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Intel Increasing Supplier Audits
Intel has audited almost five times as many of its suppliers in 2011 than it did the previous year.
Chipzilla set itself a target of visiting 50 on-site, third-party audits of its suppliers during the last year. It had that target last year as well, but missed it by only carrying out 49 audits, while one had to be rescheduled.
In comparison Intel only carried out eight visits in 2010. The company also conducted 249 in-depth assessments and 289 self-assessments by suppliers.
But the findings were not that great. Intel found 426 priority and major findings, the highest class of non-compliance as defined by the company.
Most of the non-compliance related to management systems such as a lack of documentation and systems for CSR, inadequate communication with workers or suppliers and a lack of audits. But there were also 112 instances of labour abuse, which included working hours of more than 60 hours per week, and workers not being given at least one day off a week. There were also 28 issues relating to ethics, such as not having an anonymous reporting line for employees to raise issues or concerns through.
The report was interesting because it must have covered Foxconn, which has been the subject of criticism over its treatment of workers. During 2011, Intel carried out audits at three Foxconn facilities and found them about as bad as others in the region. Most of the breaches of rules were in the areas of labour conditions, safety systems, and management systems.
Is Moore’s Law Dead?
May 11, 2012 by admin
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Physicist Michio Kaku says that Moore’s law will be dead within about 10 years.
Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York told BigThink.com that we are already seeing a slowing down of Moore’s Law. He said that computing power simply cannot maintain this rapid, exponential rise using standard silicon technology.
Kaku said that the latest CPUs from Intel, which use a unique three-dimensional design, do continue roughly doubling processors. But he points out that the new design is nonetheless proof that the Law is winding down.
The two basic problems are heat and leakage and that is why the age of silicon will eventually come to a close.
By continuing to shrink the parts that go into processors, heat becomes concentrated. At a point in the near future, the heat generated will be so intense that the chip will melt. You can literally fry an egg on top of the chip, and the chip itself begins to disintegrate, he said.
Is Ivy Bridge Better Than Llano?
Ivy Bridge notebook and desktop chips will start to surface in late April. It all starts with quad cores on April 29th and in late May early June it expands to dual cores.
Since Anand already benchmarked Ivy Bridge desktop 3770K, we got quite a nice glimpse of what to expect from Ivy Bridge graphics. Still, our sources are telling us that the final graphics scores will end up significantly faster, once the new launch driver gets ready.
You should expect Llano-class performance from Ivy Bridge we were told. Llano scales from HD 6370 integrated graphics all the way to the HD 6550 DirectX 11 core, and Ivy Bridge scores should come very close to this.
Ivy Bridge Chips May Cost Under $100
March 15, 2012 by admin
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We still don’t know the official branding of Ivy Bridge Pentium chips, but we are aware of plans for at least one SKU.
Intel plans to launch a Pentium branded Ivy Bridge and replace the G860 Pentium that currently holds the key position in L3 Legacy market. This 3.0GHz 32nm Sandy Bridge dual-core with two treads is currently available and sells for $86. Let’s not forget the 3MB cache size.
In Q2 2012 the Pentium family gets a new member, the 3.1GHz clocked G870, and both G870 and G860 get replaced in L3 market segment by an unnamed Ivy Bridge Pentium. We know that it should start selling for $86 and that this will be the cheapest of 22nm based desktop Ivy Bridge.
Ivy Bridge Specs Leaked
Intel has inadvertently leaked details of its upcoming Ivy Bridge processors in a sales flipbook uploaded to its website.
Intel’s much delayed Ivy Bridge processors are expected to tip up in the second quarter sporting the firm’s tri-gate transistor technology. Details of the chips had been relatively scant, until that is the firm decided to upload a sales flipbook, which details what appear to be most of its third generation Core i5 processors.
According to Intel’s slides there are only modest frequency bumps, with the quad-core Core i5-2570 and Core i5-2570K topping the range with speeds of 3.4GHz and 3.8GHz in Turbo mode. The addition of the ‘K’ suffix signifies Intel HD 4000 graphics, while the Core i5-3570 plods along with Intel HD 2500 graphics.
Like Chipzilla’s Sandy Bridge Core i5 chips, the Ivy Bridge Core i5 range will be all quad-core chips with 6MB of cache that lack Hyperthreading, with one exception, the Core i5-3470T, which is a dual-core Hyperthreaded processor with 3MB of cache. Previously the ‘T’ suffix was added to signify a 35W TDP chip, though this was not confirmed on the leaked slide.
Intel Unveils 3D Transistor
Intel may have jumped eons ahead of its competitors by redesigning the transistor. Yesterday Intel said the firm will start designing 3D transistors which will let them design smaller and more powerful processors.
The new Tri-gate design apparently will use a 22-nanometer process. The processors using this method will go into production later in the year and should start showing up in computers in 2012 under the code name of “Ivy Bridge”. The new designs should be more eco-friendly since they will consume less power. Intel is saying that a dual-core chip with 22nm tri-gate transistors would use the same amount of power as a 32nm chip. If these specs are valid, the move may give Intel the break it needs to become more competitive in the smartphones and tablet space now dominated by ARM.
IBM Outs Fast Graphene Transistor
Big Blue is in the process of showing of its latest graphene transistor that is capable of executing 155 billion cycles per second. IBM’s test revealed that the transistor is 50 percent faster than previous versions of the experimental transistors.
That said the transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz. The previous transistor had a frequency of 100GHz when IBM showed it off last year.
IBM’s Yu-Ming Lin stated that the research further showed that high-performance, graphene-based transistors can be asembled at an economical cost using standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. Meaning, commercial production of graphene chips should be happening in the near future.