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Intel has announced via several Product Change Notifications that it will be discontinuing a total of 19 Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge desktop CPUs across sockets 1366, 1156, and 1155. OEMs may no longer order the chips from Intel after December 7, 2012, and boxed CPUs will only be available while supplies last.

The complete list includes the Pentium G6950, G6960, G620, G620T, and G840; the Core i3 540 and 2100T; the Core i5 650, 660, 670, 680, and 2300; and the Core i7 860, 870, 930, 950, 960, 980, and 990X. Many of these processors have been around for over two years now, and with Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E products available at almost all conceivable price points (and with Ivy Bridge just around the corner), the discontinuation of these processors is unsurprising. 

More surprising is the cutting of several Sandy Bridge Pentium models, which were released only a few months ago. However, the models in question have already been replaced by slightly faster models (the G630, G630T, and G860, with the G850 apparently still available), and high competition in this market segment from both Intel's own Sandy Bridge Celerons and AMD's offerings is bound to lead to faster turnover.

Source: CPU World

AMD is refreshing its mobile CPU lineup with seven new A4, A6, and A8 Llano processors for socket FS1. With one exception, these dual- and quad-core processors give a mild speed bump to existing processors using the same GPUs, L2 cache amount, TDP, and core stepping – see the table below for specifications.

AMD Llano mobile CPU refresh

Name

Cores

CPU Clock
(Max Turbo)

L2 Cache

GPU

GPU Cores

GPU Clock

TDP

A4-3305M

2

1.9GHz (2.5GHz)

1MB

HD 6480G

160

593MHz

35W

A4-3320M

2

2.0GHz (2.6GHz)

2MB

HD 6480G

240

444MHz

35W

A4-3330MX

2

2.2GHz (2.6GHz)

2MB

HD 6480G

240

444MHz

45W

A6-3420M

4

1.5GHz (2.4GHz)

4MB

HD 6520G

320

400MHz

35W

A6-3430MX

4

1.7GHz (2.4GHz)

4MB

HD 6520G

320

400MHz

45W

A8-3520M

4

1.6GHz (2.5GHz)

4MB

HD 6620G

400

444MHz

35W

A8-3550MX

4

2.0GHz (2.7GHz)

4MB

HD 6620G

400

444MHz

45W

The refresh features four processors with the -M suffix, denoting slightly lower clock speeds and TDPs than the -MX processors (in this case, 35W). Three of these, the A4-3320M, the A6-3420M, and the A8-3520M, are 100MHz bumps in base and turbo CPU clock speed over their predecessors, the A4-3300M, the A6-3400M, and the A8-3500M (GPU clocks and core counts are unchanged). The -MX processors are the same story – newer versions of the A4-3310MX, A6-3410MX, and A8-3530MX with 100MHz more clock speed with the same GPUs and 45W TDPs. 

The outlier is the A4-3305M, a new low-end processor with the same CPU clocks as the A4-3300M but with half the L2 cache and 33% fewer GPU cores, though the GPU clock has been increased to compensate. In spite of these changes, the GPU is still called the HD 6480G.

Expect to see these APUs trickle into laptops in the coming months.

Source: CPU World

Intel has quietly released a new top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge CPU: Core i7-2700K. We reported the i7-2700K "leak" about a month ago, and guessed that i7-2700K will be released around the same time as AMD's Bulldozer CPUs, which ended being quite accurate. In terms of specs, 2700K is very similar to 2600K – the only difference is the extra CPU multiplier and hence the extra 100MHz in 2700K. That means 2700K has default frequency of 3.5GHz and up to 3.9GHz Turbo. Otherwise 2700K is equal to 2600K: Four cores, Hyper-Threading (up to eight threads) and 8MB L3 cache. Like the "K" implies, the CPU multiplier is unlocked, allowing effortless overclocking. Intel hasn't, however, added 2700K to their product database yet (aka ARK), so possible changes in stepping for example are unknown. 2700K is sold for 2 in 1000 unit lots, making it more expensive than 2600K. 

On top of the launch of i7-2700K, Intel has also reduced the prices of three CPUs: i3-2120, Pentium G850 and G630. As the naming suggests, these CPUs are lower-end desktop models. The new prices are 7, and respectively. The price cuts range from 13% to 15%, the biggest cut being i3-2120's . 

I don’t know the last time I was this excited about AMD’s roadmap. Zacate and Ontario are due out in a quarter, and both promise to bring competition to an area where we haven’t seen much from AMD.

Llano is slated for release near the end of Q2 next year. While it won’t be a big step forward in CPU performance, we should see a huge increase in integrated graphics performance.

Sampling in Q4 of this year and shipping sometime next year is AMD’s next-generation microarchitecture: Bulldozer.

Within the course of twelve months we will see AMD introduce three drastically different microprocessors into the market’s eager hands. We’ve been dying for more competition and AMD is planning on giving us just that. But that's the future, what about the present?

Today AMD announced speed bumps to nearly every processor in its desktop lineup. Everything from the dual-core Athlon II to the six-core Phenom II gets a new family member today. And they’re all very attractively priced.

TABLET AND NOTEBOOK popularity is expected to help shrink discrete GPU sales by more than 10 per cent by 2014 and drive the development of graphics enabled CPUs.

According to market research firm Isuppli, sales of tablets and notebooks will depress discrete graphics device shipments from 73 million in 2009 to 62 million in 2014. Their rise will push takeup of new graphics enabled processors including CPUs to replace the old style GPUs.

Isuppli predicts that a doubling of ultraportable notebook shipments by 2014 will mean that those products will lead the way. As well as higher shipments Isuppli foresees 82.9 per cent of notebook PCs using graphics crunching microchips by 2014, compared to 39 per cent today. If Isuppli can predict such a precise figure as 82.9 per cent four years ahead of time, could they please contact this journalist with next week’s lottery numbers?

The Isuppli prediction would also seem to be good news for Intel, because of the graphics shoveling chips not the lottery. Isuppli says Chipzilla has already cornered the market in them with its Core I series. For AMD, the research company expects it “to launch graphics-enabled microprocessors in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 2011 time frame.”

However AMD has pushed ahead with its Vision branding that has an emphasis on consumers use of graphics and video and it has already announced its Fusion graphics Accelerated Processing Unit product line. The INQUIRER hears from reliable sources that Fusion will tip up in this fourth quarter. Perhaps this helps explain Isuppli’s fourth quarter graphics-enabled microprocessors prediction?

The focus on small form factor devices bodes equally well for ARM, which could win big in the tablet market after years of success in the smartphone arena. ARM’s new A10 Eagle chip is being licensed by Texas Instruments for mobile computing devices. µ

Keeping an eye on power when choosing the hardware and software components is thus much more than naively following the hype of “green IT”. It is simply the smart thing to do. We take another shot at understanding how choosing your server components wisely can give you a cost advantage. In this article, we focus on low power Xeons in a consolidated Hyper-V/Windows 2008 virtualization scenario. Do Low Power Xeons save energy and costs? We designed a new and improved methodology to find out.

The past couple of years have shown us a lot can be done with very modest CPU power thanks to Moore's Law. Everything from netbooks to smartphones rely on a new category of "fast enough" silicon that is more power than performance optimized. A number of companies are working on a similar approach to server hardware.

SeaMicro is one such company and today it is announcing its first product: the SM10000. A single 10U SM10000 houses 1TB of memory and 512 Intel Atom processors. The idea is to deliver similar total performance to dozens of power hungry Xeon/Opteron servers, but at a fraction of the total cost of ownership thanks to very low power requirements.

We recently had the opportunity to spend some time talking to SeaMicro's CEO about the technology and honestly, it's pretty interesting. Read on…