Intel

Atom - on its way to becoming a system on a chip?

There must be more nuclear physicists over at Intel than I realized; they’re splitting Atoms faster than any scientific team I know of these days. Kevin C. Tofel,  Intel’s Newest Atom CPU Is Already Splitting

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Intel Atom.  It’s a low-power processor designed specifically for mobile devices that have Internet capabilities. It debuted back in March of 2008.

This week Intel announced Atom v2, code-named PineView.  If you listen to the blogosphere buzz, Pineview, which has a CPU, GPU and memory controller on a single die — is well on its way to becoming the holy grail for netbooks and nettops: a system on a chip. As it is, the new version of Atom moves from a three-chip design to a two-chip design, with graphics and memory controllers moving onto the processor.  The second chip, which provides I/O functions, is being called ‘Tiger Point’.  The combo (Pineview + Tiger Point) is being marketed as the “Pine Trail Platform.”

Moblin - Reinventing the Linux desktop

“Moblin may be plain old Linux under the hood, but the Intel-backed project for netbooks has managed to pull off the unthinkable: it’s made Linux look cool.” Gary Marshall, At last! Moblin has made Linux look cool!

Allow me to introduce you to Gary Marshall. Here is a perfect example of why I like him so much.

“With most technology, looking into it is like shopping for a new and exciting car. We’ll happily spend days scanning brochures, reading reviews and coming up with increasingly imaginative and expensive configurations.

With Linux, though, it’s more like shopping for a new central heating boiler. You know it’s going to be worthwhile and you know it’s going to save you money, but it’s hard to summon up much enthusiasm. Oh look. It’s a boiler. Oh look. It’s another boiler. Oh look. It’s a slightly different boiler. Oh look. I’ve wasted my life.”

Overheard: Intel’s Skulltrail is more than just a pretty name

Skulltrail. We’re not sure who thinks up these names. It brings to mind visions of worlds where dark mages do battle with Paladins for world domination. Maybe that’s what Intel had in mind when they came up with the name. In reality, Skulltrail is more of a workaholic engineer, devoted to getting the most done in the least amount of time. Skulltrail is a little short on the people skills, a little too loud, but like the geeky programmer who can write ten times as much code as his peers, Skulltrail gets the job done. Lloyd Case, Skulltrail: A Preview of Intel’s Beast

When you get down to brass tacks, Skulltrail is an engineering workstation with some added chrome to be a pretty high-end gaming system. But its primary mission in life is to bring eight cores to bear on tough computational problems.

Overheard: Intel was kicked out of One Laptop Per Child program

Responding to [Intel's proactive] announcement Thursday that it was severing ties with the One Laptop Per Child project, Mr. Negroponte said, “They’ve been doing damage in the marketplace with countries since the day we started. And after we made peace with them, they did more damage.” Steve Stecklow, Negroponte Lashes Out at Intel For ‘Damage’ to Laptop Project

Now that the dust has settled, it’s looking like Intel didn’t drop out of the OLPC program — it got kicked out for pitching their own low-end laptops, Classmate PC, to the same audience the OLPCs were intended for. Shouldn’t this little soap opera belong on All My Children?