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Maximum everything. Energy-efficient performance. Multimedia power.

	Based on Intel® Core™ microarchitecture, the Intel® Core™2 Duo processor family is designed to provide powerful energy-efficient performance so you can do more at once without slowing down.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo desktop processors
With Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor, you'll experience revolutionary performance, unbelievable system responsiveness, and energy-efficiency second to none.
Big, big performance. More energy efficient.¹ Now available in smaller packages. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based desktop PC was designed from the ground up for energy efficiency, letting you enjoy higher performing, ultra-quiet, sleek, and low power desktop PC designs.
Multitask with reckless abandon. Do more at the same time, like playing your favorite music, running virus scan in the background, and all while you edit video or pictures. The powerful Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor provides you with the speed you need to perform any and all tasks imaginable.
Love your PC again. Don’t settle for anything less than the very best. Find your perfect desktop powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and get the best processing technology money can buy. Only from Intel.

• • Up to 6MB L2 cache
• • Up to 1333 MHz front side bus

You can always depend on iLuv to make snazzy new cases for the latest Appleproducts and now they have with their latest additions for the iPod Nano 5th generation.

The cases range from hard clear plastic to soft, but irregardless, they are all super stylish and the perfect new suit for your iPod Nano.

The designs are hip and trendy and will not only make your iPod Nano pop but protect it too. Some of the designs include the icc306 city series which has different cases for New York, London, Paris and Sydney.

Another series, the icc307, is covered in retro-style record players, headphones and speakers.  There is even the icc304 case designed as a camera to enhance the newest iPod Nano feature. The new iLuv cases for iPod Nano 5th gen retail anywhere from $19.99 to $24.99 respectively.

The chip giant settled with AMD. But another rival is making noise about anticompetitive behavior.

After bumping along as low as $7 a share at the beginning of the year his stock is up near $14. Several months ago Apple (AAPL) began using his graphics chipset – a group of circuits designed to work together – across nearly its entire line of Macs, giving him a very high-profile endorsement. And in the white-hot netbook segment, his Ion processors have won raves for turning underpowered laptops into HD video machines.

Problem is, both of these acclaimed Nvidia (NVDA) products might be dead in the water.
Why? Huang blames chip giant Intel (INTC). Nvidia’s graphics chipsets, which Steve Jobs liked enough to buy by the boatload, aren’t allowed to work with Intel’s latest offering, code-named “Nehalem” – and in the computer world no Intel compatibility means no mainstream future.

Nvidia’s Ion chip is designed to work alongside the chip giant’s Atom processor, but lately it’s been priced out of the market by – you guessed it – Intel.

Feeling AMD's pain
All of this has piqued the interest of the Federal Trade Commission, which is looking into whether Intel has improperly used its power in the computer chip market to choke rivals. For those who are handicapping the chances that the FTC will bring charges, Nvidia’s gripes have recently taken on new importance: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which had been Intel’s main critic, recently settled its antitrust complaints with Intel for a tidy sum of $1.25 billion. That leaves Nvidia to bang the anti-Intel drum.

“I’m sympathetic to what AMD had to go through over the years,” Huang says.
Intel says it’s a tough but fair competitor, and that Nvidia has caused its own problems. To wit: The two companies signed a limited patent-sharing deal five years ago, and Intel says that if Nvidia had read the fine print, it would have noticed that designs like the current Nehalem chips weren’t covered in the agreement. And the Ion dispute? Well, Intel says it just lowered prices on its Atom chipsets to stay competitive. What’s wrong with that?

Nvidia tells a different story. Executives there say they’re a victim of the same kinds of tactics that got Intel into antitrust trouble in Europe and Asia. Nvidia believes it should be authorized to make Nehalem-compatible chipsets under the 2004 agreement; it claims Intel is just getting litigious to stop a competitive threat. And with Ion, Nvidia accuses Intel of unfair pricing that locks it out of the market. Intel says Nvidia just doesn’t understand the incentives it offers customers.

(The two companies are battling in court over the chipset agreement. Intel has asked a Delaware court to clarify whether Nvidia has the right to build Nehalem chipsets, and Nvidia has countersued for breach of contract.)

The courts will ultimately decide who’s right – that is, unless Intel decides to ink a settlement with Nvidia, too. Even then, that probably won’t be the end of Intel’s legal headaches. Maybe that’s the trouble with being a giant. There’s always some kid with a slingshotgunning for you.

Motorola targets young men with its most testosterone-heavy TV commercial yet

Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It's not a princess. It's a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.

The new Droid commercial that debuted in prime-time Thursday night (and is pasted below the fold) opened a new front in Motorola (MOT) and Verizon's (VZ) $100 million ad campaign to take market share from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone

Earlier commercials had appealed to the fragile male ego with icons of masculinity: stealth bombers, heavyweight fighters, rock-crushing machinery.

This one goes after the competition by painting it — and its users — as effeminate.


It's a strategy as old as the schoolyard, and it seems to be working — at least on one side of the yard. A new YouGov BrandIndex survey taken Thursday shows Motorola's buzz rising relative to Apple's and Research in Motion's (RIMM) among men 18 and older. And the company seems to be on track in its stated goal of selling 1 million Droids by New Years.

It remains to be seen whether it has burned its bridges to the other half of the market in the process.

Apple’s gadgets win adulation, but research shows the sector needs a jolt if it wants to grow :

The culprit: Widespread flaws in how they manage and invest in innovation.
If tech companies want to grow, they need to invest in breakthrough, high-impact innovations and more systematically and rigorously manage their innovation processes.

This conclusion is based on our daily interactions with clients and recent Accenture research in which we interviewed research and development decision-makers at leading consumer technology companies in North America, Europe and Asia. Collectively, the executives represent companies that generate almost two-thirds of global industry revenue.

The data revealed that innovation is a top priority for companies seeking to grow. But shortcomings in managing innovation, such as not having uniformity of command, are resulting in poor returns on innovation investments.

Accenture believes these poor returns can be turned into profitable, sustainable growth by systematically managing innovation end-to-end — with the same rigor and discipline as other major business processes. According to Accenture’s consumer technology research:

• There is a lack of innovation pipeline management with potentially too much emphasis on incremental versus long-term, large-scale innovation. One respondent indicated that incremental, as opposed to breakthrough, innovation accounts for 60 percent of his company's pipeline. There was a wide variance among participants in how often product pipelines and portfolios were evaluated.

• There are far too many self-centered business unit silos. These silos impede collaboration on innovation efforts that can benefit the company.  As devices, content and communication technologies converge, cross silo collaboration becomes more critical for successful, ground-breaking innovation.

• There is an overdependence on backward-looking innovation metrics such as the number of patents, revenue realized from new products and the percentage of revenue derived from innovation initiatives versus forward-looking indicators such as sources of ideas, pipeline velocity and project risk profiles.

• There are far too many ad hoc innovation processes, especially for larger breakthrough innovation efforts, making it difficult to deliver value. To achieve excellence and deliver value, innovation needs to be managed as a business discipline with supporting processes and tools; few companies approach innovation in a holistic and systemic way.

So what should consumer technology companies do to generate better returns on their innovation investment? Here are a few ideas:

• Companies can reorient their innovation culture to start with the consumer, rather than the technology, and increase their tolerance for failure in the quest for breakthroughs.

• Companies must manage innovation like other disciplines—some don’t and it’s a major mistake. Innovation must be managed with rigor in an integrated way, blending marketing, customer service, sales, research, operations, performance management and risk management.

• Companies must design and actively manage an innovation portfolio consistent with their strategy, balancing short term incremental innovation with longer term, market moving bets.  Particularly during an economic downturn, the natural tendency of “hunkering down” and investing in short term incremental innovation only compromise a company’s competitive position for years to come.

The typical corporate response in a down economy is to cut costs. But companies cannot simply cut their way to prosperity. They must invest in growth through innovation—yes, even during tough times. Managing innovation well, in a uniform, well-structured fashion, is as important as an act of innovation itself.

General Overview:

The Q6600 Is a fantastic new chip by Intel. It provides the end user with an extremely powerful, cheap and multi-purpose chip. At one point this chip would cost you £500 alone. Now they have cut the price down to roughly £170 making it the perfect choice for enthusiasts and gamers alike. The Q6600 has four cores each running at 2.4Ghz with 8mb L2 cache which means it can do four times the work in the same amount of time compared to a single 2.4Ghz core. The Q6600 runs on a 1066Mhz FSB (FSB is the "Front Side Bus" this tells the processor how fast to run when combined with the processor's multiplier which is different depending on which CPU you buy. Increasing the FSB will increase the speed of the processor, known as "Overclocking", there is a section

in this review on overclocking for those who are interested.)

Overclocking:
Overclocking is the art of making your PC parts run faster than they are rated by the manufacturer. For overclocking the CPU this is usually done through the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) which can be accessed by pressing a key that is stated on screen when you first turn on your computer. It is recommended for those who are looking into overclocking to thoroughly read some guides on the internet, or you may end up frying your chip completely. (and overclocking voids warranties so you won't get a refund either.) However if you are careful and know what you are doing you can increase the performance of your pc much more than it normally operates at. The Q6600 is based on the Core 2 archetecture (aka Conroe) which is much more effective than the old Pentium 4 netburst archetecture. Due to the better efficiency you can reach extreme overclocks on the Q6600, as much as 50% overclock on air (Usually stable at around 3.2Ghz with B3 stepping or 3.4Ghz with G0 stepping. See "Steppings" for more information) and around 100% on water (You can reach speeds faster than 4Ghz with watercooling! That's 16Ghz of power in total over all four cores!)

Installation:

The installation of the Q6600 or any Socket 775 CPU (See the "Socket Type" heading for more detail on what a socket is) is fairly simple. All you need to do is lift the small lever on the side of the base that the chip sits on which will release the clamps that hold the CPu in place, then place the cpu onto the slot(Socket 775 CPU's have no pins on the bottom, they are all on the motherboard now so it's quite hard to actually bend the pins, unlike on old processors where they could easily get bent and you'd either have to carefully bend them back perfectly or buy a whole new processor.) making sure the processor is the right way round, to find which way the processor goes there is a small black tab in one corner that shows you which way it goes. All you have to do after that is place the heatsink on top of the processor (Don't forget to add thermal paste if there isn't any already on the bottom of the heatsink, it usually looks like a gray paste. Your CPU may overheat if you don't have thermal paste) and twist the four locks into place to hold the heatsink onto the motherboard. After that you're all set to go and fire up all four cores!

Steppings:
The Q6600 comes in two different steppings. Steppings are the different revisions of the chip's archetecture to further imrpove efficiency. Now about the two different steppings: the B3 stepping and the G0 stepping. What's the difference you ask? The B3 stepping has a TDP (Thermal Design Power, or how much power the CPU uses in watts) of 105w. The G0 stepping has a TDP of 95w which means lower temperatures, and obviously lower power consumption. This also means that the processor can be more easily overclocked.

Socket Type:

As explained before the Q6600 and many other chips are Socket 775 or less commonly known as Socket T. There are quite a few different sockets such as socket 478, socket AM2/AM2+ (for AMD chips.) Considering the Q6600 is Socket 775 we will focus on what that involves for now. Socket 775 is different from other sockets due to the fact it has a "Land Grid Array". What that means is the processor no longer has pins, all of the pins are spring loaded on the motherboard to make it much harder to accidently bend the pins and require a whole replacement of the CPU. (All older processors have the pins located directly on the chip.) The "775" refers to how many pins the socket has to make contact between the motherboard and the CPU. Due to Socket 775 having more pins that most other sockets it provides better power distribution to the processor, which means your system is more stable especially when overclocking.

Performance:
When using multithreaded applications (Applications that can use more than one core at the same time) the Q6600 provides extremely fast calculations, but even if the program is not multithreaded it still provides extremely fast speeds. Even better performance than those of faster pentium 4 chips due to superior archetechture which maximizes the efficiency of transferring and calculating data. The Q6600 is the perfect chip for gamers and enthusiasts alike due to it's speed, large cache, four cores and great overclocking potential. Games will run at full speed with no hitches, feel like encoding that DVD you like so much so you can watch it on your PC? No problem. The Q6600 will do that faster than almost all other CPU's. The Q6600 really is one of the best performing chips you can get.

Conclusion:

In conclusion the Q6600 has to be the best chip you could possibly buy. It's cheap, fast and provides more potential than first meets the eye for those who wish to unlock it's true power. A must have for anybody who wants the most out of their PC.

This is the processor I am using day in and day out and it is by far the best piece of hardware I have ever owned. Not only does it work perfectly and stay cool, it over-clocks like no tomorrow.

I have my little E8400 running at 4.0Ghz on air-cooling which was a lot easier to set-up than I first thought it would be. I was truly amazed at just how much juice this processor could put out without seemingly batting an eye-lid. Of course you will require some pretty good cooling to pull this off, but you can get coolers like the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro or the Xigmatek HDT for around £20 which will be much better than Intel's original cooler that comes with the retail processor package.
Other processors I have owned have complained immensely when put under the pressure I put this Intel CPU under. Some of them have died; some of them
just became unstable. The E8400 though laps the pressure up, it begs for more.

I was never a fan of Intel products; some would say I was an AMD fanboy. So when I purchased this and saw how amazing it was, my opinion changed immediately. They truly are gifted engineers to create a piece of hardware that can get me excited and happy about a product so much that I come here and write a review about it.
The only problem I had with this processor was monitoring the temperatures. It seems to say the temperatures are much higher than they are in reality. For some reason there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the temperature probes this chip uses. Now I never did find out if it was my processor, or the software I was using, it doesn't seem to have affected the lifespan of the processor so I am happy.

I will probably never sell this processor, even when I upgrade my computer. I will likely just hide it in a draw in some bubble wrap, so in the future I will find it and be reminded of the good old days. I have no idea where technology is heading now, but when I change this processor to a new one I am sure it will not make its way into my heart like this E8400 did.
I am using this processor with an Abit IP-35E motherboard which is considered a budget board but works superbly with this processor. I am also using a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 to cool the processor which works great too, although the size of it can be a problem in some cases.

So if you are looking for a processor and this one is in your budget, consider it. I know there are Quad Core processors and other such fancy equipment now, but if you are looking for something to love rather than something to use and abuse, the E8400 should be at the top of your list.

We are now in 21st century and most interesting changes for this period are in computer and mobile phone industries. Life is moving very fast and there is no scope for traditional thinking. So we are getting unexpected technology now days. We have some popular brands in computer technology and they are still getting good response from overall market.
***
In this category we have some good dual core processors and they are still very popular with good processing speed and low price. Sometimes ago we got Pentium4 models from Intel and they were long run processors in the line. Celeron series processors are still popular in low budget category. The time is changing very fast and multicore processors are getting
more popularity due to its performance and speed. We cant ignore latest product in dualcore category as they are mandatory for latest applications.
If we have a look on some applications like commonly use Adobe Photoshop, which is now available with CS4, it require atleast 2GHz processor with 2GB RAM. But the reallity is that we cant get such a good performance with 2GHz processor and even 2 GB RAM also.
So If we use latest versions of applications then we definitely need some fast speed and multicore processors.
***
Here I am going to discuss about a budget processor from Intel and it is still getting good response with its fast speed performance and low price features. This processor, Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 GHz has some latest features which may be as per your choice, like its new 45nm technology and low poer consumption with about 65 W.
***
The new technology with 45 nm is most important feature for this processor as it may be a good choice for hot climatic reasons. Due to this feature, this processor generates very less heat and the problem of computer crash due to high temperature doesn't happen with it. High temperature is a main problem in Asian countries, so this processor can be a good budget choice for these countries.
***
Next important features are its fast clock speed with almost 2.5 GHz and front side bus speed of about 800 MHz. One more feature that is important is its 2 MB of L2 cache size.
Now have a look on above features and its performance. The 2,5 GHz speed is good enough for any regular applications with Windows Vista operating system of Macintosh Leopard latest version. 2 GHz and more speed processors with multicore processors are good for this purpose.
This processor also has more than 2 GHz clock speed and 2 processing cores. The next feature of front side data bus speed also require for high speed data transfer. We are getting here 800 MHz of data speed and this is s still very popular for any processor and RAM. If we have same speed RAM with 800 MHz speed than we will get best performance with this processor.
L2 cache performs well to provide smooth running speed with temporary data storage and 2 MB speed is good but not best for multicore processors. But for Windows Vista operating system, atleast 2 MB is necessary.
***
Processor is a perfect solution for almost all regular applications and games, for Microsoft office, internet access; Photoshop's all versions and almost all regular games. If we have a good combination with 4 GB of DDR2 RAM with 800 MHz of speed, then we will get superb performance will almost all regular applications and some advanced versions also. It will perform extremely good with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and even with CS4, excellent performance with Autodesk AutoCad 2D application and all regular applications.
For good performance with 3D application, this processor can be a better choice if you have good graphics card installed. We cant get adequate performance even with good quad core processors also without having proper graphics card. So this processor is a good budget choice for some 3D applications also with proper combination of graphics memory. It performs an average performace with Google Sketchup and 3ds max with regular graphics memory. If we have good graphics memory like nvidia quadro then it will performs extremely good.
So have a fun with this for your routine work with high speed performerswithout putting so much of pressure on your pocket. Recommended.

According to a report published by c’t magazine, Intel is now aiming to launch Larrabee in a variety of flavors in 2010 and has scrapped the previous late 2009 plan. Intel’s Joseph Schultz made this comment during the opening of a visual computing research center in Saarbruecken, Germany. Spokesman Nick Knupffer confirmed the narrowed-down date, but declined to provide further comments.
Schultz also told c’t that it will be a “big challenge” to compete with Nvidia’s and AMD’s products and especially highlighted the power-efficiency achieved by AMD’s Radeon graphics cards.

Intel is very careful providing any information about its x86-based Larrabee. What we know, however, is that the device will be based on second-generation Pentium processor technology with the P54C core. The first Pentium core (P5, 800 nm, 60 and 66 MHz) was in development since 1989 and was introduced in 1993. The P54C was launched in 1994 with speeds up to 120 MHz, while the succeeding 350 nm P54CS reached 200 MHz. The 55C core (280 nm up to 233 MHz) followed in 1995 and was replaced with the Pentium II in 1997.

Larrabee is expected to come in multiple flavors with at least 8 cores at the low-end have at least 32 cores on the high-end. At a clock speed of 2 GHz, the 32-core version could be topping a theoretical maximum performance of 2 TFlops.

Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest chip foundries, just announced a marketing collaboration involving Intel’s Atom processor. Atom is Intel’s effort to downsize its processor chips to fit into the realm of emerging smart devices below the Personal Computer space. TSMC will work closely with Intel to port some of the Atom processors to its own process and design flows. TSMC will also have the ability to do engineering on the chip to build customized versions for the large number of existing TSMC customers. However, Intel will have ownership of the final device and the customer, as Intel will be selling the custom designed chips that TSMC designs and builds in its foundry.

As PC sales wane, and their chip revenues along with them, Intel looks to additional sources for revenues. Consumer products represent a massive potential market, though at clearly lower margins and price points. But, Intel’s cost of operations makes it a supplier at too high a price to go after the cut-throat and highly price sensitive consumer market. And Intel is not set up for customized, System On Chip (SOC) solutions the market demands. Enter a partner that can bring all of this capability to Intel – TSMC.

This is a direct attack by Intel on competing processors, especially the ARM processor, which is trying to move upstream from the smart phone and embedded gadgets market it currently dominates, while Intel is trying to move downstream with Atom into this overlapping space. The battleground in the middle will be aggressive and likely bloody, with huge potential returns. And while Intel’s attack is primarily on ARM, it also has profound effect on other players – AMD, Qualcomm (Snapdragon), Nvidia, TI, and even Marvel to whom Intel sold off its own ARM-based processor (XScale).

Intel announced a technology partnership with Nokia that could potentially give the chip maker the breakthrough it has been looking for into the mobile market.

The companies said last night they would work together on a new class of mobile computing devices, but would not say when they would come to market or give details on the kind of wireless products they hoped to develop together.

Analysts saw the pact as strategically important for Intel in the long term because it gains the world's top cellphone maker as a potential client.

But given the lack of details, analysts said it could take one or two years for products to come to market, and it remained to be seen if they would find favour with consumers.

"Intel at least has its foot in the door. It's an important and strategic customer," said Gartner analyst Jon Erensen, who sees the partnership as a way for Intel to get into the market for advanced phones known as smartphones.

However, he added, "You're probably talking about something like 2011 before you get down to the power consumption and integration (levels) you'd need for that kind of device."

Analysts said the deal gives Intel a chance to take on leading cellphone chip makers Qualcomm Inc and Texas Instruments, a big Nokia supplier.

It could also mean stiffer competition for ARM Holdings , which supplies core cellphone processors to both Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, and whose customers rely in part on software from Wind River Systems.

Intel said earlier this month that it would buy Wind River, whose software speeds up and connects devices made by Samsung Electronics, Apple, Hewlett-Packard Co and Motorola.

Intel, whose microprocessors are found in eight out of 10 personal computers, already works with LG Electronics on mobile devices. The agreement with Finland's Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, is a bigger step.

Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini has said that the handheld, embedded and netbook markets would be as important for the company as the PC market in the near future.

Under the agreement, Intel will buy intellectual property from Nokia related to high-speed wireless technology. They also plan to collaborate on open-source mobile Linux software projects, which some analysts say will compete with Google's Android software in the netbook and mobile Internet device (MID) market.

Intel and Nokia said they aimed to define "a new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks" for hardware, software and mobile Internet services. They stressed the pact was about their technology collaboration and not about specific products.

INTEL (TICKER: INTC) and Nokia (NOK) announced a strategic alliance to develop Intel architecture-based mobile chips and open-source software. The goal appears to be creating open and standards-based technologies to explore new ideas and products in mobile computing and communications.

Collaborative efforts between the two companies will be centered around these three initiatives: definition of mobile chipset based on Intel architecture; development of open-source software infrastructure such as Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin; and Intel licensing of Nokia's HSPA/3G modem internet protocol ...

INTEL LEADS the CPU market, full stop. More than ever, perhaps. So, why change its perfectly good branding then? After all, Core 2 - and Core 3, and so on - does sound better than Pentium, Hexium or Sexium, and definitely far better than Itanium, all names sounding like some evil Big Pharma drugs.

Aside from a lot of extra marketing and sales work, resulting in marketeers keeping their jobs in these tight times, there doesn't seem to be any real reason to rehash the branding just because of the Nehalem arrival.

The new chips, rather than being called say Core 3, got the brand new Core i7 moniker, in a way reminding us of the old P7 codename. Now, the dual-channel mainstream Nehalems will be called Core i5, and the low-end integrated-graphics parts might bear the burden of the Core i3 brand. And, just like the current i7 with the brand new three-digit product numbers instead of the old four-digit ones, you'll have an interesting time comparing chip models.

So, when you do your holiday system shopping later this year, you could, for instance, choose between the old Core i7 965, the new Core i7 960 or the brand new Core i5 XXX (I didn't say '860'). While all three are internally basically the same CPUs and run at a 3.2GHz clock, the differences will be there. The first one is the old 2008-launch part with unlocked multiplier but C0 stepping. The second one is to be the new part late this year, with locked multiplier but newer, more efficent D or even E stepping. And, finally, the last part will have two memory channels and the LGA1156 versus LGA1366 socket, but faster Turbo mode and of course cheaper P55-based mainboards. Love the confusion?

Many publications commented on the new branding approach, with mixed reactions. There is no clear connection to the old Core 2 branding, and even the product numbering was completely rehashed. Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9770 and Core i7 Extreme 965 cover the same market segment and run at the same default clock and, in fact, aren't that far apart in performance. But there's no correlation at all in the naming. The old Pentium, Pentium 2, Pentium 3 approach was, in this respect, more consistent.

Why not look at something like that, since Intel already went with this BMW-style numbering? The "7" series is the high end, the "5" series is the mainstream, and the "3" series is doing the basic work. An obligatory "X" could be added at the end of any Extreme part in the "7" and "5" series, to avoid having to use different basic numbers for otherwise same-clocked extreme and normal, that is, locked parts. A similar "L" could be added for the low power parts, and an "M" for the mobile parts. Plus, of course, a "G" for the graphics-enriched ones.

After all, at the Xeon front, that's the case already. The "W" parts are top bin workstation CPUs, the "X" parts are for high end servers, the "E" parts are the mainstream offerings, and the "L" parts are the low power workhorses for dense and green computing.

Then, there should be enough numbering in reserve to accommodate the 32nm 'Westmere' parts without changing the i7-i5-i3 sequence. Right now this scheme seems to be a bit tight for the i7 series as we'd only have the 980, 985, 990 and 995 numbers available before hitting the four digits, and that has to take care of the next 20 months at least. Aside from that, the possible i8-i6-i4 sequence could then be left for the Sandy Bridge and Haswell generations.

Talking about numbers, in Chinese, eight is a very lucky number, but four isn't. The last murdered Alpha CPU was codenamed EV8, but was supposed to be really called, umm, the 21464. So, maybe, let's skip any future 'i4' at the low end, eh?

Intel Chairman Craig Barrett will step down from his post in May, ending a 35-year stint at the world's No. 1 chipmaker, the company announced Friday.

Barrett, who joined Intel in 1974, also served as the chief executive of the company from 1998 through 2005.

"Intel became the world's largest and most successful semiconductor company in 1992 and has maintained that position ever since," said Barrett. "I'm extremely proud to have helped achieve that accomplishment."

Barrett said he was confident that Intel has the right management in place to continue its leadership in the chip making industry.

Jane Shaw, a board member since 1993, will replace Barrett as non-executive chairman in May.

Earlier this week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that last quarter's profit tumbled 90% to $234 million, and reportedly told employees that he couldn't rule out the possibility that Intel might actually lose money in the current quarter. It would be the first time that's happened in more than 20 years.

The company also announced Wednesday that it will be cutting production at two U.S. silicon wafer facilities and closing three facilities in Asia, affecting between 5,000 and 6,000 workers.

Shares of Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) rose 3% in mid-afternoon trading, but the company's stock has lost more than 40% since August.

What’s in a name? If you’re Intel, there’s plenty of brand equity in names like Atom, Centrino, Core and Pentium. But there’s also a fair share of confusion, too, among consumers and IT buyers.

And so, Intel is planning on revamping its portfolio of brand names, an effort that revolves around a good-better-best format. In a statement, the company said:

…we are focusing our strategy around a primary ‘hero’ client brand which is Intel Core. Today the Intel Core brand has a mind boggling array of derivatives (such as Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, etc). Over time those will go away in its place will be a simplified family of Core processors spanning multiple levels: Intel Core i3 processor, Intel Core i5 processor, and Intel Core i7 processors. Core i3 and Core i5 are new modifiers and join the previously announced Intel Core i7 to round out the family structure. It is important to note that these are not brands but modifiers to the Intel Core brand that signal different features and benefits. For example, upcoming processors such as Lynnfield (desktop) will carry the Intel Core brand, but will be available as either Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 depending upon the feature set and capability. Clarksfield (mobile) will have the Intel Core i7 name.

So glad Intel has taken the complexity out of it. Actually, the company acknowledges that there will be multiple brands in the market next year, including the old names, as the company makes the transition.

Under the Core brand, the i3 represents the entry-level of the Core family, with Core i5 and Core i7 representing the mid-level and high-level products. Celeron will stick around for entry-level computing, Pentium for basic computing and Atom for devices such as netbooks and smartphones. For PCs, think of Celeron being good, Pentium being better and Core being best.

Even Centrino, which came to be synonymous with wireless computing, won’t completely go away. The company plans to transition the name to WiFi and WiMax products next year.

Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, will sell processors to Nokia Oyj for mobile devices, marking the biggest breakthrough in Intel's expansion into the phone market.

The two will develop a new mobile device and chips, Intel and Nokia said today in a statement. Intel will also get mobile- phone radio technology from Nokia and the companies will develop versions of the Linux operating system for mobile devices.

Intel, whose microprocessors run more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers, has struggled for about a decade to get a foothold in the market for mobile-phone chips. The company has a unit that sells a scaled-down version of its personal-computer processor. The chip, called Atom, is designed for mobile devices that access the Web and handle basic computing functions.

"Even if they get just a piece of Nokia's business, it's a big deal," said Will Strauss, a Cave Creek, Arizona-based analyst for research firm Forward Concepts. "Nokia is still the biggest cell-phone maker in the world."

In 2006, Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini scrapped his predecessor's $5 billion investment in chips for mobile devices, after the company was late to the market and failed to win enough customers.

Restarted Effort

Now Otellini is again pushing to get Intel's chips into phones, a bid to lessen the company's reliance on computers, which account for more than 90 percent of sales. A total of 1.21 billion mobile phones were sold globally last year, according to ABI Research in Oyster Bay, New York.

Intel rose 3 cents to $15.71 at 11:18 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock had gained 7 percent this year before today. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, fell 10 cents to 10.19 euros in Helsinki trading.

Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said in February that the company needed to land one of the top five mobile-phone makers if it wanted to build a significant business.

Intel is challenging Texas Instruments Inc., the largest maker of chips used to run programs in mobile phones. San Diego- based Qualcomm Inc., meanwhile, supplies the majority of communications chips for phones. Both companies have said that Intel would struggle to break their dominance because its products use too much power.

Intel announced in February it had landed LG Electronics Inc., the world's third-largest phone maker, as a customer. LG will use an Intel processor to make a mobile Internet device, a cross between a mobile phone and a computer.

Intel's attempts to create a mobile business have foundered in the past, even when they've had announcements of interest from customers, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at Scottsdale, Arizona-based research firm In-Stat.

"They've been dreaming of getting a significant win at Nokia," he said. "It's a big announcement, they're a key guy. The only question now is whether they will actually come out with a product."