Intel Joins One Laptop Per Child

Intel and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) today announced they have agreed to work together to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world through synergy of their respective programs. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content. Intel will also join the board of OLPC.

OLPC is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to bring learning opportunities to the most remote and poorest children of the world by providing connected, low-cost and rugged laptops to each and every child in their daily lives.

"Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child.

"Joining OLPC is a further example of our commitment to education over the last 20 years and our belief in the role of technology in bringing the opportunities of the 21st century to children around the world," said Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel.

Intel currently invests more than $100 million per year in over 50 countries to promote education, including efforts through the Intel Foundation, and has been developing products for the educational marketplace. Intel's focus on education for emerging markets is part of the Intel World Ahead program, the company's comprehensive approach to bring technology to everyone, anywhere in the world.

About One Laptop per Child
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. These machines will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy efficient that hand-cranking alone will generate sufficient power for operation. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection.

OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital. The corporate members are AMD, Brightstar, Chi Lin, eBay, Google, Intel, Marvell, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, Red Hat and SES Astra. More information is available at www.laptop.org.

VMware And Intel Capital Announce Investment

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for virtualization solutions today announced that Intel Corporation, through its global investment arm, Intel Capital has agreed to become an investor in VMware. VMware's base virtualization platform virtualizes the Intel architecture. Intel microprocessors comprise the majority of the systems on which VMware's virtualization products are deployed.

Intel Capital will invest $218.5 million in VMware's Class A common stock subject to customary regulatory and other closing conditions including Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) review. At the completion of VMware's planned initial public offering and upon closing of the investment, Intel will own approximately 2.5 percent of VMware's total outstanding common stock (less than one percent of the combined voting power of VMware's outstanding common stock). Pursuant to the investment, an Intel executive is expected to be appointed to the VMware Board of Directors.

Intel's investment is intended to foster strengthened inter-company collaboration towards accelerating VMware virtualization product adoption on Intel architecture and reinforcing the value of virtualization technology for customers.

In addition, VMware and Intel have entered into a routine and customary collaboration partnering agreement that expresses their intent to continue to expand their cooperative efforts around joint development, marketing and industry initiatives.

About VMware, Inc.
VMware, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC), is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.VMware.com.

About Intel
Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

New Intel Products Simplify and Speed Software Development for Multi-Core Processors

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of two software products that help developers efficiently create more reliable, high-performing applications that speed up a computer's responsiveness. The Intel® C++ Compiler and Fortran Professional Editions bring together a unique combination of highly optimizing compilers, performance libraries and the Intel® Threading Building Blocks.

The products feature new automatic support for accelerating program performance on Intel's latest multi-core processors. Applications containing 3-D graphics or video are automatically accelerated through the use of vectors via Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), including the latest SSE 4 instructions. Application performance is also accelerated by multi-core processors through the use of multiple threads. Combining the use of vectors and threads and integrating them with a technology known as loop transformation generates greater performance on multi-core processors without requiring developers to rewrite their code.

"Combining these capabilities in a cooperative and coordinated manner brings our customers added performance benefits and compiler reliability, which in turn gives greater PC responsiveness for gamers and everyday PC users," said Kevin J. Smith, director of the Intel Compiler Products. "This project has undergone extensive validation and application testing with Intel customers and we're excited about the results our customers are seeing in their applications."

The combined capabilities also provide benefits that extend beyond multi-core optimizations by assisting developers in locating vulnerabilities that would otherwise go undetected, such as uninitialized variables and possible buffer overruns.

The Intel® C++ Professional Edition for Windows*, Linux* and Mac OS* X combines the Intel compiler with the Intel® Math Kernel Library, the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives and the Intel® Threading Building Blocks.

The Intel Fortran Compiler Professional Edition for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X combines the Intel compiler with the Intel Math Kernel Library. For the first time, the Intel® Visual Fortran Compiler 10.0 now includes Microsoft Visual Studio, which provides the visual development environment to create, edit, build and debug Fortran applications.

The new products are all available today with suggested prices ranging from $599 to $1,599. Upgrades to the Professional Editions from the prior version of Intel compilers or libraries are available for limited time through resellers worldwide.

Intel also announced a new package for students that include all of these products as well as Intel® VTune Performance Analyzer, Intel® Thread Checker and Intel® Thread Profiler in one discounted package for students who qualify.

Intel® Software provides resources, technologies, products and services developers need to create innovative products and industry-leading software solutions with enhanced business value and are designed to run best on Intel platforms. For more information, visit www.intel.com/software/products

Intel Introduces '3-Series' Chipsets at Computex

In his opening keynote at the Computex computer trade show, Intel Corporation Executive Vice President Sean Maloney unveiled the new Intel® 3 Series Chipset family along with several other technology plans that surround the company's popular Intel® Core™ 2 Duo and Quad processors for home and business PC users.

The products enable a number of innovative features for today's PCs such as greater PC performance, clearer definition video and storage technologies that help better protect valuable data. Maloney, also Intel's general manager, Sales and Marketing Group, and chief sales and marketing officer, said the chipsets are also designed to be used with the company's upcoming Intel 45 nanometer (nm) "Penryn family" processors expected later this year. More than 100 motherboard designs are underway, and he expects the new chipset family to be the fastest growing in Intel's history.

"There is a tremendous amount of excitement and anticipation for our forthcoming 45nm Hi-K processors based on the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture," Maloney said. "The Intel 3 Series chipsets lay the foundation for an exciting, media-rich experience for today's systems and those that arrive later this year."

Maloney also said that Intel and Asustek are working together to offer a family of education focused, low-cost mobile PCs, with one model below $200. Asustek's mobile PCs will play a key role in Intel's World Ahead program that aims to accelerate access to fully featured computers and technology for anyone, anywhere around the world.

Maloney also disclosed plans for an Intel Core 2 Extreme mobile processor product to be released by Intel in the third quarter of this year. The plan follows the company's Extreme Edition brand introduced for desktop PCs in 2003 and extends it to laptops, which continues to be the fastest-growing computing market segment. The upcoming chip is targeted to be the company's highest-performing mobile dual-core processor that still includes energy-saving power features for notebook-friendly designs.

New Chipsets Advance Consumer, Business Experience
The Intel® 3 Series Chipsets, formerly codenamed "Bearlake" enable exceptional PC performance while helping to enable improved energy efficiency, system design and quietness. Computers with these chipsets can deliver CE-like video and sound quality and new data security and manageability features for business users and will be the foundation for Intel's next-generation Intel® Viiv™ processor technology and Intel® vPro™ processor technology, codenamed Salt Creek and Weybridge, respectively.

The Intel 3 Series Chipsets support DDR2 up to 800MHz, or DDR3 memory with data transfer speeds up to 1333 MHz, enabling speedy access to files and a more responsive PC. The chipsets also support PCI Express* 2.0, which doubles the available bandwidth for graphics cards and are engineered to support Intel® Turbo Memory which enables faster application loading and boot times.

The Intel 3 Series Chipsets also includes versions with integrated graphics called the Intel® G33 and G35 Express Chipsets. These products will include Intel® Clear Video Technology which can enhance video playback and supports the High Definition Media Interface (HDMI). System manufacturers can also support HD DVD* and Blu-ray* disc playback with these chipsets at a lower system cost than most discrete graphics cards. Additionally, the G35 integrates hardware support for MS DX10 for smoother, more realistic 3D applications.

Intel® graphics fully support Windows* Vista Home Premium and the Windows* Aero interface. All of the Intel 3 Series Chipsets enable users to add up to six external drives to a PC for extra data protection and performance, Intel® High Definition Audio for up to 7.1 theater-like surround sound quality and Intel® Quiet System Technology to help enable reduced system noise and heat for a much quieter, yet high-performing PC.

The Intel® G33 and P35 Express Chipsets have been shipping since April, while the Intel® Q33 and Q35 Express Chipsets are shipping now ahead of their Q3'07 introduction. The Intel® G35 Express Chipset and the advanced Intel® X38 enthusiast chipset with dual graphics support will ship within 90 days.

New Intel Tools Help Developers Create, Debug And Tune Applications For Windows Vista And Latest Multi-Core Processors

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of new versions of its Intel® Thread Checker, Intel® Thread Profiler, Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer and Intel® Threading Building Blocks. These software development products enable developers to create more reliable, scalable applications, and have now been enhanced for the latest multi-core processors – Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX6800 and Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q6600 – and newest operating systems - Microsoft Vista*, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise*, Red Hat Enterprise Linux* and Fedora Core*.

"Our Intel Core 2 processors have essential new profiling capabilities we're taking advantage of for the first time in our VTune Analyzer 9.0. Since nearly all systems shipping with Windows Vista will be multi-core systems, developers targeting Vista have been asking us for these parallelism tools," said James Reinders, director of marketing for Intel's Developer Products Division. "Developers on all operating systems want their move to parallelism well supported by development tools and we're committed to keeping up with our aggressive pace of supporting developers in as many ways as possible."

Performing multiple tasks simultaneously is referred to as "running in parallel." Parallelism is accessed in hardware and operating systems with the concept of threads of execution that are easier to program when abstracted into the software concepts of data and task parallelism. Intel Software Development products are the latest example of the company's commitment to simplify parallel programming and represent an efficient way for development teams to prepare applications for multi-core processors. These products ensure threaded applications are scaleable, reliable and optimized for current and future processor innovations.

Intel Thread Checker 3.1 for Windows and Linux detects errors in the coding of parallelism so that developers can introduce threading more safely and quickly. With its patented advanced error protection engine, the product provides "thread safety" by identifying the most obscure threading errors in 64-bit applications. This tool is enhanced with optimized performance for lower instrumented image size and runtime overhead, which gives developers even faster analysis.

Intel Thread Profiler 3.1 for Windows provides developers with insight into how application threads behave and pinpoints parallel performance issues such as bottlenecks. It allows developers to measure the number of cores that are effectively utilized by the application and indicates the percentage of the code that is not optimally parallelized for the hardware platform on which the application is running. This updated version now offers selectable stackwalking for much faster analysis and display, and is easier to use repeatedly through support for automatic recall of custom configuration settings within an activity. This updated product increases consistency and saves developers time on repetitive tasks.

Intel Threading Building Blocks 1.1 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X is a C++ template library that simplifies introducing threads to an application, making performance gains possible while shielding software developers from the low-level complexity of assigning threads to processor cores. It enables developers to write an application once that automatically recognizes the number of available cores and scales performance appropriately. This enhanced version includes an automatic grain size calculator for optimal algorithm parallelization.

Intel VTune Performance Analyzer 9.0 is a solution that helps developers run their software faster on single and multi-core systems. Vista users now have full support, including Intel's new signed driver, which will install without Vista blocking for security concerns. Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad processors have significantly enhanced performance analysis capabilities and support more events, higher precision in event location correlation and an innovative new pipeline stall accounting. The stall accounting features radically improve tuning by focusing the user on instances of possible issues, such as cache misses.

VTune 9.0 for Linux offers a new connection between the Intel compiler's analysis and VTune run time analysis of hotspots. This new version contains an intuitive hotspot navigator that enables developers to scroll to the source from hotspot to hotspot. This allows users to identify hotspots and benefit from the knowledge built into the Intel compiler.

Pricing and Availability

Intel VTune Performance Analyzer 9.0, Intel Threading Building Blocks 1.1, Intel Thread Checker 3.1 and Intel Thread Profiler 3.1 are available today. Suggested pricing for the products: Intel VTune 9.0 $699; Intel Threading Building Blocks 1.1 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems $299; Intel Thread Checker 3.1 for Windows and Linux $999 and $499, respectively; and Intel Thread Profiler 3.1 for Windows $299.

Intel provides software products, training, resources, technologies and services software developers need to create innovative products and industry-leading software solutions that run best on Intel platforms. Intel offers a complete line of software development products, including compilers, libraries and analysis tools, which enable developers to get more performance out of their systems and applications. Intel software developer products offer industry leading support for parallel programming for systems of all sizes. For more information, visit www.intel.com/software/products.

Intel Delivers Its Fastest Enthusiast Quad-Core Processor

Intel Corporation today advanced its enthusiast-level quad-core processor family with the introduction of the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor QX6800, the company's twelfth quad-core processor offering. Running at 2.93 GHz -- the fastest native clock speed yet reached with the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture for the quad-core desktop -- this addition to Intel's innovative processor family sets new standards for desktop PC performance. The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 is ideal for those gamers, digital design professionals and enthusiasts who crave the highest performing computers they can get their hands on.

At the recent Game Developer's Conference* in San Francisco, several software developers demonstrated new games that have been "threaded" to take advantage of multiple processor cores and threads. This increased performance can help deliver smoother gameplay, more realistic game effects and more lifelike artificial intelligence. Some of the most exciting titles of the year such as Crytek’s Crysis*, Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander* and Flagship's Hellgate London* have undergone substantial joint engineering efforts with Intel to use more than two processing threads to their advantage.

One of the first games ever developed for the PC is also entering the quad-core era. "The latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator* X, Service Pack One (SP1), due out later this month, is a great match for the extreme multi-core processing delivered by the new Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor," said Phil Taylor, Flight Sim Program Manager, Microsoft Game Studios. "Flight Sim X SP1 greatly increases multicore utilization and will scale as more threads are available leading to reduced load times as well as frame rate improvements and greater visual complexity during flight. The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft is pleased to work with Intel to provide our end users with a great gaming experience."

In addition to delivering adrenaline to hardcore gamers, the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 is also being embraced by media users and developers. Adobe*, Cakewalk*, DivX*, Sony Creative Software* and dozens of other developers have delivered applications that use all four cores, enabling media professionals to do what they do best-- capture creativity quickly and reliably. For example, the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6800 is up to 65% faster1 than the Intel Core 2 Extreme dual-core processor X6800 on video encoding. This is a key capability as more households are recording and editing high-definition video to capture, preserve and share memories.

"The performance and technology leadership we are delivering with our enthusiast quad-core processor lineup is a direct result of the reliability provided by Intel's manufacturing and engineering strength," said Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group. "This translates to user benefits such as better gameplay with more intelligent computer-generated opponents and less wait time for demanding high-definition media editing."

The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 is produced on Intel's industry-leading 65 nanometer process, key to enabling the large 8 megabyte cache. A 1066 MHz system bus is supported and the processor is available now at a cost of $1,199.


* Other brands may be claimed as the property of others.

1 1 MainConcept* H.264 Encoder v2.1 using input file 30sec long, 1920x1080 HD mpeg2 video clip with a bitrate of about 18000kpbs. Output is H.264 format video encoded at 6000 kbps. Details and system specs at http://www.intel.com/performance/desktop/extreme/video_encoding.htm