Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor architecture has been kicking it in public for almost a year now, but the new chips weren’t very friendly towards the budget crowd. However, the company finally released new Ivy Bridge processors that cater towards the frugal bunch, including new Celeron, Pentium, and Core dual-core chips.
In total, there are three Celeron CPUs, four Pentiums, and a new Core i3-3210, which all range from $42 to $117. All of the Celeron chips have 2MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. The Pentiums have 3MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and clock in from 2.5GHz to 3.2GHz. The Core i3-3210 is the flagship CPU out of the bunch, and it comes with HD 2500 graphics and clocks in at 3.2GHz.
All of these new processors are compatible with Intel’s existing Socket 1155, so there’s no need to upgrade motherboards if you’re looking to downgrade to one of these budget CPUs. However, the Celeron and Pentium chips don’t include hyper-threading, so if you’re looking to get the most performance, the $117 Core i3 might fit the bill.
The best part is, these new chips will be available starting today. We’re not seeing them on retailers’ websites just yet, but it should only be a matter of time. And while the Ivy Bridge architecture won’t last for much longer, we can’t say that it’ll be a huge deal for budget builders looking for a decent CPU at a really great price.
After almost a year of Ivy Bridge implementation in everything from Windows tablets to miniature computers, Intel has finally rolled out its latest architecture to its budget line of silicon. According to CPU World, the chip giant released pricing and concrete specs for three Celeron CPUs, four Pentiums and a new Core i3-3210, all of which are available today. The Celerons all have 2MB of L3 cache, HD graphics and range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. Meanwhile, the Pentiums rank a touch higher with 3MB of L3 cache, HD graphics and processors that clock at 2.5GHz on the low end to 3.2GHz on the high end. Last but certainly not least, the 3.2GHz Core i3 tops the lot with 3MB of L3 cache and HD 2500 graphics.
All the Celeron and Pentium models have two cores and two threads each, but the Core kicks it up to four threads with the help of Hyperthreading. They’re all compatible with existing Socket 1155 motherboards and cost anywhere from $42 for the cheapest Celeron to $117 for the Core i3. Of course with Haswell on the horizon, Ivy Bridge won’t be the latest and greatest for much longer, but that shouldn’t derail budget-conscious silicon lovers from a good deal. If all of this CPU speak gets your heart thumping, be sure to peek at the source to get a more detailed pricing breakdown of each individual chip.
At CES 2013 we saw the unveiling of the NVIDIA Tegra 4, a mobile processor the company suggested was the World’s Fastest, it containing 72 GPU cores, five CPU cores (one of them an A15 “companion”), and the ability to work with 4G LTE. The Tegra 4 will be working with the NVIDIA Icera i500, that being a 28nm HP, Category 3 LTE (4 in the pipeline) Soft Modem. These two pieces of architecture together will be NVIDIA’s hero technology for mobile devices throughout 2013.
NVIDIA Tegra 4
The NVIDIA Tegra 4 System-on-Chip with five ARM Cortex A15 cores – four of them with 1.9GHz max clock speed, a fifth synthesized to work at lower power. The technology working around this fifth Companion core is similar to the Tegra 3, and for the lay person, it may as well be presented as the same due to how similar it really is. The fifth core is not visible to the operating system you’re using (be it Android, Windows, or something else), acting as more of a “Shadow Core” or a “Ninja” as we’ve been apt to call it, just as it was with Tegra 3.
Above you’re going to see a rundown of what Tegra 4 is, how it compares to Tegra 3, and what the future holds for mobile processing. The talk you’re seeing above is with NVIDIA Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam who presented us more of a detailed look at the Tegra 4 and what it means for mobile devices in 2013 (and beyond.)
For those of you that want to get rather technical with it all, you’ll be interested in knowing that the die size here in this new model is 80mm^2, ever so slightly larger than Tegra 3, but a whole lot denser as well. The cores you’re seeing here work on 28nm HPL, that being 28nm low power with high-k plus metal gates. What that basically means here is that you’re going to get one extremely optimized experience, made for high performance and low power consumption – as every great processor should.
The Tegra 4 processor will be working with “Always-On” HDR camera technology as well. You’ll find a rather interesting set of details in our initial reveal post, and we’ll be seeing this technology in-person sooner than later. It’s then that we’ll be seeing what it really means to be able to instantly take a shot with multiple exposures at once!
NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem with 4G LTE
The NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem is what the company describes as 40% smaller than a conventional die – this referring to other modems they’ve worked with from companies other than themselves, of course. The Icera i500 will work with Soft Modem technology, starting with UE Category 3 LTE (100 Mbps downlink on 20 MHz FDD-LTE) and moving forward to UE Category 4 LTE in the very near future. VoLTE is supported with other voice mode technologies, and the modem will be paired with a new never before seen transceiver built on 65nm LP CMOS.
The NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem is built on TSMC’s 28nm high performance High-K Metal Gate process, and the company is able to power gate each of its cores individually. Depending on the needs of each device’s software package, each of the NVIDIA Icera i500′s 8 cores can be used or not used, gating based on changing load conditions.
Following Tegra 4
Those of you getting pumped up about Tegra 4 and NVIDIA’s full 2013 experience, you’ll have a fabulous time hitting up our massive Tegra Hub. There you’ll find not just your everyday NVIDIA Tegra mobile processor news, but featured hands-on articles, must-read up-to-the-minute updates, and reviews of Tegra-toting devices of all kinds.
Right this minute you’ll find several stories on the first device to have been revealed working with the Tegra 4 processor: NIVIDA’s own Project SHIELD. You’ll find plenty of awesome Project SHIELD action in the immediate future and up with its final name some time in Q2 of this year. Also have a peek in the timeline below to see the first important detail articles to have come down the line here in the first week since Tegra 4 was first revealed – Project SHIELD included!
Samsung announced today its Evolution Kit at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from January 8-11, 2013. The Evolution Kit, which has been introduced for the first time at CES 2012, is an innovative concept that enables Samsung 2012 Smart TV to evolve into Samsung’s new 2013 Smart TVs. By simply attaching the Evolution Kit device into the back of a Samsung Smart TV, consumers can enjoy the latest features that the 2013 Smart TVs have to offer. With hardware enhancements, …
A duo of electrical engineers (or mad scientists, if you prefer) at the California Institute of Technology have developed chips that could very well end up in the next James Bond movie. Or, you know, real life. The newfangled chips are capable of generating and radiating “high-frequency electromagnetic waves, called terahertz (THz) waves, that fall into a largely untapped region of the electromagnetic spectrum.” They can penetrate a host of materials without the ionizing damage of X-rays, and apparently, can be integrated into small, handheld devices. The university is already dreaming of potential applications — everything from homeland security to wireless communications to health care, and even touchless gaming. In theory, this kind of work would eventually lead to noninvasive cancer diagnosis as well. The technobabble can be seen in full at the source link.
Not so long ago, mobile processors from Intel had thermal design points (TDP) of 45W. TDP designates the energy that the chip and its cooling system are designed to dissipate. It is not really a measure of power draw, but both are correlated because dissipating more heat, means that more energy is consumed to produce that heat. (more…)
For many, the very definition of the custom desktop PC is the ability to upgrade the processor, choosing a $300 retrofit instead of a $1,500 whole-system replacement. We might have to kiss that symbolism goodbye if sources at Impress Watch, SemiAccurate and ZDNet are genuinely in the know. They claim that desktop processors built on Intel’s future, 14-nanometer Broadwell architecture will be switching from contacts based on a land grid array (LGA) to a ball grid array (BGA) that could dictate soldering the chips in laptop-style, rather than putting them in an upgrade-friendly socket. The exact reasons for the supposed switch aren’t available, but there’s speculation that it would be mutually beneficial for Intel and PC manufacturers: Intel would have more control over motherboard chipsets, while builders could save money on assembly and conveniently drive more outright PC sales. Intel hasn’t confirmed any of the strategy, so we’d still be very cautious before making any presumptions. If real, though, the switch would be glum news for chipset makers, motherboard makers and most of all hobbyists; even though socket changes have made CPU upgrades tricky in the past, having the option removed altogether could put a damper on the do-it-yourself community.
We’ve been hearing that Apple is looking to replace Samsung as the main manufacturer of the CPUs found in its iDevices, and it seems that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC) will be the one to eventually take the reins. We’re learning today that this could be both good and bad for TSMC – good, obviously, because Apple sells a lot of iPhones and iPads and would therefore need to buy a lot of CPUs. This could be bad for the same reason, though, considering that TSMC is going to need to dedicate a lot of its time and energy just to get Apple the components it needs.
According to DigiTimes, that has some worried that TSMC may not be able to handle the demand coming from Apple without making its other customers upset. With Apple said to begin relying on TSMC for parts next year, one of the company’s biggest challenges of the year will be making sure it allocates its resources properly so it keeps everyone happy. Other TSMC customers include the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA, so TSMC can’t exactly put its other customers on the back burner in favor of Apple.
With Apple’s devices requiring 200 million mobile processors a year, TSMC certainly has its work cut out for it. It’s worth pointing out that TSMC can handle the massive orders Apple is bound to place, but the question is whether or not TSMC can do this while successfully filling orders from other customers at the same time. Having recently started in on the sixth-phase construction of its Fab 14 plant, TSMC will soon be able to begin mass producing 20nm SoCs, which should help with the demand a bit.
Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see what happens when Apple begins buying its CPUs from TSMC. If it can balance the demand from Apple with the demand from other companies, then TSMC stands to make a healthy profit, which is something else market observers will be keeping an eye on. Stay tuned for more information.
A couple days ago, 4A Games developer Oles Shishkovtsov had some fighting words for Nintendo’s new Wii U gaming console. He simply said that the new console has a “horrible, slow CPU.” He was pretty straightforward in his comment obviously, but THQ‘s Huw Beynon — who works full time as a representative of 4A Games — says that Shishkovtsov’s comment didn’t tell the full story necessarily.
Beynon says that the Wii U, indeed, “isn’t as fast as some of the other consoles out there”, and Metro: Last Light is “a very CPU intensive game.” However, Beynon says that “lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform.” He thinks that Shishkovtsov’s opinion of the Wii U’s CPU had to do with the way that the game’s engine was built, making it more difficult to develop the game on the Wii U.
Beynon then says the game could have been ported to iPad if 4A Games had wanted it to be, but he says that every console version stretches the developer’s resources ever so much, and it turns out 4A’s resources are stretched pretty far as it is with the three versions of Metro: Last Light that are planned.
However, Gustav Halling, a game developer at DICE — makers of the Battlefield series, says that he’s been hearing the same things from his industry contacts about the Wii U’s slow CPU, saying that while the GPU and RAM can handle shaders/textures, things like physics and gameplay run on the CPU, and that can create a potential problem in the future. However, Halling notes that Wii U owners shouldn’t have anything to worry about, since the new console will still have plenty of great games released for it.
The Wii U from Nintendo just released a couple days ago, and it’s turning out to be a pretty hot item. However, to one game developing studio in particular, it’s not as great as it may seem. 4A Games will be bringing its new shooter, Metro: Last Light, to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, but they’ll be skipping the Wii U because of it’s “slow CPU.”
4A Games’ own Oles Shishkovtsov explains the reason why Metro: Last Light isn’t coming to the Wii U by simply stating that the “Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU.” Another 4A Games developer Huw Beynon was a little more helpful with answering the question, and he says that the team “had an early look” at the Wii U and initially thought that they could bring the game to the new console, but Beynon says that they would have to lower the quality of the game because of the console’s CPU, which wasn’t worth it to the developers.
From the iFixit teardown a couple days ago, we know that the Wii U has an IBM PowerPC processor and AMD Radeon HD graphics, as well as 2GB of RAM. We’re not sure what all of this is clocked at, but if the Wii U can play Assassin’s Creed III, you’d think a shooter title from 4A Games wouldn’t be too much to ask for.
However, it’s certainly possible that the game studio may bring the latest Metro title to the Wii U at some point, but they said that they “couldn’t make any promises.” Could this be bad news for the Wii U? If game studios are already crossing off the Wii U from their lists, what will the selection of games be like for the new console in the future?
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