AMD has officially launched its first ever 45nm ‘Shanghai’ Opteron processor for servers and workstations.

The Shanghai chips are designed using the 45nm technology using a new technique called “Immersion Lithography”. The chips come with a higher amount of cache amounting to  8MB and the core frequency rises up to 2.7GHZ from a 2.3GHZ base model. The chips feature an integrated memory controller supporting up to DDR2-800.

AMD is also expected to launch its 45nm “Deneb” desktop CPUs before the end of the year.

Popularity: 97% [?]

Intel’s first Core i7 processors will be unveiled in a press conference on November 17 according to an announcement from Intel. The press conference will be held in San Francisco and according to invitations sent by Intel, the Core i7 will become “the fastest processor on the planet”. The claim is based on the SPECint_rate_base2006 benchmarking, which will be the highlight of the event. The Core i7 chips each have four cores capable of a total of eight threads.

The pricing for the Core i7 processors are $284 for the 2.66GHz Core i7 920, $562 for the 2.93GHz Core i7 940, and $999 for the 3.20GHz Core i7 Extreme 965.  These prices are for entities buying in 1,000 minimum quantities.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Analog Devices launched the new Blackfin BF51x  series, the newest members of their  convergent-processor family.  The Blackfin convergent-processors have superior ability to reduce cost, power consumption, software complexity, and development schedules in a broad spectrum of mobile lifestyle, industrial and instrumentation, portable medical diagnostic and VoIP telephony applications. Blackfins are commonly used in Asterisk- based VoIP appliances like Astfin and Digium AA50.

The newest members of the Blackfin family are the BF512, BF514, BF516 and BF518, they are all  single-core convergent processors that surpass outdated, heterogenous MCU+DSP approaches in reducing part-count, system cost, board space, and power consumption. These new processors are available at clock speeds of up to 400 MHz and include 116 kBytes of RAM plus an optional 4 Mbits of serial (SPI) flash memory. Each also integrates Lockbox™ security for code and content protection.

The BF51x processors feature high clock rates and low power dissipation per unit of processing (MMACs/mW), and like traditional MCUs, these convergent processors are OS and compiler-friendly.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

ASUS has launched the G71, the first quad-core notebook designed for gamers. The Asus G71 sports a 17-inch Crystal Shine High Brightness LCD display, an Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor, Nividia GeForce 9700M GT GDDR3 512MB graphics card, 4GB of DDE3 RAM, a storage capacity of up to 1TB, a built in Blu-ray DVD re-writer and a 2 megapixel camera.

Below are the full specifications of the ASUS G71:

• Intel® Quad Core QX9300
• Intel® Core™2 Duo Extreme Processor X9100
• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T9600/ T9400/ P8600/ P8400/ P7350
• Mobile Intel® PM45 Express Chipset +ICH9M-E
• Intel® WiMAX/ WiFi Link 5100
• Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
• DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM, up to 4GB
• NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT with 512MB GDDR3 VRAM
• Intel® Turbo Memory Technology with 2GB NANDFlash(optional)
• 17″ WXGA+ Color Shine
• 17″ WUXGA, High Brightness, Color Shine
• Dual hard disk drives and single hard disk drive (optional); 1 terabyte (500 GB x 2) 5,400 rpm; 640 GB (320 GB x 2) 5,400 rpm; 500 GB (250 GB x 2) 5,400 rpm; 400 GB (200 GB x 2) 7,200 rpm; 200 GB, 7,200 rpm
• DVD Super Multi Double Layer/ Light Scribe/ DVD combo / Blu-ray DVD writer
• 2-megapixel swivel web camera
• Built-in Bluetooth™ V2.1+EDR(optional feature)

Popularity: 3% [?]

In a sign that AMD is in trouble and is losing from the processor war from Intel, AMD announced a shocking decision that will affect the computer industry.

AMD has decided to split into two in order to stay competitive, one will design chips and keep the AMD name while the other, officially named the Foundry Company, will manufacture chips.  The two companies will work closely together, but will stay independent from each other.

AMD will retain a 44.4 percent stake in FoundryCompany while the majority ownership belongs to Advanced Technology Investment Company, a company created by Abu Dhabi government. The Foundry Company will produce chips for AMD and other companies. 

With AMD splitting into two, Intel is now the only company left that designs and makes its own chips, a fact that will make Intel stay on the top of microprocessor and chip industry.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Majority of the netbooks available in the market today are powered by 1.6GHz single-core Atom processor from Intel. The tiny processor is perfect for netbooks because of its low cost and low power requirements.

Last month, I blogged about Intel’s dual-core Atom  which will be released this month. Intel has officially announced that the dual-core version of the Atom processor has been released. The dual-core Atom 330 processor features a core frequency of 1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 1MB L2 cache, a TDP of 8W and supports DDR2 667 RAM. The dual-core and single-core Atom processors are pin-compatible. However, single-core Atom platforms will  need a BIOS update to support the dual-core CPUs. 

The Atom 330 processor is priced at US$40 while the single-core Atom 230 is priced at US$29.

Popularity: 3% [?]