Intel's New 'Atom' Low Power Processor

The Intel® Atom™ processor is based on an entirely new design, built for low power and designed specifically for a new wave of Mobile Internet Devices and simple, low-cost PC's. Newly designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel® Atom™ processors pack an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm², making them Intel's smallest and lowest power processors.

The new Intel Atom processor, Intel's smallest processor that is built with the world's smallest transistors, the be exhibited at Embedded Masterclass 2009. This year’s event will include four workshops: an Embedded Linux workshop; a 'GUI Development' workshop, a 'Software Timing Analysis' workshop and a 'MISRA C++' workshop. The free technical presentations will discuss such issues as the use of 3D CAD technology for enclosure design, and data management in realtime and embedded systems.

AMD demonstrates 24-core Istanbul Opteron server

The Tech Report attended the demo, and revealed some interesting findings. The first factor to note is that Istanbul CPUs will be fully compatible with existing Socket F Opteron systems. To perform a drop-in upgrade to Istanbul processors, the server's motherboard will just need a BIOS update and support for dual power planes.

Intel’s six-core Dunnington Xeon CPUs have already been doing the rounds since September 2008, but AMD’s rival Opteron processors have now finally caught up. The company recently demonstrated its own six-core ‘Istanbul’ CPUs, and the demo included showing off a 24-core, quad-socket server based on the new CPUs.

A range of six Istanbul CPUs are currently planned, including both low-power and high-performance models, and AMD apparently hopes that the easy upgrade option will make the new chips particularly appealing to cash-strapped businesses looking for a cheap server upgrade.

Intel® Xeon® Processors

The Low Voltage Intel® Xeon® processor has the added benefit of lower thermal design power making it ideal for thermally-sensitive, space-constrained environments. When coupled with the Intel E7500, Intel E7501 or the E7520 chipsets, the Low Voltage Intel Xeon processor delivers compelling value in a variety of network infrastructure applications including web-serving, search engines, telecommunications servers, network management, security, voice, and load balancing.

The Intel® Xeon® processor is the solution for specific communication applications that require the highest levels of processing performance - such as web-serving, storage (NAS, SAN), search engines, telecommunications servers, network management, security, voice, and load balancing. When coupled with the Intel® E7500, Intel® E7501 or Intel® E7520 chipsets, the Intel Xeon processor provides high memory bandwidth, high memory capacity, and high I/O bandwidth.

AMD processors aim to challenge Intel's lead

AMD recently launched a new range of Phenom II processors aimed at snatching back market share from arch-rival Intel.Unlike Core i7, explained AMD's head of sales Craig Connell, Phenom processors will not need to populate all three memory slots at the same time. AMD's architecture can do the job with two, he said.

AMD has added a product aimed squarely at the gaming and high-performance PC users. The Phenom II X3 720 has a Black Edition processor, designed for ‘pure overclocking', which should prove attractive to those who configure high end workstations for specific processor intensive applications such as design, computational fluid dynamics or modelling.

While AMD admitted Intel's Core i7 technology has capitalised on the increased data rate of DDR3, it claimed to have taken developments one stage further.AMD insiders predict that the move to DDR3 memory will add five per cent to AMD's performance figures across the board.

Atom N280 processors being shipped by Intel

Intel has now confirmed they are shipping their new Atom N280 processors to PC manufacturers. The Intel Atom N280 processor should improve performance and improved graphics within laptops.The Intel Atom N280 delivers a marginal increase over the Atom N270 and runs at 1.66GHz while the N270 runs at 1.6GHz.

Originally perceived to run basic apps such as web surfing and production apps, the Intel Atom N280 processor’s ability to decode HD video will allow laptops to better handle streaming video says Intel spokesman Bill Calder.The new offering from Intel is paired with a chipset which allows the user to view high definition content whilst drawing less power.