Intel Talks Core i7 975 Extreme, Computex, Westmere and More

Dan Snyder is a technical PR manager specializing in high end client products like Core i7 Extreme Edition and Intel SSDs. Dan began his career with Intel in an engineering role at one of the company’s largest fabrication and assembly factories in Arizona. In 1994, he moved into a Technical Marketing position in Santa Clara involving Intel’s processors for mobile computers. From 1996 to 1999 Dan drove worldwide marketing initiatives with OEMs and Retailers for the Pentium Processor family of products before moving to Europe for five years in technical marketing there. Dan holds an Engineering degree from Columbia University and an MBA from Stanford.

Dan from Intel here to talk about some of the goodies we just launched at Computex this week. In my 15 years at Intel–both as an engineer and now in tech PR–I am always blown away at the constant churn of the treadmill and how our factories consistently crank out faster and better products. Take the Core i7-975 Extreme CPU we just announced, for example. It is a screamer and it gets all the goodness of a new process “stepping” where continuous improvements and tweaks to the architecture are implemented, not to mention a little clock speed kicker.

Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition Overclocked to 4.1GHz

HotHardware's review shows how well it overclocks, and both the i7-975 and i7-950 come in at the exact same price as the parts they supplant. I am always racking my brain for other industries besides tech that offer nearly a doubling of performance every few years for roughly the same price. Heck, if that applied to the airline industry my recent vacation to France would have been a 10 minute, $10 flight.

Intel Westmere System In Action

While I have your attention, I know lots of the enthusiasts (that’s YOU guys) dig the Core i7’s performance, but are looking for lower cost high performance solutions. Well, we also discussed the “next Nehalem,” codenamed Lynnfield at Computex, to be released in the second half of this year. This will be paired with lower cost chipsets, meaning lower cost boards, which in turn means lower cost systems. Our executives also reiterated that our next-gen 32nm CPU “Clarkdale” product is on track for production in Q4 of this year. We have also publicly demonstrated our 32nm processor family, codenamed “Westmere” which is slated for production in Q4 of this year. These processors will offer our first 32nm process implementation (meaning faster, smaller, more efficient) and graphics integrated on the processor package. Stay tuned for more info at IDF this fall. Lots of good news and things for you guys to look forward to in CPU land this year.

We'd also love to know what’s on your mind and if you have any questions for Intel... Can’t guarantee I can answer everything, we do need to keep a few secrets, hehe...but we'll do what we can!