http://liliputing.com/2014/08/chromebooks-intel-broadwell-chips-way.html

Announcements of 64 bit Quad and Octa-core chipsets from Allwinner, Mediatek, NVIDA and Samsung are ringing up Intel's chimes a bit.   Intel's best Chrome chipset, a Haswell based Celeron 2955U is getting punched around some by the Tegra K1 in a very public fashion .... and now here comes the rest of the ARM Octa-core  crew to get their turns at hitting on that dangly Intel 2955U speed bag.

AMD is also here now, getting their licks in on the speed bag using their fanless integrated Mullins chipset.   Mullins is both integrated and fanless, just like the ARM boys.

Intel's PR department responds to this dangly sack abuse with a big brown vapor gas blast from way out sometimes in 2015 -- and I quote the smelly brown vapor as follows:

"Google’s François Beaufort notes that code for a Broadwell-based device code-named Auron has been posted to the Chromium code repository."



"Auron is just the code-name for a board that someone is testing. It’s not clear if this will turn into a real product anytime soon. But it does seem likely that some PC maker will attempt to offer a Chromebook with a Broadwell chip eventually… so why not start preparing the code now?

Broadwell chips should offer better performance-per-watt and lower power consumption than today’s Haswell chips (which are found in a number of Chromebooks from Acer, HP, and Dell).

We’ll have to wait until 2015 to see Broadwell chips for desktops and premium notebooks. But the first Broadwell chip is coming this year. The Intel Core M processor is a low-power chip aimed at [very high end] portable devices including fanless tablets, notebooks, and 2-in-1 systems

So don’t be surprised if some of the first Broadwell-based Chromebooks are thin, light, and fanless.".

And, supposedly 5% faster and at a 20% energy improvement -- all of these future 14nm numbers relative to the existing 22nm Haswell of course, not the actual competitive ARM based 28nm and 20nm chipsets which already do better than the new Haswell supposedly will be able to do.

     BUT HEY .... it will finally be fanless but it will still likely need them BIG Intel loss leader price supports to be made into any real shippable products.        

http://liliputing.com/2014/08/lilbits-8-29-2014-hello-haswell-e.html

Intel now needs some revenue.

One place they are accustomed to getting it is from the small faithful crew of full bore case modding water jacketing PC enthusiasts who are willing to go drop $4,000 every time a new Intel upper end Core i7 chipset comes out .... not that they really need it for anything, mind you,  but it might make their bit coin mining go a little better.

Do you happen to remember how harshly and scornfully Intel derided the AMD Bulldozer 8 core chipset as "totally unnecessary" after it came out?  

Truth was that Microsoft's OSs would not even really use the core count after 4 for much of anything at all .....  and cores 6 through 8 just sat there mostly.


       ..... yeah, we all remember what you said, Intel.   You ain't fooling anybody.


However, Intel now needs some revenue   .... badly ....   so here comes the brand new "never been faster ever before" Haswell E series to pick the hip pockets of them water jacket overclock'n boys.

And yeah, the Intel corporate image & ego really does need a bit of a boost right now, and something positive to distract them pesky stockholders would be right helpful too ......




"The most powerful is a Core i7-5960X 8-core processor with 16 processor threads, 20MB of cache, and a base clock speed of 3 GHz. (more if overclocked or turbo'd)

The new chips also feature Intel’s new X99 Chipset, with support for DDR4 memory."





So what can you do with this "can't be fully utilized by any earthly OS" 8 core Intel x86 processor system?  

Alienware, of course.   Any decent alien OS system can use dozens and  hundreds and thousands of them up to 8 core Intel x86 CPUs for doing those uber complex real time alien multi-dimensional totally alien hyperspace navigation calculations ....


  <grin>       ..... ET skype home .....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/03/us-microsoft-gates-idUSBREA410YS201...

Bill Gates on track to own no Microsoft stock in four years



Speaking of which, Microsoft stock is getting sold off by certain heavy MS holders.   Billy boy here is getting monitored by the SEC for any potential insider trading since he is the Technology Advisor to MS's CEO and here Billy is selling off all of his MS stock on a SEC approved 4 year scheduled plan.

Note that Balmer the stupid hasn't begun selling off any of his mass of stock yet, because Billy gets to go first as you can only liquidate so much stock at a time without throwing the whole thing into the toilet.   The SEC is not going to let that happen.

When Ballmer breaks traces and suddenly dumps chunks of his stock, then you know it is all over but the shouting.

First StreamBook is out, not from HP but from Asus, the guys who made netbooks popular.   Asus is even using the Eeebook moniker, which denotes netbook (and is something they own instead of StreamBook which they do not)

http://liliputing.com/2014/09/asus-eeebook-x205-netbook-reborn-199-euro-noteb...

Asus EeeBook X205: the 2.2 pound all day life "netbook" reborn as a $199 notebook



"The EeeBook X205 features an Intel Atom Z3735 Bay Trail processor, a 1366 x 768 pixel display, 2GB of RAM, 32GB to 64GB of solid state storage, and up to 12 hours of battery life.

It’s basically what you’d get if you took the guts of a cheap Google Chromebook and threw Windows on it instead of Chrome OS… or possibly what you would have seen by now if netbooks had evolved into laptops instead of sort of fading away for a few years."

Asus has swung pretty much low end on the unit, making up a netbookish take on the StreamBook.  

However, Asus can make a very slim profit on this unit, which may or may not play true with the 14" HP StreamBook when it comes out with its better specs, keyboard and screen size.

Reviews are pending awaiting arrival of the units.   Unless Microsoft has done something to BingOS to make it run a lot better on smaller resources folks are anticipating Chromebooks to run a lot better/quicker than the similar priced BingOS units.

Also note that with everyone going to MS Office On-Line and bookmarking the pages for Word, Excel and Powerpoint on their Chromebooks, so having Microsoft out there saying that you can't do Office on a Chromebook is pretty much not true any more.

Microsoft will likely now try to somehow exclude Chromebooks from using their free Office On-Line web pages and that will get them a lawsuit or two pretty quick like.  

Plus, there are Chrome store apps already in the Chrome Store that allow your Chromebook to identify itself as an old version of Windows IE to those sites that try to say "we only support MS products" or "this site can be best viewed by Internet Explorer".

The Chrome wars are up and going now, with two vendors now placing matching cased Chrome and Windows warriors out there on the very low end of the fighting field.    Their swords are still sheathed though as they haven't reached the reviewers yet.

        Once again, very good direct comparisons will be able to be made as Asus makes the exact same unit in a Chromebook.


Microsoft has now joined Intel in "staying in existence" by loss leader spending.   In both cases, the companies MUST come out with a competitive product soon before their loss leader spending runs their bank accounts dry.  

Neither company is making any real profit from their mobile forays, and now their low end laptop businesses have gone under water too.

Both are resorting to bribes, free products and loss leader spending.

Bribes and free products can only keep you going for so long, eventually you will have to make a customer acceptable OS version (or some inexpensive integrated chipsets) with a low enough cost posture that allows you to make a real profit doing it.

Both companies have had to cannibalize their low end (profitable) product lines as the march of ARM and Open Source has begun eating them up from below the knees like piranha in a shallow stream crossing.

What is scary is that consumers are realizing that phones, tablets and Chromebooks/netbooks can indeed do 95%+ of what the family needs done on a regular basis.

One (1) old style full Windows desktop/laptop unit (the family antique) sitting in the den hooked up to a scanner and a wifi E-printer can supply the remaining elephant power for what the family only occasionally needs.

And as the net based stuff keeps getting better and better and better, that required "occasional elephant use" will decline until the old den unit can be thrown out as unneeded.

Like I have said so many times in the past when talking to friends...there is coming the day that your television will be an all encompassing "communication" station.
And so will your portable...
I am talking about kindle/ipad type devices turning into a Bluetooth cell/notepad device.
If a company comes out with a pad that is say 10" and has cell phone capabilities/w Bluetooth, I am so going to buy it, even though I would have to wear a "manbag" or "murse" to put it in.
I am so tired of squinting to see print on my cell phone and even though I "pinch" it larger, I still have to minimize the "pinch" to navigate to the next phrase.
When I go on vacation, I carry my kindle fire, a small laptop and my cell phone... too many devices!
Its simple now really, I want a 10" screen, 10megapixel camera/w light, cell phone with Bluetooth, all in one!
Give me what I want.... i'm getting to old to wait for it.....!!!!  

And this is just for Old_Rider to take a drool at since he believes in super TVs ......





Watch full size on YouTube for best effect:      

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXtihYufl8Y


..... and here are the interface gestures explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b5UcfJ24aM

Chrome wars are still showing a software divide between x86 and ARM.

Intel runs best if you plan to run Chrome and Linux distros.  

ARM runs best if you plan to run Chrome and Android apps.





There are two price points developing.  

Absolute bottom end and next jump up for slightly better stuff.    Absolute bottom end is $179 to $200 and Chrome still owns that span.    The devices down here are adding memory and drive space and better screen/keyboard to make up the $250 to $300 "next jump up" which is now populated by both Chrome and Windows devices.

Windows still has no OS variant that can play with these $200 low levels of resources, so although Windows is there now (2 instances) nobody seems to be taking them seriously.

Windows is simply so fat and porky and slow that it simply won't play well at all at the current $200 low end hardware base level.    

Windows needs to go on a diet and hit the gym and sweat off some fat .....     Microsoft needs to get busy and really create a light enough variant that can perform this job or accept the fact that they simply can't go there and quit trying.

Given the fact that some 70-80% of new laptop sales right now is happening at this $179-$200 lowest level seems to indicate Microsoft needs to hit the gym (or agree to fade away).

Intel has always kept a tick tock cadence to rolling out a new lithography tick this year and downsizing their current stuff, then on the next year's tock cycle rolling out new technology to advance their product line technologically.

Tick-Tock has been disrupted this year, with 14nm lithography lagging back a bit more than one full clock cycle due to issues getting it working well.

Intel is getting all confused internally now, being so very large and vertically silo'd they keep getting surprised internally when items needed for a new technology tock cycle simply aren't there yet.

Right now half of Intel is still ticking from last year when the rest seems to be tocking on the original schedule (with some pieces that aren't nearly ready to be built on a tick that simply isn't finished yet).  

It is making a right mess of things right now .....


===================================


ARM isn't as strongly affected by the lithograph screw up as Intel has been because they always planned finer smaller lithography steps (and are now stepping down those smaller steps very gracefully).

20nm is progressing nicely as the new upcoming main-stream lithography level, with 16-14nm to follow next year equally gracefully.

ARM did react to the 14nm lithography mess by putting out the A-17 as a new A-9 replacement and by upgrading the A-7 and A-15 generations slightly twice while keeping the lithography at 28nm.

28nm is the "old mainstream" in ARM now, but because of the steady ARM updates all the various players are doing very well still as they step down to 20nm.  

They are all lined up and ready to go now to step down to 20nm and go to 64 bit, which is the next big ARM wave of stuff that is coming out now as we speak.

Everyone will step quietly past 22nm Intel while they are still piled up at the foot of the 14nm step that Intel simply can't take yet.