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Posts tagged "Intel"

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Intel might be about to make a major Linux move
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Intel has quietly acquired a German software developer with the aim of bringing fresh life to a key, decades-old Linux kernel project.

In a blog post, vice president and general manager of system software engineering at Intel's Software and Advanced Technology Group, Mark Skarpness revealed that the company had acquired the German firm Linutronix which provides services for Linux-powered industrial systems and also specializes in real-time Linux applications.

While neither Intel nor Linutronix disclosed the financial terms of the deal, the acquisition is a sign that the chip giant wants to further commit to an incredibly important yet often overlooked Linux kernel project. 

According to Intel, Linutronix is the “architect of PREEMPT_RT (Real Time)” and this patch set can be used to make low-latency communication possible between controllers, sensors, robots and tooling and other equipment in real-time industrial applications running on Linux. 

When enabled, PREEMPT_RT changes the way the Linux kernel handles interrupts and locks to allow threads to to get additional time on a CPU core with little latency. As a result, developers can use it to configure the Linux kernel for real-time use-cases without having to worry about out-of-tree patches, new kernel versions or other disruptions resulting from new point releases.

Revitalizing a key Linux kernel project

Despite its usefulness in Linux-powered industrial systems, like other open source software projects, PREEMPT_RT maintained by a small group of core developers. Up until now, the project has lacked enough contributors and funding to be integrated with the main Linux kernel. Still though, companies having been building products that use this patch and the number doing so will likely increase with Intel's backing.

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Skarpness provided further details on Intel's plans for Linutronix going forward in his blog post announcing the acquisition, saying:

“By acquiring Linutronix, we are deepening our long-standing relationship with a highly respected team of globally recognized Linux experts, adding to the remarkable breadth and depth of Intel’s hardware and software talent. Linutronix will continue to operate as an independent business within our software division, led by Egger and Gleixner.”

In a statement to The Register, Skarpness confirmed that Intel intends to continue to support the PREEMPT_RT project as the company believes it is a “critical piece of technology that's going to be used in a lot of places”.

We'll likely hear more regarding Linutronix and Intel's plans for PREEMPT_RT once the acquisition is complete.

Via The Register

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

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Windows 11 is more popular with gamers, but there’s bad news for Intel in Steam survey
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Windows 11 is gaining some decent momentum with gamers, at least going by the latest stats from Steam, although Intel has slipped slightly compared to last month’s Steam survey.

The hardware and software survey for January 2022 showed that Windows 11 is now used in 13.56% of the gaming rigs evaluated for this report, which is up quite strongly on December’s figure of 10.15%.

That’s good news for Microsoft, of course, but the survey produced somewhat disappointing results for Intel on the hardware front.

In December’s stats, Intel actually witnessed an increase in its processor market share among Steam gamers to the tune of 0.82%, with Team Blue securing 69.27% in total.

That looked significant given how dominant rival AMD Ryzen processors have been in recent times, stealing a lot of turf from Intel in the desktop PC world – but the upward movement has ebbed for Team Blue, as it dropped slightly to 69.02% in January 2022, albeit that only represents the loss of a quarter of a percentage point.

Analysis: Nothing too worrying for Intel, and serious momentum building for Microsoft

With the Intel figures, while the chip giant might be slightly disappointed that growth hasn’t continued – and that new Alder Lake CPUs aren’t sparking a continued upswing – it’s not a huge surprise.

This is only a very slight loss for Intel, after all, and in recent times, the figures for Team Blue have been rather up and down anyway (even before Alder Lake came out, we saw some decent upticks with Rocket Lake). Really, this is a pretty minimal downward dip, and could be put down to the typical margin of error that Valve’s survey is doubtless working with.

Windows 11’s progress is a more clearly defined growth spurt, and with an increase of 3.41% for January 2022, that’s almost double the gain Windows 11 witnessed from November to December (1.87%).

In short, there’s a clear suggestion that more and more gamers are making the move to Microsoft’s newest OS, despite the early bugs which we’ve written multiple reports about (mind you, some of these are now fixed up, and it’s not like Windows 10 doesn’t have bugs either).

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

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Intel Lakefield is here, powering the future of computing
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At CES 2020 it seemed like every laptop manufacturer wanted to show off foldable devices, but wouldn't reveal what was powering them. However, Intel Lakefield processors have now been launched, and will be powering a whole slew of inventive computers.

Intel Lakefield will only be behind two announced laptops at first: the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold and the Intel version of the Samsung Galaxy Book S. The former doesn't have an official release date at the time of writing, but Samsung's Lakefield-powered device should be hitting the street this month. 

It's important to note that these aren't just another processor refresh – this is a completely new chip design. Intel has clearly taken some inspiration from ARM's big.LITTLE architecture: one 10nm Sunny Cove CPU core will be paired with four lower-power Tremont cores. The bigger Sunny Cove core will tackle heavy workloads that need a lot of power, while the Tremont cores will more efficiently tackle background tasks. 

What's even more impressive is the new Foveros 3D stacking technology, which will essentially stack the entire SoC and memory into one tiny package that measures just 12 x 12 x 1mm, which is basically the size of a dime. This will eliminate the need for RAM to be built into motherboards externally, and will lead to much smaller devices.

Coupled with the included Intel LTE solution built into the die, Intel Lakefield is going to be behind the most portable devices we've seen, and we can't wait to get our hands on it. 

Don't expect a powerhouse

The two processors announced as part of Intel Lakefield are the Intel Core i5-L16G7 and the Intel Core i3-L13G4. Both of these processors are 5-core chips with no Hyper Threading, and even the Core i5 has a max single-core speed of 3.0 GHz. 

Needless to say, hardcore productivity isn't the aim of these processors. In terms of raw performance, these CPUs are almost certainly going to be slower than Intel's Ice Lake processors, and are instead aimed at long battery life and portability. 

We obviously haven't had a chance to test any device with one of these processors quite yet, but we imagine that these chips will be ideal for folks who need an always-connected device that they can take with them wherever they go, and who only need something powerful enough to do light office work like checking email and loading up some spreadsheets. 

And, because of the smaller board size that will be enabled by these Intel Lakefield processors, this architecture will be the default for foldable devices, where there is less space available. 

For instance, when we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S with the Qualcomm Kryo 495, that laptop weighed in at just 2.12 pounds (0.96kg) and was less than half an inch thick. The obvious benefit with the Intel Lakefield version will be that it will be able to run all Windows apps, as it will support all x64 and x32 programs. 

So before you go out and preorder a Lakefield-powered device because it is the future of mobile computing, you should seriously consider if it's right for you. If you're a traveling businessperson, it might just be for you. 

 

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

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Little-known Japanese CPU threatens to make Nvidia, Intel and AMD obsolete in HPC market
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Sandia National Laboratories has announced it will be the first Department of Energy labs in the US to deploy the Fujitsu A64FX, the only ARM-based processor designed from ground up for HPC projects and supercomputers.

Fujitsu is known primarily for its business laptops, tablets and desktops, but is a behemoth in its own right when it comes to processors, having been in the business for well over half a century.

Launched in 2019, the CPU has 48 cores, a theoretical peak performance of 3.38 TFLOPS, runs at 2.2GHz and has 32GB HBM2 memory on the die itself.

What makes it ideal for the HPC market is that it provides far higher bandwidth performance between memory and the CPU – up to 1TBps. Moving data to and from the CPU is the biggest obstacle by far to what researchers refer to as exascale computing.

What makes the A64FX even more exciting is that Fujitsu wants the technology to trickle down to hyperscalers and major cloud computing giants so that the masses can benefit too.

Given it is based on ARM architecture, it can (and has) run Linux distributions out of the box and even Microsoft Windows.

It is considered a general purpose CPU, but surpasses even GPUs from Nvidia and AMD on the all-important metric of performance per watt. Indeed, a 768-CPU prototype sits on top of the Green500 list – the leaderboard for supercomputers that deliver the most power per watt.

The A64FX was designed expressly to power the successor of Japan’s main supercomputer, the K, which was decommissioned back in August 2019. 

Its replacement – the Fugaku – is expected to be 100 times faster when it launches later this year, will run on a Linux distribution called McKernel and will reach a staggering 400 petaflops. The aim is for it to be the first supercomputer to hit one exaflop when fully deployed with half a million processors buzzing.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

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