News for Thursday, 21 August 2008

While AMd and Nvidia are already working on similar technology, Intel demoed its solution to save battery lifetime by switching from a powerfull but power draining discrete GPU to a integrated graphics chipset depending on the work load. Couple of months ago, Nvidia introduced such concept wit hits "hybrid SLI" providing an intelligent power management especially usefull for notebook. If NVidia solution is based on NVidia discrete GPU and IGP, Intel demoned its technology by using a notebook featuring a NVidia discrete GPU and an Intel IGP. While draining 25 W when running on the discrete GPU, the power usage dropped by 9 W when switching from GPU to IGP. According to Intel it could extend battery lifetime by up to 1 hour. For us Mac users, it would then mean that MacBook Pro battery lifetime could increase by 1 hour when using only office suite or other 2D-type applications not requiring heavy 3D rendering.

Apple seems to have taken to heart some of criticisms on its lack of communication concerning the Mac in Europe and especially in France. One can find the following page in the last Contact magazine published by FNAC.

This publicity-information speaks about the simplicity of Mac and deflects some the falsehoods that salesmen like to hawk, such as the absence of MS Office under OS X. If these publications multiply, Apple could see an increase in growth take place in France.

The Penryn processors for portables can run one core in overclocked mode at a higher frequency if the other core is not being used. The goal is to offer a little additional power for applications that do not support multiple processors.
Intel will extend this function to all the Nehalem processors, whether they are intended for portables or office machines.
In fact, if a processor with 4 cores is running with only one or two in use, these will increase in frequency by a little less than 10%. The power can not exceed maximum thermal envelope defined for the complete CPU.
Since this all will be managed in a transparent way and without any risk, this additional power is always good to have, especially on of Mac Pro equipped with 8 cores where the majority pass a good part of their time doing nothing.