Intel IDF 2005: What is New and Exciting
Introduction
Every year, Intel gets together some of their business partners for a gathering. For those who don’t know, IDF is short for Intel Developer Forum. This is where Intel gets to brag and boast about their achievements the past year and announce upcoming technology for the future. This is my first attendance at IDF, and the experience was rather exhausting. Exhausting in a good way? Not really. Frankly, I expected to be more intrigued by the event. I guess the computer technology excitement is slowing down for me.
Intel kicks off the show with a nice speech by CEO Craig Barrett. He spoke of Intel’s previous accomplishments and moved on to what was truly the main event at IDF–Intel’s dual core processing technology. Before he concentrated on the dual core technology, West Coast Customs, one of California’s famous automobile customization company with the hit MTV show “Pimp My Ride”, made a guest appearance. They displayed their new 3 week project of the Chrysler 300C. The original 4 door car was shortened and turned into a coupe. The car features absolutely zero mirrors; and to check the peering eyes behind you, there are cameras installed in place of mirrors. These cameras are hooked up to monitors that sit at what used to be the glove compartment. Added to these nice features is a fully suede interior. So what does West Coast Customs have to do with Intel? The Chrysler features a built in laptop powered by none other than Intel’s Mobile Centrino. And since the car is full of built-in cameras, the wireless capabilities are awesome. With a handheld PDA, you can connect to the laptop and monitor what’s going inside your car. All you frisky kids out there, daddy’s watching.
The next guest was Burt Rutan, the owner of a private flight company. Burt Rutan and Craig Barrett chatted about the importance of technological innovations and how space travel for the average Joe is now a reality. After all, why should only NASA get to head into space?
The opening keynote ended with a roadmap of Intel’s future plans and goals. Craig Barrett mentioned the “half assed” wireless technology we’re offered today. The 802.11a/b/g are not formats that are considered high speed bandwidth. What he described as high speed bandwidth is in megabytes, not megabits. A small clip of future high speed wireless bandwidth was shown, which featured a transmit tower that allowed extremely high coverage of the San Francisco city. To conclude, Craig Barrett mentioned Moore’s Law; and that at the time of discovering the linear growth of transistors in a processor based on a given set of time, Moore had no idea that dual core processors would exist in the future. Intel’s dual core processor is a technology breakthrough, and they have no doubts that multiple cores will exist in future processors.
NVIDIA nForce4 Intel SLI
When Nvidia announced their first nForce chipset for the AMD platform, I was boggled as to why they didn’t offer a solution for Intel users. The nForce chipset progresses and yet there is still nothing for Intel users. Even ATI, SiS, and VIA, although not as mainstream, offer their own solutions. Nvidia is the only one who has yet to enter the Intel market. I’ve always thought that it was a feud between these two large corporations. My guess may or may not be right, but it seems like any sort of tension between the two companies has dissipated. Nvidia is now working with Intel to provide enthusiasts with their SLI technology.
Much like the nForce4 SLI chipset for AMD, the nForce4 SLI for Intel features the same hardware and technology, with the addition of RAID 5. Unlike the single MCP (media communications processor) found on the AMD platform, Intel’s nForce4 SLI will feature a two bridge design. The Northbridge will handle all the memory, graphic, and CPU interactions. The Southbridge will handle the usual PCI buses, hard drives, audio, and so on. At a private meeting with Nvidia, they performed the same demonstrations as with the AMD nForce4, and the capabilities of their new RAID 5. At the technology showcase, a couple of motherboards were presented with the Nvidia nForce4 Intel chipset. These motherboards are from major manufacturers like Asus, Gigabyte, Epox, Biostar, and MSI. I wonder if Abit will build a Fatal1ty board with the chipset…
I’m a big fan of new technology and SLI definitely qualifies. While it brings quite a big performance boost to gamers, I’ve yet to migrate over to the SLI setup. One reason is the SLI drivers. Currently only a number of games are officially supported. Although it will work with older games in some cases, knowing that games like World of Warcraft are not supported is a major turnoff. I’m a big fan of Blizzard games and I plan to start playing WoW in the near future. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to take the plunge because of the driver and support issue. I did ask Nvidia about a new driver release and future support, and they answered that new drivers will be out very soon. The drivers will add support for at least 50 games under SLI. This is certainly good news that Nvidia is doing something about the gamer’s needs. If it does add support for WoW, I’ll see you all in the realms.
Intel High Definition Audio
To start off, I have to be honest and tell you all that I’m not a big audiophile. I wasn’t too hyped up or extremely anxious to know that Doc and I are going to meet with the Intel desktop division regarding their new sound offerings. I do enjoy good surround sound and music from my music and games, but I’ve never been able to differentiate typical onboard audio with add-on sound cards. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really owned a pair of high quality speakers.
At the meeting, Intel introduced their new onboard audio solution for their 945 and 955 chipsets. Intel’s new Audio Studio features works from Sigmatel and Sonic Focus. The chipset is manufactured by Sigmatel and is a much better solution than what’s available today (*cough cough* Realtek). The sound presentation was definitely awesome. I listened while Doc and the guys chatted over the power and technology behind this new offering. Not being an audiophile sucks, because there is so much equipment out there that is so fun to work with. Rest assured, I will do my homework and start learning about it.
Their demonstration was simple. They played a clip of I, Robot and repeatedly turned on and off the multi-channel surround sound. At 5.1, it sounded pretty good. I was able to hear crisp, clear highs and lows all around me. Nothing was really muffled. After they enabled multi-channel in Intel’s Audio Studio, I was blown away. Highs were even more crisp and everything sounded much more vibrant. I’m not sure you can describe sound with the word vibrant, but that is definitely how I felt. If a non-audiophile like me can tell the difference, imagine what you audiophiles will feel! I didn’t get much while Doc, Intel, and Sonic Focus were chatting, but I did absorb one particular feature. The Intel Audio Studio supports true 24bit sound. The Audio Studio allows playing of regular 16bit sound from CD’s and such and boosts it to 24bit. It actually amplifies the sound quality. Imagine that. The Audio Studio also allows a huge number of features for audiophiles to work with. There are so many settings you can tune that it would take over 2 weeks for users to understand.
Hardware features-wise, Intel’s new audio solution definitely beats any of the Creative cards you have sitting in your system. I used to wonder why people would spend money buying Intel made motherboards, because they offer no overclocking potential. Well, I now know why.
Intel Dual Core Processors and Conclusion
Now we get to the highlight of the event. Intel recently announced their 64bit CPU’s. There have been many reviews all over the web regarding the release. Why is it that Intel is not making such a big deal out of it? They don’t believe in 64bit processing, yet. Yes, it’s the future, but because there’s no software out to take advantage of 64bit, why bother? It’s just a gimmick. Why have a car when you can’t drive? The reason why their 64bit processors are officially released is because of AMD. There are many computer illiterate people out there who buy into AMD’s 64bit processors. They think that just because it has high end hardware, it’ll automatically be better. That’s not true. While I am a fan of AMD Athlon64s, I don’t think the 64bit is anything to drool over, at least for now. The Athlon64s are actually good because of the CPU architecture and the ondie memory controller, not because it supports 64bit. If you keep the same design on the Athlon64s and take away 64bit support, you’ll still get the same great performance. Anyway, at IDF, Intel has the right to brag about their new technology. Dual core is actually something that benefits at anytime or anyplace.
I had the chance to meet up with Intel and see their demonstration thanks to Doc. I was a bit late because stupid buses in San Francisco stop at every bus stop. At the meeting, Intel demonstrated the power behind dual core processing. Although they didn’t have it compete head to head with AMD’s FX55, they did compare it to their new 3.73GHZ EE. The dual core Extreme Edition features a single piece of silicon but with two execution cores. Each core has 1MB of L2 cache and shares the same Front Side Bus frequency. The flagship dual core Extreme Edition will debut for roughly $800, much less than what current Extreme Editions cost, and will run at 3.2GHZ. You might think, why not have it be 3.73GHZ with dual core? The reason is cost and heat. The 3.73GHZ EE puts out roughly 130W of heat. That makes it the hottest (heat wise) CPU today. The heat output of a dual core CPU with that much processing power will just be ridiculous. You’ll definitely need watercooling. Intel thus decided to slow down the processing speed to 3.2GHZ. With two execution cores, the heat output is about the same as a single 3.73GHZ EE. The pricing and processing frequency is a good move by Intel. It makes it more affordable while still providing great performance. $800 more affordable, you laugh? Well, if you can spend $500 on the latest graphic card, why can’t you spend $800 on a good CPU? Current graphic cards are already bottlenecked by current processors. It’ll actually be wiser to keep that X800 XT PE and get a new pimpin’ processor, rather than jumping to the X850 XT PE, .
Side by side, the 3.73GHZ EE went against the dual core 3.2GHZ EE in some benchmarks. The 3.2GHZ EE features the same EM64T as the current 3.73GHZ EE and also has the features of Execute Disable Bit, a feature that detects overload during virus attacks. The benchmarks shown were Adobe Photoshop Premier and a new benchmark from Futuremark. The 3.2GHZ EE simply blew it away. The difference was incredible and extremely noticeable. To render a 6 second clip, the 3.2GHZ EE performed almost twice as fast as the 3.73GHZ EE. In Futuremark’s benchmark, frame rates were smooth and superb. It’s simply jaw dropping.
What about those who can’t afford the Extreme Editions? Well, Intel will release much more affordable Pentium D processors. No it’s not Pentium 5; there is no more number. The Pentium D is code named Smithfield and comes with the same features as the Extreme Editions. The ONLY and most important difference is that Pentium D processors will not have HyperThreading. The 3.2GHZ EE features HyperThreading on both cores, essentially providing 4 thread of processing. There was information about future plans of mobile dual core processors, but there wasn’t much detail and not much can be said. Instead of Centrino, you’ll start seeing a new name called Yonah.
With a new CPU release comes a new chipset release. Intel will launch the 945 and 955 chipsets in a month or two. From a paper specifications standpoint, there doesn’t seem to be anything really new with the new chipset. The only thing I can see is the new Intel sound solution (hopefully motherboard manufacturers will implement the sound chip) and the second PCI-E slot. Supposedly that’s for SLI, but we won’t know if Nvidia’s drivers will actually allow them to run SLI.
Conclusion and Thoughts:
Intel’s 2005 IDF displayed a few interesting upcoming technologies that promise great performance. The dual core is definitely something worth upgrading to. As for the show itself, I did expect much more out of it. I was already disappointed with this year’s CES and I expected much more out of an actual computer convention. The majority of the keynotes were rather boring to me, and I guess it was that way because it catered more to servers and not desktops. The excitement now is left to the motherboard manufacturers and official launch dates. It is then we’ll see just how much performance Intel’s dual core actually brings to gaming enthusiasts. It’s been a while, but I’m sure that Intel can very well retake the gaming crown.