Vlog: Intel Core i7 Ushering In Era Of Ubiquitous Processing

A confluence of events -- faster processors, 32-nm fab technology, and the ubiquity of computing power -- make this an incredibly exciting time in the chip industry. So I made a video about it. Click through to see my eight minute vlog, where I opine on these trends and also showIntel (NSDQ: INTC)'s new Core i7 processor, the X-25 solid-state drive (SSD) that's taking the PC storage market by storm, and one surprisingly large heat sink.

Since this blog post is mainly an excuse to get you to my vlog video, let me just summarize the high points, which involve both a couple of new product and some philosophical stuff. (I'll dive into the discussion more deeply in an upcoming online column.)

The product stuff revolves around Intel's new Core i7 processor family and its solid-state drive. As I've previously written (see Intel Raises Performance Bar With Nehalem Core i7), the Core i7 line is significant because of the wonderful performance: dollars ratio it delivers to the desktop. (For one thing, I think we're going to see video creation become ubiquitous, since there's no longer any impediment to content creation by the home user. Well, maybe on the software front -- non-linear video editing programs still aren't cheap and require training. But we're headed in the "everyone's a video producer" direction.)

This leads directly into my broader, philosophical point. Namely, what chips like Core i7 spotlight is the trend towards a world where processing power is essentially free to anyone who needs it. (OK, not free, but $290 for a quad-core, 2.66-GHz processor is close.)

For businesses, this frees them from the chains of having to worry about how to afford the computing power they need to be competitive. As well -- and this is the great part -- they no longer have to even buy, manage, and support that computing power themselves. If you want to own your own big-ass desktops and servers, great. But if you'd rather purchase computing power and storage capacity in the cloud, you can do that do.
This second option is available, because nearly free processing power has made the cloud possible, by allowing Google (NSDQ: GOOG) et al to cheaply deploy massive armies of servers of their own.

OK, so I haven't even gotten to the Intel SSD. For that, you'll just have to watch my vlog:

Source : http://www.informationweek.com/

Intel's Energy-Efficient Transistors

Each of the 45nm transistors in the upcoming 8-core Intel® Xeon® processor uses 1/7000th the power of the original 4004 transistors that Intel was manufacturing in 1971 - quite a statement in energy efficiency. If the fuel efficiency of automobiles had improved at the same rate, a car would get 200,000 miles per gallon. You could put one gallon in your tank when you first purchase a car and never have to stop at a gas station again for the life of the car, and still have plenty of fuel to spare. And each transistor today takes up 1/40,000th the area of the transistors in the 4004.

Source : http://www.hardocp.com/

How Intel's battle with NVIDIA over Core i7 impacts Apple

A technology licensing suit between Intel and NVIDIA over controller chipsets and the next generation of Intel's Core i7 CPUs may complicate Apple's immediate plans for the next iMac and Mac Pro, and disrupt the company's long term strategy for standardized GPU acceleration using OpenCL.

Apple in the middle

The suit relates to a disagreement between Intel, the maker of the Core 2 Duo CPUs used in Apple's MacBook line and its desktop Macs (apart from the high end Mac Pro, which uses Intel's Xeon "Harpertown" CPU), and NVIDIA, which last year expanded its role with Apple as a GPU provider into one where the graphics company now supplies the chipset-on-a-chip controller that serves as the glue between Intel's CPU and everything else in the computer.

Intel and NVIDIA teamed up in 2004 in a patent licensing agreement that resulted in NVIDIA making a competitive move into Intel's chipset business with its MCP79 chipset platform. Last year, Apple became the first PC vendor to adopt NVIDIA's one-chip controller in its MacBook line. The move not only simplified and improved the architecture of Apple's notebook machines, but also provided significantly better graphics compared to the Intel controller chips it had been using.

The dispute between Intel and NVIDIA involves Intel's next generation Nehalem CPUs (marketed as "Core i7") with QuickPath integrated memory controllers; Intel says NVIDIA's license does not allow it to make competing, compatible chipsets for the new CPUs, while NVIDIA says it believes the 2004 agreement does. Apple has a lot riding on the dispute, as its next iMac and Mac Pro are both expected to use Nehalem CPUs. Further, a mobile version of Nehalem is expected next year, resulting in Apple's entire Mac lineup being Nehalem-based within the near future.

Upsetting the Apple cart

Apple's migration to NVIDIA controllers last fall in the new unibody MacBooks was part of a long term strategy to standardize on GPUs across its Mac product line. In addition to being able to deliver optimized graphics drivers that take fuller advantage of NVIDIA hardware features than previous Macs, the move will also make it easier for the company and third party developers to accelerate tasks in Mac OS X Snow Leopard using OpenCL.

If Apple is forced to go back to Intel platform chipsets in order to use Intel's latest CPUs, it will end up with two separate GPU architectures to support, just as it had prior to last fall: NVIDIA standalone GPUs in its higher-end Pro models, and Intel integrated graphics on the lower end consumer models. Intel's integrated graphics (where the GPU is integrated into the controller chipset) are significantly behind NVIDIA's in performance and do not support OpenCL.

The uncertainty involved in the dispute is likely itself a significant problem for Apple. The company was widely expected to introduce a revised iMac last fall at the one year anniversary of the current design, and again at Macworld Expo. If Apple delayed the refresh primarily to take advantage of the upcoming Nehalem CPUs, this eleventh hour wrinkle could again delay an already overdue update.

The company's desktop Mac sales have already tapered off in expectation of the next refresh; Apple's cyclical sales surges are directly tied to new product introductions. Any additional delay will only compound this year's sales slump related to the economic crisis. On the other hand, this is one of the better years to suffer through an architecture war; had the battle between Intel and NVIDIA played out during a surge in economic growth, Apple's dilemma of having no new desktop products to sell would be a much bigger problem. The issue does not affect Apple's notebook sales, which now make up the majority of its Mac sales.

Intel's history with competition

As the long term leader in PC CPUs, Intel has played the hardware equivalent to Microsoft in the decades since IBM released its original PC in 1982. Like Microsoft, Intel has defended its dominant position by seeking to kill opportunities for competitors to muscle into its business. Intel's battle with NVIDIA today has already played out in the past like the dramatic foreshadowing of a soap opera.

After struggling to sell memory components against Japanese competitors, Intel's sudden success in microprocessors tied to IBM's selection of its 8088 processor in its first PC led to a cutthroat battle to defend that business in the 1980s. When IBM selected Intel's 8088 CPU, it insisted Intel license the design to other manufacturers to ensure a chip supply from at least two sources. Intel licensed its chip to AMD.

Intel then happily supported Compaq's efforts to take away IBM's business after the new PC maker cloned IBM's ROM, allowing Compaq to sell IBM-compatible PCs with Intel's new 386 processors. At the same time, Intel naturally defended its own intellectual property, refusing to license the new 386 processor that Compaq was using to other chip manufacturers, including AMD, starting in 1986. AMD filed suit and won in arbitration, but Intel kept the case in the courts until 1991, when the Supreme Court of California ended the matter by ruling in favor of AMD. In the meantime, that legal uncertainty forced AMD to develop additional clean room compatibility with Intel's CPUs.

After AMD muscled its way into the 386 business, Intel developed Socket 1 in 1997, a proprietary new physical connector for its new 486 CPUs to prevent users from being able to replace Intel's 486 with compatible versions from other vendors such as AMD. Earlier CPU socket designs had been essentially open standards. Fierce competition from competitors also resulted in Intel marketing its 586 as Pentium, a brand it could trademark. With the Pentium II, Intel released Slot 1, a cartridge-style, proprietary CPU packaging that again threw competing CPU makers off the track.

In markets where Intel faced less competition, such as with its late 90s Pentium Pro, chip prices didn't fall nearly as dramatically each year compared to markets where Intel faced AMD and others. That led Intel into its partnership with HP to build Itanium, an entirely new 64-bit CPU intended to eventually replace the x86 entirely, starting in the server market. The subsequent, monumental failure of Itanium was particularly embarrassing for Intel because the company was then forced to start over in copying AMD's 64-bit extensions to x86, in order to produce CPUs compatible with the standard AMD had popularized.

Along with Itanium, Intel also floundered in the development of its x86 Pentium 4, ending up trounced by AMD's competing Athlon XP CPUs. However, intense competition with AMD eventually resulted in Intel producing its Core CPU architecture and again grabbing the lead in desktop performance at high efficiency and competitive prices, attracting Apple's attention just as PowerPC began to run out of steam.

Partnership and rivalry with NVIDIA

With AMD's merger with NVIDIA's arch-rival ATI, one might think Intel and NVIDIA would find more reasons to agree than to argue. NVIDIA has sought to release a series of "two-chip PC" systems, where one chip is made by NVIDIA and the other is made by Intel: the first being the MCP79 used by Apple in the MacBooks, and a second being Ion, a platform that pairs NVIDIA's graphics and controller chip with a low cost Intel Atom CPU. Apple is rumored to be considering Ion for use in its future products, such as an update to Apple TV.

Intel naturally wants Apple's entire business to itself, as well as the chipset business of other PC makers that it is rapidly losing to NVIDIA. Along those lines, the company has worked hard to brand its combination of CPU, controller chips, and WiFi components into a platform brand it could co-market with PC makers, including the Centrino laptop brand, of which Santa Rosa was a member. While many PC makers buy up Intel's parts across the board, Apple has never co-marketed the Centrino brand with Intel, instead preferring to use Intel's components together with those of other makers.

Apple's move last fall to adopt NVIDIA's chipset was a particularly large jump away from Intel's integrated platform, however, likely serving as further motivation for Intel to investigate ways to keep its customers, including Apple, tied to its products using artificial means rather than by simply providing the best products available on the market. That includes leveraging strong products (such as Intel's CPUs) to force adoption of its weaker products (such as its integrated GPUs), by refusing to license interoperability with key products to its competitors (such as seeking to block NVIDIA's attempt to support its upcoming Nehalem CPUs).

Such competitive games are played by everyone in the industry, from Apple (refusing to license FairPlay and iPod connectivity to Microsoft's Xbox) Microsoft (resisting efforts to make Windows and Office interoperable with competitors) to NVIDIA (which similarly seeks protect its proprietary technologies, including CUDA).

Fortunately for all involved, Intel and NVIDIA have expressed an interest in working together, and both can gain more from partnerships than from blockades that would open up the market to AMD and other rivals. Until the matter is resolved however, Apple is caught in the middle of squabble that may deeply impact the company's desktop hardware plans this year, complicating an already difficult time for PC sales in general.

Source : http://www.appleinsider.com/

Start Up the Risk-Takers

Reading the news that General Motors and Chrysler are now lining up for another $20 billion or so in government aid — on top of the billions they’ve already received or requested — leaves me with the sick feeling that we are subsidizing the losers and for only one reason: because they claim that their funerals would cost more than keeping them on life support. Sorry, friends, but this is not the American way. Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how we’ll get out of this crisis.

G.M. has become a giant wealth- destruction machine — possibly the biggest in history — and it is time that it and Chrysler were put into bankruptcy so they can truly start over under new management with new labor agreements and new visions. When it comes to helping companies, precious public money should focus on start-ups, not bailouts.

You want to spend $20 billion of taxpayer money creating jobs? Fine. Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all lose. If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel, taxpayers will give you 20 percent of the investors’ upside and keep 80 percent for themselves.

If we are going to be spending billions of taxpayer dollars, it can’t only be on office-decorating bankers, over-leveraged home speculators and auto executives who year after year spent more energy resisting changes and lobbying Washington than leading change and beating Toyota.

I’ve been traveling all across the country on a book tour, and every evening I return to my hotel with my pockets full of business cards from inventors in clean energy. Our country is still bursting with innovators looking for capital. So, let’s make sure all the losers clamoring for help don’t drown out the potential winners who could lift us out of this. Some of our best companies, such as Intel, were started in recessions, when necessity makes innovators even more inventive and risk-takers even more daring.

Yes, we have to shore up the banking system, which underpins everything; and finding a fair way to prevent hardworking people, who played by the rules, from losing their homes to foreclosure is both right and essential for stability.

But beyond that, let’s think, talk and plan in more aspirational ways. We’re down, but we’re not out. As we invest taxpayer money, let’s do it with an eye to starting a new generation of biotech, info-tech, nanotech and clean-tech companies, with real innovators, real 21st-century jobs and potentially real profits for taxpayers. Our motto should be, “Start-ups, not bailouts: nurture the next Google, don’t nurse the old G.M.’s.”

To be fair, the stimulus package that the Obama team and the Democrats in Congress recently passed — with virtually no Republican help — goes some way toward doing just that. Hat’s off for that. Now let’s do more.

The renewable-energy business — wind, solar and solar thermal — was almost dead in this country. Most new projects stopped last fall because they depended for their financing on selling their renewable energy tax credits to Wall Street firms. As those Wall Street firms went bust or suffered steep losses, they had no need for tax credits because they had no profits to offset. The stimulus package created a mechanism for renewable energy innovators to bypass Wall Street and monetize their tax credits directly through the U.S. Treasury, for any project that starts between now and the end of 2010.

The wind and solar industries in America “were dead in the fourth quarter,” said John Woolard, chief executive of BrightSource Energy, which builds and operates cutting-edge solar-thermal plants in the Mojave Desert. Almost five gigawatts of new solar-thermal projects — the equivalent of five big nuclear plants — at various stages of permitting were being held up because of a lack of financing.

“All of these projects will now go ahead,” said Woolard. “You are talking about thousands of jobs ... We really got something right in this legislation.”

These jobs will be in engineering, constructing and operating huge solar systems and wind farms and manufacturing new photovoltaics. Together they will drive innovation in all these areas — and move wind and solar technology down the cost-volume learning curve so they can compete against fossil fuels and become export industries at the “ChinIndia price,” that is the price at which they can scale in China and India.

That is how taxpayer money should be used to stimulate: limited financing, for a limited time, targeted on an industry bristling with new technology start-ups that, with a little push from Uncle Sam, won’t just survive this crisis but help us thrive when it is over. We need, and the world needs, an America that is thriving not just surviving. 

From : NYTimes