Intel to bundle Liquid Cooling with Retail Sandy Bridge-E Processors?

First news of Intel bundling a liquid cooler with its high performance processors appeared back in Apr this year. Intel made a reference to it during it's developer's forum at that time.

 With processors being built with dynamic clocking, they can be used in both directions. One is to slow down to clock to slow down and thus reduce power consumption. On the other hand you could "overclock" to get the last ounce of performance out of them. Thermal dissipation will obviously increase. Overclocking has been the tricks used by enthusiasts, particularly gaming guys, to squeeze out the last bit of performance. Liquid cooling has been a trick used by this crowd. Now by providing this option Intel is letting board designers and hence anyone needing it, the option of getting enhanced performance through this. Last checked, it is actually being offered now. This is how it is being offered according to Tom's Hardware.

Top engineering schools ranking

Top universities and engineering schools rankings came out as in every other year. The rankings were taken by the usual suspects. These rankings give rise to the usual debates too. Main issue, that resonate with what I speculated on a couple posts back, is if the teachers are the best engineering teachers(for engineering schools, in particular). Some of the comments are significant and I quote from them in the following. Some of the points relevant have been highlighted. As I had mentioned in my post earlier, where is the emphasis on "teaching" engineering!

"December 29, 2011

In response to: Top engineering schools ranking
Glen Bishop commented:

Allegiance to one's alma mater seems to be clouding the idea of "best" engineering school. As a Princeton freshman, I lived the feeling of "woe unto me for being the dumbest member of the entering class". With high school grades and test scores in the top one percent, I probably WAS the dumbest in the class. Other students breezed through material that I found challenging, but then again the undergrad curricula in junior year featured compilers, quantum mechanics, finite element analysis, and digital signal processing. Princeton offers undergrad classes with 30 students taught by a full professor, and labs stuffed with cutting edge equipment. The "Harry Potter" style dining halls offer a clue, but the conversations with students and faculty make it clear that this is one of the "best" schools. Beware though: the "best" school is definitely NOT the "best" choice for the average or even the above average engineering student. Students are advised to select schools that can teach no more and no less than what the student can absorb in each 12 week term. Hence the "best" school is a "bad" choice for the majority of students. We are all equal before god and the law, but final exam scores at those "best" schools will reveal something else."

"December 29, 2011

In response to: Top engineering schools ranking
MA Engr commented:

Lots of great comments here. I received my BSEE/MSEE in the early '80s. Things have changed much since then. Now I have been helping my sons select universities. Having been in the business awhile, I am appalled at some of new grads who can't even figure out basic circuits. Are the "best" schools weighted by research grant money, famous faculty, etc? Which is all great, but perhaps what should get more weighting for non-academic career people is how good is the TEACHING. Are all classes taught by grad students? Are they really learning fundamentals well, or are they jumping into programming ASICs and FPGAs before they even know what a resistor is? Look at things like class size, curriculum, faculty focus on teaching."

"September 30, 2011

In response to: Top engineering schools ranking
Disgruntled commented:

For my undergraduate BSME, I went to an ABET-accredited college ranked slightly below the middle. It was mostly a friendly school, and I enjoyed learning and studying there. It was in some ways the best time of my life. I’m not bragging, but just to establish the situation: I did very well there, being first in the Mechanical Engineering Department out of 92 people.
For my graduate MSME, I went to Stanford. I was rather naïve, and didn’t even realize that it had such a good reputation. I was pushed into applying there by several of my professors; without my even knowing much about Stanford itself.
There is no doubt that attending this institution has caused people to pay more attention to my resume, and opened some doors to me that would have remained closed if I’d stayed at my 3rd tier undergraduate school.
Nearly all of the students at Stanford were very bright, some true geniuses. But also, some of them were literally high-functioning autistics - with no social skills at all, often very rude or non-communicative. At my previous lower-ranked undergraduate school, the upper quarter of the class was also fairly bright. The main difference from Stanford, was that the bottom half of the class wasn’t so bright; and probably stood little chance of getting a real engineering job, unless they had connections. 
In Stanford, I was under the most stress I have ever been in my life. It was very competitive. Everyone was out for themselves, and no one helped anyone else. The course load was very hectic, and I came close to having a nervous breakdown. Even though most of the students were supposedly selected based on academic achievement and merit; there was a very elitist, snobby, moneyed attitude present. Coming from the middle class, I felt patronized by the rich students. The popular topic of conversation around the dinner table was where everyone had gone on their third trip to Europe, and what wonderful art museums they had seen there. (I had never even been outside of the US.)
And some of the teachers at Stanford were really not all that good. Because the school selected only the highest-ranked students, they could have probably just taught basket-weaving to the students for the whole time they were there. Once graduated, because of their innate talent, most the students would have probably done all right anyway, and adapted to the real-world needs of their jobs.
I had always intended to get my Phd. However, all of the stress was too much for me. After getting my MSME; I fled to a situation where I could go home at 5 in the evening and relax; instead of studying 80 or 90 hours a week. I became too busy with work and home life to ever pursue a Phd again. Stanford, and its elitist attitude, broke my self-confidence. I now regard attending this so-called top-ranked school, as being one of my life’s greatest mistakes.
Looking back over 35 years now, the main moral is: A school’s ranking isn’t everything. Select a school that you’re comfortable in. It may not necessarily be the top-ranked school, but rather a school that fits your personality and lifestyle."

Visicalc-Grandmother of all spreadsheets, Excel included!!

Last Oct 22 VisiCalc was launched. I am fortunate to have seen an early version on a HP machine. The link provided here is by the developers (Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston) of the spreadsheet and there is a lot of information about the program. 


This is one solution I have always admired, nice, elegant and simple! The qualities any elegant solution should have. This is great.

Intel Ships Samples Of Medfield Smartphone Chip

For long Intel has been the king of microprocessors. The whole PC revolution was a dual monopoly of Intel and Microsoft, well known as Wintel monopoly.  Yet, during a recent period of few short years, mobile handsets, particularly the smartphones became huge. This was a ARM game. The basic core is the same yet most companies create their own individualized SoC and and use that processor. I have mentioned elsewhere, may be Intel has missed the boat on this. I was talking about Oak Trail then. This story is about Medfield processors for smartphones. Yet, ARM is so well entrenched that the boat is actually too far gone! In fact what is more likely to happen is ARM with the Windows 8 (that has an ARM version) may start biting into the PC share. According to Apple, PCs are irrelevant in this post PC era, tablets shall rule. This is an exciting time. keep watching this space for ongoing updates!


Intel Ships Samples Of Medfield Smartphone Chip -- InformationWeek

Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU line-up

 Qualcomm has added a new processor to their Snapdragon line up, designated, APQ 8x60 family. The first one is APQ 8060. As with all new introductions at this time, this processor too has increased general performance as well as graphics performance so that a consumers overall experience is enhanced including the multimedia experience. Towards that purpose what this system on chip offers is a pair of its own Scorpion processor cores operating at 1.5 GHz and Adreno 220 graphics processor. The Scorpions use the ARM v7 instruction set. Along with the graphics processor it aims at providing viewing of stereoscopic 3D (S3D) videos or still images, 1080P HD video capture and playback, "console-quality" gaming and Flash-equipped web browsing for not only smartphone handsets but large screen tablets too.

The two cores can run asynchronously, not only at different frequencies but at different voltages too.  It supports all the ARM instructions. That includes the NEON  group of instructions assisting multimedia applications.  According to the manufacturer the processor is faster than OMAP4 from Texas Instruments. But, then OMAP 5 is already on the way. We'll have to see how the Snapdragon compares with that. According to one review the numbers for the CPU are like Linpack Scores at around 48 - 49 mflops . While the GPU, Adreno 220 is capable of rendering 88 million triangles/sec. Some benchmark scores are 39 FPS in GLBenchmark Egypt, 93.6fps in GL Benchmark Pro, 80 fps on quake 3. That's a five times improvement on its predecessor the Adreno 205.

Qualcomm updates Snapdragon CPU line-up

Quad-Core Kal-El Mobile Processors

The mobile marketplace, mobile handsets as well as the new fangled tablets  is seeing a lively amount of activity with manufacturers bringing out ever  better performing devices. This Mobile World Conference time, back in Mar, saw a lot of announcement prior to and during the conference.Nvidia's own Tegra 2 was quite a leg up in performance compared to the first generation chips.Tegra 2 was representative of the new generation as it represented the combined force of a CPU and a GPU being used to address the mobile computing needs.

The new Kal El (Superman as he is known on his birth planet) is quad core chip and should be about twice fast than the 2 core devices.. That is the CPU side. With the enhanced graphics built in the graphics performance too becomes almost double. For example if Tegra 2 had a Coremark benchmark rating of 5840, the Kal El has 11, 352 as Nvidia claimed during launch.

All this firepower is aimed at making HD video possible on mobile devices, may be even 3D video visibility besides all the smartphone features we have come to expect on smart devices./

Nvidia Unveils Quad-Core Kal-El Mobile Processors

New Intel Atom Processors

This post is a real indicator to how things are changing, changing very quickly, in the PC/Notebook, netbook, nettop categories of products. I noticed this news item in Feb 2011. In this two short months after that, March  and April, tablets came on the scene. The netbook has quickly lost its relevance, in fact even the PC is threatened as a category. Steve Jobs calls it the "post- PC era". Quite likely so!

Anyway, these Atom improvements, Cedarview processors,  are coming by the last quarter of this year. Netbook as a category was largely fueled by the Intel Atom. Yet the category is , in all likelihood, going to be wiped out. Intel will have to find a new market segment for it. Tablets may be! The processor will have higher power, to be able to manage playback of Blu-ray video and lower power consumption through the smaller 32 nm process devices.
New Intel Atom Processors for Netbooks and Nettops Due in Fourth Quarter

Nanowire Processors

The article, reporting on nanowire developments, says "A programmable processor built from nanowires could lead to chips that are far more efficient than current CMOS processors."  According tyo Wikipedia,
"A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10⁻⁹ meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. Many different types of nanowires exist, including metallic, semiconducting, and insulating are composed of repeating molecular units either organic inorganic."

This component then could be used to fabricate and link tiny components into really very small devices. The fabrication is simple so that manufacturers could get attracted and the power consumption is extremely low. A part of the reason is that the devices would be non volatile and would, thus hold the state even when power is taken off. Those are the things one would be looking for for the coming generations. The power consumption angle will be a powerful motivator for studying these devices closely! A Harvard research team is working on these structures and is led by Prof.Charles Lieber.

Nanowire processors promise chip revolution

ARM-Based Mobile OMAP 5 Processors from TI

Omap 5 too is addressed to the mobile market with 3D capability in mind. This is a competitor to some other processors that were announced in and around the Mobile World conference in Feb/Mar this year. Claims are impressive. For example it should deliver twice the processing power of the earlier Omap 4, five times graphics processing and a power consumption reduction by 60%!


The OMAP 5 will have ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores, two of them each running at 2 GHz. Two more M4 cores take over real time workloads. Stereoscopic 3D applications,  video conferencing, 2D and 3D graphics processing etc will be addressed by the chip. Record and playback of 3D video, convert 2D video to 3D, at 1080p resolution, etc. can be supported. Devices using the device should become available by mid next year, with the chip coming out about now.




Texas Instruments To Launch Feature-Rich, ARM-Based Mobile OMAP 5 Processors

Samsung to Start Making New Exynos Processors Next Month - PCWorld

Samsung named a processor directed at mobile space Exynos in February this year. the first processor is designated Exynos 4210.  This is a 2 core, 1 GHz processor. This should be capable of handling HD video and yet save on battery life. That is the race anyway for all smartphone processor vendors. Incidentally Samsung used to manufacture A4 processor for Apple, the earlier generation chip that has been used in iPad and iPhone 4 devices. Apple uses A5 for its iPad 2 and Samsung does not make it any more. Exynos is a successor to the Hummingbird family, developed jointly with Intrinsity. However, they have been bought out by Apple. hence Samsung had to create a different identity in the processor family. Exynos is based, no prize in guessing, on ARM architecture!


Samsung to Start Making New Exynos Processors Next Month - PCWorld

New Qualcomm Processor

APQ 8060, part of Snapdragon family,  is the designation for the new processor announced in Feb this year. Directed at mobile space this is a part of the next generation, a dual core affair. Qualcomm says it uses the ARM v7 instruction set but optimizes its own hardware. This is in the same class as ARM Cortex A8, A9 processors.The chip comes integrated with Adreno 220 graphics engine. In the race to support HD video, 1080 preferrably, the company claims this processor should be able to support 3D video playback and capture, Web browsing with Adobe Flash 10, and playback of 1080p 30fps HD video.

HP TouchPad Is First Device to Use New Qualcomm Processor

New ARM Cortex-R Processors For 3G, WiMax, 4G, etc.

Two more generations of the Cortex processors, R5 and R7, were announced by ARM by end January. That ARM is the leader in most things mobile as also a large slice of embedded stuff is indisputable. These two are clear signs of what's to come. They are positioning these at 3G and 4G, LTE use as well as mass storage devices, in-car entertainment applications as well as industrial equipment. The R5 enhances features of R4, it predecessor. low latency peripheral port (LLPP) improves peripheral I/O. R5 also has am accelerator coherency port that helps cache coherence.

R7 add substantial number new features. This should improve performance significantly over the older members of the family. Out of order execution, superscalar execution, dynamic register renaming, better branch prediction, hardware assist for floating point calculations, including divide are some of these features.These processors, according to ARM, should take care of real time processing needs of the future handsets.

ARM launches Cortex-R processors - 3G, WiMax, 4G, more

Future Computer Designs Need Not Be Von Neumann Architecture

With the availability of multicore processors computer architectures need not be Von Neumann architectures anymore. This architecture makes strict serial execution of instructions. Whereas with so many cores available one can issue more than one instruction as long as the input of one does not depend on output of another.

That is much like the multiple execution unit computer we all read about. Vishkin proposes an architecture based on a central coordinating core with multiple execution cores. When execution has to serial, the coordinator can take care of it. Multiple cores take care of independent parallel instruction issues. He proposes this in an article in Communications ACM, Jan 2011.

Radical Redesign' Urged for Future Computers - PCWorld

Freescale offers take on tablets, 3-D units

Freescale announced a new line of processors for the exploding tablet market during the consumer electronics show in January this year. Director of global marketing, consumer-segment marketing four kind of things that will start appearing in tablets of the future. This line of quad core processors would take care of the increased processing load when they start appearing in 18 months. That would make it by this time next year. The predictions were four fold.

First consumers will start seeing augmented reality applications. For example, in a shopping mall, you would be able to find out who's offering what, what prices and many other details. Even though you are able to look into a few shop-fronts physically, you cannot find this kind of details. These applications will let you look up details from stores that are on a different floor or a different corner of the building! Well, that kind of application would really be useful. If you are able to find if the particular book you are looking for is available or not without going inside and browsing around, that would really be helpful!

Second prediction was about gaming capabilities in tablets.3D and desktop gaming coming on the tablets is a easy prediction to do. It will happen and the Freescale processors are equipped with 4 cores and 3 graphics units to tackle the load.

He predicts the tablets will be used for content creation, going beyond the content consumption at present. That is a usual progression too. People will start creating stuff after a while and if the find the platform has the power to do the job. Part of this prediction is that the tablets will start sporting 2 cameras to make 3D video creation possible.

The way 3D is becoming popular the 3D creation coming on the tablets is not very much of a stretch to believe. All four look likely scenarios. Even if the details do not work out exactly as predicted, that the tablets will need 4 core power is not difficult to see. 2 core tablets are already on the market!

Freescale offers take on tablets, 3-D units

CES's biggest fallout --- Say good-bye to Wintel

The Wintel alliance that has dominated the PC space for so long, may be destined to end. Microsoft has announced in the last CES that they'll have the next Windows version on ARM platform also. Will it mean ARM will muscle into PC space! Maybe. But, as Jobs says this is the post PC era. May be they'll turn up on the tablets. The predominant OS Android is platform agnostic. Besides, all sorts of innovations seem to be coming to the tablet space! May be MS want to get there!

Windows 7 has not exactly been a hit in the smartphone segment. Whereas Arm is doing great in it. Can MS ride coattails of ARM there!


CES's biggest fallout --- Say good-bye to Wintel

MIPS Aims to Break into Smartphone Space

Mobile handset space has been dominated by ARM based processors for a long time and by a long shot. However Intel and MIPS has been trying to get into this ever expanding space for a time now. News coming out of this year's CES show says they are both serious about it. Smartphone is the most lucrative segment of the handset market and you need a powerful processor to handle the tasks demanded of a smartphone.

MIPS announcements at the CES-2011 brings out features of the newer MIPS processors that make them suitable for this space easily. One of the major handicap used to be the availability of one of the popular OS being available in MIPS machine code version. However, with Android that problem vanishes, as the Dalvik JVM makes it all the same whether the Android runs on an ARM based machine or a MIPS platform. They also seem to have processors that deliver more power in same physical form factor yet consume smaller amount of electric power. 3 MIPAS core can be fitted into the space and power consumption taken up by 2 of the ARM cores that delivers 80% more processing power! That should be an incentive for many vendors to look at it as an alternative!

MIPS Aims to Break ARMs With New Smartphone Platform

Android Version 3.0 is Near

We talked about how the Honeycomb may mandate two processor cores and high resolution displays. This article looks at usability features that the Honeycomb brings you.. read the reference article for details, but here are highlights.  The recent CES showed off a range of tablets based on the Android. The Android OS itself is undergoing improvements and the upcoming version 3.0 was shown off. Motorola has already announced a tablet based on the Honeycomb, the Xoom.

The desktop presented can be split into 5 different customizable screen. The desktop is being touted as a virtual, holographic user UI. Each of these could be named with whatever takes your fancy. Program, widget, apps icons available can be released onto these screens, multiple screens can be combined, it is up to the users to arrange the UI.

The browser has tabs now, forms auto fill, sync with Chrome bookmarks and even an incognito mode are features that have been brought into the Android browser.Full screen video calling is supported to other tablets as well as regular PCs.

eReader is a big feature that gives you access to the Google ebook library. That has some 3 million free books as well as the latest best sellers that you can buy. Google Maps 5 is going to be supported on the Honeycomb. Gmail and YouTube downloader  have been integrated for the devices that will run this OS.  Like many other manufacturers the Android is going to be supported by the Android marketplace that already has some 100,000 apps. 

Android 3.0 Honeycomb

Intel's Core Chips for Secure Streaming Movies, the "Insider"

The new Sandy Bridge processors will have a secure layer built into the hardware that will manage rights protected movies to be processed. These can be in true HD 1080p format and will ensure the plain text video cannot be accessed and thus copied. This will probably encourage the studios to stream movies to consumers. Intel has worked with Warner Brothers on this and have their backing. WB Show and Best Buy's CinemaNow has 300 movies already whose content will be streamed.


Combined CPU and GPU is another thing that is coming onto these chips. Wi-Di that supported up to 720p is upgraded to full 1080p. This technology lets pictures and video to be moved to the TV directly from the processor. Another feature, known as Quick Sync, lets video be reformatted to smartphone format. That visuals are increasingly the preferred medium becomes evident. You can see the moves across all processors, manufacturers improving video processing, managing the high computations needed.


Intel's Core chips to handle secure streaming movies

CES: As processor recedes from view, AMD stands to benefit | ZDNet

More on the Fusion chips from AMD. AMD sees more compute power in these processors than anything available so far. Even after adding a significant amount of salt, the performance of the APUs ( accelerated processing units) has to be something to watch for. AMD chips have always been cheaper than Intel's. Add to that the phenomenon where a consumer is not bothered with a "Intel inside" or any such emphasis on specific. They are now more interested in a total experience a device like iPhone or iPad brings you. It is here that these multi-core ,x86 and Direct X 11 capable CPU's will score.

What such product package will be able to offer to the consumer are improved HD video playback, really long battery life along with heavy application processing power. AMD already has design wins from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. Tablets and embedded designs should be coming along by late Q1 this year.

Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.The APUs cover desktops, notebooks, netbooks and tablets across all price points.


CES: As processor recedes from view, AMD stands to benefit 

Speedy Quad-core, Six-core Phenom II processors from AMD stable

Here's couple of announcements from the AMD stable in the CES, on the 4 Jan. AMD announced a 4 core and 6 core Phenom II processors. They also announced Fusion processors that are addressed to the market powered by Intel's Atom processor.


The Phenom II announcements adds two members. One is the 3.6GHz Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition. This possibly is the fastest quad core of the AMD processors up to now. the second member is the 2.9GHz Phenom II X6 1065T processors. This one balances performance with relatively low TDP which is is a low 95 W. It also has AMD's own Turbo CORE technology. I am making a guess here, but that must be the over clocking mechanism used by the AMD for crucial applications and compute intensive parts of an application.


The fusion processors are a combined processor that puts AMD classic core with ATI GPU logic and gets a high performance GPU. It also has built in Direct X 11 support. Was a long time coming, since the acquisition of ATL by AMD  4 years back. This can offer more than 10 hour battery life and high performance graphics that can change things with netbooks. This territory has been the monopoly of the Intel Atom so long.




AMD announces speedy new quad-core, six-core Phenom II processors

AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics

Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor from VIA

VIA Technologies announced the VIA Nano X2, a new dual-core processor on Jan 4. These are available to OEMs and motherboard makers. It is built on 40 nm technology and is part of the VIA's Isiah(64 bit) architecture.

VIA has been a Intel compatible processor maker for quite some time. This processor too is compatible and also covers the superset SSE4 or the Streaming SIMD extensions. As published by Intel this extension set contains some 47 (SSE 4.1)+ 7(SSE 4.2) instructions. These are completely implemented in the core i7 for the first time. The new processor is geared for mainstream PC markets including desktops, notebooks and all-in-one solutions. Looks like VIA is determined to keep up with the Joneses, the Intels and the AMDs of this world in the mainstream computing platforms.

 This is a two core processor and   features two out-of-order x86 execution units/cores. 64 bit support is available natively. It also include VIA's Padlock security features as well as VT CPU virtualization technology. Systems using these chips should start appearing Q1 of this year.

VIA Reveals New Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor

IBM Supercomputer plays Jeopardy!

Power processor seems to be coming up ever so often! This is the third post that is related to the Power architecture from IBM in the recent past. This story is about a supercomputer that does natural language processing and uses 2000 to 3000 Power processors. being able to play jeopardy with two top winners of the jeopardy is something unthinkable even a few years back. Sometime back I had talked about how AI successes are slow in coming. But a IBM computer beating Gary Kasparov, proves something! If this challenge is actually won by this machine, that'll be a huge mile post for natural language processing, an important area of AI. Read the Forbes article for details of the mission.
IBM Plays Jeopardy!

PowerPC based SoCs in Embedded Designs

In one of the recent posts we talked about power management features on the PowerPC processor architecture and how that makes it suitable for the embedded systems. Comes news that AppliedMicro has released a SoC that include Power chips and is positioned for the manufacturers of next-generation multifunction

printers, enterprise control planes, consumer NAS systems, wireless access points and industrial

applications. The AppliedMicro offers the industry’s most advanced capabilities in power management, security and concurrency.


AppliedMicro has created a Scalable Lightweight Intelligent Management Processor (SLIMpro) that is able to provide power management, true Asymmetric Multi-Processing (AMP), inline packet processing, look aside hardware offloads, tamper detection and response circuitry for applications demanding low-power operation, end-to-end security and RTOS concurrency.   These features make the SLIMPro family a contender in complex peripheral device operations. Wake on LAN, USB 2.0, general purpose I?O and on RTC etc. provide the devices lot of opportunities to go to sleep and save power. Frequency gating options are also available.

AppliedMicro News Release