The idea of putting notebook computers into the hands of kids around the world to allow them to improve their education is a noble thought. The field was pioneered by the OLPC with its XO Notebook and an early partner with the OLPC was Intel.

Once Intel caught a glimpse of what the market could be for ultra low cost notebooks it entered the fray with its own low cost notebook called the Classmate. Intel announced today that it has the second generation Classmate ready for use around the world.

On Sunday Intel launched new processors with smaller chips that go by the name Penryn that are produced with a 45 nanometer process which is significantly smaller than the 65 nanometer process used today. Intel announced plans for this launch earlier this fall which introduces such small circuitry thirty million of these 45nm-wide circuits could fit on the head of a pin.

There are multiple advantages to this smaller design. First, the smaller circuits allow Intel to create more chips using the same single platter of silicon making overall production more efficient and Intel is expecting as much as a 15 percent increase in processing speed with the new design. It also currently puts them undeniably in front of rival Advanced Micro Design in an ongoing head-to-head battle for the fastest and most efficient processors. AMD launched 65 nm chips earlier in the year as well as a triple core processor, and plans to also have 45nm chips in production by next year.

Intel along with HP, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments Incorporated have announced the formation of the USB 3.0 Promoters Group with a goal of creating the next generation of USB interconnect for use with PC’s and other mobile and consumer gadgets.

As need for increased storage continues to grow along with larger file sizes, the need for a faster connection becomes increasingly important. The USB 3.0 will create a new standard that will be backwards compatible to support existing USB 2.0 and 1.1 connections while providing the ability to transfer data at 10 times the current speed available with USB 2.0.

Intel announced today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Fancisco that the companies next generation of processors, code named “Penryn”, are slated to start hitting the streets November 12. This announcement continues to fuel the race between Intel and rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, who within the last week unveiled new quad-core and triple-core processors.

The new Penryn chips from Intel promise a 20 percent performance boost along with improved energy efficiencies over the current chips available. The new Penryn’s are able to achieve faster processing with less energy due to the companies new 45 nanometer manufacturing process, which creates ridiculously small circuitry that’s only 45 billionth of a meter wide. Thirty million of these circuits could fit on the head of a single pin. Moving ahead to the 45 nanometer production gives Intel an additional edge over AMD in the processor manufacturing race since both companies currently product chips using 65 nanometer construction.

Intel unveiled six new chips today that raise the industry’s benchmark for how fast quad-core processors can run handling multi-processor servers. Translated from geek speak, these chips run amazingly fast but you don’t need them for your home PC. However, they will help the companies that handle your banking, phone service, cable provider and so on.

The sextet of Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series processors, dubbed Tigerton, deliver more than twice the performance and more than three times the performance per watt over Intel’s earlier generation of dual-core clips. The fastest model is the X7350 running at 2.93GHz, 8M bytes of shared on-chip cache and a thermal design power of 130 watts. The next fastest is the E7340 at 2.4 GHz and the same 8M cache followed by the E7330 at 2.4 GHz (6M cache). Next follows the E7320 and E7310 with both having 4M bytes of shared cache and pace along at processing speeds of 2.13GHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. Finally there is the L7345 at 1.86GHz and a 8M cache, designed exclusively for blade servers and high-density rack servers.

Intel has announced the first laptop CPU for the companies Extreme Edition of processors called the Core 2 Extreme X7800. The X7800 is a 2.6GHz processor with 4MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz front-side bus which all makes for great news to gamers who would like to get desktop-like gaming performance out of a mobile computer. In addition, this new high-end mobile chip will have nothing to stop you from overclocking it, at your own risk of course.

On Friday Intel announced that it will join Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative to provide inexpensive computers to the children of developing nations. This announcement came as somewhat of a surprise to many since Intel also has a similar, what some might say competing, initiative with its Classmate PC.

The Classmate PC from Intel is priced at $225 and requires external power, while the OLPC machine, originally targeted for $100, is now costing $175 and is powered by cranking a handle …

Notebooks utilizing Intel’s latest Santa Rosa upgrade to the Centrino platform recently launched on computers from Dell, HP and Gateway many other manufacturers.

“When we introduced Intel Centrino 4 years ago, Intel changed the computing landscape with our mobile innovations,” said Intel vice president Mooly Eden. “Now, simply said, we have improved virtually all aspects of Intel-based notebooks, the most popular and fastest growing computing market segment in the world.”

The new “Santa Rosa” promises to add less power consumption and in turn a longer battery life for you notebook without …

Today Intel announced a new addition to its quad-core processor family with the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800.

The Core 2 Extreme delivers the fastest clock speed ever reached for Intel in a quad-core desktop. While this is good news for really any type of processor intensive applications, where it really gets the most notice is from the gamers. Intel mentioned some games that are already built utilizing the quad-core functionality to improve gaming performance, such as Crysis, Supreme Commander and Hellgate London. Intel stated that these games have …

Today Intel, a world leader in silicon innovation, took their first crack at a new product line of solid state drives based on Nand flash memory.

The new Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive is intended to be used in the place of traditional hard drives offering a more cost-effective and high-performance storage solution. The Nand flash-based drives can offer quicker boot times and faster data access while using less power in systems such as PC’s, routers and gaming devices. Aside from just being able to improve boot …

As chip design companies, Intel and AMD are locked in a seemingly never-ending race to outperform the other, with every little technological advantage that they can wring out of their designs trickling down to the bottom line and how much money they stand to make.

However, it looks like Intel just took the lead with today’s announcement that it is now selling more energy-efficient quad-core microprocessors. For companies that have data centers, the annual power savings could be significant if they used the power wise chips. Intel says that its new …

Today Intel and Motion in Computing have both announced the Motion C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA). The C5 is the first product built on Intel’s MCA platform and is designed for use in the health care setting to allow providers to spend more time near patients while staying connected and can also help with medication administration.

The MCA platform is the Intel’s first built specifically for healthcare and works towards connecting clinicians on health care facility floors to real-time information with a light, durable and easily-disinfected …

Pictured here is ASCI Red which was the first computer to reach a Teraflops of processing, equal to trillions of calculations per second. ASCI Red did this in 1996 using almost 10,000 Pentium Processors running at 200MHz and using 500kW of power. (Another 500kW of juice was needed to keep the room cool.)

Intel has now announced just over 10 yeas later that they have developed the world’s first processor that will deliver the same Teraflops performance all on one single 80-core chip using less electricity than a typical single-core processor at …

Today Intel has announced plans for their next generation processor chips, intended to improve processing speeds and increase the lead between themselves and their competition when the new chips go into production. The new processor, code named Penryn, will used a 45 nanometer manufacturing process to provide faster processing on the same amount of physical space without significant changes to power consumption.

Intel’s ability to improve performance is due to the implementation of high-k dielectrics and metal material for the transistor gate electrodes. According to Mark Bohr, senior fellow at Intel, the …

The wireless connectivity options on a laptop are becoming increasingly important considering the growing availability of bandwidth-consuming content such as movies, videos and music. The quality of this experience can be limited by current networking technologies which may not provide adequate bandwidth or wireless range.

To help with this problem, Intel is promoting a new wireless product that works with its Centrino Duo line of processors to assist users in getting more out of their wireless networks. Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N is based on the draft 802.11n Wi-Fi specification and offers users …