“CES 2011 hasn’t even started properly yet and we’re already getting plenty of rumors, leaks and press releases that are generally related to the Consumer Electronics Show about to get underway in Las Vegas,” Chris Smith reports for TFTS. “Intel is one of the companies that decided to amaze the audience before the official start of the show with the announcement of its 2nd-generation Core processors, or its Sandy Bridge 2011 Core processors lineup.”
“The new Core i3, i5 and i7 processors will come with some new features: Intel Insider, Intel Quick Sync Video and a new Intel Wireless Display version. The new generation of processor also comes with 3G graphics technology and Intel HD Graphics on each 32nm chip, which should offer us an even better HD multimedia and gaming experience this year. Last but not least the new chips will offer better battery life and ‘the ability to design thinner, lighter and more innovative laptops and all-in-one PCs,'” Smith reports. “As for the new trademark features mentioned above, Intel Insider will bring you support for HD video streaming from various content providers and some of your favorite movies will be available in HD on the same date the DVD/Blu-ray gets released.”
Smith reports, “With Intel Quick Sync Video you’ll be able to “edit, convert and share videos” a lot faster than you used to (four-minute HD video would be transferred to an iPod in just 16 seconds) and the Intel WiDi 2.0 feature will help you “beam content” from your computer straight to your big screen HDTV.”
Read more in the full article here.
An in-depth look at Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” architecture via AnandTech is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
“the ability to design thinner, lighter and more innovative laptops and all-in-one PCs”
And all the good that that will do.
All well and good but when has Intel ever made a graphics chip worth a hill of beans?
Its funny. AMD have been working on this for a while. Suddenly Untel pops pup and goes me2!
Just like AMD was first with 64-bit way way before Intel at the time Intel was talking down 64-but for consumers. And just like AMD was way before Intel with real dual core. And just like AMD was way way way!!! Before Intel with integrated memory controller something Intel just announced like something new and revolutionary like not long ago.
Wouldn’t Intel want to compete(really compete) in the ultra-portable market? Ultra-thin tablets and phones are the FUTURE. CES will be proof! Sure, laptops and desktops are going to be around, but to INCREASE their market share, why aren’t they focusing their engineering on competing with ARM and Apple’s A4(and beyond)? Speed and power efficiency in the smallest size possible should be what all these chip companies live for.
In the mean time Apple’s chip division, already producing the most powerful and least battery-drain mobile chip, is hard at work without fanfare. You won’t learn about their next gen chip until Steve Jobs announces it is already being installed in products.
Wow, more blazingly fast CPUs, with scorchingly fast glue-logic and video chips – all forced to rely on the sucky SATA interface! There’s nothing like the experience of driving your Ferrari down a 30MPH street that has a stoplight on every corner. SATA is the one part of Apple that got caught in the PC’s “race to the bottom”. I have a MBP with an i7, and I have to sit there and watch the 4 cores barely move while the disk intensive I/O pushes data on & off the drive trying to keep up. It’s about time for an interface change. Maybe if Apple pushed SAS for drives we’d see an improvement?
@FunnyOne,
You must have double-vision because your MBP only has 2 cores. As far as improving SATA, Sandy Bridge does do that too, with support for 6Gbps. You’re using a disk drive in your MBP faster than that?
@Val4MotherBoard,
Intel is competing and doing so across a much wider variety of devices from different vendors then the A4. Look for lots of product announcements at CES.
Here’s a video published this morning showing how Intel is positioning the Atom:
http://connectedsocialmedia.com/5961/the-intel-atom-processor-a-building-block/
It’s important to remember that one of the great things about iOS and OS X that it’s derived from is that the architecture isn’t locked in and Apple has the freedom to move from one to another.
@m159
Looking forward to it! The A4 is great, but I have been expecting even bigger and better results from Apple’s PA Semi deal. Time to take a big step ahead of the pack (again!) in the mobile processor space.
@macslut:
You’re correct that there’s only 2 hardware cores, but due to hyperthreading, the logical number displayed is 2x their hardware cores…which here equals 4.
Similarly, it doesn’t do us all that much good for Sandy Bridge to bump SATA to 6 Gbps when the protocol interface isn’t the system’s performance bottleneck. The bottleneck is (and has been) the spinning platters themselves.
-hh
@macslut
-hh qualified the cores better, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to have 10x that many cores if your disk interface is crap, and SATA is CRAP! Yeah, it’s better than ATA, but it’s still a bottle neck – never mind the platter technology. The problem is that SATA still only allows one operation on the bus at a time. It still can’t do stuff SCSI did 20 years ago. SATA is a result of cheap OEMs and cheaper Consumers. Apple originally used SCSI for all their drives because they did their homework and know it was a better interface than ATA, and they’d be using SCSI or SAS if they could get the chips and drives at anywhere near a reasonable price.