Intel seeks tablet breakthrough with Clover Trail, Windows 8
After months of heralding its Clover Trail processor for Windows 8 tablets, Intel on Thursday unveiled the chip that it believes is its ticket to success in the ARM-dominated market.
Tablets with Clover Trail, aka the Atom Z2760 chip, will become available around the end of October when Microsoft ships Windows 8, Intel officials said. The chip will facilitate long battery life for Windows 8 tablets and full HD video.
While Intel dominates the PC market, it faces a tough road in the mobile battle with ARM, whose processors ship in most smartphones and tablets including Apple's iPad. Intel has high hopes for Windows 8, and has worked with Microsoft to take advantage of OS features to provide fast performance and long battery life in tablets. Read more...
Dell carves out new servers from 10-petaflop supercomputer
Dell announced servers based on designs the company is implementing in an upcoming 10-petaflop supercomputer called Stampede, which will be fully deployed at the University of Texas, Austin, starting next year.
The PowerEdge C8000 servers use standard Intel x86 CPUs and offer the flexibility to include graphics processors or more storage to improve performance on database, high-performance computing or cloud workloads. Customers will have the ability to mix and match graphics processors, storage, memory and other elements inside servers, depending on their computing needs, said Armando Acosta, product manager at Dell. Read more...
Samsung will ship Galaxy Note 10.1 in August with better processor than expected
Samsung Electronics will start shipping the Galaxy Note 10.1 later this month, with a 1.4GHz quad-core processor and a software feature from the Galaxy S III.
When it revealed the Galaxy Note 10.1 at Mobile World Congress in February, Samsung said the device would have a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, but the company apparently felt that wasn't enough to compete with the latest iPad or the current crop of Android-based tablets.
Removing the S Pen stylus from its slot in the Galaxy Note 10.1 turns the screen on, while a software feature inherited from the Galaxy S III uses the front camera to see if someone is using the device, and while that is the case the screen isn't dimmed. Read more...
Clues about HP’s Gen8 servers leaked
Hewlett-Packard has let slip some details on its website about its upcoming Proliant Gen8 servers ahead of their official launch.
The pages list basic details of single- and dual-socket BL, ML and DL Gen8 servers, which will be based on Intel's upcoming Xeon E5 processors.
One system, the single-socket ProLiant BL460c, is a small-form-factor server based on Intel's E5-2650L processor.
Some servers will have HP's latest networking, I/O, storage and management capabilities, according to results that show up during a search of HP's website. The pages the results are supposed to lead to have been removed from the site. Read more...
Intel recasts Pentium chip for servers
Intel is giving new life to its Pentium processor for servers, and has started shipping the new Pentium 350 chip for low-end servers.
The dual-core processor operates at a clock speed of 1.2GHz and has 3MB of cache. Like many server chips, the Pentium 350 lacks features such as integrated graphics, which are on most of Intel's laptop and desktop processors.
The iconic Pentium line of processors has been around for more than a decade, but now is mostly targeted at budget laptops and desktops. Pentium was Intel's flagship PC processor line, a mantle now held by the Core chips. The company once offered Pentium III and Pentium II Xeon processors for servers. Read more...
Android ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ arrives Oct. 19 in Hong Kong
The big Google-Samsung event to launch Ice Cream Sandwich -- postponed at CTIA earlier this week -- will take place next Wednesday in Hong Kong, according to an invitation sent by the two companies.
It will be held Oct. 19 in Hong Kong at 10 a.m. local time, which translates to 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday in the U.S.
While Android 4.0 was always rumored to be the subject of the event, it now seems certain, since the invitation shows off an Ice Cream Sandwich in the shape of the familiar Android creature.
Also, recent reports pegged Verizon Wireless as the exclusive carrier for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which would run on 4G LTE and Android 4.0. (The Galaxy nexus is also known as the Nexus Prime.) Read more...
Nvidia boss: Windows 8 will run Windows Phone 7 apps
Nvidia has been outlining a future that sees a Qualcomm/Nvidia duopoly providing processors for every computing platform, which will share apps as well as chips.
Nvidia's CEO has been briefing journalists, including C-Net's Roger Cheng, pointing out that the company's Tegra chipsets are already powering half of the Android smartphones, and 70 per cent of tablets, and are looking forward to getting radio signal processing integrated too. But the CEO also made clear his belief that applications developed for Windows Phone 7 would find themselves happy running on Windows Desktop 8. Read more...
Intel: Processor upgrade program saves tearing apart PC
Intel this week defended its fee-based processor upgrade program, saying it is a way to add incremental performance without having to tear the system apart for a CPU upgrade.
Intel is selling upgradable processors in which some features, such as processors and cache, can be added through upgrade cards sold through retail stores. The card points to a downloadable software program that completes the chip upgrade on PCs running Microsoft's Windows 7 OS.
The CPU upgrade program is in its pilot stages and involves just a few low-end budget processors, said Dave Salvator, an Intel spokesman, in response to questions about why Intel was locking out features in some chips. The program is targeted at customers interested in adding additional capabilities to the baseline features provided with the original upgradable chip. Read more...