With our review done I did the one thing I've been keeping myself from doing for the past week: I pulled the heatsink off my Kabini review notebook and grabbed a shot of the SoC. I guess this is technically the world's first consumer quad-core x86 SoC. Haswell will come in a single-chip solution as well but only as a dual-core part. Kabini needs no companion platform/IO controller chip, everything is integrated on this single piece of silicon. There are also two GCN compute units in there. I'm sure AMD will have more accurate numbers shortly, but using my completely unimpressive calipers I measured the die at 10.35mm x 10.35mm (107mm^2). I figure the actual number will be somewhere in the range of 104 - 112mm^2...
Additional Details on Sandy Bridge-E Processors, X79, and LGA2011
The latest Intel roadmap has come out, and it's already being discussed elsewhere, so we're going to weigh in with our own analysis of the content as there's plenty...
67 by Kristian Vättö on 4/26/2011
Ask the experts: Cloud Computing Questions Answered
Last year we ran a little series called Ask the Experts where you all wrote in your virtualization related questions and we got them answered by experts at Intel...
40 by Johan De Gelas on 3/28/2011
Ask the Experts: Virtualization & Cloud Computing Questions Answered
Last year we ran a little series called Ask the Experts where you all wrote in your virtualization related questions and we got them answered by experts at Intel...
56 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/17/2011
Intel Plans on Bringing Atom to Servers in 2012, 20W SNB Xeons in 2011
The transition to smaller form factors hasn't been exclusively a client trend over the past several years, we've seen a similar move in servers. The motiviation is very different...
54 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/15/2011
Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms
We first met LucidLogix (now just Lucid) 2.5 years ago at IDF. The promise was vendor-agnostic multi-GPU setups with perfect performance scaling. The technology was announced at a very...
39 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2011
Intel's Codename Light Peak Launches as Thunderbolt
Back at IDF 2010, we wrote about Intel Light Peak nearing its eventual launch in 2011. Back then, the story was a 10 Gbps or faster physical link tunneling...
108 by Brian Klug on 2/25/2011
AT Bench Update: Now with Mobile, Smartphone, and GPU 2011 Results!
Since starting our Bench results databases, they've grown by leaps and bounds. Bench is a central place where you can compare products based on the variety of tests and...
36 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/1/2011
The Source of Intel's Cougar Point SATA Bug
I just got off the phone with Intel’s Steve Smith (VP and Director of Intel Client PC Operations and Enabling) and got some more detail on this morning’s 6-series...
125 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011
Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis
In our Sandy Bridge review I pointed out that Intel was unfortunately very conservative in one area of the platform: its chipset. Although the 6-series chipset finally brought native...
161 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011
The Brazos Review: AMD's E-350 Supplants ION for mini-ITX
AMD has been curiously absent from the value netbook and nettop segments since Atom’s arrival nearly three years ago. These markets are highly profitable only for component vendors, as...
177 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/27/2011
What a Day: AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer Resigns
I don’t usually pay much attention to corporate executives and the hirings, firings and resignations thereof. It’s not that executives are unimportant, it’s that they’re not exactly what I’m...
67 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
Intel Settles With NVIDIA: More Money, Fewer Problems, No x86
NVIDIA and Intel just released their respective PR announcements a bit ago, but after much rumor mongering it’s official: Intel and NVIDIA are the latest duo to bury the...
29 by Ryan Smith on 1/10/2011
CES 2011: Intel WiDi 2.0 Brings New Media Extenders
One major feature of mobile Sandy Bridge is support for Intel WiDi 2.0. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, WiDi 2.0 uses SNB’s Quick Sync engine...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
A Closer Look at the Sandy Bridge Die
Aside from a stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I snagged something else of interest at my Intel meeting at CES 2011: a shot of some exposed Sandy Bridge...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
Intel Insider: Sandy Bridge Gets 1080p High Bitrate Streaming
In an attempt to ultimately raise its stock price, Intel is trying to shock and surprise investors by keeping details scarce on unannounced products. We saw the first example...
20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
Lucid Enables Quick Sync with Discrete Graphics on Sandy Bridge
If you read our Sandy Bridge Review you’ll know that we were very excited about Intel’s Quick Sync hardware transcode engine. It easily offers at least twice the performance...
44 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/7/2011
AMD and GlobalFoundries, CES 2011
The entities formerly known as AMD—namely, AMD and GlobalFoundries—are both here in Vegas for CES, and we had an opportunity to stop by and discuss their current and future...
73 by Jarred Walton on 1/7/2011
Ask Your 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor Questions Here, Update: Now with Answers!
ASUS and Intel are putting together a webcast that they've invited me to attend. The topic of discussion? Sandy Bridge. The webcast will air after Intel's official announcement of...
223 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/5/2011
The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
Intel never quite reached 4GHz with the Pentium 4. Despite being on a dedicated quest for gigahertz the company stopped short and the best we ever got was 3.8GHz...
282 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/3/2011
AMD's Winter Update: Athlon II X3 455, Phenom II X2 565 and Phenom II X6 1100T
AMD is usually pretty aggressive with turning process tweaks and yield improvements into new products. Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the...
66 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/7/2010