Intel Releases Centrino 2

BEIJING, Jul 18, 2008 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --
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-- Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC and SEHK: 4335) released Centrino 2,
next generation mobile platform for laptops, in Beijing on July 15,
2008.

The release was put off for more than half a month due to failure of
integrated graphics cards and certification of wireless access
technology.

Centrino 2, codenamed as Montevina, is the most advanced laptop
platform released by the world's largest semiconductor company, which
promises higher integrated graphic performance as well as less power
consumption.

The platform provides clearer 3D observation and high-
definition (HD) viewing for Blu-ray playback in consumer laptops. Users
can watch a two-hour HD movie with a single charge of laptop batteries.
Moreover, the platform makes business laptops securer and easier to
use.

Nearly 250 models of consumer and business laptops will soon
come into the market, revealed Ian Yang, vice president of Intel
Corporation, Intel's Sales and Marketing Group, and general manager of
Intel China. Eight models of refreshed processors will also be promoted
within the next three months, including the first model of four-core
laptop processor.

Intel is said to fight Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD)
in the laptop field with Centrino 2. Last month, the latter released
Puma, its next-generation laptop platform, which is a complete mobile
platform with the help of third-party Internet access cards. After
acquiring ATI Technologies, a manufacturer of chipsets and video cards
for use in desktops, laptops, and TVs, AMD is able to add
differentiated advantage to Puma.

Centrino 2's producers include Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: Dell), HP,
Toshiba Corporation, while AMD teams up with Acer Inc., Fujifilm
Holdings Corporation, NEC Corporation, Panasonic, and ASUSTeK Computer
Inc. in the production of Puma.

Intel announced that Centrino 2 focused on HD capability, which
is oppugned by insiders, because graphic processing has been AMD's long
suit. In on-spot demonstrations of HD video playback, Centrino 2's CPU
usage rate is around 30%, while AMD's mobile platform only has a rate
of 10%.

In both independent and integrated graphics cards, Intel is
facing challenges. The company relies on archrival AMD, and NVIDIA, a
world leader in visual computing technologies, for technology support.
AMD's 780G chipsets have monopolized the desktop market.

Moreover, Centrino 2 is unable to support WiMAX technology in a
short term. Wireless modules bundled with the platform are not superior
to those of Puma, which are produced by professional communications
companies.

In 2008, the competition in the laptop market will focus on HD
video and 3D games. Intel still has a long way to go in graphic
processing.

(USD 1 = CNY 6.83)

From : http://www.tradingmarkets.com/

Intel Clubhouse in Ghana soon

Mrs. Luversa R. Sullivan, Clever Programme Director has said plans
are underway with Intel, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of PC
microprocessors, to establish an Intel Clubhouse in Ghana in 2009.

The computer clubhouse provides a creative and safe after-school
learning environment where young people from under-served communities
work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop skills, and
build confidence in themselves through the use of technology.

First
in the sub-region, Mrs. Sullivan disclosed to ADM, the Clubhouse will
give opportunity to deprived children in Ghana to learn how to produce
music, video, animation and among others to build robots.
“This
will help them to be fluent in using technology, so that in future,
they can better use their creative skills for their own benefit and
that of the society,” she said.

Mrs. Sullivan is in Ghana with
five teenagers from the Clubhouse Clever Kids of USA for a three-week
training programme. On Wednesday, the children who are beneficiaries of
the Clubhouse visited the Autism Awareness, Care & Training (AACT)
at Kokomlele in Accra.

At the centre, the autism children and
their trainers where taught about kinetic sculpture, photo paint and
other creative arts using the computer.

The equipment used in the
training which included four laptops, picocrickets (engineering
programme), digital camera and wireless router worth about $6,000 was
donated to the centre. Mrs. Sullivan advised them to make good use of
the items. The group also visited Morning Star School at Cantonments
and donated a computer and a projector worth $4,000.

Mrs.
Sullivan said she was happy the group had been able to achieve the
objective of coming to Ghana for the second time and said it would be
made an annual affair.
“It will help the kids to know the importance
of not taking life for granted. We have achieved our goal because,
coming back home in Africa and giving back what we have acquired is a
dream we always have,” she said.

A member of the group, Liischai Pickinson expressed happiness at having visited Ghana.
“I
am happy I had a chance to come here. You see everyone happy and
willing to learn. We are learning from them and they are also learning
from us,” she told ADM.

Mrs. Serwah Quaynor founder of AACT said
it is wonderful to be selected for such a project. She described
autistic children as amazing and appealed to society to support them
and not to shun them.
She promised to use the equipment judiciously to churn out creative children from the centre with knowledge in technology.

Mrs. Quaynor hoped to put up a boarding and respite centre for autistic children.
Clubhouse Clever Kids’ trip was sponsored by Microsoft, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Intel.

From : http://news.accra-mail.com/

European regulators crack down on Intel

Antitrust regulators in
Europe expanded their investigation of Intel Corp. Thursday by charging
the world's largest microprocessor-maker with illegally pushing rival
Advanced Micro Devices out of retail stores in the 27-nation European
Union.

Santa Clara's Intel denied wrongdoing and called the action by the
European equivalent of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission "the same set
of complaints that our competitor, AMD, has been making to regulators
and courts around the world for more than 10 years."

In February, European officials raided the offices of two European
retailers, Media Markt and DSG International. Without naming names,
European regulators allege that "Intel has provided substantial rebates
to a leading European personal computer retailer conditional on it
selling only Intel-based PCs."

Intel has eight weeks to respond to the latest charges and the case
is far from decided. Should the charges be upheld by the 27-member
European Commission, Intel could face a fine of up to 10 percent of
global sales or roughly $3.8 billion.

From : http://www.sfgate.com/

40 Years of Intel

In honor of Intel's 40th birthday, we've compiled a list of the
major dates in the history of the Intel chip. The company has helped
define the technopoly we live in today, and how we work and play with
our computers. From chips in a calculator, to 486 PCs, to the Pentium
era in which our computers are outdated every season, Intel chips have
been at the center of the personal computing world since its inception.
Read ahead and wax nostalgic with us.

1971:

4004 This 400-KHz chip was used in Busicom
calculators and arithmetic manipulation. It was the world's first
microprocessor, as well as the first semiconductor device that
provided, at the chip level, the functions of a computer.

1974:

8080 Found in traffic-light controllers, as
well as within the Altair computer (the legendary first PC), the 8080
was the first widely accepted microprocessor.

1979:

8088 Blistering 5-MHz and 8-MHz models of
this chip were the standard CPUs for all IBM PCs and PC clones at the
time. The 8088's success launched Intel into the ranks of the Fortune
500.

1982:

80286 With the introduction of the 286, a
processor family is born. The 286 was the first chip Intel released to
be backward-compatible with software written for the 8088.

1985:

386 DX The 386 was Intel's first 32-bit desktop chip, comprising 275,000 transistors.

1989:

486 DX The Intel 486 was the first CPU to
offer a built-in math coprocessor, speeding computing by offloading
complex math functions from the central processor.

1994:

Pentium Running at up to 100 MHz, the
Pentium processor let computers more easily incorporate real-world data
such as speech, sound, handwriting, and photographic images.

1995:

Pentium Pro Released in the fall of 1995,
the Intel Pentium Pro was designed to fuel 32-bit server and
workstation applications. Each chip was packaged together with a second
speed-enhancing cache memory chip. The Pentium Pro incorporated 5.5
million transistors.

1996:

Pentium II High-performance desktop and
servers came with the 7.5 million-transistor Intel Pentium II,
incorporating MMX technology—designed specifically to process video,
audio, and graphics data efficiently. It was introduced in a single
edge contact (SEC) cartridge that also had a high-speed cache memory
chip.

1998:

Pentium II Xeon The Intel Pentium II Xeon
was designed for workstations and servers; systems based on it could be
configured to scale to four or eight processors and beyond. This took
multitasking even further.

1999:

Pentium III Running as fast at 500 MHz, the
PIII featured 70 new instructions—including streaming SIMD
extensions—to enhanced performance, particularly the Internet
experience. The processor incorporates 9.5 million transistors, and was
introduced using 0.25-micron technology.

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