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Apple desktop fans were disappointed at today's World Wide Developer Conference, where, despite persistent rumors, Apple's iMac and Mac Pro lines went unmentioned during the keynote presentation.

When the Apple store came back online after the show, a "New" tag on the Mac Pro hinted at a stealth update. Glancing over the specs for the supposedly new system turned up only a clock speed bump to a few of the available Xeon processors.

Rather than the quad-core, 2.8GHz Intel Xeon W3530 chip, for example, now the $2,499 Mac Pro starts with a 3.2GHz … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Intel launched its E5 family of Xeon processors today, a tremendously important product line for the chipmaker that brings new performance to Intel-based servers and workstations.

The E5 line now comes in two varieties, Intel announced at a launch event here at the CeBIT tech show. First is the E5-2600 series for the mainstay of the server market, systems with two processor sockets. Second is the E5-1600 series chiefly for single-socket workstations.

The Xeon chips are a very important part of Intel's business. For one thing, servers are a growing market because of cloud computing, Internet businesses, and … Read more

A University of Texas of supercomputer will tap a future Intel chip that contains more than 50 processor cores--the first instance of Intel supplying this novel technology to a commercial computer.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and University of Texas announced today that they will deploy a 10-Petaflop (or 10,000 trillion operations per second) supercomputer dubbed "Stampede."

When it arrives in early 2013, the supercomputer is expected to be among the world's most powerful computers for scientific and financial applications.

Inside will be an Intel chip design codenamed "Knights Corner," which will house … Read more

Intel has announced the 32-nanometer Xeon E7 family of chips for high-end servers, along with an entry-level Xeon E3 processor family.

The 18 chips, unveiled today, were formerly code-named Westmere-EX and follow on from the Nehalem-EX range of processors. Additionally, Intel also announced 11 entry-level server processors for its new Xeon E3-1200 family, but provided few details.

The processors are targeted at servers running key CPU-intensive applications in the enterprise data center or those administering large fleets of virtual machines, Intel said.

Read more of "Intel debuts Xeon E7 family" at ZDNet UK.

These days, the Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is dominated by cluster designs assembled from many independent computing nodes. But there's still a place in the world for an earlier approach, as evidenced by a new machine called Blacklight at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Blacklight is a mammoth $2.8 million shared-memory machine built by SGI for the center. The system comes in two halves, each with 16 terabytes of shared memory. Either half would be the largest such amount of memory so far built, PSC said, and with a bit more programming effort, the … Read more

Apple is tapping Intel chips for its desktop lineup in a way it never has before.

Unveiled Tuesday, updated the iMacs have, for the first time, adopted Intel's Core i3 processor, with some distinct differences between the i3, i5, and i7 models, while the refreshed the Mac Pros tap Intel's most advanced six-core processor, also a first.

So, what should consumers zero in on inside the box? Here's a quick rundown.

Core i3/Core i5 Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading--most have both, but a of couple processors don't: Apple has gone with Core i3 processors for the first time. The Core i3, as the number suffix indicates, is Intel's low-end core i series desktop processor. In addition to the most salient differences--clock (gigahertz) speed and processor core counts--the biggest variation among the various Core i3 and Core i5 models is that a couple of the iMacs don't have both Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading. The size of the cache memory is also a distinction.

A primer, first.

Hyper-Threading: This can double the number of tasks--or threads--a processor can execute. So, a two-core processor can handle four threads. This technology is not offered on prior-generation Core 2 chips. Apple describes it as follows: "When you're running multiple applications at once,… Read more

A prototype iPhone 4G is powered by an Apple processor similar to the one found in the iPad, according to published reports Wednesday.

iFixit said Wednesday that the iPhone 4G prototype torn down on a Vietnamese Web site uses a chip that has markings similar to the iPad's A4 processor.

"[Wednesday's] photos from Vietnam of a leaked iPhone 4G prototype contain legible part numbers revealing [the] new iPhone's processor: the Apple A4," iFixit said.

If an Apple A4-class chip actually makes it into the final version of the iPhone 4G, consumers would likely see another … Read more

Every new IT product, it seems, is "revolutionary." A "breakthrough." "Transforms the economics of computing." Yeah, right.

Very few products really are, or do, these things. There are, however, a handful of products each year that are excellent milestones to the progress IT is making, and that are themselves impressive and important accomplishments that move the industry forward. Intel's just-introduced Nehalem-EX is one of those. Why?

Completing the set All together, Intel's "Nehalem" processor generation is pretty darn impressive. It's distinguished by its aggressive manufacturing density (45nm and 32nm), … Read more

Intel is integrating the largest number of processing cores onto one chip in its history, a boon for server makers looking to squeeze more performance into less space.

The Xeon 7500 offers what Intel is saying is the largest performance leap in the history of its Xeon line, with an average three-fold jump in performance. And the feat of putting eight cores on one die--the raw chip--offers practical advantages to data centers. As a yardstick, data centers can replace 20 single core, four-chip servers with a single new Xeon 7500 processor series-based system, according to Intel.

Servers using the Xeon 7500 can use up to 256 chips per server, Intel said.

Like other Intel Core i series processors, the Xeon 7500 features a technology called "hyper-threading," which can double the number of tasks--or threads--a processor can execute. So, an eight-core processor can handle 16 threads. This technology is not offered on prior-generation Core 2 chips.

Intel is also supporting more memory. New servers based on the 7500 will boast a four-fold increase in memory capacity, with support for up to 1 terabyte in four-processor configurations.

The Xeon 7500 follows an announcement from Advanced Micro Devices on Monday of a 12-core processor, which combines two six-core die.

"Both AMD and Intel are demonstrating huge leaps in performance per watt," said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat, adding that this represents the biggest challenge to high-end RISC server suppliers to date. RISC, or reduced instruction set computer, is chip technology offered in servers from… Read more