The latest version of Intel's Media SDK open sourced a key component of the QuickSync pipeline that would allow the open source community to begin to integrate QuickSync into their applications (if you're not familiar with QS, it's Intel's hardware accelerated video transcode engine included in most modern Core processors). I mentioned this open source victory back at CES this year, and today the HandBrake team is officially announcing support for QuickSync. The support has been in testing for a while, but the HandBrake folks say that they expect to get comparable speedups to other QuickSync enabled applications. No word on exactly when we'll see an official build of HandBrake with QuickSync support, although I fully expect Intel to want to have something neat to...
Intel Discontinuing Some Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge Desktop CPUs
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...
13 by Andrew Cunningham on 12/9/2011
AMD Releases New Llano Mobile CPUs
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...
12 by Andrew Cunningham on 12/8/2011
Ivy Bridge Mobile Lineup Overview
It sure didn't take long. Last week, Intel's roadmaps about desktop Ivy Bridge processors were leaked and we posted our Ivy Bridge Desktop Lineup Overview on Saturday. The initial...
39 by Kristian Vättö on 12/7/2011
Why Ivy Bridge Is Still Quad-Core
A couple days ago, we published our Ivy Bridge Desktop Lineup Overview in which we mentioned that Ivy Bridge will remain a quad-core solution. There are dozens of forum...
82 by Kristian Vättö on 12/5/2011
Ivy Bridge Desktop Lineup Overview
It's that time of the year. Once again, Intel's roadmaps have been leaked and we get to see what Intel has in store for us in 2012. I find...
99 by Kristian Vättö on 12/3/2011
AMD Revises Bulldozer Transistor Count: 1.2B, not 2B
This is a bit unusual. I got an email from AMD PR this week asking me to correct the Bulldozer transistor count in our Sandy Bridge E review...
42 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/2/2011
Bulldozer for Servers: Testing AMD's "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 Series
Last month, AMD launched their Bulldozer architecture on desktops, and the result was rather underwhelming; however, there are plenty of indications that Bulldozer simply wasn't architected to excel at...
113 by Johan De Gelas on 11/15/2011
AMD Introduces New Socket FM1 Athlon, Price Changes
In addition to its new Opteron chips, AMD yesterday announced a few small changes to its processor line-up, including adjusted prices for several of its Llano-based APUs (and one...
35 by Andrew Cunningham on 11/15/2011
Applied Micro's X-Gene: The First ARMv8 SoC
We covered the X-Gene announcement a couple of weeks ago when the news was first made public. I was in London at the time meeting with Nokia so I...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
AMD Releases Opteron 4200 "Valencia" and 6200 "Interlagos" Series
AMD launched Bulldozer about a month ago, but the initial CPUs were only for desktops. As a follow up, AMD has today released the server variants of Bulldozer. There...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 11/14/2011
Intel's 32 in 32 Challenge: SNB-E Giveaways
If you've read our Core i7 3960X Review, you'll know that Intel's Sandy Bridge E platform can be incredibly fast. If you want to own a 3960X system without...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
Intel Core i7 3960X (Sandy Bridge E) Review: Keeping the High End Alive
If you look carefully enough, you may notice that things are changing. It first became apparent shortly after the release of Nehalem. Intel bifurcated the performance desktop space by...
188 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
AMD's Project Win: A Misunderstanding
Last week AMD announced layoffs that impacted 10% of its workforce. A disproportionate number of those AMDers were apparently from the marketing and PR groups, but even engineering was...
27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
Intel Haswell Info: Single Chip for Ultrabooks, GT3 GPU for Mobile, LGA-1150 for Desktop
VR-Zone spotted a bunch of very interesting slides about Haswell over at Chiphell. The slides and information both look fairly believable so let's get with the analyzing shall we? Haswell...
38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
A Quick Look at MSI's X79 Motherboards
Sandy Bridge E is right around the corner and the amount of Socket-2011 related emails we're getting is going up. The latest is from MSI - we got an...
16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/7/2011
Some Thoughts on the Impact of AMD's Layoffs on the Future of AMD GPUs
Here's something I'm concerned about. AMD's Carrell Killebrew, part of yesterday's announced layoffs, was a Director of Product Planning for AMD's GPU division. His job, at least as he...
48 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011
AMD Implements Cost Cutting Workforce Reduction, Carrell Killebrew is Out
I had a feeling I was going to have to write a post like this after I published that Rick Bergman left AMD. Those of you who remember the...
20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011
Bulldozer Does It Again: Overclocked to 8.58GHz
Last week, we reported that Andre Yang had managed to overclock AMD's FX-8150 CPU to 8.46GHz, breaking the former record set by AMD. Andre Yang has now been able...
45 by Kristian Vättö on 11/3/2011
Bulldozer Breaks Frequency Record Again: Overclocked to 8.46GHz
Just before the launch of Bulldozer, AMD demonstrated it at 8.43GHz, which was the world record back then. Now an overclocker named Andre Yang has achieved an overclock of...
60 by Kristian Vättö on 10/29/2011
AppliedMicro Announces 64-bit ARM Based X-Gene SoCs
AppliedMicro has released specifications of their upcoming X-Gene SoC (Server-on-a-Chip this time, not System). AppliedMicro X-Gene Specifications Architecture ARMv8 Cores From 2 to up to 128 Frequency Up to 3GHz Process TSMC 40/28nm Power Usage Up to 2W per core Above...
23 by Kristian Vättö on 10/28/2011