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Intel’s adoption of a hybrid core architecture has significantly changed the roadmap of the PC space. More and more applications are now taking advantage of the “secondary” low-power P-cores to boost performance as well as efficiency. Of course, this approach has its own shortcomings, which Intel plans to iron out in the coming years. The first, most radical change involves replacing hyper-threading with a more efficient pseudo-multi-threaded solution: Rentable Units. As far as the different applications running on your PC are concerned, they can’t differentiate between the physical and logical cores born out of hyper-threading. They see all as equal....

My PC has been running slowly at times during the past several months. Some time ago, I thought I had done enough troubleshooting to conclude I needed more RAM, so I added 4GB and now have 8GB. However, the slowness continues. Now I see that when I am loading a new web page in my browser, or a web page update with new content, the CPU usage goes up to 70-90%, and that is when it slows for a while. I have tried using Waterfox (64-bit version of Firefox) and Edge with the same symptoms and results, so it isn't...

Users have complained that the updates released by Microsoft last week for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities cause Windows to break down on some computers with AMD processors. Several individuals whose computers rely on AMD processors, particularly older Athlon models, say they are unable to start Windows 10 after installing KB4056892, an update released by Microsoft in response to the disclosure of serious flaws affecting Intel, AMD and ARM processors. The security holes have been dubbed Spectre and Meltdown and they allow malicious applications to bypass memory isolation mechanisms and access passwords, photos, documents, emails, and other sensitive information. Both...

Only Intel machines are affected by Meltdown Details have emerged on two major processor security flaws this week, and the industry is scrambling to issue fixes and secure machines for customers. Dubbed “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” the flaws affect nearly every device made in the past 20 years. The Meltdown flaw only affects Intel processors, and researchers have already released proof of concept code that could lead to attacks using Meltdown. The vulnerabilities allow an attacker to compromise the privileged memory of a processor by exploiting the way processes run in parallel. They also allow an attacker to use JavaScript code...

The fix requires major OS rewrites which will probably make your computer run slower. An extremely severe security flaw has been found to affect nearly every Intel processor made in the past decade or more, giving any hackers who might know how to exploit it access to protected information systemwide. The Register reports that programmers are rushing to make the sweeping changes necessary to protect against the vulnerability on Linux and Windows operating systems, with such fixes required on macOS as well. Even worse, you can expect these vital updates to noticeably slow down your computer. The design flaw in...

Just a quick question to all computer gurus- I have an old Pentium 4 2200, and have to replace the cpu cooler/fan, so I ordered one that is supposed to work with socket 478, but the contact pad that came with it is much smaller than the one that came with the computer's cpu cooler which needs replacing- Can I simply grease the new pad and install it? or will I need to purchase new larger pad?

I have a Dell notebook that's about 5 years old. Windows 7. It works fine most of the time, but every few hours it goes into a mode where the CPU goes straight to 100% usage and stays there, making it unusable. Sometimes it self corrects after 15 minutes or an hour, or sometimes I have to do a hard reboot. Then it works fine again for a while. Any suggestions?

Russia's policy on Western technology is clear: The country can live without it, especially if key issues like economic sanctions, NSA spying and GPS cooperation aren't resolved to its leader's satisfaction. It looks like this tough stance extends to US-designed computer chips too, as a Russian business newspaper is reporting that state departments and state-run companies will no longer purchase PCs built around Intel or AMD processors. Instead, starting in 2015, the government will order up to one million devices annually based on the "Baikal" processor, which is manufactured by a domestic company called T-Platforms.

Hello, I'm looking for some technical help and FR never steers me wrong! I have an older Hewlett Packard xw8400 workstation that came with one CPU and it is now running 64 bit Windows 7 with the 2010 BIOS update. I've now inherited another 8400 that isn't working and I've transplanted the RAM, a hard drive, and the CPU to my original machine. The motherboard has two CPU slots and the new CPU fan runs fine in the slot. But I'm not getting the new CPU to run. I also can't find in the BIOS how to enable multiprocessor support....

Adding cores to the CPU has become the general recipe to ensure performance improvements in modern computers, even if we have heard before than the IT industry will face efficiency problems beyond 16 cores. New research published by MIT now suggests that the industry will be running into a soft wall when 48 cores are reached and new operating system architectures may be required. Intel Core i7 Die The number of cores in modern CPUs has grown much slower than we initially anticipated. The first mainstream quad-core processor (Intel Kentsfield), followed just 18 months after the release of the first...

One flip of a bit in the memory of an onboard computer appears to have caused the change in the science data pattern returning from Voyager 2, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Monday, May 17. A value in a single memory location was changed from a 0 to a 1. On May 12, engineers received a full memory readout from the flight data system computer, which formats the data to send back to Earth. They isolated the one bit in the memory that had changed, and they recreated the effect on a computer at JPL. They found the...

When US Air Force researchers last year created the mother-of-all-processors using Sony PlayStation-3 game consoles, it seemed like a stroke of cost-saving genius.To deliver a 53-TerraFLOP processing cluster, the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., hoovered up 1,700 PlayStation-3 game consoles, then harnessed the power of their combined processors to evaluate new breakthroughs in technology for synthetic aperture radar, high definition video and something called "neuromorphic computing". At the time, the researchers noted that two PlayStation-3 consoles provide 150 GigaFLOPs of processing power for $600, but a single 3.2GHz cell processor delivers 200 GFLOPs for $8,000. Why spend the...

Hewlett-Packard says it has made a discovery in electrical engineering that could one day lead to computer systems and handheld devices that are dramatically faster and more energy efficient than what's possible using today's technology. The discovery relates to technology based on a basic element of electrical engineering called a "memristor," which an HP Labs team first demonstrated in 2008 as a resistor with memory. While researchers initially believed the memristor-based technology would only be useful in storage devices, they have recently learned that it can perform logic. If such technology can one day be used in developing a new...

It's official. We're now entering the six-core realm, thanks to Intel's Gulftown. The first model, Core i7-980X, is more than capable of delivering the sick scores that our title suggests, and along with it, we can begin to see some major benefits of the 32nm process. To sweeten the deal further, Intel even includes an effective new CPU cooler.IntroductionIn May of 2005, both AMD and Intel delivered the world's first desktop dual-core CPU's, and since then, the processor technology and increase in performance from generation to generation has accelerated to mind-boggling levels. I'm not sure if it's a sickness, but...

Note: title suffix – “autosuggest still blocked” has been removed, see update2 at bottom of story. We’ve had the term “global warming” in the lexicon since well before the Internet became a household tool, certainly well before Google itself. So it is with amazement that I report the rise of a new term, “Climategate” in just a little over 1 week in the Google search engine.

I'll have this as link only.

Motherboard died. HD seems OK. So time to upgrade with new motherboard. Seriously contemplating Asus M3A78 with Quad core Phenom and 4GB. Any experiences, cautions, or alternate suggestions? Have to run out so if I don't respond immediately will still check on your recommendations when I get back.

Intel Corporation is presenting a paper at the SIGGRAPH 2008 industry conference in Los Angeles on Aug. 12 that describes features and capabilities of its first-ever forthcoming “many-core” blueprint or architecture codenamed “Larrabee.” Details unveiled in the SIGGRAPH paper include a new approach to the software rendering 3-D pipeline, a many-core (many processor engines in a product) programming model and performance analysis for several applications. The first product based on Larrabee will target the personal computer graphics market and is expected in 2009 or 2010. Larrabee will be the industry’s first many-core x86 Intel architecture, meaning it will be based...

Intel Corp. today announced that it expects to ship a six-core processor to resellers in the second half of this year. With 1.9 billion transistors and 16MB of Level 3 cache, the six-core chip, code-named Dunnington, will be built with Intel's new 45 nanometer technology, according to Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group."The big cache and six cores will give customers a nice bump in performance," Gelsinger said during a press briefing today about the company's product road map and its upcoming Intel Developer Forum, slated to be held next month in Shanghai....

Submerging computer chips in oil could make them more energy efficient, according to a UK company that hopes to start selling such systems within a year. The microprocessors inside servers and desktop computers are normally cooled using fans that blow air across the components. But UK a company called Very-PC hopes to see a much more radical, oil-based alternative, take off instead. "It is possible to cut power consumption in half," managing director Peter Hopton told New Scientist. "You don't need to drive inefficient fans, or the usual air conditioning." Hopton first got the idea after seeing computer enthusiasts discuss...