Intel responds to USB 3.0 criticism

Intel has hit back at the rumours that it is holding back on USB 3.0 technology, amid suggestions that AMD and Nvidia are considering developing a rival.

Intel are the driving force in the development of USB, which means that their rivals are now waiting for USB 3.0’s specifications and guidelines in order to put the next-generation ports in their components.

However, disgruntlement appears to be growing at Intel’s lengthy consultation process, although, in truth, it seems highly unlikely that competitors would actually develop a rival to USB 3.0 and successfully market it to the public.

Blog response

But the rumours have prompted a response from Intel who said in a blog post: “…Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology.

“Think of the host controller spec as a 'Dummies' Guide' to building a USB 3.0 compatible piece of silicon; it is NOT the USB 3.0 specification itself. The industry is keen to get this guide as it will allow them to build USB 3.0 compatible circuits without repeating the massive investment undertaken by Intel.”

It’s an argument that is unlikely to go away any time soon.
By Patrick Goss

Intel shows smallest PC motherboard at IDF

Intel showed what it considers the smallest PC motherboard in the world at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in Shanghai. The motherboard, or main PC circuit board, will go into the company's next-generation "Moorestown" mobile Internet device (MID) platform due in the 2009-2010 time frame.


Intel's Anand Chandrasekher holding motherboard
(Credit: Intel Corp.)

"Our engineers have been very hard at work on Moorestown," Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, said during an IDF keynote speech Wednesday. "The platform design teams have been hard at work in figuring out what is the smallest form factor that they can actually fit a complete PC motherboard into so they can deliver a great mobile Internet experience."

"What I'm holding in my hand is what is possibly the world's smallest PC motherboard," Chandrasekher said. The Moorestown motherboard houses the processor, chipset (including graphics), and memory, along with silicon for 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, he said. "This is the heart of the new machine."

Moorestown will be Intel's showcase system-on-a-chip, combining the CPU, graphics, and memory controller (and other silicon mentioned above) on a single die. It will likely be the main launching pad for Intel into the mobile phone market--what the chipmaker calls "MID phones." Moorestown may also be a major market for Intel's upcoming solid-state drives.

Intel® Desktop Board DX58SO

The Intel® Desktop Board DX58SO is designed to unleash the power of the all new Intel® Core™ i7 processors with support for up to eight threads of raw CPU processing power, triple channel DDR3 memory and full support for Ati CrossfireX and NVIDIA SLI* technology. Today’s PC games like Far Cry 2* need a computing platform that delivers maximum multi-threaded CPU support and eye-popping graphics support.Features and benefits

Form factor	ATX (12.00 inches by 9.60 inches [304.80 millimeters by 243.84 millimeters])
Processor	Click View supported processors for the most current list of compatible processors. At product launch, this desktop board supports: Support for a Intel® Core™ i7 procesor in an LGA1366 socket
Memory	Four 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets Support for DDR3 1600 MHzς, DDR3 1333 MHzς, DDR3 1066 MHz Support for up to 16 GBς of system memory
Chipset	Intel® X58 Express Chipset
Audio	Intel® High Definition audio subsystem in the following configuration: 10-channel (7.1) Dolby Home Theater* Audio subsystem with five analog audio outputs and two S/PDIF digital audio outputs (coaxial and optical) using the Realtek* ALC889 audio codec
Video	Nvidia SLI* and ATI CrossFire* multi-GPU platform support enables two graphics cards to work together for ultimate 3D gaming performance and visual quality Full support of next-generation ATI CrossFire* and Nvidia SLI*
LAN support	Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem
Peripheral interfaces	Twelve USB 2.0ports (8 external ports, 2 internal headers) Six Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s ports, including 2 eSATA port with RAID support supplied by a Marvell* controller Two IEEE-1394a ports (1 external port, 1 internal header) Consumer IR receiver and emitter (via internal headers)
Expansion capabilities	One PCI Conventional* bus add-in card connectors (SMBus routed to PCI Conventional bus add-in card connector) One primary PCI Express* 2.0 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector One secondary PCI Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector One PCI Express* 1.0a x16 (electrical x4) bus add-in card connector

AMD's new mobile processor is called Turion Ultra

Mountain House (CA) - Computex Taipei 2008 is just around the corner and news of what we can expect to see at the conference is already trickling in. Nvidia will release its new GeForce GTX 280 and 260 GPUs, AMD its Radeon 4850 and 4870 as well as its Puma notebook platform.
According to our sources at a top-tier OEM/ODM, AMD will be announcing Puma as well as the Griffin processor on June 3 (local time), the first day of the show. Puma will consist of the Griffin CPU, which we now know will be called “Turion Ultra”, a mobile version of the 780G chipset (RS780M), the Mobility Radeon 3200 graphics chip (integrated in the mobile 780G chipset) as well as Wi-Fi chips from the usual suspects (Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell, Ralink).

Puma will show up in all major notebook form factors (12.1”, 13.3”, 15.4” and 17") and will be on display with ATI Mobility Radeon 3450, 3650 and 3850 discrete graphics chips. SSDs will be available as an option, albeit in a very limited fashion: Puma will aim for the volume business and consumer markets and SSD simply are still “too expensive” for these segments. That scenario should change with the arrival of AMD’s 2009 Shrike mobile platform (better known for its Fusion processor), which is expected to see a greater adoption of SSD devices.

At this time, we have no information whether Puma and its Turion Ultra will be available in volume from day one. Stay tuned for more information coming soon.

Despite the fact that a first Intel Montevina notebook has been announced already, don’t expect the platform to debut at Computex. Montevina notebooks are likely to have a significant presence at the show, but our sources indicated that the platform will not be launched until later in the month.

Intel® IXP455 Network Processor

Ideal for Communications and Embedded Networking Applications

The highly integrated, single-chip design of the Intel® IXP455 network processor provides a unique combination of performance, reliability, and flexibility, and extends Intel XScale® technology into a broad range of applications that require built-in communications functionality such as networking gateways, security appliances, interactive clients, test and instrumentation, RFID readers, and networked print imaging applications.

Features and Benefits

Intel XScale® core available at 266, 400, and 533 MHz Delivers high MIPS/power consumption ratio and provides ample processing headroom for value-added software features
32-bit 33/66 MHz PCI v2.2-compatible, host and option interface Provides flexibility to directly connect devices including 802.11x chips, PCMCIA controllers, and cable MAC/PHYs
USB v1.1 device controller
USB v2.0 host controller, supports low-speed and full-speed modes only
Industry-standard interface for connection to a wide array of devices
32-bit, DDR1-266 SDRAM interface for 32 MByte to 1 GByte of memory High-bandwidth memory interface
32-bit expansion bus interface with parity
Master/Target capable
25-bit address
Glueless connection to other devices
External mastering capability allows external devices to communicate with each other and with internal peripherals resulting in shared memory subsystem design and lower system cost
Up to three integrated 10/100 Ethernet MACs with MII interface
Industry-standard networking interface
Multiple ports allow lower system cost, multiple LAN port support, and concatenation of networking modules
UTOPIA-2 interface with multiple ADSL/G.SHDSL or VDSL PHY support Industry-standard WAN interface
Two High-Speed Serial (HSS) ports for connecting to T1/E1 or SLIC/CODEC Connects to T1/E1 or SLIC/CODEC for voice support
Silicon functional assistance for Random Number Generation Accelerates public key exchange, authentication and key generation
Integrated hardware support for popular cryptography algorithms Acceleration for popular applications such as IPSec and SSL VPNs (AES/ AES-CCM/ 3DES/ DES /SHA-1 /SHA-256 /SHA-384 /SHA-512 /MD-5 /RSA /DSA /Diffie-Hellman algorithms)
Two high-speed UARTs support up to 921 Kbaud each Provides an interface for debug and passing control information
Integrated I2C and SSP interfaces Provides serial interface for common embedded and communications application; reduces system BOM
Spread-spectrum clocking Improves system reliability by reducing EMI
Comprehensive pre-validated, pre-integrated "out-of-the-box" development infrastructures ready for application development using Linux* and VxWorks* Ease of design and fast time-to-market
544-ball PBGA package
35 mm x 35 mm, 1.27 mm ball pitch
Lead-free packages available
Commercial temperature
(0° to 70° C)
Extended temperature
(–40° to 85° C)
High-performance package provides improved reliability
Lead-free packages help meet environmental regulations
Extended temperature support for industrial control and automation applications

About Intel

Intel pushes the boundaries of innovation so our work can make people's lives more exciting, fulfilling, and manageable. And our work never stops. We never stop looking for the next leap ahead—in technology, education, culture, manufacturing, and social responsibility. And we never stop striving to deliver solutions with greater benefits for everyone


In the mainstream and high end motherboard markets, there seems to be an "arms race" between the various manufacturers; each stuffing as many integrated peripherals and features into its products as possible. Consumers are definitely benefitting, motherboards these days come with almost every features you can think of, and ample expansion space on top of that.





While most of the attention has been spent on physical attributes, a few manufacturers like Foxconn are moving beyond the hardware and into software features. Overclocking is big business now and a strong software overclocking/tweaking utility can help win over users. After all, who wouldn't love the ability to tweak their computer settings while from the comfort of the Windows desktop?



Foxconn has made a pretty big splash in the retail market with its motherboards and videocards, and the company is considered a top tier manufacturer (in terms of quality) with the likes of Asus, MSI and Gigabyte. The Foxconn MARS motherboard certainly looks like a great enthusiast friendly motherboard, particularly because it's based on Intel's hot P35 Express and ICH9R chipsets.


With a retail price of $187 CDN ($190 US, £92 GBP), Foxconn is targeting high end users with the MARS motherboard. In terms of integrated goodies, the motherboard has a Gigabit network card, two IEEE 1394a ports, onboard 7.1 channel high definition Azalia audio codec, six Serial ATA II ports (with RAID 0,1,5,10) along with an eSATA jack and twelve USB 2.0 (six on the rear I/O, six headers).


In terms of expansion the Foxconn MARS motherboard offers up two PCI Express x16 slots for videocards, two PCI Express x1 and three 32 bit PCI slots. This Intel P35 Express based motherboard will support all current Intel Pentium 4/D/XE and Core 2 Duo/Quad processors running on an 800/1066/1333 MHz FSB. The four DDR2 memory slots will accommodate a maximum of 8GB of DDR2-667/800/1066 memory. The Mars platform supports Windows Vista and the next-generation 45nm Intel multi-core processor.