Many eyes may be shifted south of San Francisco to a shindig in Cupertino, but Intel's making some waves in the city. Just now onstage at IDF 2013, CEO Brian Krzanich showed off a functioning laptop running on a 14nm Broadwell Intel SoC. Naturally, Krzanich didn't deal any other details about the laptop, but did say that we'd see those tiny chips ship by the end of this year. And, following that little nugget, Chipzilla announced that there will be tablets packing Intel silicon being sold for less than $100 this holiday season. Who will build these bargain slates? Krzanich isn't telling, but we'll do our best to find out, and we'll let you know as soon as we do.
If you kept up with last week's rumors about Intel's 14nm Broadwell chip being hardwired and non-upgradeable, then you'll know they were anything but precise. They never quite implied that all of Intel's next-gen desktop processors would be soldered to the motherboard, even if Broadwell (or some of its variants) did happen to go that way. So perhaps it's fitting that Intel's rebuttal -- reassuring as it is -- maintains the theme of imprecision. In a statement to Maximum PC, the chipmaker said it...
"...remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the forseeable future..."
Now, that's a solid promise, especially considering how careful silicon companies tend to be about revealing any long-term plans. But it's also worth bearing in mind that the wording leaves some wriggle room for Intel -- not least in terms of selling LGA socket chips only as expensive niche options (i.e. the true definition of "enthusiast") rather than as mainstream products, should it wish to do so. Indeed, the prospect of Core i3 owners chaining themselves to HDD cages in defense of their upgrade rights may yet come to pass, and no one would want to be on the wrong side of that.
Via: TechPowerUp
Source: Maximum PC
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.
Source: Impress Watch, SemiAccurate, ZDNet
Intel had already promised that it would avoid using conflict minerals, and now it's giving itself a more concrete timetable for that to happen. It wants to have at least one processor that's proven completely conflict-free across four key minerals -- gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten -- by the end of 2013. Lest you think Intel's not taking swift enough action, it wants to reach the tantalum goal by the end of this year. The effort's part of a wider array of goals that should cut back on the energy use, power and water use by 2020. Sooner rather than later, though, you'll be buying a late-generation Haswell- or Broadwell-based PC knowing that the chip inside was made under nobler conditions.
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Intel wants to have conflict-free processors by the end of 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 19:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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