good reason. While we are seeing numbers hovering around 9.776MB/s on our current desktops, the switch to a triple-channel memory controller essentially triples it (more like 3.4x), despite the fact that the exact same memory modules are used. This is a rather incredible feature, but it will all come down to the real-world benefits.

Other features are improved VM, Nehalem vPro, and improved performance. On an overclocked eight-core processor, they scored over 45,000 in Cinebench R10... when our eight-core SKulltrail scored around 25,000, back when we took a look at it back in February. Impressive. We'll update you later with even more details, especially after we will be able to ask Intel themselves specific questions regarding the architecture.

Intel CEO Launches Inspire-Empower Challenge

In his opening keynote speech at Intel’s fall IDF conference, which began today, Intel CEO Craig Barrett delivered a rousing speech about improving the quality of life worldwide through the use of new technologies. He proceeded to introduce a series of guests whose pioneering work in the areas of investment, healthcare, human interface, and alternative energy have created technological solutions toward that end.

All of this led up to the announcement of the Intel Challenge – four awards of $100,000 each to be given toward the development of innovative technology ideas in the areas of education, healthcare, economic development, and environmentalism. The submitted projects will be judged by an independent panel, and the awards themselves will be given at the 2009 Spring IDF.

The Challenge is designed to inspire developers, individuals, and organizations to innovate and empower them to deliver new ways to apply technology to these issues. The INSPIRE•EMPOWER Challenge advances the commitment of the Intel World Ahead Program – to connect people to a world of opportunity.

Enjoy these pictures from Craig's keynote. We'll post more pictures and news as it happens.

Source: Intel Inspire-Empower Challenge

IDF is Here, Off to a Great Start

As mentioned a few times recently in our news, IDF is here and will continue through until Thursday. We're here in the (not so) warm San Francisco, ready to take in the gorgeous women awesome Intel talks. We've arrived early, along with thousands of others, and so far, things are off to a great start.

To reiterate, the biggest news of this conference will no doubt be hovering around Nehalem, and I'm sure we'll be learning a LOT more about it as the day goes on. We're also sure to have great discussion also revolving around SSD, Larrabee, X58 and other good stuff. It's looking to be an exciting conference, so check back often for our updates.

Apple Offers Additional 60-day Extension to MobileMe Subscribers

Apple's cloud-based MobileMe service has had a hard time from its conception. First, it experienced downtime at launch, then the company offered a 30-day extension for users who experienced problems. If that wasn't enough, Steve Jobs sent out an internal email essentially admitting that they had "a lot to learn" about their online services. Most recently, Apple experienced problems with email on Monday mirroring the Gmail outage that occurred (though the two were unrelated), which came and went with barely any admittance from the company.

Today, in an email to the service's users, Apple announced that they would provide an additional 60-day extension for everyone who owns an account while they "continue to improve the service." Although the extra time is a nice gesture, and 100% up time is not guaranteed by any web service provider, the extension may not satisfy users who experienced unrecoverable productivity, especially since they are paying for the subscription.

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped.  While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service.

Source: Apple Insider

August 19th Tech Roundup

• Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme - Overclockers Club
• Gigabyte EP45-DS3L & EP45T-DS3R - Phoronix
• ASUS Maximus Formula II - Motherboards

• BFG GTX 280 OCX - Hardware Canucks
• Foxconn GeForce 9500 GT - Benchmark Reviews
• Leadtek WinFast PX9800 GTX+ - Bjorn3D
• AMD All In Wonder HD - HotHardware
• AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 - iXBT
• ASUS EAH 4850 TOP - Rbmods

• OCZ SOE Urban Elite Edition DDR3-1600 2GB - ThinkComputers
• Corsair Dominator DDR3 2GB - Legit Reviews
• Thecus N5200B PRO NAS - Tweaknews

• Vizo Mini Ninja Notebook Cooler - Elite Bastards
• Spire Blue-Star 1000 CPU Cooler - Technic3D
• Modern-V Fan Controller - FusionMods

• Thermaltake Xaser VI MX - Pro-Clockers
• Tuniq 3 - BurnOutPC
• Kingwin Mach 1 1220W - Overclocker Cafe'
• Silverstone Zeus ZM1200M 1200W - JonnyGURU

• MSI Wind Notebook - Digital Trends
• Flip Video Mino Video Camera - ASE Labs