Intel to Shrink Upcoming Nehalem Chips for Laptops

Intel said that its upcoming chip microarchitecture, Nehalem, will first be targeted at servers and high-end desktops but later will be scaled down for laptops.

The Nehalem architecture, a substantial upgrade to Intel’s current Core 2 microarchitecture, will pack between two and eight cores, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of the digital enterprise group at Intel. He did not talk about plans for Nehalem laptops. Intel plans to touch on the subject at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai in early April, a company spokesman said.

Each core in Nehalem chips will be able to execute two software threads simultaneously, so a server could potentially run 16 threads at the same time. Each core will have 256K bytes of L2 cache and a shared 8M-byte L3 cache, so local cores can better execute threads, Gelsinger said. The QuickPath Interconnect will provide improved communication between system components.

The Nehalem architecture will include an integrated DDR3 memory controller that delivers three times the memory performance of today’s highest-performance Xeon processor, Gelsinger said. Nehalem chips will come with an optional integrated graphics controller, Gelsinger said.

Overall, Nehalem chips are designed to deliver better performance-per-watt and improved system performance, Gelsinger said. The chips are due for release in late 2008 and will be made with a 45-nanometer manufacturing process.

The company will follow up Nehalem with the Westmere microarchitecture in 2009 and Sandy Bridge in 2010. Work has begun on microarchitectures to succeed Sandy Bridge, but code-names have not been assigned to those. Intel has said chips will be manufactured using a 22-nm manufacturing process by 2011.

Intel is also working on the Larrabee platform, which will combine lots of cores, lots of threads and graphics capabilities to deliver high speed for the high-performance computing segment, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said at an investor conference in early March. It may bundle a graphics processing unit with the CPU on a single chip, Gelsinger said. Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices plans to launch the Fusion chip, which will combine a graphics processing unit and CPU on one chip, in the second half of 2009.

Intel also said it would ship its first six-core Xeon processor, code-named Dunnington, in the second half of this year. The Dunnington chip will be part of Intel’s Xeon MP 7300 series of processors and will allow a four-processor server to have as many as 24 cores. The chip will have 1.9 billion transistors and include a 16M-byte L3 cache. It will be part of the Caneland server platform, which also includes the Clarksboro chipset.

Microsoft to Release Vista SP1 This Week

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is set to become available to a wider audience, according to Amazon.com and reports from a website that correctly called SP1’s ship date last month.

Amazon.com lists Vista SP1 retail copies as available on Wednesday March 19, while TechARP.com, the Malaysian website that nailed the update’s release to manufacturing (RTM) date several days early, said users would be able to download SP1 starting Tuesday March 18.

Vista SP1 shipped to duplication and OEMs on February 4, but since then it has only been available to previous beta testers, volume licensing customers and subscribers to IT subscription services. In fact, subscribers to TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) only got access to SP1 after raising a ruckus, with some threatening to cancel their subscriptions and others saying they would postpone Vista deployment.

Most Vista users, however, have been unable to obtain the service pack. That was a conscious decision on the part of Microsoft, which said that the delay was caused by a small number of hardware device drivers that won’t properly reinstall during the SP1 upgrade. Microsoft said it needed extra time to identify the drivers and set up blocking mechanisms that will prevent users whose PCs have those drivers from receiving SP1.

Microsoft has never identified the balky drivers or the responsible hardware manufacturers.

Retail buyers of the new version of Vista face no such driver problem, Microsoft has said. According to Amazon.com, customers after packaged retail copies of SP1 can get them beginning on Wednesday March 19.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian website that called Vista SP1’s RTM has reported that current Vista users will be able to download and install SP1 starting on Tuesday March 18. TechARP.com named Tuesday as the first possible start date for what it dubbed ‘End-User Manual Update’.

Since early February, Microsoft has said that Vista users would receive SP1 in “mid-March” by either selecting the optional update in Windows Update or downloading a standalone installer from Microsoft’s Download Center website. Only in April would it start pushing SP1 to all Vista users who have Windows Update’s Automatic Updates set to automatically retrieve and install important fixes. (TechARP has named April 18 as that date.)

When asked to confirm the March 18 delivery date for SP1, a Microsoft spokeswoman only repeated the company’s earlier statements. “In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update and the Download Center on microsoft.com,” she said. “Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. Any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not upgrade successfully will not be offered SP1.”

It’s unclear so far how a February snafu with affect SP1’s roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would “make the update available again shortly after we address the issue”.

That update was designated 937287 and described in a support document, with the same number. Microsoft has not re-released it to Windows Update as an automatic download/install.

Asked to explain how users will be able to download and install SP1 this month without the prerequisite, Microsoft’s spokespeople said that the endless reboot problem and the subsequent withdrawal of 937287 would not impact SP1’s schedule.

“The temporary removal of the prerequisite from automatic updates will not affect the SP1 release schedule – we are on schedule to release Windows Visa SP1 to Windows Update and the Download Center in mid-March and to users using Automatic Update in mid-April,” different spokeswomen said earlier this month.

LG Launches Widescreen Entertainment Notebooks

LG announced the launch of its new range of widescreen entertainment notebooks — the E200 and the E300.

The latest range of entertainment notebooks come with a 12.1-inch (E200) and 13.3-inch (E300) widescreen along with power saving module which offers extended battery life.

The notebooks are powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processor technology. The E200 as well as the E300 notebooks have a curl-fit design with LG Fine Bright LCD technology that delivers vivid and life like images.

The notebooks include ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset and an 1.3MP LG Smart Cam. The new notebooks also feature a 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (XD/SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro), an Express Card Slot (34) and a built-in DVD Writer.

The notebooks have a glossy look and are currently available in black color. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) technology provides uncompressed, crystal-clear digital video and audio via a single cable. The user just needs to connect an HDMI cable to digital TV or LCD monitor and can experience an improved quality of digital entertainment contents on the notebook.

The E200 and E300 are available for Rs. 51,500 and Rs. 57,000 respectively.