Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Unreleased Quad-Core Microprocessor Goes Beyond 5GHz. Intel Kentsfield Quad-Core Overclocked to 5.25GHz

11:55 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

While Intel is going to release its first quad-core central processing unit later this year, already a substantial number of engineering samples of Intel’s chips code-named Kentsfield seem to have “leaked” to enthusiasts, who can experiment with them months before official launch.

Despite the fact that Intel Core micro-architecture was not designed to operate at exceptionally high clock-speeds, a Japanese overclocker known as kaz-n has managed to overclock his Kentsfield engineering sample from default 2.66GHz to an impressive 5.25GHz frequency.

The investigation was carried out on Asus P5W DH mainboard equipped with a pair of Corsair PC-6400 (CL3) 1GB memory modules. The CPU was cooled down by liquid nitrogen.

“All four cores working at a speed over 5.2GHz. Ironically he has only performed a SuperPi 1M test at this speed, a test that doesn’t even make use of two cores, and the result was mighty impressive; 9.86 seconds. It’s the first time Kentsfield goes below 10 seconds with SuperPi 1M and then it’s just one of the four cores which is really active,” reports NordicHardware.

• NordicHardware: Intel Kentsfield Quad-Core Overclocked to 5.25GHz!

An Alliance between Apple and Google. Man from Google Joins Apple’s Board

11:54 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Last week Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, was named to Apple Computer’s board. This marked a new era of cooperation between powerful companies, and many believe it to be a strategical step by Apple’s co-founder, Steven Jobs against Microsoft’s domination.

“The old social networks in Silicon Valley run very deep. And this reminds us that Silicon Valley has a common enemy to the north,” noted AnnaLee Saxenian, a leading scholar of the industry and dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

A news story by The New York Times reads that even in a valley where careers leave few degrees of separation between any two companies, the Apple announcement was remarkable. Schmidt, brought in five years ago to guide Google and its young founders to a stock offering, is Silicon Valley’s consummate insider. Jobs, who spent years in the industry wilderness before retaking the helm of Apple, is its defining outsider.

“There are many possibilities for a complementary strategy between their companies. This week, for example, Google announced that it was beginning to weave together a number of services that could be a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office. And Jobs has skillfully driven a wedge into the dominant PC computing standard established by Microsoft’s Windows software and Intel’s hardware - the so-called Wintel alliance - by recently adopting Intel’s processor for Apple’s Macintosh computers,” says an article at Cnet News.com.

Schmidt’s appointment set off chatter about linking the Google search engine to iTunes, Apple’s online music service - reinforcing Apple’s pre-eminence in a category where Microsoft is seeking a grip. That would also have broader implications for the entertainment industry, an industry repeatedly put on the defensive by both Apple and Google.

“The studios, and for that matter, all the copyright owners, don’t want to see only one place become their sole retail outlet - whether it is Google or Apple or Sony,” said William Randolph Hearst III, a veteran Silicon Valley executive and investor.

• Cnet News.com: Man from Google Joins Apple’s Board.

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