Intel lets loose with 3rd gen Ivy Bridge tri-gate chips

Intel has released its first chips using tri-gate memory technology with the Core i5 and i7 series, dubbed Ivy Bridge, which it claims puts it years ahead of "the competition" – the chip giant's traditional name for AMD. The quad-core processors are Chipzilla's first 22nm range, and Intel claims the combination of reduced die …

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

Quote

System boot times have been cut Skaugen said, and the new chips include Smart Connect systems to download email and social networking content automatically.

Is this their major USP for these chips? Really? WTF?

I can't believe that Intel have spent time, money and silicon real estate on stuff that can download all those inane Twatter posts a few microseconds quicker. There MUST be more important things for their designers to be working on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: WTF?

More importantly, who's got a fast enough Internet connection for hardware-accelerated Twitter to matter?

[andreas koch]

Re: WTF?

Even more important than that: Who the f*&% wants to Twitter?

[h4rm0ny]

Re: WTF?

This post made me go back and re-read the article. Did it really say there was such a feature? Yes it actually did. Still not quite believing this, I checked out what Smart Connect actually does. And it's worse than you think! It's not "hardware accellerated Twitter". What it actually does is allow the hardware to connect to Twitter, email, Facebook whatever, WHILE THE LAPTOP IS ASLEEP! Basically, it periodically tuns over in its sleep, checks to see if any updates have come in and grabs them ready for when you resume.

Personally, like constantly getting txts when I'm trying to sleep myself, I can't see this as being any kind of good. I'll leave the security implications of the hardware accessing my various accounts below the OS level for others to contemplate.

I think AMD's combined GPU/CPU have actually got Intel rattled. I can't see how anything is better for low-power, reasonable performance simple devices than AMD's APUs. Assuming they can manufacture enough of the buggers, anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: WTF?

Smart Connect has been around since Sandy Bridge, so I don't know why he's mentioning it. It periodically syncs new content from Twitter, Facebook, Outlook etc whilst the system is sleeping. Pretty useless feature though.

[Dave 126]

Re: WTF?

It seems that Smart Connect is only as useful as the information you receive over email... if it is only inane social twatter, then yes, it is useless.

If you are receiving emails about local extreme weather conditions, seismic activity or some other information that is urgently important to you, then it might be a useful feature. Niche, but useful.

And then there are the many people for whom emailing is the primary function of their laptop- having things 'ready to go' as soon as possible after powering it up- this is very far from a niche segment. In this respect, it can be considered a logical extension to technologies designed to cut boot times.

If it is of no use to you, as I doubt it will be of use to me, turn it off in BIOS. We all have our personal computers set up in a way is, well, personal : D

[Ammaross Danan]

next....

when will they actually go on sale...?

[Gumby]

Where can I get a 6000x4000 monitor? to fit my 16 mp digital photos without any need to "actual size" them only to end up viewing only a small portion of the photo with any oridnary HD monitor..