Processor Whispers

Intel causes confusion with the Ivy Bridge's launch date, HP starts a second restructuring attempt and Nvidia launches rumors about a Tegra 4 – all (amongst other things) because of Apple.

Until now, things haven't been going well for Intel in the TV market. A new media processor is supposed to help it gain a foothold with settop boxes, and concerning the television business, Intel has further grandiose plans. AMD could minimally increase its market share in the past year, but suffered severe losses in the server sector. The new Opteron 3200 family is supposed to turn the tides.

It is hard to believe, but with the Remote Management Module 4, for the servers with the new Xeon E5 processors, Intel gets rid of a long-standing annoyance. AMD sells its remaining stake in Globalfoundries and might equip the next Sony Playstation.

Intel releases the instruction extension for transactional memory and gives numerous speeches at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). AMD equips the Piledriver with inductors and China delivers another new processor.

Intel's Haswell processor casts its shadow before it, AMD starts an open-standard IP initiative for SoCs, Apple partner Audience Inc is going public and the final end of the Itanium is on the horizon.

Intel plays the musical chairs game, the IT industry celebrates lots of record quarters, only AMD disappoints. Things are uncertain around Globalfoundries and numerous Bryants draw attention.

IBM has the highest profit, the most patents – and now a woman in charge. Intel is upset about sold processor prototypes and AMD about the lawsuit from a notebook manufacturer.

It's jinxed: A lot of things related to the Bulldozer go wrong, including the joined endeavor of Microsoft and AMD to improve the processor's performance under Windows 7.

Maybe Microsoft boss, Steve Ballmer, will also address various tops and flops of the company in his Keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show CES 2012 – the last of its kind, as, to the surprise of the industry, Microsoft is saying farewell to this show. The list of flops got a little longer in mid-December, with the “update to optimize the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs” (KB2592546 ). In the description, Microsoft explains that, until now, the performance of the AMD Bulldozer CPU has been worse than expected.

Once a year, at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), the experts of the craft meet to report on the advancements in transistor, memory and manufacturing technology. Intel is struggling with the C1-step of its newest processors and AMD miscounts.

It's the “worst-kept secret of the industry” – so it was said at Supercomputing 2011 (SC11) – that Intel's Haswell processor will feature transactional memory. Other leaked bits of news concern Intel's Ivy Bridge and AMD's Trinity.

About two years ago, in August 2009, Intel, IBM and Sun founded a “Drafting Group” in order to devise a common specification for transactional memory (TM). All three of them were planning to incorporate this feature into their next processor generations.