Intel today expanded its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" client processor family into the commercial segment. Devices in this segment are bought in bulk by large businesses and enterprises; the processors powering them have certain in-built device security and remote management features that enforce company policy regardless of where the employees take the devices. Intel has been pioneering hardware-level remote-management and device security features for close to two decades now, with its vPro feature-set (originally launched as Centrino vPro in the 2000s. The new 13th Gen Core vPro lineup covers popular processor models across various device form-factor classes, spanning ultraportables (15 W or below), thin-and-light commercial notebooks (28 W to 35 W segment); mainstream commercial notebooks (45 W to 55 W); and commercial desktops (65 W).

The 13th Gen vPro series have a lot in common with the 12th Gen Core vPro series, At a hardware-level, these are processors based on the same "Raptor Lake" silicon as the mainstream-client 13th Gen Core processors, but with the enhanced vPro Management Engine that interacts with a compatible operating system to offer endpoint remote manageability for administrators. The desktop versions of these chips have identical SKU differentiation to 65 W 13th Gen Core processors already launched, but with either vPro or vPro Essentials feature-sets. Something similar applies to the 15 W U-segment, 28 W P-segment, and 35-45 W H-segment Core vPro processors. Along with these processors, Intel is debuting Q700-series chipsets specific to the form-factor. For U- and P-segment mobile processor SKUs, the core-logic is part of the processor package; while the H-segment and S-segment (desktop) processors come with discrete chipsets. With the 13th Gen, Intel is also standardizing a new WiFi 6E (Gig+) WLAN chipset with vPro features.

Intel today launched its 12th Gen Core Processors with vPro. Released across the company's mobile and desktop product lines, these processors are targeted at pre-built commercial desktops and commercial notebooks that companies typically issue their employees, which come with a host of security and remote-management features suitable to a large corporate environment. With this generation, Intel is bringing vPro to even more market segments, including ultraportables designed under the Intel Evo banner; a new breed of enterprise-grade Chromebooks for businesses built entirely on the Chrome OS platform and cloud-based apps; and for the first time, an SMB version of vPro called vPro Essentials, which will make it to entry-level Core i5 processors with vPro.

Security, Productivity, and Future-readiness form the three areas in which Intel innovated for 12th Gen Core processors with vPro. The company added new capabilities for Threat Detection Technology, which can detect ransomware and supply-chain attacks, and can work with various endpoint security software. Intel Hardware Shield technology prevents attacks from "below" the software (below ring-0, or at the firmware, microcode, or hardware levels). This is achieved through hardware-accelerated virtualization and encryption of the entire software environment. Hardware-based protections extend to vPro Enterprise for Chrome.

Today, Intel revealed new details about Thunderbolt 4, the next generation of its universal cable connectivity solution, delivering increased minimum performance requirements, expanded capabilities and USB4 specification compliance. For the first time, Thunderbolt 4 will offer docks with up to four Thunderbolt ports and universal cables up to 2 meters in length. Intel's upcoming mobile PC processors, code-named "Tiger Lake," will be the first to integrate Thunderbolt 4. Intel also announced the Thunderbolt 4 controller 8000 series, compatible with the hundreds of millions of Thunderbolt 3 PCs and accessories already available. Thunderbolt 4 developer kits and certification testing are now available.

"Thunderbolt provides consumers with a leading connectivity standard across a range of devices, helping to advance computing experiences and delivering on the promise of USB-C with simplicity, performance and reliability. The arrival of Thunderbolt 4 underscores how Intel is advancing the PC ecosystem toward truly universal connectivity solutions," said Jason Ziller, Intel general manager of the Client Connectivity Division.

AVADirect, a leading custom computer manufacturer, announces newly added desktops and notebooks featuring the new Ivy Bridge architecture by Intel. What does this mean for AVADirect? The world-renowned custom computer manufacturer has strived on the ability to create truly customizable options at their customer's disposal. As opposed to a 32nm process, the Ivy Bridge processors are designed off of a 22nm process. The Ivy Bridge processors also have a lower power consumption rating of 77w, compared to the Sandy Bridge's 95w on average. Those interested in AVADirect's slim or compact custom computers, AVADirect Ivy Bridge solutions will allow end-users to have high-end systems with a smaller footprint. Ivy Bridge chipsets were designed behind the motivation of mobile solutions. This is great news for AVADirect considering they offer some of the best mobile solutions available within the custom computer industry. Ivy Bridge solutions designed by AVADirect will provide superior performance with very little or unnoticeable impact to pricing.

Details of desktop Core i7 and Core i5 "Ivy Bridge" processors in the LGA1155 package have been detailed at lengths, in the past. Core i3 parts based on the same 22 nm Ivy Bridge silicon, however, were relatively known. Tables listing out updated information about the lineup points out that Intel has as many as five Core i3 "Ivy Bridge" desktop processors in the works, all dual-core, and among which two are low-power parts.

The table also suggests that these Core i3 chips will have reduced features, importantly, the lack of PCI-Express 3.0 bus. When connected to these chips, PCI-E 3.0 add-on cards (such as graphics cards) will function in PCI-Express 2.0 mode. Further, these chips will lack support for AES-NI (accelerates encryption), VT-d (enhanced virtualization), and TXT (security). Certain models in the lineup have faster integrated graphics, denoted by a "5" in the end of the model number. These chips also lack Turbo Boost for the x86 cores, but feature HyperThreading.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

As previously reported, Intel's first wave of Sandy Bridge-E processors have VT-d (Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O) disabled due to an errata in the C1 stepping. That issue couldn't be resolved in time for the launch but it's getting fixed with the C2 stepping which is set to start rolling out to customers on January 20th, 2012 (samples have already been delivered).

The CPUs moving to the C2 stepping are the hexa-core Core i7-3960X (3.3 GHz) and Core i7-3930K (3.2 GHz). Beside the fixed VT-d, the C2 chips will feature new S-spec and MM numbers so a BIOS update for current motherboards will likely be required.

The latest Sandy Bridge-E 6 core processors have just been released, to excellent reviews. However, the architecture is designed for 8 cores, so these current i7-3960X & i7-3930K processors actually contain those 8 cores, but with two turned off in order to enable them to fit within a manageable 130 W power envelope. Hence there's quite a bit more potential to be released and soon. Therefore, anyone looking to invest in the premium-priced SB-E platform right now, should note that these processors are at the initial C1 stepping and have the VT-d hardware virtualization issue and PCI-E 3.0 compatibility uncertainty. The VT-d problem will be a real show stopper where hardware acceleration of a virtual machine is a must, so it shouldn't be ignored.

VR-ZONE brings us news that the fully unlocked SB-E 8 core chips will be released as the long awaited Xeon E5 family of processors, which will be built on the C2 stepping, solving the above issues. However, being 8 core, these will be very power hungry indeed, consuming around 150 W at just 3 GHz with all 8 cores active and 20 MB of L3 cache. At 2.5 GHz though, the new processors are expected to fit within the 95 W power envelope.