Intel Corporation today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont. The technology is aimed squarely at low-power requirements in market segments from smartphones to the data center. Silvermont will be the foundation for a range of innovative products beginning to come to market later this year, and will also be manufactured using the company's leading-edge, 22nm Tri-Gate SoC manufacturing process, which brings significant performance increases and improved energy efficiency.

"Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments," said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer. "Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including "Bay Trail" and "Avoton" is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence."

During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, discussed how her company is helping users harness powerful new capabilities that will improve the lives of people by building smarter cities, healthier communities and thriving businesses.

Bryant unveiled details of upcoming technologies and products that show how Intel aims to transform the server, networking and storage capabilities of the datacenter. By addressing the full spectrum of workload demands and providing new levels of application optimized solutions for enterprise IT, technical computing and cloud service providers, unprecedented experiences can be delivered.

ASUS today announced a new range of microATX motherboards with onboard HDMI and DVI ports for Intel and AMD processors with integrated graphics, and USB 3.0 ports with performance-enhancing ASUS USB 3.0 Boost technology. By removing the need for a discrete graphics card, the new motherboards provide a more affordable option for home entertainment PCs that can fully exploit high-performance USB 3.0 storage.

The latest Intel 22nm CPUs feature Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, while AMD Socket FM2Athlon and A-Series APUshave integrated AMD HD 7000 Series discrete-level Radeon GPUs.The processors provide excellent 2D and 3D graphics performance, without the need for a separate graphics card, which in turn results in lower PC build costs.

In his keynote today at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said, “In the future, if it computes, it connects. From the simplest embedded sensors to the most advanced cloud datacenters, we’re looking at techniques to allow all of them to connect without wires.”

Rattner demonstrated for the first time a working, all-digital WiFi radio, dubbed a “Moore’s Law Radio.” The CTO explained that an all-digital radio follows Moore’s Law by scaling in area and energy efficiency with such digital chip processes as Intel’s latest 22nm tri-gate technology. System-on-chip designs for smartphones and tablet computers would be the most likely spot for the all digital radios to be integrated. The small size and lower cost of integrated digital radios will enable a host of new applications from wearable devices to “The Internet of Things” where devices such as home appliances with sensors can communicate with each other, exchange data and can be operated remotely.

Following last Friday's Q3 outlook lowering by Intel, market punters such as Merrill Lynch cut estimates. Vivek Arya, an analyst with the firm, cut its Q3 and Q4 estimates for Intel, while remaining optimistic about upcoming processes in the company's pitched battle with ARM in the lightweight SoC segment. Arya believes that with upcoming technologies, Intel has a fighting chance against ARM heavyweights. Said Arya in his report:

Next-gen chip manufacturing has become a 3-horse race between Intel, TSMC and Samsung, with Intel holding a 1 to 4 year lead, in our view. As we saw in 1H12, foundries were unable to ramp 28nm capacity, leading to product delays. Rising costs/ complexity (tri-gate) could further widen this gap. We believe this could enable Intel to gain a foothold (vs. zero today) in mobile over the next 2 years, as smartphone/tablet vendors look to Intel as a second or even primary source […] We firmly believe in Intel’s ability to reliably produce the lowest cost and highest performance silicon can help it maintain a dominant position in servers/data centers (20% of sales, 10-15% CAGR), and transition from legacy PCs to next-gen smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and other converged devices in the next 1-2 years. Investors, meanwhile, benefit from a 3.6% div yield, $7.5bn in available buybacks (6% of mkt cap) and <10x PE.

Signaling its commitment to energy-efficient high- performance computing, Intel Corporation today announced that it will work with HP to help design and provide the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with a supercomputing system that will drive research across a number of energy-related initiatives, including renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. The new High Performance Computer (HPC) data center promises to become one of the world's most efficient installations.

The system is scheduled to deliver full compute capacity in the summer of 2013 and will feature approximately 3,200 Intel Xeon processors including current-generation Intel Xeon processor E5-2670, future 22nm Ivy Bridge based processors and approximately 600 new Intel Xeon Phi co-processors. The total peak performance of the system is expected to exceed 1 Petaflop (equivalent to a thousand trillion floating point operations per second) and it will be the largest supercomputer dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research. Leading energy-efficient capabilities of Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi co-processors combined with the new HP warm water cooling solution and innovative data center design will result in this facility likely being the world's most efficient data center with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 or better.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of long lifespan, high performance, fully upgradable Notebooks and Mobile Workstations is shipping a small form factor ultraportable notebook capable of running multiple virtual machines and multiple operating systems with up to 16GB memory and 1 TB storage while weighing under 4 lbs.

“The EUROCOM Monster is capable of running up to 8 virtual machines due to its high performance hardware; Intel Core i7 3920XM processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics combined with 16GB DDR3-1600 memory and up to 1 terabyte of storage with up to 410 minutes of battery life. This is the perfect system for mobile professionals who need exceptionally capable hardware for such things as mobile server applications, technical presale, CUDA and OpenCL development on the go” Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

Today during the Structure Conference in San Francisco, Jason Waxman, GM of the Cloud Infrastructure Group outlined Intel’s vision and roadmap for microservers and discussed how they best suited to handle emerging “scale-out” applications. Waxman provided an update on Intel's roadmap for microservers including new generations of Intel Xeon processors and Intel Atom architecture based 22nm SoC chips codenamed "Avoton", both scheduled for 2013. In his blog Jason also talks about why within the new segment of servers it is the application that will decide which core – Intel Atom or Xeon - will be the optimal solution. Waxman's presentation can be found here.

The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family reached a new supercomputing milestone as the fastest adopted new processing technology to power 44 systems, including 3 Petascale-class supercomputers on the 39th edition of the Top500 list announced today.

The "SuperMUC" supercomputer at LRZ in Germany, which ranked fourth on the list, delivers 2.9 PetaFLOPs of performance, making it the most powerful in Europe, as well as the largest installation based on the new Intel Xeon processors E5 family.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, releases its next generation, ultra low power, compact form factor embedded server platform (5017P-TLN4F) based on their new Mini-ITX (6.7" x 6.7") motherboard (X9SPV-F/LN4F). Compared to the previous generation architecture, this solution delivers 15% more processing performance, up to 50% more 3D graphics performance supporting the latest graphic APIs - DirectX 11, OpenCL 1.1 and OpenGL 3.1 and new features such as Intel Smart Response Technology enabling increased storage I/O performance with SSD caching.

Intel Corporation Senior Vice President Tom Kilroy officially introduced the next wave of Ultrabook systems during a keynote address at Computex Taipei 2012. Making a bold statement around the importance of touch technology, Kilroy also announced that Intel has signed agreements with several leading touch panel manufacturers to ensure adequate capacity to meet the expected demand for touch-enabled Ultrabook experiences over the next several years.

He also highlighted the company’s efforts to deliver user-centric experiences across a range of mobile devices from the Ultrabook to smartphones and tablets, pointing to momentum across all three.

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is shipping HyperX dual-channel kits engineered especially for the new Intel third-generation Core i7 and i5 processors (Ivy Bridge). Kingston HyperX memory is available in 16GB and 8GB kits of two at 1600MHz, 2133MHz, 2400MHz and soon to be speedy 2666 MHz frequencies.

“The new 22nm architecture of this processor allows significant performance gains for benchmarkers, enthusiasts and overclockers,” said Mark Tekunoff, senior technology manager, Kingston. “Enthusiasts who want to push the performance boundaries of the new processors will want to pair it with Kingston HyperX memory. Our 2666 MHz kit combined with the top CPU in the Ivy Bridge family will allow unparalleled performance.”

Dell today announced that customers such as Morphlabs and Vibrant Media are using Dell microserver technologies based on Intel Xeon processors to power business-critical web 2.0, cloud, and content delivery networks (CDN), as well as high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Driven by the emergence of a growing hardware and application ecosystem, x86-based microservers are rapidly evolving from a niche solution to one with widespread awareness and value.

“We’re constantly inspired by the unique ways our customers are leveraging Dell microserver platforms to drive specialized web 2.0, HPC and cloud computing applications,” said Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager, Dell Server Solutions. “As the microserver market and ecosystem have matured, customers like Vibrant Media have validated that microservers are a cost-effective, scalable platform in web 2.0 environments.”

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.

MSI announces that its Intel-based H61 (G3) series now offers the latest ME8 BIOS and Driver with support for 3rd generation Intel 22nm processors. Its Intel H61 motherboards are also the fastest in the world, with DDR3 memory support up to 2400MHz. With its solid R&D ability, MSI has created H61 motherboards with superior efficiency that is the best choice for users wishing to upgrade to next-generation 22nm processors from Intel.

As a commitment to long-time MSI users, MSI releases the ME8 upgrade package and related upgrade guide for the most robust update solution, allowing consumers of MSI H61 (G3) / Z68 (G3) motherboards to easily adopt the latest Intel 22nm processor. This solution offers amazing DDR3 memory speeds of up to 2400MHz, efficiency never seen before.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable notebooks is adding the newest AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU to their extensive options list of Ivy Bridge powered, high performance notebooks. The addition of the AMD Radeon HD 7970M offers users a new level of high performance GPU computing. Eurocom will also offer the AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPUs separately to existing customers as an upgrade option.

The addition of the AMD Radeon HD 7970M, the highest performing mobile solution from AMD, gives Eurocom customers a superior choice of video processor options to configure into their new Eurocom system or upgrade into their existing system. The addition of the AMD Radeon 7970M GPUs in single and CrossFireX offers customers a greater selection of video processor options to fit any preference or performance level.

GIGABYTE introduces its latest whitebox All-in-One PC based on the Thin Mini-ITX standard and addressed to channel resellers, VARs and system integrators. Being the biggest screen size (24") in GIGABYTE's All-in-One PC offering, the GB-AEGT aims at establishing its supremacy as the ultimate entertainment All-in-One PC. To do so, it offers the worldwide exclusive ability to receive off-the-shelf double slot desktop graphic cards up to 400W.

Gaming on an All-in-One PC won’t be a dream anymore, and to complete this dream the GB-AEGT has a full load of multimedia features detailed below. In addition to these features, the GB-AEGT naturally keeps GIGABYTE homemade modular design and is fully upgradable thanks to an easy access to all the internal components.

While we're fairly certain about the launch-schedule of Intel's "Ivy Bridge" Core processor family and 7-series chipset from an older article, which pin-points at April 29 to be the day full-fledged reviews (including overclocking performance, and benchmarks that cover new features) can be published, there's still a looming doubt over that day being the one on which you could buy say, a Core i7-3770K off Newegg.com. A latest slide, probably sourced from Intel's Retailedge, lays that doubt to rest. April 29 is indeed the day you will be able to buy most significant "Ivy Bridge" Core i7 and Core i5 models. Certain other models are slated for June 3. Dual-core Core i3 and Pentium processors based on Ivy Bridge silicon are slated for "Holiday". As on April 29, you also be able to buy motherboards based on 7-series chipset, which support Ivy Bridge processors out of the box.Source: DonanimHaber

The world renowned motherboard manufacturer MSI will display motherboard products that are equipped with Intel’s new generation 7 series chipsets and support Intel's new generation 22nm CPU and PCI Express Gen3 specification at CeBIT 2012 exhibition that will be held at Hannover, Germany on March 6th, 2012. These motherboards include high-end Z77 chipset: Z77A-GD80, Z77A-GD65, Z77A-GD55, Z77A-G45 and Z77MA-G45; mid-end H77 chipset: ZH77-G43; entry-level B75 chipset: B75A-G43. With the adaptation of Military Class III components on MSI 7 series chipset motherboards, Military Class III components provide enthusiasts the highest quality and stability 1. MSI's Military Class III components have passed seven rigorous tests, conducted by third party laboratories; the tests include extreme temperature, humidity, pressure, vibration and dropping etc., the components received the MIL-STD-810G Military Class Certification!

Lincredible phenomenon spreads around the world! Miracles did not only happen on the new basketball star Jeremy Lin, but also ASRock, the global top3 motherboard manufacturer! By updating the latest ME8 BIOS & Driver, ASRock today proudly announced their entire Intel H61 motherboard series now support Intel Rapid Start and Smart Connect Technologies! These new technologies are targeted to be supported with Intel next gen motherboard platforms, but ASRock offers an early chance to let users to experience new techniques on current H61 motherboard with 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor (Sandy Bridge).

"High-performance functions are not exclusive for high-end motherboards. ASRock's strength is to apply premium function on budget-level motherboards, making the function available by most of the users." commented James Lee, V.P. of Sales and Marketing at ASRock. "This time, miracles do happen at ASRock! Thanks to the excellent R&D team, ASRock is the first motherboard company to apply these two Intel new functions on H61 series motherboard in the world!"

Known to be missing out on both CES 2012 and CeBIT 2012, Intel's next-generation processor platform, codenamed Ivy Bridge, is now claimed to be rolling out on April 8th. Of course, April 8th is a Sunday so it's probable that the actual launch, accompanied by a long press release and a flurry of reviews, will be scheduled for Monday, the 9th of April.

According to Digitimes' Taiwanese sources, the first Ivy Bridge wave will include no less than 25 processors (17 desktop models and 8 notebook/ultrabook chips) and 8 chipsets (Z77, H77, Z75 and B75 for desktops, HM77, UM77, HM76 and HM75 for mobile PCs). More Ivy Bridge products, including the Core i5-3470T CPU and the Q77, Q75, QS77 and QM77 chipsets, are said to become available in May.

Intel is planning to launch a new system-on-chip (SoC) processor derived from Atom, for network-attached storage (NAS) devices. NAS devices simple computers that connect hard drives directly to the network, where they are accessed by other computers. Over the years, NAS devices have added several functions, such as the ability to expand storage from external storage devices, the ability to perform simple tasks such as bit-torrent downloads, etc. To keep up with the growing need for compute power with these "super-NAS" devices, and to keep power draws low, there is a demand for low-power, low-footprint (small in size), and high-performance processing cores. This is one small but emerging segment that Intel doesn't want to concede to high-end multi-core ARM processors.

Sources told DigiTimes that Intel is working on an entire lineup of Atom processors for NAS devices, targeting various performance and power-draw segments. Intel is codenaming these Atom processors "Centerton". The chips are built on second-generation Atom architecture, and will be built on the 32 nm process. In related news, Intel also plans to roll out 22nm Silvermont-based Atom processors in 2013 and 14nm Airmont-based Atom parts in 2014, according to sources.Source: DigiTimes

Nordic Hardware has scored an exclusive interview with Pat Bliemer, Managing Director of Intel Northern Europe to discuss the technology following on from the 22 nm one used in the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors. Unfortunately, Bliemer was light on the technical details of this technology and didn't say when it would see the light of day, except to say that it will make fuller use of the Tri-Gate tech being used in the Ivy Bridge processors and that test circuits are running.

We need to keep going and you can trust me that in our labs we actually have the next generation after 22nm running, so we need to keep going.[...]I cannot really disclose more about that other than that in a laboratory-environment, absolutely we do have the path, our engineers do have the path to actually go and produce 14nm products. There are many variables that you can play with of course it is not the right name for it and the engineers would not like it when I say play, that you can influence to actually go and stay to that model. And I think the breakthrough we had now with the 3D metal gates, just the design of the gate will actually allow for much more efficient thermals and power.

Back in July, we looked even further ahead and reported that Intel aims to have 10 nm-based processors by 2018 and that the 14 nm tech is due for release around 2014. Watch this space.

Previous preliminary reports have suggested that the forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs will have single threaded performance on par with the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and will mainly deliver improvements to power consumption and integrated graphics - nothing for PC enthusiasts to get excited about. However, in leaked documents sent to partners, Intel have now revealed official performance figures for IB and they look rather good. They've produced a raft of benchmarks, which reveal improvements such as 56% in ArcSoft Media Expresso, 25% in Excel 2010 and a 199% gain in the 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark. Unfortunately, they haven't released any benchmarks based on high performance 3D games, but it's probably safe to say that they will be similarly improved. Now, on to the benchmarks, which compare their new 3.4 GHz i7-3770 (4 cores + HT) with the current 3.4 GHz i7-2600, also with 4 cores + HT:

At SC11, Intel Corporation revealed details about the company’s next-generation Intel Xeon processor-based and Intel Many Integrated Core (Intel MIC)-based platforms designed for high-performance computing (HPC). The company also outlined new investments in research and development that will lead the industry to Exascale performance by 2018.

During his briefing at the conference, Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of Technical Computing, Intel Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, said that the Intel Xeon processor E5 family is the world’s first server processor to support full integration of the PCI Express 3.0 specification**. PCIe 3.0 is estimated** to double the interconnect bandwidth over the PCIe* 2.0 specification** while enabling lower power and higher density server implementations. New fabric controllers taking advantage of the PCI Express 3.0 specification will allow more efficient scaling of performance and data transfer with the growing number of nodes in HPC supercomputers.