Computers these days are taking more and more power to keep up with the world's increasing computing needs.  One of the biggest culprits today is the processor (these days, the graphics card probably comes in first), and Infineon has announced a solution that will dramatically decrease the power consumption of transistor-based devices such as CPUs.  Their new "3D transistors" claim to have the same functionality as standard transistors, but with right around 50% of the power consumption.

Transistors lose most of their power through what are known as leakage currents.  For those of you who have no idea what a transistor is, it's basically a sort of switch, where the voltage applied to the "gate" determines whether or not current can travel from the "drain" to the "source."  Because of the physics behind transistors, a small amount of current can still "leak" through to the source even when there is no voltage on the gate, which means that the transistor is taking power that it doesn't need.  This problem seems to be alleviated by Infineon's new transistors by having two gates between the drain and source.  Only about half of the original leakage current is present; and, since there are two gates instead of just one, the possibilities arise for a single transistor to have more functionality than before.  (The one in the picture above could very easily be used for an AND gate, for example.)

Four into one does go thanks to the boffins at Intel. Intel kicked off the computer industry's multi-core PC era by delivering four computing "brains" inside a single microprocessor with the introduction of the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® 5300 and Intel Core^TM2 Extreme quad-core processor families. These products deliver immense speed and responsiveness for general purpose servers and workstations and for digital media creation, high-end gaming and other market segments that crave absolute performance.

Intel began the transition to multi-core technology 4 years ago with Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology), followed by the introduction of the industry's first dual-core PC processors in April last year. Intel recently refreshed its entire product line by introducing over 40 new processors, including those based on the revolutionary Intel® Core^TM microarchitecture, a more powerful yet energy-efficient design.

"Today's announcement ushers in another new era in computing," said Paul Otellini, Intel's president and CEO. "The capabilities of quad-core microprocessors will bring new possibilities for science, entertainment and business. I'm incredibly proud of what Intel's employees have achieved with these new products."

Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700

The world's best desktop processor for multimedia applications, the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 is up to 80 percent faster than the company's current Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X6800.

This is the world's first quad-core desktop processor available for unmatched, highly threaded performance. Ideal for today's games with incredible performance for tomorrow's highly threaded games; the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 is available at 2.66GHz with a 1066MHz FSB. The processor runs on Intel's existing 975X Express chipset family.

The company plans to offer a mainstream quad-core processor starting in the first quarter next year under the Intel Core 2 Quad processor brand name. The processor will be an ideal choice for processor-intensive, highly threaded programs such as entertainment, gaming and multimedia activities.

Don't you feel just a little dumb now with only your little grey cells to get you through the day.

So far AMD has been really secretive about their new "4x4" platform designed to compete with Intel's Core 2 Quad processors.  (If you don't know, the 4x4 platform will let you use two dual-core CPUs on the same motherboard, giving you somewhat of an equal footing with a quad-core CPU.)  Even though it's being officially released November 14, we still only have very sketchy details about how it'll all work.  But AMD has revealed a few details on the 4x4 platform at a PR event in Munich.

Obviously a new platform supporting two processors will require a new chipset, and sources are saying it will be provided by NVIDIA, so it will probably be a version of the nForce 600 chipsets they just released for Intel.  AMD will release the 4x4 platform along with three new FX processors, the FX-70, FX-72, and FX-74 (2.6GHz, 2.8GHz, and 3.0GHz, respectively, with 2MB of L2 cache), with an FX-76 (3.2GHz) coming up in the middle of next year.

Experts are concerned (for good reason) about how well both processors can be used.  Windows Vista Ultimate is the only version that will support more than one physical processor, while all version will support multiple cores on the same processor.  This puts Intel's single-package solution at an advantage.  Nevertheless, we should be seeing more multi-threaded applications now that single-core processors are old news.

AMD has announced that it will a new processor, codenamed "Fusion," with both a CPU and a GPU integrated into a single package.  This is really the first time we're seeing AMD using ATI, its recently acquired partner, in a joint project.  The focus, AMD asserts, is on integrating the two parts of the computer into one single solution.

The Fusion processor will be aimed at mainstream and low-end consumers, at first, in addition to applications in servers and mobile computing, since hardcore gamers will probably still be better off with a separate graphics card, maybe two or more.  But as the technology develops, even gamers may want to have to buy less new components when they want an upgrade.  It remains to be seen how successful this will be, but it sure beats the so-called "integrated graphics" my laptop has now.

AMD has decided that processors with the K8L core, AMD's first single-die quad-core processor, will initially be built for Socket AM2+, rather than the new AM3 socket.  Socket AM3 is planned to be used for DDR3 memory support, but AMD wants K8L processors (called Altair) to use DDR2 memory, at least at first.

As a side note, AM2+ is only different from AM2 in that it uses HyperTransport 3.0 rather than HyperTransport 1.0.  Socket AM2+ is considered to be a transitional socket to accomodate K8L.

It's probably just as well, considering that DDR3 will be quite expensive for a while.  Just think about how much it costs to upgrade from a 256MB card to a 512MB card with the same GPU.  And multiply that by 8 if you want 2GB of DDR3, assuming the price doesn't go up as the modules get more dense, which of course it will.

Now there's a word we like to see in our inbox. Overclocking. Rodney brings out the implements of torture and finds out what it takes to make an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.14GHz processor crack. The best bit is, the whole things captured in video so you can watch the processor fry in realtime. Woohoo.

Details over the page.

Here's a handy little tool that recently dropped into our news mailbox.

Pick an Intel processor and easily identify the specs. All current Intel processors can be now again simply identified. Because for the launch of the new product models, the brand-new Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme, as well as the Intel Core Duo and Core Solo processors are now integrated in the latest interactive product ID guide. This interactive Intel product ID guide is used for the fast and easy identification of the current Intel processors and will show on the basis of the processor number immediately the exact values like e.g. frequency, L2 Cache, etc.

Now if only it could tell you how much each processor will overclock and where you can buy them from. That would be neat!