Processors

Chip giant Intel is set to acquire Wind River Systems, a maker of software for embedded devices.

Intel has entered a definitive agreement to buy Wind River for $11.50 per share in cash, which works out to a total value of approximately $884 million, Wind River said Thursday. Wind River would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel, reporting to the chipmaker's Software and Services Group, headed by Renee James.

The pending acquisition, Wind River said, would fit into "Intel's strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments, … Read more

Intel has updated its price list with new processors, including new Core i7 chips and a bevy of mobile models.

Many gamers have been waiting for the update of the "Nehalem" Core i7, which was introduced last November. Intel's update Tuesday includes the newly minted i7-975 (8M L3 cache, 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.33GHz, 6.4 GT/s QPI). This is priced at $999.

For the uninitiated, threads effectively double the number of tasks a processor can do, GT/s stands for giga transfers per second, and QPI is Intel's new Quick Path Interconnect technology. … Read more

Unleashing innovation is key no matter what laptop category you're talking about--whether Netbooks or low-cost notebooks, said Intel's sales chief, ahead of this week's Computex trade show in Taipei.

I spoke briefly with Intel's marketing chief Sean Maloney--who is at Computex this week--on Monday night and asked him about how the wave of low-cost, thin notebooks based on his company's "ULV" (ultra-low-voltage) chips may affect Netbook sales.

New, aesthetically appealing, inexpensive notebooks, such as the $699 Acer Aspire Timeline, could make Netbooks less attractive, which pin a lot of their popularity on bargain-basement … Read more

I've been getting a fair number of questions about multi-threading the past couple of weeks. The reason is that Intel has been previewing its "Nehalem EX" Xeon processor in advance of Advanced Micro Device's six-core "Istanbul" CPU launch. Intel's Nehalem generation has simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)--which Intel calls Hyper-Threading (HT)--while Istanbul does not.

I wrote about this topic in depth a couple of years back in "Gradations of Threading," but it's worth reviewing in the context of these new server processors.

First, a little terminology.

A thread is a … Read more

This was originally posted at Between the Lines.

Global chip sales rose to $15.6 billion in April, up 6.4 percent from March. That's the good news. The bad: chip sales are still down 25 percent from April sales of $20.9 billion a year ago, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

The SIA provides the following color (statement):

• PC demand is better than expected as inventory is replenished;

• PC sales in 2009 are expected to fall 6 percent better than estimates that expected a decline of 12 percent;

• Cell phone sales also aren't as bad as … Read more

When your iPhone's screen automatically reorients itself, it's using a nascent silicon technology expected to become a $1.7 billion market by 2013.

It's called an accelerometer--and the iPhone brought these devices into the mainstream.

"When you turn your iPhone to the side and the screen automatically adjusts from portrait to landscape view, there's an accelerometer at work. And when you swing your (Nintendo) Wii controller and bowl a virtual strike, there's an accelerometer at work there too," iSuppli noted in a report released Thursday. The market for these devices is expected to grow to $1.7 billion in 2013, up from $947.7 million in 2007, according to the market research firm.

Accelerometers are based on another burgeoning silicon field, Microelectromechanical Systems, or MEMS--also referred to as micromachines. MEMS are made up of components typically no larger than 100 micrometers in size and usually integrate a microprocessor and other components, such as the microsensor found in the iPhone's accelerometer.

Accelerometers in recent years have emerged as a popular input device for some of the world's hottest electronic products, causing shipments to boom, according to iSuppli. "Due to this rapid sales growth, accelerometers by 2013 will displace the current leading MEMS products--inkjet heads and Digital Light Processing (DLP) chips--to become the dominant type of MEMS device sold worldwide in 2013," said Jérémie Bouchaud, iSuppli principal analyst for MEMS, in a statement.

"Consumers' desire for motion-sensing in smart phones and video game systems will boost demand for accelerometers," Bouchaud added.… Read more

In the midst of a tight market for flash memory, SanDisk and Samsung Electronics have renewed two key agreements that both companies expect will strengthen their positions.

In the first of the two deals, SanDisk and Samsung announced on Wednesday an agreement to renew the cross-licensing of certain semiconductor patents. The agreement means that each company has the right to use each other's patents in producing cell flash memory and flash storage systems, such as solid-state drives. It does not include patents related to 3-D memory, a new technology that could eventually replace traditional flash memory in portable devices. … Read more

Intel has slipped out a revised schedule for its next-generation Itanium processor, code-named Tukwila. Again. This time it's into 2010.

Intel released a statement Thursday on the schedule changes. It reads in part:

During final system-level testing, we identified an opportunity to further enhance application scalability best optimized for high-end systems. This will result in a change to the Tukwila shipping schedule to Q1 2010.

In addition to better meeting the needs of our current Itanium customers, we believe this change will allow Tukwila systems a greater opportunity to gain share versus proprietary RISC solutions including Sparc and IBM … Read more

Intel is celebrating its four-decade-long relationship with Stanford University by spotlighting the school's nexus with its top executives.

The Intel-Stanford tie famously began back in 1969 when Stanford electrical engineering alumnus Ted Hoff became Intel employee No. 12. Within two years, he had invented, along with Federico Faggin and Stan Mazor, Intel's flagship product: the microprocessor.

For more than four decades, the Stanford-Intel relationship has been behind the launch of some of Intel's flagship technologies and hundreds of the company's engineering careers. (Almost 1,000 Stanford alumni have worked at Intel and a Stanford University Web page marks this relationship.)

The retirement this month of Intel chairman and former CEO (1998-2005) Craig Barrett, highlights one of the most enduring ties. Barrett was a professor from 1965 until he joined Intel in 1974.

"Industry does a good job at the D part of R&D--but we rely on the tier-one research universities like Stanford on the R side," Barrett said in an interview published on Stanford University's Web site. Barrett cited marquee research at Stanford such as semiconductor device modeling and new packaging technologies.

Senior VP Pat Gelsinger is another Stanford graduate. "We've had great results from the collaboration," said Gelsinger--also quoted in the interview--who earned an masters of science degree in electrical engineering at Stanford in 1985. "In almost every area that Intel is doing work we can point to significant collaboration and research projects with Stanford." … Read more