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Global Semiconductors On the Rise
Global semiconductor revenue is expected to rise at faster and force bigger chipmakers to acquire smaller rivals to increase their market share, according to bean counters at research outfit IDC.
In an industry report, IDC predicts that revenue may expand by between six percent and seven percent this year. Global semiconductor sales rose 3.7 percent to $301 billion in 2011, as orders for chips used in wireless devices offset declining revenue for computing-related chips, IDC said.
But it thinks all this will coase nergers and acquisitions among chipmakers will continue. Already Qualcomm bought Atheros and Texas Instruments took over National Semiconductor. But IDC thinks that industry consolidation may allow bigger chipmakers to offer products that are used in a wider range of applications.
Intel’s Itanium Processor Available Until 2022
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HP will have access to Intel’s Itanium processor until 2022, according to Intel’s Kirk Skaugen.
Skaugen, who used to be VP of Intel’s Datacentre and Connected Systems Group, testified under oath during the HP versus Oracle lawsuit that HP and Intel had an arrangement that “enabled HP to have access to the Itanium microprocessor through 2022, and that HP could extend even longer”. Skaugen’s testimony was submitted as part of court documents filed on 23 April and gives some indication of how long both HP and Intel were expecting to push Itanium.
Oracle, which has been involved in an increasingly bitter spat with HP over Itanium and the hiring of its current co-president and former HP CEO Mark Hurd, claims Intel’s Itanium was on its way out, alleging that HP mislead it and customers, leading to its decision to drop support for the IA64 architecture.
However, according to HP, “Oracle resorts to mischaracterising HP’s statements, taking them out of appropriate context, or misstating the relevant timeline.”
HP claims Skaugen’s comments show that when HP said Itanium had a long future it wasn’t lying. “By any measure, all of HP’s statements regarding the length of its roadmap and the future of the Itanium microprocessor were true,” HP said in documents filed with the court.
Skaugen’s comments are something of a surprise, not because they show an agreement between HP and Intel – HP already admitted that one existed – but the length of Intel’s commitment to HP on Itanium and the fact that HP could extend it.
HP’s language suggests that it, as the customer, had the upper hand in the contract with Intel, with the firm saying, “Intel was committed by contract to continue producing Itanium microprocessors”. Skaugen’s testimony in court supports HP’s claim.
Intel Goes ALL-IN On Windows 8 Tablets
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It appears that is working on a new type of NAND storage, offering higher data density and lower costs. The company believes the new triple-level cell ships are ideally suited for tablets and ultrabooks.
Samsung claims it is the first chipmaker to embrace triple-level cell (TLC) technology, but other companies are expected to follow suit. Unlike single-level cell (SLC) or multilevel cell (MLC), the new tech can store three bits per cell, greatly increasing density. The obvious offshoot is lower production cost, as TLC basically allows for more bits per wafer.
However, TLC also has some drawbacks. Due to its design, it is more prone to errors, less reliable and it is also slower than MLC. However, it still ends up significantly faster than hard drives and reliability issues can be worked out with a bit more digital signal processing.
Intel Appears To Be Dedicated To Tizen
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As we know Intel is not a total Windows 8 and Android shop. Although MeeGo was abandoned by Nokia in favor of huge investment from Microsoft, but Intel will continue to develop MeeGo and it will also add Tizen to its OS effort.
Tizen is a free open source mobile operating system based on Linux and backed up by Linux foundation. Tizen is planned to work on Atom N2800 and N2600 processors or simply said Cedar Trail platform and it was supposed to be out of Beta by end of Q1 2012. If all goes according to schedule it will reach its gold status by mid of Q2 2012. At some point it will also get an application store too, but release schedule is yet to be set in stone.
Intel believes that Tizen combines the communities and best technologies under one unified environment. MeeGo is supposed to have Strong developer community and LiMo should bring broad service provider support to this marriage. They will have strong support for HTML 5 and WAC (wholesale application community).
Tizen is supposed to work on ARM as well as on x86 and we can expect the first devices, or at least prototypes, to show up by the end of the year. Once it gets out it should cover mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment systems.
Did HP Really Need Intel?
Back in the day HP said it chose Intel to co-develop Itanium due to its process technology, as it didn’t have the cash to fund next generation fabs.
Intel has often been the butt of Itanium jokes, but HP invested as much, if not more into the enterprise. Kirk Bresniker, CTO of HP’s Business Critical Systems told The INQUIRER that HP needed Intel’s manufacturing capability. Bresniker said HP’s decision to partner with Intel was due to the firm realising it couldn’t afford the VLSI manufacturing process iteration needed for developing competitive chips.
Bresniker said, “It is really an extension of the CISC processor that led us to partner with Intel on the Itanium. We knew we weren’t going to be able to maintain the investment levels neccessary to continue to fund deep sub-micron fabs.”
Until HP’s foray with Itanium, the firm was known for its PA-RISC systems, some of which Bresniker designed himself back in the early 1990s. Bresniker said, “We got to the point of microprocessor development and more importantly the economics of fabrication environments and realised we were facing transition to the deep sub-micron [fabrication processes] and potentially writing billions and billions of dollars worth of cheques for fabrication, and part of the impetuous for us to partner with Intel on the Itanium design was that we wanted to have access to the world’s number one microprocessor silicon fabrication.”
While HP continued with PA-RISC chips well into the new millennium, HP’s decision to offload the work of actually producing chips onto Intel could be seen as shrewd move, and one that firms such as AMD did a decade later. The cost of process node iteration is getting ever higher, which is something that Intel itself admits.
Not surprisingly, Bresniker wouldn’t be drawn on the demise of Itanium, though HP did announce Project Odyssey late last year, which effectively mixes and matches the firm’s Itanium kit with Intel Xeon servers. He did admit that the firm had to go towards x86 in the mission-critical market, Bresniker was quick to point out that while Intel is porting more features from the Itanium chip, not everything will be moved over.
AMD Aims For The Cloud
Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday is expected to announce new Opteron 3200 series chips for low-end servers, which the company believes will give it a competitive edge over Intel in the cloud server arena.
The three Opteron 3200 chips are for use in single-socket servers for Web hosting and cloud applications, according to a company presentation. The chips have up to eight processor cores, clock speeds of up to 3GHz, and draw between 45 watts and 65 watts of power.
The new chips are based on the Bulldozer processor architecture, which is also in the Opteron 6200 16-core processors and FX-series gaming chips. The Opteron 3200 launch comes after AMD in late February announced it would pay US$334 million to acquire SeaMicro, which offers dense and power-efficient servers for cloud computing environments.
AMD’s chips will likely compete against Intel’s Xeon E3 series chips, which are used in SeaMicro’s SM10000-XE server. Intel worked with SeaMicro on the server, but analysts have said that AMD will ultimately swap Intel’s chips with its own chips.
AMD is pitching the Opteron 3200 as a “low-cost-per-core” product. The chips are priced between US$99 and $129, while Intel’s E3 chips are priced between $189 and $885. MSI, Tyan, Fujitsu and Dell are expected to launch Web servers and dense systems based on the chips.
AMD’s expanded product line provides an entry point to new markets, said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat.
But the Opteron 3200 could be a misfit in servers if competing on price versus performance-per-watt, McGregor said. There is a growing interest in deploying low-power servers in data centers to cut energy costs, but the Opteron 3200 chips are comparatively power-hungry for such installations.
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.
Hitachi Bringing New Xeon Servers To Market
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Hitachi Data Systems announced that it will expand its family of blade and rack server products for the enterprise market. The forthcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will be based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 family.
Roberto Basilio, vice president, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems said that by leveraging the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family, upcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will feature faster performance, higher density and greater energy efficiency. The servers are being designed for converged data centres. They come pre-configured and optimised for leading applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010, SAP HANA and solutions with VMware.
He said that the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family provides exceptional energy efficiency, increased security, flexible performance and the opportunity for streamlining customer’s data centres. The current range of Hitachi Compute Systems consists of two blade server product lines, Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 and Hitachi Compute Blade 320, both of which are intended for high performance, high availability applications. The portfolio also includes a family of rack-optimised servers, Hitachi Compute Rack, that are the foundation for dedicated, packaged solutions such as the company’s award-winning object store, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
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.