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According to information obtained from Digitimes from motherboard manufacturers, the launch of the Nehalem Bloomfield has been "advanced" to September while it was recently a question of November/December on certain roadmaps. However, officially these processors and X58 motherboards that accompany them will not be available before early October. In actuality, this doesn’t mean much because some partners are sometimes very ahead of the game when everything goes well.
 This was recently the case with the launch of the Radeon HD 4850. Moreover, some manufacturers that work with Intel do the same as was notably the case with P35 motherboards that arrived a month too early. Some may point out that it’s only logical that availability will start in certain large Asian cities at the end of September as earlier this year there was a similar phenomenon on the market with the arrival of low volumes of other processors... |
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Intel has just lifted the NDA on the Tolapai, a SoC (System On a Chip) solution mainly destined for "embedded" systems. It combines a CPU and chipset in a single external envelop.
 At first glance, the absence of a graphic controller may seem surprising but some presentations show this component wouldn’t have much interest as this is a solution which is essentially oriented towards VPNs/Firewalls. The accent has thus been put on network/professional connectivity. Of course, the company has higher ambitions for its latest creation and, for example, it could eventually rival ARM processors. Future evolutions of this chip should therefore be interesting to follow. One thing is certain however: with Consumer Electronics (CE) and telephones, the creator of x86 is sees a lot of potential.  While Intel is currently relying on the very time tested architecture of the Pentium M (with 90nm engraving), it should rapidly be replaced by that of the Atom’s (45nm) to notably lower TDP even more. A propos, reductions in the size of CPU circuits to 32nm and even 22nm has already been mentioned. In short, there should be a way to advance quite far in this domain.  Finally, we should note the extent to which the Californian company insists on QuickAssist technology in its documents sent to the press. This is actually a rather flexible AAL (acceleration abstraction layer) that is found in drivers and which enables accelerating the speed of encryption and the processing of "packets". When used correctly by applications conceived with VPN/Firewall or VoIP environments, it allows freeing up CPU cycles. |
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According to AMD, their new southbridge, the SB750, which will be officially launched next week and accompanies the 790FX and 790GX, is supposed to improve the overclocking of the Phenom by 200 MHz or more with a technology called «Advanced Clock Calibration» (ACC).
Our colleagues at AnandTech were able to get their hands on a motherboard equipped with an SB750 and take a look at performances. In terms of the technology itself, we only know that the SB750 is relayed to an AM2+ via 6 pins which puts it into direct communication with the CPU. Combined with a an up to date bios, it enables modifying internal CPU settings, ACC, which has an influence on a CPU’s o/c potential.
 In practice, AnandTech obtained good results from ACC. For example, their Phenom 9850BE went from 3.1 to 3.4 GHz thanks to ACC or 300 MHz higher! However, the result varies greatly from one CPU to another as their Phenom 9950 «only» went from 3.4 to 3.5 GHz, although we should point out that the initial 3.4 GHz is rather impressive. In short, Advanced Clock Calibration, which remains a mystery in terms of its exact functioning, seems to be bearing its fruits. It should enable AMD to stress the platform aspect as its latest chipsets are an absolute requirement in order to make these modifications. |
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