“Selling these patents to Intel unlocks some of the substantial and unrealized value of RealNetworks assets,” said Thomas Nielsen, RealNetworks President and CEO. “It represents an extraordinary opportunity for us to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets while still protecting our existing business.

“RealNetworks is pleased Intel has agreed to acquire our next generation video codec software and team,” said Nielsen. “Intel has a strong reputation as a technology innovator, and we believe they are well positioned to build on the development work and investment we’ve made in this area.”

“As the technology industry evolves towards an experience-centric model, users are demanding more media and graphics capabilities in their computing devices. The acquisition of these foundational media patents, additional patents and video codec software expands Intel’s diverse and extensive portfolio of intellectual property,” said Renée James, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group. “We believe this agreement enhances our ability to continue to offer richer experiences and innovative solutions to end users across a wide spectrum of devices, including through Ultrabook devices, smartphones and digital media.”

In addition to the sale of the patents and next-generation video codec software, RealNetworks and Intel signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on future support and development of the next-generation video codec software and related products.

“We look forward to working with Intel to support the development of the next-generation video codec software and to expanding our relationship into new products and markets,” said Nielsen.

RealNetworks does not anticipate that the sale of the approximately 190 patents and 170 patent applications and next generation video codec software will have any material impact on its businesses. RealNetworks businesses include a wide variety of SaaS products and services provided to global carriers, RealPlayer, the Helix streaming media platform, GameHouse online and social games, SuperPass and other media products and services sold both directly to consumers and through partners.

According to the report by analyst firm Juniper Research, more than 178 million Ultrabooks will be shipped annually, but tablet-culture will still dominate with approximately 253 million units sold.

The report’s author, Daniel Ashdown, suggests that Ultrabooks will come down in price over the next five years due to a decline in component costs.

In an interview with The Register, Mr. Ashdown said he believes that manufacturers will begin producing cheaper ‘Ultrabook-lite’ models which have a similar look and feel but lower specs.

“All notebooks in five years’ time will look like Ultrabooks; it’s just the way things are going. But I can’t see Apple dropping the price of its MacBook Air because it is not a value player,” said Mr. Ashdown. “It’ll be very interesting to see if Apple comes out and invents another form factor. I could see it happening.”

However, in the report Mr. Ashdown notes that there are a number of obstacles facing vendors.

“While Intel’s control of the brand ensures that Ultrabooks stand out from traditional notebooks, vendors face a balancing act in terms of product strategy,” he wrote. “Meeting Intel’s specification secures brand status and funding, but the step-change from notebooks means many of today’s Ultrabooks are too expensive for many consumers.”

Mr. Ashdown also claims that the platform-agnostic Windows 8 will be a “big driver” for Ultrabooks when Microsoft releases the OS later this year, along the same time that Intel’s next-generation Ivy Bridge chips are due.

Mr. Krzanich, 51, will continue to oversee worldwide manufacturing for the world’s top chip manufacturer, while handling internal operations as well.

Previous to his appointment as Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Krzanich had been the senior vice president in charge of worldwide manufacturing. As Intel has a long standing tradition of hiring CEOs from within the company, Mr. Krzanich is largely seen as being the heir to the throne; current chief executive Paul Otellini served as COO before being appointed to the top job.

Under Intel bylaws, Mr. Otellini, 61, can continue to serve as CEO until May 2016, when he’ll reach the company’s mandatory retirement age, an Intel spokeswoman told Bloomberg.

This executive reshuffle comes a day after the chipmaker beat Wall Street’s moderate quarterly expectations. In an earnings call to investors, Intel says the reshuffling reflects plans reflect efforts to dramatically increase capital spending in order to catch up to competitors in the tablet and smartphone market.

Intel’s shares gained 1.6 percent to $26.04 in midday trade as investors welcomed its stable quarterly results.

Intel's Mooly Eden

At the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show Press Day today, Intel Corporation described a new era of computing experience that is underway, as the first wave of Ultrabook devices come to market. Leading the event were Mooly Eden, Intel vice president and general manager, PC Client Group, and Kevin Sellers, vice president, Sales and Marketing Group and director, Advertising and Digital Marketing.

Intel first unveiled the Ultrabook at Computex 2011 in Taiwan as a way for PC manufacturers to counter the rise of tablet-culture. Designed to have the portability of a tablet, and power of a PC, Intel claims that their “extensive research” has defined the Ultrabook by figuring out what people want most out of their computers.

In the few short months since the category was created, it is already seeing early momentum as the first wave of Ultrabook systems started to come to market last October.

• More than 75 Ultrabook designs are in the pipeline for 2012 and will come in a variety of screen sizes (including 14- and 15-inch), shapes and styles. The second phase of Ultrabook devices will be powered by the upcoming 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor family, initially available in systems starting in the spring and with increasing availability through the year.
• Security is increasingly becoming more important to consumers who want to protect their data and personal assets. Eden demonstrated a securer, “peace of mind” experience offered by the early results of a strategic collaboration between Intel and MasterCard. This collaboration was announced last year to provide more options for a safer and simpler check-out process for online merchants and MasterCard cardholders using Ultrabook devices.
• Continued innovation from the industry is required to deliver the sleek, beautiful Ultrabook designs that measure less than just 18 millimeters in thickness. Components from display panels, battery technology and storage solutions to motherboard and cooling technologies all have to be redesigned to fit into the slim designs. Last year, Intel announced a $300-million Ultrabook Fund to fuel development of these and other innovations, and help bring them to market in high volume and at mainstream price points.

The Continued Evolution of Interaction

In response to the success of Apple’s Siri, Intel plans to add capabilities that will let people engage naturally and intuitively with an Ultrabook. Mooly Eden, Intel vice president and general manager, announced a strategic relationship between Intel and Nuance Communications, Inc., a leading provider of voice and language solutions, to develop an intuitive, multi-language, natural voice experience for these devices.

The experience will be based on Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition technology that will be optimized for Intel® architecture and is expected to be available this year.

• Using this technology, people will be able to control their Ultrabook just by using their voice, from quickly and easily launching applications, playing media, checking and updating social media sites or controlling their email and calendar.

•  A software development kit for Dragon and other Nuance technologies will be available on the Intel AppUp Center to help developers create new Ultrabook experiences.

As the Ultrabook will likely be one of the anchors of CES, more details are expected as the show progresses.

The 3820 is clocked at 3.6GHz with a turbo clock of 3.9GHz, and has a 10mb cache. The chip has an MSRP of $285.

CPU World

According to CPU World the list includes:

• Pentium G6950, G6960, G620, G620T, and G840
• Core i3 540 and 2100T
• Core i5 650, 660, 670, 680, and 2300
• Core i7 860, 870, 930, 950, 960, 980, and 990X

Some of the chips listed are approximately 2 years old, though the Sandy Bridge Pentium G630, G630T, and G860 are less than 4 months old.

As Intel is planning on launching their Ivy Bridge lineup soon, a retooling of their product lineup was somewhat expected.

Citing sources in China, the site says that there will be “3 mainstream, 2 unlocked, three mid-power and three low-power models” in Intel’s Ivy Bridge lineup. The chips will share similar fundamentals as they will still have 4 CPU cores with Hyper-Threading support, 8 MB level 3 cache, and Turbo Boost technology. i7 The fastest chip will be the 3770K, fully unlocked with a 3.5GHz clock speed.

Rumor has it that the projected launch date for these chips is April 2012.

During his briefing at the conference, Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of Technical Computing, Intel Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, said that the Intel Xeon processor E5 family is the world’s first server processor to support full integration of the PCI Express 3.0 specification**. PCIe 3.0 is estimated** to double the interconnect bandwidth over the PCIe 2.0 specification while enabling lower power and higher density server implementations. New fabric controllers taking advantage of the PCI Express 3.0 specification will allow more efficient scaling of performance and data transfer with the growing number of nodes in HPC supercomputers.

The early-performance benchmarks revealed that the Intel Xeon E5 delivers up to 2.1* times** more performance in raw FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second as measured by Linpack*) and up to 70 percent more performance using real-HPC workloads compared to the previous generation of Intel Xeon 5600 series processors.

“Customer acceptance of the Intel Xeon E5 processor has exceeded our expectations and is driving the fastest debut on the TOP500 list of any processor in Intel’s history,” said Hazra. “Collecting, analyzing and sharing large amounts of information is critical to today’s science activities and requires new levels of processor performance and technologies designed precisely for this purpose.”

The Intel Xeon E5 processors made their way onto the TOP500 list in the year of the 40th anniversary of availability of the world’s first microprocessor (the Intel 4004 processor) and on the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Intel Xeon brand. Since the introduction of Intel Xeon processors in 2001, Intel estimates that Xeon processor performance has increased by more than 130 times***.

Two months since its initial shipments to supercomputer centers, Intel Xeon E5 processors now power 10 systems on the TOP500 list. More than 20,000 of these processors are in operation, delivering a cumulative peak performance of more than 3.4 Petaflops.

As previously announced, the upcoming Intel Xeon processor E5 family will power several other future supercomputers, including the 10 PFLOPS “Stampede” at Texas Advanced Computing Center, the 1.6 PFLOPs “Yellowstone” at The National Center for Atmospheric Research, the 1.6 PFLOPS “Curie” at GENCI, the 1.3 PFLOPS system at International Fusion Energy Research Center (IFERC) and more than 1 PFLOPS “Pleiades” expansion at NASA.

Intel started shipping the Intel Xeon processor E5 family to a small number of cloud and HPC customers in September, with broad availability planned in the first half of 2012. Intel is tracking more than 400 design wins for the Intel Xeon processor E5 family, nearly double the amount at time of launch of the Xeon 5500/5600 generation. Demand for initial production units is approximately 20 times greater than for previous generations of the Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 series processors.

During SC’11 Intel also provided details on its greatly expanded lineup of server boards and chassis, including products specifically optimized for HPC, which will be ready to support the launch of the Intel Xeon Processor E5.

First Teraflops Intel Many Integrated Core Co-Processor Showcased
Intel also reiterated its commitment to delivering the most efficient and programming-friendly platform for highly parallel applications. The benefits of the Intel MIC architecture in weather modelling, tomography, proteins folding and advanced materials simulation were shown at Intel’s booth at SC’11.

The first presentation of the first silicon of “Knights Corner” co-processor showed that Intel architecture is capable of delivering more than 1 TFLOPs of double precision floating point performance (as measured by the Double-precision, General Matrix-Matrix multiplication benchmark — DGEMM*). This was the first demonstration of a single processing chip capable of achieving such a performance level.

“Intel first demonstrated a Teraflop supercomputer utilizing 9,680 Intel® Pentium Pro® Processors in 1997 as part of Sandia Lab’s “ASCI RED” system,” Hazra said. “Having this performance now in a single chip based on Intel MIC architecture is a milestone that will once again be etched into HPC history.”

“Knights Corner,” the first commercial Intel MIC architecture product, will be manufactured using Intel’s latest 3-D Tri-Gate 22nm transistor process and will feature more than 50 cores. When available, Intel MIC products will offer both high performance from an architecture specifically designed to process highly parallel workloads, and compatibility with existing x86 programming model and tools.

Hazra said that the “Knights Corner” co-processor is very unique as, unlike traditional accelerators, it is fully accessible and programmable like fully functional HPC compute node, visible to applications as though it was a computer that runs its own Linux*-based operating system independent of the host OS.

One of the benefits of Intel MIC architecture is the ability to run existing applications without the need to port the code to a new programming environment. This will allow scientists to use both CPU and co-processor performance simultaneously with existing x86 based applications, dramatically saving time, cost and resources that would otherwise be needed to rewrite them to alternative proprietary languages.

Intel Increases Investment in Exascale Computing Labs
As previously announced at the International Supercomputing Conference 2011 in Hamburg, Germany, Intel’s goal is to deliver Exascale-level performance by 2018 (which is more than 100 times faster performance than is currently available) while only requiring two times the power usage of the current top supercomputer. Fundamental to achieving that goal is working closely with the HPC community, and today Hazra announced several new initiatives that will help to achieve that goal.

Intel and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) have signed a multi-year agreement to create the Exascale Laboratory in Barcelona, Intel’s fourth European Exascale R&D lab that joins existing sites in Paris, Juelich (Germany) and Lueven (Belgium). This new laboratory will focus on scalability issues in the programming and runtime systems of Exascale supercomputers.

Additionally, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Intel have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop and test technology that will be required to power the supercomputers of tomorrow. Under this initial agreement, STFC’s computational scientists at its Daresbury Laboratory in England and Intel will work together to test and evaluate Intel’s current and future hardware with leading software applications to ensure that scientists are ready to exploit Intel’s supercomputer systems of the future.

•    The ability to make firmware updates under Microsoft Windows* (instead of DOS).
•    Even easier graphical user interface (GUI) — (see photos).
•    Contextual help — integrated, same-page one-click help pointers.
•    A System Information button to help guide tech support troubleshooting.
•    Hyperlink to Intel® SSD webpage for instant access to additional SSD information.
•    The Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox has gone global. It is now available in 11 additional languages including:
o    Brazilian/Portuguese, French, German, Italian, International Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

SSDs provide users one of the single best performance boosts to their PC system. But SSDs don’t behave the same as a traditional hard-disk drive (HDD.) For example, because they are so much faster than an HDD and are based on silicon, there is no need for SuperFetch or disk defrag. SSDs also have the benefit of firmware updates for the latest product improvements. These firmware updates can now be performed under Windows or via Command Line Interface (CLI.)

In addition, the Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox 3.0 provides an even easier GUI and offers Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART), Summary Drive Health and Estimated Life Remaining bars, used/unused capacity pie chart, diagnostics, system information summary and contextual help that integrates one-click same-page help pointers. The Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox also now comes in 11 languages besides English, making it easier to own a solid-state drive worldwide.

As with previous versions of the Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox, the free utility provides a system tuner that makes system configuration recommendations for the user’s PC for optimal SSD performance. It will detect and determine if SuperFetch/Prefetch should be disabled and whether ready/boost, defragmenter or DIPM should be turned off.  Since SSDs do not behave like an HDD, some of these services designed to make an HDD faster are not needed or even impede the performance of an SSD.

The Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox 3.0 provides Secure Erase, and can now also perform secure erase of a secondary Intel SSD ensuring all data is cleaned from the drive before water falling the drive to another user or system. The utility allows users to set up automatic clean ups (trims) of their drive and check the system for optimal SSD configuration.

Super easy and elegant, the Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox helps users embark on the road to the faster performance of SSDs without having to deal with the complexities of the drive. It makes it easier for consumers to make the technology leap as SSDs become more mainstream.  Intel SSD owners can download the new toolbox free at www.intel.com/go/ssdtoolbox.
Additional information about Intel® Solid-State Drives can be found at www.intel.com/go/ssd.

Intel’s new quad-core chip clocks in at 3.5GHz, has a 8MB of L3 cache and a 95W TDP. This speed places it a mere 100Mhz ahead of the Core i7-2600k. Similar to the Core i7 2600k, the Core i7 2700k has an unlocked clock multiplier to enable overclocking.

The Core i7 2700k has an MSRP of $332.

The Cedar Trail-M platform includes two new CPUs, a 32nm-based Atom N2800 with a 1.86GHz clock speed and the N2600 that runs at at 1.6GHz.

The launch of Cedar Trail – M was expected in September, but Digitimes claims it will be pushed back until November. Apparently the platform has failed to pass the Windows 7 certification test, as issues have emerged with its integrated graphics drivers and Direct X 10.1. Delays are needed to make the necessary changes to obtain the certification.

As netbooks no longer enjoy the market clout they once did – because of the emergence of tablet-culture – this delay is not expected to have a substantial affect on the notebook market as a whole.

TI has not formally announced the deal, nor has the name of a buyer been released. When asked by Hardware Canucks for a statement a spokesperson for Texas Instruments would not comment on the story, citing company policy not to discuss rumors or speculation about mergers, acquisitions or divestitures.

During June’s Computex it was first rumored that TI was interested in selling its OMAP division. According to an apparently well placed, yet anonymous, source in the industry Intel is considering purchasing the division from TI. This source claimed that the OMAP division was not producing the margins that TI wanted, and if the company sold that division it would allow them to focus on their higher margin businesses.

Given the nature of the source, it is impossible to validate the authenticity of his claim.

While Intel has previously purchased divisions from TI – in August 2010 Intel purchased TI’s cable modem division – this purchase would seem unlikely considering Intel’s investment in its own Atom line of processors.

Intel, however, is not the only other potential suitor for TI’s OMAP division: AMD, ATIC, and NVIDIA, are also apparently interested parties.

The post begins by arguing the computing industry is at something of a crossroads, or in the nomenclature of CEO Andy Grove, a “strategic inflection point”. Intel wants to embrace this shift towards mobile computing, and the ultrabook — a tablet when you want it, a PC when you need it according to Intel – will be the vehicle in which they embrace this change.

According to the blog post, the ultrabook rollout will come in three phases:

Phase 1 (June 2011 – 2012): Phase 1 was kicked off when Intel introduced its latest Ultra-Low Voltage 2nd Generation Intel Core processors in June that will bring new systems to shelves this holiday season.

Phase 2 (2012-2013): Centers around the next generation of Intel micro-architecture, code-named Ivy Bridge, with processors scheduled for availability in systems in the first half of 2012. Faster I/O such as USB 3 and Thunderbolt technologies are also part of Intel’s ongoing work to drive the PC platform forward.

Phase 3 (2013): Intel micro-architecture dubbed Haswell. Accelerating the Ultrabook and reinventing the capabilities of the laptop in sleek systems.

One of the other selling points of the ultrabook that Intel has promoted is battery life. The sleekest units will offer at least 5 hours, with some offering up to 8 hours or more.

Aimed at mobile PCs, the Celeron M 857 has two cores clocked at 1.2GHz, a TDP of 17w, as well as 2Mb of L3 cache.

The Celeron 857 M retails at $134.

Intel’s replacement for the LGA-1366 Core platform was due by the fourth quarter of this year, and motherboards based on the new 32nm LGA 2011 socket format were shown off at this year’s Computex.

It has widely speculated that the rationale for the delay has is to ensure that Intel has a strong lineup at CES 2012.

The 710 drives will be able to achieve read/write speeds of 270MB/s and 210MB/s respectively, with Intel rating their 4K random read and write performance at 36K/2.4K IOPS.

The 710 series, entering production in July, will feature 2.5-inch form factor, 25nm Multi Level Cell NAND Flash memory, 64MB of DRAM cache, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, and 128-bit AES encryption. It will be available in 100, 200, and 400 GB sizes.

The 710′s counterpart, the 720, arrives in Q3 2011 and will feature a PCI Express Interface as well as 34nm Single Level Cell NAND Flash memory, 512MB of cache,  and 256-bit AES encryption. It will be available in 200 and 400 GB models. These drives will be able to deliver 180K/56K random 4K read and write IOPS.

No word yet on pricing.

According to the specifications established by Intel Ultrabooks will be notebooks that are less than 2cm think, use solid-state storage, have enhanced security features, and are available below the $1,000 price point.

Ultrabooks will be powered by the current generation Sandy Bridge processor, and when it’s released, the next generation Ivy Bridge chip. In 2013, Intel will unveil a new generation of Ultrabooks based on a new system on a chip architecture design, code-named Haswell. Intel claims that Haswell will “will reduce microprocessor power to half of today’s design point”. This system on a chip architecture is expected to bring Ultrabooks down to the $599 pricepoint.

In conjunction with Intel’s announcement, ASUS unveiled their first entry into the Ultrabook category – the UX 21. ASUS hasn’t released all the details on the UX 21, though we know that is has an 11.6 inch screen, and comes in either a 64GB or 128 GB model. ASUS also says that this computer will have a 2 second wake time, thanks to the SSD.

Intel expects other OEMs to begin releasing Ultrabooks by the end of 2011. The company expects that 40% of all notebooks sold in 2012 will be based on Ultrabook designs.

From Intel:

Confident in the enhanced reliability features of it’s recently introduced third-generation solid-state drive (SSD), Intel announced it has extended its limited warranty for the Intel® SSD 320 Series from three years to five years.

The extended warranty term will apply to all Intel SSD 320 Series drives, including those already purchased. Additional limitations apply to enterprise usage levels.

See full warranty details at: http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/index.htm

The $99 Pentium LGA1156 chip is virtually identical to the Pentium G6950, with the addition of “hardware feature upgrades” available for purchase. What the unlock gets you is Hyperthreading technology for a total of 4 processing threads, and access to the disabled 1MB of L3 Cache.

In order to unlock the processor, a user much purchase an upgrade key, install specific Intel software which then activates the key. It’s not just that simple however, Intel’s requirements for the upgrade state “the computer system to have an upgrade-enabled Intel CPU, BIOS, and chipset, network hardware and software, as well as connection with a power source and the Internet.” So a user will likely also require a compatible Intel board or one specifically licensed to provide the service, and you can almost guarantee this won’t make it cheaper.

With the price premium putting the cost of the CPU at $150, all said and done it rings it more expensive than a base Core i3 chip, which not only already includes the paid features, but has a higher clock speed as well.

Intel has stated this is only a test market idea, but would it be a welcome possibility if included on more premium chips?

A joint venture between Intel and Micron earlier this year has resulted in Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) 25 nm MLC NAND flash memory  that will be used in the “G3″ version of Intel branded SSDs.  It is expected there will be three X25-M drives, listed as 600GB, 300GB and 160GB models, along with an X25-V 80GB all available by the end of 2010.

The lineup is still a part of the “Postville” series, however, along with the chip shrink, the SSDs will bring a new controller,  data encryption, S.M.A.R.T support and of course enhanced performance.

Intel also looks to expand its X25-E extreme lineup with new a Lyndonville series, boasting the same features as its other models, but with better write performance. Release is expected at the start of 2011 with 400GB, 200GB and 100GB models.

The one glaring omission on these highly anticipated drives, no SATA III 6Gbps support

In a technical paper presented by Intel, the company conceded that GPUs are faster than the traditional CPU, but only by 14 times. The thing is, NVIDIA claims that its current generation of GPUs are over 100x more efficient.

Titled, “Debunking the 100x GPU vs CPU Myth”, Intel’s presentation pitted a GTX 280 against a Intel Core i7 960 and concluded that in select application kernels GPUs operate only up to 14x faster.  However, NVIDIA reports, Intel failed to release critical details about how the tests were structured, what settings were configured and how the applications were run. They also provide a handful of counter research from places such as Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital showing the improvements of GPUs measured between 100x and 300x.

Here’s a solution, let’s compromise and accept that the median performance improvement of a GPUs is only 57x faster. Sound fair?

More details on the study and counter studies can be found through the Source link below.

Fortunately for all the tech junkies out there, an engineering sample has landed in the hands of Coolaler.com who has been kind enough to provide chip shots, as well as CPU-Z details and some quick benchmarks.

Sandy Bridge chips will be using the new LGA-1155 socket and based on the 32nm Westmere technology. We now know at least one processor will be a Quad Core with hyper-threading (8 threads) clocked at 2.5GHz. The chip has 256KB of L2 Cache per core and a shared 6MB L3 Cache. The chips still keep the integrated graphics, however the IGP is now built into the core, rather than a separate chip.

Sandy Bridge marks the start of Intel’s preparation for its eventual transition to the 22nm process, mapped for 2012

The benchmarking results show the expected results; falling under the faster clocked 2.8GHz i7 860 in Cinebench and completing a SuperPI 1M calculation in 16.349s, in line with similarly clocked Core i7 processors.

The launch is rumoured to be in early 2011, but with motherboard manufacturers already showing off retail grade products and engineering samples making their way out of the labs, one can’t help but wonder if that timeline has been accelerated .

Intel now has three completely separate desktop sockets and a dozen chipset lines all for three processor families using the same Core i3/i5/i7 tag. Do you feel this may cause confusion in the market and for everyday consumers?

Intel recently announced that it has begun to ship 25nm NAND to customers. The new chips, originally announced in February, should lead to decreased prices and increased capacities for next-gen SSDs.

Press Release:

Intel announced today that Intel-Micron Flash Technologies are in mass production of their breakthrough 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash memory and Intel is shipping in volume to customers. Announced in February, IMFT was the first to sample, and now to ship in production, 25nm NAND using the world’s smallest, most advanced manufacturing process technology. The 8 gigabyte (GB) 25nm NAND flash memory chip measures just 167mm2 and can hold up to 2,000 songs, 7,000 photos or 8 hours of video. NAND Flash memory is used in USB memory keys and SD cards for data storage in digital camcorders and cameras, as well as in smart phones, personal music players and solid-state drives.

This announcement comes as welcome news for enthusiasts, as it means that products will be hitting the store shelves soon. No figures have been released yet, but it’s likely that 25nm NAND will mean lower prices, higher capacities, and possibly greater performance. Stay tuned to HWC for more news as it becomes available.

Today at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, leading industry players announced the development of Google TV—an open platform that adds the power of the web to the television viewing experience, ushering in a new category of devices for the living room. Intel, Sony, and Logitech, together with Best Buy, DISH Network and Adobe, joined Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) on stage to announce their support for Google TV.

Over the past decade, the Internet has created unprecedented opportunity for innovation and development across the world, but so far the web has largely been absent from living rooms. With Google TV, consumers will now be able to search and watch an expanded universe of content available from a variety of sources including TV providers, the web, their personal content libraries, and mobile applications.

Search across TV, Web, and Apps

Google TV is based on the Android platform and runs the Google Chrome web browser. Users can access all of their usual TV channels as well as a world of Internet and cloud-based information and applications, including rich Adobe® Flash based content – all from the comfort of their own living room and with the same simplicity as browsing the web. When coupled with the Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100, Intel’s latest system-on-a-chip designed specifically for consumer electronics, the new platform will offer home theatre quality A/V performance. Sony and Logitech said they would be delivering products based on the new Intel Atom processor and running Google TV later this year. While Google TV is designed to work with any TV operator, at launch the user experience will be fully optimized when paired with DISH Network.

Google TV expands video choice from the hundreds of channels available today through a pay TV provider to the vast storehouse of video content available through the web and streaming videos. The Google TV experience is complemented by the ability to watch streaming video from leading content platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and YouTube. Google TV will also have the capability to run apps from the Android Market.

To navigate the array of content that will now be available through a single device and on a single screen, Google TV introduces an integrated search experience to help viewers easily find relevant content across over-the-air and pay-TV channel listings, DVR, and the Internet, as well as a picture-in-picture layout to access multiple windows simultaneously. Google TV also features an innovative home screen to help viewers quickly organize their favorite content and personalize their TV viewing experience. Some of these features are only available with advanced integration from DISH Network.

Broad Alliance of Industry Leaders

Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman and CEO said, “We are very proud to be working with this distinguished set of partners, all of whom have decades of experience in hardware, design and retail.”

Sony announced plans to introduce “Sony Internet TV,” the World’s first TV lineup incorporating the Google TV platform. The first models are planned to be introduced in the U.S. market in the fall of 2010 with the lineup featuring both a standalone TV model and set top box-type unit incorporating a Blu-ray Disc drive.

Howard Stringer, Chairman, President and CEO, Sony Corporation said, “I am delighted to announce the unique alignment of Google’s rapidly growing, open source Android platform with Sony’s unparalleled expertise in the field of TV design and technology. The addition of ‘Sony Internet TV’ will further bolster Sony’s comprehensive TV lineup and will fuse new levels of enjoyment and interactivity into the TV experience.”

Logitech will introduce a companion box that brings Google TV to existing HDTV home entertainment systems, easily integrating with any brand of HDTV and set-top box. The companion box will incorporate Logitech’s Harmony® remote control technology, and will include a controller that combines keyboard and remote control capabilities. The company also has plans to introduce an HDTV camera and video chat for Google TV, along with additional choices for navigation and control, including apps to turn a smart phone into an advanced controller for Google TV and home-entertainment systems.

Gerald Quindlen, President and CEO, Logitech said, “We committed to Google TV early on because it aligns with our strategy to support open platforms that enable new immersive experiences in the digital living room. While Google TV enables seamless discovery of all your content, Logitech enables seamless control over how you experience that content. We look forward to continued collaboration with Google and the developer community to create new Google TV experiences that have yet to be imagined.”

The Intel Atom CE4100 processor will power both the Logitech and Sony devices. Paul Otellini, Intel President and CEO praised the collaborative effort and said TV as we know it was being “reinvented.” “Today marks the next step in the evolution of TV to Smart TV. TV’s are becoming smarter as a result of the microprocessor and the Internet. Traditional TV programming will be merged seamlessly with the infinite amount of content on the Internet to enable every viewer to determine what they want to watch, when they want it. This is Moore’s Law transforming television, powered by the performance of Intel microprocessors.”

DISH Network has been a key partner with Google on advanced integration development for Google TV. The two partners began a joint trial over a year ago with more than 400 DISH Network and Google beta users. Based on the continuous feedback from the trial, Google and DISH Network have built the optimized Google TV experience that seamlessly integrates traditional TV, DVR and web content.

Charlie Ergen, Chairman, President and CEO of DISH Network, said, “Google TV marks the next evolution in television, and we are excited to be the first to partner with Google to bring this experience to our customers. Only DISH Network Google TV customers will be able to enjoy a unified search across TV, DVR and web; easily find related content; and manage their entire TV viewing experience. Additionally, the advanced integration will allow developers to create new and exciting applications to enrich the TV viewing experience.”

Best Buy will bring their retail experience and consumer expertise to the project, with Google TV devices being sold at Best Buy locations nationwide later this year. “Every day, our 180,000 Blue Shirt store employees and Geek Squad Agents work with our customers to get them the best home theater experience possible”, said Brian Dunn, CEO Best Buy, “We are thrilled about the new and exciting experiences smart TVs, like Google TV, provide to our customers – and we are looking forward to showcasing those experiences in our store and ensuring customers get connected to all the products and services that bring those experiences to life.

Finally, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will be integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser on Google TV, enabling viewers to experience tens of millions of web pages with rich Flash content including games, animations, applications, videos, audio and more. Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO, Adobe said, “An open web ecosystem offers endless opportunities for creativity and innovation. Flash Player 10.1 extends the advantages of full web browsing and consistent, rich experiences to smartphones, tablets, netbooks and Internet-connected TVs. We’re thrilled to be part of the Google TV initiative with other industry leaders who share a common vision of enabling access to the best web experiences possible.”

Opportunity for Developers

The demonstration at I/O highlighted the unique opportunity developers have to help shape the future of Google TV. Today Google announced that they would soon release a set of TV specific APIs for web applications, encouraging web developers to begin building unique web applications for use on television sets. Later this year Google will also release an updated Android SDK, which will support applications built for Google TV.

Google also plans to open source the Google TV platform to help spur innovation in the industry and so that other developers can benefit from the project. The long term goal is to collaborate with the entire developer community to help drive entertainment in the living room forward and to introduce the next generation of TV-watching experience.

For more information, click on the Product Page link below.

The Core i5 680 is just a rung up over the 670, clocked at a blistering 3.60 GHz with Turbo boost at 3.86GHz.  It is a dual core CPU, with hyperthreading for 4 threads, 4MB of L3 cache, integrated graphics, and a 73W TDP. Pricing is expected at $294 USD. The Core i5 680 will be will be the fastest dual-core processor ever produced.

The Pentium E5500 is based on the 45 nm Wolfdale-2M core, with a clock speed of 2.8GHz and 800MHz FSB, 2MB shared L2 cache and 65W TDP.  Pricing is expected at $75 USD.

*** Correction: It should be noted that Intel’s announcement about TRIM support only applies to single SSD’s that are present in a system with a RAID array, and not to a RAID array of SSD’s. ***

Users have long lamented over the fact that TRIM was not previously supported in SSD RAID Arrays, resulting in less efficiency and crippled performance.

To the joy of those with Intel Chipsets and SSDs, the 9.6.0.1014 version of the Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology driver now enables TRIM for every SSD in the RAID array, across all volume types except RAID 5.

This is not a firmware update, simply a motherboard chipset driver update, only for those with Intel Raid Chipsets, and obviously supported only through Windows 7.

The Intel Driver for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of W7 can be downloaded from the Intel download centre: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/detail_desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=&DwnldID=15251

Driver Changelong:

RAID enabled systems: Redundant Array of Independent Drives (RAID) refers to multiple independent disks combined to form one logical drive. The main objective of this technology is to improve storage system performance, data protection, and increase fault-tolerance.

This technology provides support for the following features:

■ Intel® Rapid Recover Technology
This technology provides full data redundancy by copying data from a designated source drive (i.e., master disk) to a designated destination drive (i.e., recovery disk). Data updates of recovery volumes can be continuous or on request.

■ Intel® Rapid RAID
This technology provides the ability to create RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 volumes on desktop and mobile platforms. Data is distributed across two or more disks to provide data redundancy or to enhance data storage performance.

■ Intel® Matrix RAID Technology
This technology allows two independent RAID volumes to be created on a single array. The first volume occupies part of the array, leaving space for the second volume. The array may consist of two to six SATA disks depending on the volume types.

■ Volume migration
This feature provides support for converting system data into a high-performance or protection RAID configuration.

■ Volume size increase
This feature allows you to increase the data storage capacity of a volume by utilizing 100% of the available array space or by adding one or more SATA disk to an existing volume.

Our application also provides support for the following features:
• Password-protected disks
This feature provides high-level security and protection for the data on your disks with a password, denying access from any unauthorized user.
• Trim (Microsoft Windows 7* only)
This feature provides support for solid state disks (SSDs) that meet the ATA-8 protocol requirements. This feature optimizes write operations, helps devices reduce wear, and maintains unused storage area on devices as large as possible.