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The cost of buying a second monitor for one developer is immaterial. The cost of buying second monitors for every developer isn't.

Really?
Lets put things into perspective here. $200 for a decent 2nd monitor (we're not talking IPS Cinema displays here) compared to:

• 1% bonus (avg 80k salary = $800)
• Any decent proprietary software license 1 seat (avg. $300)
• 5 hours of productivity (at 80k salary = $200)
• ...etc.

The dual-monitor solution of days yore has been solved with stuff like DisplayLink or Thunderbolt (or by good gfx cards if your desktops are beefy enough).

I even have a 3-monitor solution for my home setup - A macbook pro, with 1 displayport 32" HTDV + 2 extra monitors running on the 2 separate USB2 channels (one is on a hub). Combine this with a mounting solution like this and you've can easily get 2 browsers and dozens of terminal windows all open simultaneously. You could easily setup a dual-display rig for $300 in addition to an existing monitor.

The i7 extreme is not a quad core. It has 6 cores. This is good if you are doing 3D rendering and simulation or other processor intensive tasks. It's wasted for just streaming Netflix and reading email.
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52585

These aren't (common) FinFETs. They're trigate, and a little different than conventionally defined FinFET. See here.

Your entire rant about Intel has been rectified. First AMD sued Intel, that case was settled over a year ago. Then the FTC gave Intel an anticompetitive smack down on top of that, which was settled nearly a year ago.

http://download.intel.com/pressroom/legal/AMD_settlement_agreement.pdf

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/08/intel.shtm

Under the settlement, Intel will be prohibited from:

        conditioning benefits to computer makers in exchange for their promise to buy chips from Intel exclusively or to refuse to buy chips from others; and
        retaliating against computer makers if they do business with non-Intel suppliers by withholding benefits from them.

In addition, the FTC settlement order will require Intel to:

        modify its intellectual property agreements with AMD, Nvidia, and Via so that those companies have more freedom to consider mergers or joint ventures with other companies, without the threat of being sued by Intel for patent infringement;
        offer to extend Via’s x86 licensing agreement for five years beyond the current agreement, which expires in 2013;
        maintain a key interface, known as the PCI Express Bus, for at least six years in a way that will not limit the performance of graphics processing chips. These assurances will provide incentives to manufacturers of complementary, and potentially competitive, products to Intel’s CPUs to continue to innovate; and
        disclose to software developers that Intel computer compilers discriminate between Intel chips and non-Intel chips, and that they may not register all the features of non-Intel chips. Intel also will have to reimburse all software vendors who want to recompile their software using a non-Intel compiler.

Having 4 cores going at 100% will drain the battery, sure, but compare that against 4 cores doing a task in 1s that a single core takes 5 or 6 seconds to do.

Please don't expect super linear speedup.
However, for a given generation of hardware, 4 cores at frequency f are using less power than one core at frequency 4f, because increasing the frequency requires to increase the tension, and power=tension^2/resistivity
(Wikipedia cites P = Cf(V^2) but fails to note that core voltage is increased with frequency[PDF warning]).

Better specs

No they didn't, read the white paper about it. You can see all the capacitors involved in the anandtech review even. In theory, this has finally fixed the problem that made Intel's drive unusable for high-performance databases, that the write cache was useless in that context because it lied about writes.

Unless of course they're telling the truth.

Intel is strongly denying Oracle's claims that Itanium is near end-of-life. So it looks like more Oracle FUD, and probably intended to harm HP-UX rather than Intel.

That's a really silly analysis. Oracle could not care less about HP-UX because they don't compete in the proprietary Unix market. No one does. Yes, Oracle owns Solaris, but Ellison's smart enough to know that proprietary Unices only exist to sell the servers attached to them. There's no money in selling proprietary Unix operating systems by themselves.

Now that PA-RISC is gone, the only thing HP-UX runs on it Itanium. Already, you can't run any Microsoft or Red Hat on Itanium. And those are just companies that previously supported it - tons of companies simply never did. With Oracle out of the picture, Itanium is effectively dead. Yes, you can continue to run your in-house and specialty apps on it, but Oracle has a huuuuge presence in enterprise software, way beyond just databases.

I expect other remaining vendors to jump in - they have no love for supporting a operating system with a low market share.

HP is stuck and will either port HP-UX to x86 or migrate customers to Linux on x86.

Not sure why the submitter didn't post the Intel response denying it: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/03/23/chip-shot-intel-reaffirms-commitment-to-itanium While you would think Intel would of course deny it, but considering Intel just took the wraps off their next revision of the Itanium, this is pretty much just FUD coming from Oracle.

Unless of course they're telling the truth.

Intel is strongly denying Oracle's claims that Itanium is near end-of-life. So it looks like more Oracle FUD, and probably intended to harm HP-UX rather than Intel.

Neither of those, per se, but when I was looking for jobs I ignored Intel, and they do use a lot of applied mathematicians.

studied the effect of separating teenagers from their cell phones

intel science

2nd place score points for being a blind girl perhaps?

Does your Laptop really work well with Windows7/Vista on an 855GM chipset!? no it doesn't Its simply not true. Lets face it its an old chipset that is not supported http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-030907.htm in fact its the oldest chipset mentioned. Does it work on Linux, by your own admission it does with the workaround as easy as editing your xorg.conf. What is true though is Intel dropped the ball when they introduce KMS/UMS, in fact these drivers introducing regressions while adding needed features after finally getting involved in Linux. I am glad they did; intel drivers were pretty poor, and have been moving and shaking since hell notice mobody mentions config files now x.org doesn't need one. Work is still continuing on i8xx drivers so people will not experience problems in future although none are perfect. There are workarounds available, and no its not an answer.

That said i8xx on intel/pulseaudio/compiz are all examples of how not to introduce large numbers of users to revolutionary changes, but these are the exceptions not the norm, and have brought major benfits, as painful as the transition as been for some. What is not true is this chipset works on windows and not on Linux in fact it works on Linux and not on windows

ark.intel.com

Example:

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=42915

Gordon Moore's paper disagrees. He directly addresses the fact that increased density leads to lower per-component costs.

Actually, Intel recommends overprovisioning the drive even further. For example, I have a 160 GB SSD in the notebook I am typing this on. It is provisioned to 128 GB (and formatted to 125 or so). http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/45/95/459555_459555.pdf. You do indeed see a speed increase by leaving more of the drive "unavailable" to BIOS. We've been using Ubuntu Live CD's and hdparm to set this.

Nope, that was an error in the documentation:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031491.htm

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 9.6 supports TRIM in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume.

A defect was filed to correct the information in the Help file that states that TRIM is supported on RAID volumes.

Notice the date on that page.... "Last Modified: 26-Mar-2010", which is a few days after the flood of articles a few days prior (including the one you linked) claiming the driver would support TRIM on SSD arrays

When pricing options the bionomial way, one creates a sort of decision tree for movements the underlying value makes. (scroll down on http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/high-performance-computing-with-binomial-option-pricing-part-1/ to see such a tree).

This paper seems to prove that there is no easy formula short cut for the tree: if one wants to know the answer, one really needs to build the entire tree.

Is Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini incompetent?

Thunderbolt is protocol agnostic, so it is more than DisplayPort and PCI-E bundled together.

Thunderbolt only supports two protocols, DisplayPort and PCI-E. Other controllers can hang off the end of the PCI-E channel and drive other protocols from there but Thunderbolt itself is certainly only DisplayPort and PCI-E.

It's bad news when TFS is a troll.

Seems pretty accurate to me. Most new technology (eg: CPUs, GPUs, memory types, etc) are on the market for months (at least) before Apple picks them up. They tend to keep older technology around for longer, as well (eg: Mac Mini still has a Core 2 Duo).

The rare counter-examples (eg: Firewire, Mini-DP) are rarely found outside of the Mac ecosystem.

That's before even going into the technology other vendors have that they stubbornly refuse to implement. Like, say, a docking station for their ostensibly "professional" laptops.

Have you not been following along?

Look at this Overview of Thunderbolt. Think that someone won't implement a Docking Station (with a connector that doesn't fail after a few months, like the typical PC laptop's docking conns.) with an interface like that? And cooler yet, your Desktop will be able to share all those same peripherals (do you really think this isn't going in all Macs?), as long as the total count is 6 devices or less (yes, I wish it were more, too!), and the total cable length is 100 meters or less.

Intel marketing hype aside, an industry-standard, "remoting" a PCIe bus over an LVDS-like link on a laptop at 10 Gb/s is potentially a Big Deal. Because now, there really doesn't have to be any substantive difference between a peripheral (say, a 256-channel audio I/O, frinstance) in a PCI "slot" and one at the end of a Thuderbolt cable attached to a laptop.

That IS a big deal. Far bigger than USB 3, FW 3200, eSATA combined. And oh, BTW, All of that stuff CAN be done over Thunderbolt. And, according to Intel, with existing drivers (somehow!). If this "goes" in the marketplace (gets support from third parties), far more than any other computing invention in recent memory, Thunderbolt will definitely blur the lines much further between tower and notebook. A very cool thing, if, for example, you split your embedded development work between the office and home, for example.

That's not fanboyism. That is fact.

it doesn't seem to have intel VT: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29753

It doesn't have intel VT
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29753

I'm pretty sure LightPeak uses an optical connector.

Then you haven't been keeping up with the news as Intel announced (or let slip) that the Light Peak would be all electrical (at least at first) some time ago.

Thunderbolt was developed under the code name Light Peak.

Intel® Core i7-740QM processor (quad core 3.6 GHz)

Not sure where you got that from. The i7-740QM is a quad-core 1.73GHz part. In the highest Turbo Boost mode, it is a single-core 2.93GHz part. It doesn't have a 3.6GHz mode. It's also the last generation (Clarksfield, 45nm) part, while the MBPs use the newer (Sandybridge, 32nm) ones. The slowest that the 17" MBPs come with is the Core i7-2720QM, which is 2.2GHz in quad-core mode, up to 3.3GHz in single-core mode.

Given the other features of that machine, the CPU looks pretty anaemic.

I hope Apple hasn't let their fascination with reducing port count get in the way of what might otherwise have been an interesting technology...

Well, first the mini-DisplayPort compatible connector has been adopted by Intel as well - so this is the official Thunderbolt connector, not some Apple proprietary thing.

Secondly, according to the Apple website, you can still plug a monitor directly into the thunderbolt port, using your existing Mini-DP cables and adaptors. So nothing has been lost.

Interestingly, if you look on the tech brief at the intel site, it says:

Thunderbolt cables may be electrical or optical; both use the same Thunderbolt connector. An active electrical-only cable provides for connections of up to 3 meters in length, and provides for up to 10W of power deliverable to a bus-powered device. And an active optical cable provides for much greater lengths; tens of meters.

So - is there actually an optical link hiding inside the socket on the new Macs? (Not unfeasible: there's already one hiding inside the audio jacks, but the rumors had said that Lightpeak was going to be optical only).

Unless they have a clever plan in mind to make it useful for niche cases that could actually use the 10gb/s, without blocking external monitor capabilities

If you read TFA you'll see that the port contains 2 independent, duplex, 10Gbps channels.

As of 2011, there are(to the best of my knowledge), zero displayport peripherals, announced or in production, that either support display daisy chaining or use the AUX channel to integrate USB ports, webcams, audio, or other peripheral functions into displayport devices without the use of additional cabling, despite 720mb/s being ample for quite a few applications. Zip, zero, nada.

Yeah - that's annoying. Even the Apple Cinema Display, which is DisplayPort only, doesn't have a daisychain and uses a separate USB link for the camera, audio and USB hub (which kinda suggests that there is some hitch with doing that over DisplayPort - I can't see Apple getting any advantage from denying people the opportunity to buu two cinema displays...!)

Maybe the fact that the first Thunderbolt machines out of the gate only have single ports will ensure that device manufacturers include daisychain ports...

Light Peak is designed to be what the minimal Intel marketing on Light Peak calls "multi-protocol" capable, which most observers have taken to mean "it can serve as the transport layer for other protocols" in the same way that FireWire can serve as a TCP/IP connection on the Mac, today. The exact capabilities do not seem to be public information, just yet. The public demonstrations of Light Peak which Intel has performed clearly indicate that one intended use case is a remote "hub" which can have Light Peak as well as other connection types on it, such as the USB and Light Peak hub demonstrated in this Intel demonstration of Light Peak.

The gaming industry has always been a niche market, and PC gaming is even a smaller niche.

A total of $35 billion revenue generated by gaming market, of them PC gaming "smaller niche" is 62% and projected to grow: http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2010/04/19/hear-that-knocking-sound-its-pc-gaming/

I would buy a PC-replacement phone with HDMI or even better WiDi. Add a proper data storage backup server (which syncs wireless from anywhere) and I would be able to work anywhere by hooking the device to any monitor. Theft or loss will not be a problem with a good semi-online backup solution and mobile really means mobile, just get up and move somewhere else without interrupting any program or logging in and pulling up all files again. Once you get proper mobile PCs with some power the need for more useful interfaces when not connected to a larger display will create a perfect opportunity to develop better speech and writing interaction because the power needed is finally combined with the necessity. This will certainly be so common it's almost boring 10 years from now, mark my words.

We just released the tablet UX alpa. You’ll find it here http://appdeveloper.intel.com/meego. In addition, we are giving 5000 MeeGo based Software Development Platforms at our App Labs to help developers get started with app development. More here: http://bit.ly/Iapplab. So, you can develop apps for MeeGo today. There are some exciting early adopter incentives http://appdeveloper.intel.com/opportunities. ~Gunjan from Intel

We just released the tablet UX alpa. You’ll find it here http://appdeveloper.intel.com/meego. In addition, we are giving 5000 MeeGo based Software Development Platforms at our App Labs to help developers get started with app development. More here: http://bit.ly/Iapplab. So, you can develop apps for MeeGo today. There are some exciting early adopter incentives http://appdeveloper.intel.com/opportunities. ~Gunjan from Intel

You can also dual boot. See this blog http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2010/11/02/setting-dual-boot-netbook-win-7-meego ~Gunjan from Intel.

well maybe now that all of qt's goals are down the crapper, they'll have time to fix my year old semi-important bugs
it's amazing a 10 line patch is still excluded from the source.
all i want is for an sslserver (sslsocket in server mode) to be able to include intermediate certificates.
please trolls, now that you don't need to do useless crap for symbian and meego, at least find some time to help out the stranded desktop users.

btw there's an interesting comment on http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2011/02/11/intel-and-meego
"Tom Turbo> What about Qt? Does Intel support it for its MeeGo plans?"
"gunjan-rawal (intel)> @ Tom Turbo Intel remains committed to MeeGo development. Re: Qt: Stay tuned for more details."

It would have to be an Intel marketing campaign.

Or, they could be actual quotes from the company's actual press release.

The logical assumption, as best I can tell, is that this will be showing up in Intel's Active Management Technology... in one form or another. Intel has been iterating this "AMT" for a while now, to provide various capabilities that things like PXE cannot, as a value-add to upsell corporate customers who would otherwise buy cheaper chips. There may also be some sort of blasphemous convergence with Intel's UEFI and hardware virtualization, to move AV right into the hardware, where the waste is harder to see and the competition finds it harder to dislodge...

That's when the crippling bug surfaced. It seems the USB3 ports on the Intel DH67BL don't want to work.

This is hardly surprising. The board's only certified to comply with the USB2 specification.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-026528.htm

And how exactly can it be "sneaky" when Intel makes all this information about this technology public. They even have a webpage all about it. This is about as far from "sneaky" as one can be.

And how exactly can it be "sneaky" when Intel makes all this information about this technology public. They even have a webpage all about it. This is about as far from "sneaky" as one can be.

Fabricated on 25nm: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100201comp.htm over 36 billion transistors in 167 mm^2.

ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf

Stupid not previewing...

There's no question on what "Moore's Law" is as the article would paint. Originally, he said double transistor count every year. Then, in 1975, he revised it to every two years.

It's obviously not a scientific law but it is based on the manufacturing process for circuits and how they evolve, and it has been a good rule of thumb number and has proven as accurate as can be expected while we continue to make chips in basically the same ways.

It's fairly easy to look this up, there's no need for a lame mainstream media article link.

Is it really that difficult?

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.[7]

Original Article:
Cramming more components
onto integrated circuit
Article 2: Excerpts from A Conversation
with Gordon Moore: Moore’s Law

wow! intel is really keeping up with whats What hot and new , intel open source Now sounds like intel really wants to please OSS users like on Arrandale when they pull these kinds of stunts, TFA:

Intel decided not to send out any Sandy Bridge CPU samples to us, so we are unable to deliver test results, but all I got were frustrated journalists asking me how to get the Sandy Bridge graphics working under Linux.

Arrandale is also a complete mess on some platforms like fedora for e.g.Currently now running gentoo with xorg 1.9. and kernel 2.6.37.7 and feeling lucky that most things are now working on an Arrandale platform.

I would have expected Intel to have released drivers. They are involved heavily in Open Source. They have the Open Source Technology Center. Has anyone asked Intel about it?

http://www3.intel.com/cd/corporate/icsc/apac/eng/teams/331393.htm

Read about the actual tech... the article you linked to is pretty silly http://download.intel.com/it/pdf/Evaluating_Intel_Anti-Theft_Technology.pdf

The tech basically moves the bios password from residing in the bios into the CPU itself... I'm still not sure why you would want this... The motherboard manufacturer would need to include all the equipment needed to remotely do anything, and the "kill" on the CPU can be undone.

Are you entirely sure about that?

Intel themselves writes this in their product brief:

Supporting SATA signals over a PCI Express* (PCIe) mini-connector

try harder next time: http://antitheft.intel.com/get-service.aspx

You can find the information on Intel's own site: http://www.intel.com/technology/anti-theft/ . The 3G kill switch requires the operating system to keep working, but there are other disable mechanisms, such as a watchdog, that don't.

since it doesn't explain how this works, or what's it's really all about.

It doesn't permanently disable the processor, you can revive it if you know the password. To do a kill over 3G, you send an encrypted SMS, and the laptop obviously needs 3G capability and the OS needs to be running.