July 1 - 4:55pm EDT   Apple and NVIDIA may be engaged in a fierce dispute that could exclude NVIDIA graphics chips from future Macs, according to sources reportedly aware of the talks. They claim to SemiAccurate that Apple views NVIDIA's proposals for renewed deals as "arrogance" and that much of the argument centers on the overheating material that triggered widespread failures in all GeForce 8400M and 8600M mobile graphics chips. The Mac firm has had to extend MacBook Pro warranties for up to three years and may be skeptical of NVIDIA's insistence that newer models aren't at risk of the same problem. [full story]

July 1 - 8:45am EDT   HP today stepped up the power of its xw9400 workstations with the addition of AMD's six-core Opteron 2400 series to the mix. Also nicknamed Istanbul, the chips give a system as many as 12 cores. HP maintains AMD's view that the chips offer about 34 percent more performance per watt when compared to earlier quad-cores, which often use the same amount of energy. [full story]

May 26 - 4:10pm EDT   Intel today provided early official details about Nehalem-EX, the architecture that will form the foundation of the chip maker's highest-end Xeon processors. The design will stand as Intel's first eight-core processor and, thanks to Hyperthreading, will run as many as 16 program threads at once. It will also have the most bandwidth of any design with four QuickPath interfaces, which create a point-to-point link between the CPU, memory and peripherals. Each core will have as much as nine times the bandwidth of present-day Xeon 7400 processors. [full story]

May 19 - 12:50pm EDT   The next generation of Xeon server processors will be introduced on May 26th, according to an early Intel announcement. The Nehalem-EX series is based on the same platform as Intel's Core i7 chips, but is explicitly intended for high-end server use. Each processor incorporates eight cores, and can be used in multi-socket configurations. New power gates are said to reduce energy consumption, and 16 threads can be calculated simultaneously. [full story]

April 2 - 11:25pm EDT   Apple today has accidentally confirmed plans of its own to launch Xserve rackmount servers based on Xeon processors using Intel's Nehalem architecture. A Hong Kong product page (still active as of this writing) has a broken image link that asks users to "pre-order the new Xserve using Intel Xeon (Nehalem)" but doesn't take visitors to a relevant page. No specifications or other details have surfaced with the link itself. [full story]

March 30 - 5:50pm EDT   HP on Monday announced the upcoming release of three new Z-series workstation PCs. The flagship Z800, mid-range Z600 and entry-level Z400 are powered by Intel's Nehalem-era Xeon processors and require no tools to access and service all of their components, including their power supplies and motherboards. The modular interior design is cable-less, while the exteriors are designed by BMW Group Designworks USA and thought to add extra appeal to normally plain pro systems. The flagship Z800 Workstation is meant for highly-advanced applications such as 3D animation, broadcast video or medical imaging. [full story]

March 30 - 4:30pm EDT   Intel this afternoon finally made its Nehalem-based Xeon processors available to a wider audience. First introduced in the Mac Pro, the single-socket Xeon 3500 (not used by Apple) and the dual-socket Xeon 5500 share the same roots as Core i7 and drop the old northbridge system controller and system bus in favor of a point-to-point architecture known as the QuickPath Interface that talks directly to memory and peripherals. The memory controller is now built-in and can talk to three memory channels, improving bandwidth even as it drops lag. [full story]

March 27 - 9:00am EDT   NVIDIA late Thursday filed a countersuit (PDF) against Intel, accusing the semiconductor firm of a breach of contract. The response follows Intel's earlier formal complaint and accuses Intel of violating a 2004 license for NVIDIA by denying it the rights to build mainboard chipsets for Intel processors that use integrated memory controllers, which includes any Core i7 chip as well as newer Xeon chips like the 3500 and 5500 series. NVIDIA is currently only being allowed to engineer for processors no more advanced than Core 2. [full story]

March 25 - 11:40am EDT   Dell is about to introduce three new Precision T-series PCs based on Intel's Nehalem platform. While the threesome has not been made fully official, Engadget has obtained early details and photos. The T3500 will have support for up to 24GB of RAM and should come priced starting at $999. [full story]

March 3 - 9:15am EST   Apple on Tuesday morning updated the Mac Pro Mac Pro based on Intel's Nehalem architecture. The first-ever Mac to use the technology now supports triple-channel, DDR3 ECC memory and builds a memory controller directly into an updated, faster line of Xeon processors. Doing so gives about 2.4 times more memory bandwidth and reduces memory lag by about 40 percent, according to Apple. The new systems also have an updated interior that provides much easier access to RAM slots as well as space for a RAID card that doesn't require cables to link with hard drives in the four bays above. [full story]

March 2 - 5:10pm EST   New Macs based on Intel's Nehalem platform -- consisting of Core i7 and updated Xeon processors -- should indeed become available within the next few months, says UBS analyst Maynard Um. The research firm cites checks, which not only say that Mac OS X 10.5.7 will pave the way for Nehalem, but that the update could be released to the public as soon as this month. Rumors of a March 24th computer launch are said to aid this view, although Um observes that UBS cannot yet confirm any event. [full story]

February 23 - 4:10pm EST   Intel has begun the week with three new low-power Xeon processors as well as a price drop on its most important Atom processor. The Xeon L3110 clocks in at 3GHz across its dual cores and 6MB of Level 2 cache but consumes a more modest 45W of power, suiting it to very compact workstations and rackmount servers. A higher-end Xeon L3360 uses a higher but still moderate 65W in return for a move to quad-core, a 2.83GHz clock speed and 12MB of cache. Topping the updates is the 3.16GHz, quad-core X3380 with the same amount of cache and 95W of energy use. [full story]

February 10 - 3:15pm EST   Intel at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference today provided some of the first concrete details of Westmere, the codename for its 32 nanometer processor family. The design is primarily a smaller, more efficient adaptation of the Nehalem architecture in the Core i7 but, in the dual-core desktop (Clarkdale) and notebook (Arrandale) offerings, will include both a two-channel DDR3 memory interface and an integrated but switchable graphics core. Like NVIDIA's Hybrid SLI mode or AMD's Hybrid CrossFire, the technology will let systems with dedicated graphics chipsets revert to Intel's own core in low-demand situations or when on battery. [full story]

February 2 - 5:20pm EST   Intel will release its Nehalem-based Xeons at the very end of the quarter, a late leak reveals. The semiconductor firm is believed to be readying the new Xeons for an unusual late March release that would see the first wave of processors announced on the 29th and available a day later. Pricing has also been corroborated for some chips and tops out at $1,557 for a 3.2GHz quad-core Xeon W5580, with a 2.93GHz parallel costing $1,349. [full story]

January 29 - 4:10pm EST   Intel will give its first public look at an 8-core Xeon processor in less than two weeks at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the show's schedule (PDF) reveals. The unnamed chip will double the core count of existing Xeons and is based on the same 45 nanometer manufacturing process and Nehalem architecture that underpins the Core i7. The shift adds Hyperthreading and will let even a single-socket Xeon processor theoretically address as many as 16 simultaneous program threads at once by putting two threads on each core. [full story]