Intel has made sure that their 34nm X25-M Gen 2 SSD will perform better than ever thanks to the new SSD Toolbox that will include an SSD Optimizer which allows users to monitor and manage the SSD’s health more effectively. Apart from that, the 160GB model will be able to experience a performance boost to sequential write speeds of up to 100MB/sec – that’s a cool 40% faster compared to what you’re getting from existing firmware.

Intel has placed pretty strict restrictions on the specifications of a netbook in order to keep things uniform, but the increase in netbook processing power would lead more and more people to push the envelope in terms of programs used, not to mention the roll out of Windows 7 that will probably soften Intel’s heart to allow 2GB RAM in netbooks when shipped instead of the current 1GB figure. This might mean a standard Intel Atom netbook featuring a 160GB or 250GB hard drive and 2GB RAM going for $299 to $349 from next year onwards.

Intel and AMD might soon have to face a new competitor in the form of Tilera with their newly developed 100-core processor that will attempt to muscle its way into the server market that is currently a monopoly by both Intel and AMD. The Tile-GX series of processors will target servers and appliances that execute Web-related functions including indexing, Web search and video search. Sipping nearly 55 watts of juice at maximum performance, it isn’t exactly a power-hungry chip, as you can see by its 16-core varianbt that draws a mere 5

It seems like we’re going to have to wait a little more for Intel’s Pine Trail, despite earlier reports, it seems that they won’t appear until early 2010, which fortunately isn’t that long away. The Atom processors have certainly contributed to the popularity of the netbooks in the market, and we’re hoping that when the Pine Trail processors are released, we’ll have some significant improvement in the netbook scene.

Super Talent launches its new line Performance Series DDR3 and Speed Series DDR3 4GB dual channel DDR3 kits for Core i5 and Core i7 systems based on Intel’s P55. There are in total nine kits and are available in speeds ranging from DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2200. Performance Series DDR3 WP200UX4G8 DDR3-2000 4GB (2x 2GB) Kit, 8-8-8-24 WP200UX4G9 DDR3-2000 4GB (2x 2GB) Kit, 9-9-9-28 WP160UX4G7 DDR3-1600 4GB (2x 2GB) Kit, 7-7-7-21 WP160UX4G8 DDR3-1600 4GB (2x 2GB) Kit, 8-8-8-24 WP160UX4G9 DDR3-1600 4GB (2x 2GB) Kit, 9-9-9-28 Speed Series

There’s a rumor about an Apple exclusivity on the Intel Xeon processor update. It would be used in the Mac Pro refresh and here’s what’s new: 6 Cores (12 threads), that’s 50% more than current Xeons 12MB of cache (versus 8MB now) 32nm manufacturing (versus 45nm) New Xeons will consume less power As it is the case with recent Intel CPUs, the new Xeons will achieve at least performance parity on single-threaded apps, but will increase performance on multi-thread apps dramatically. On the In/Out (I/O) side,

NVIDIA has stepped on the brakes when it comes to developing chipsets for Intel’s Nehalem-class processors, at least until there is a clear outcome of a legal dispute over the two companies’ licensing agreement. It is widely believed that the issue will be settled sometime next year, and a blip like this will not see NVIDIA stop support for and selling their existing chipsets for processors based on Intel’s older Frontside Bus (FSB) architecture, which will also comprise of the Ion graphics platform for Intel Atom-based

Intel’s latest CE4100 media processor is more or less a system-on-a-chip with a processor and graphics controller crammed onto a single chip that was built using a 45nm process. To sweeten the deal, it was built on the low power Atom processor core, making it the ideal “brain” for set top boxes including cable boxes and Blu-ray players, although it shouldn’t see any action in notebooks. Capable of running at clock speeds up to 1.2GHz while featuring FSB speeds of 200MHz to 400MHz while supporting playback of 2

Asus comes back with a new desktop replacement with Intel Core i7 processors for high definition cinematic visual enjoyment. The Asus M60J comes wih either Intel’s Core i7 720QM (1.6GHz) or 820QM (1.73GHz) processor, a 16-inch (1366×768) HD LCD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, up to 4GB DDR3 RAM, max 500GB of hard drive, and a 1GB of nVidia GeForce GT240M graphics card. According to ASUS, the M60J provides high definition cinematic visual enjoyment, true-to-life virtual surround sound, one-touch multimedia center, and extensive multimedia and data storage.

As expected, Intel just announced its Clarksfield laptop chips, bringing Core i7 to the laptop form factor. There’ll be three chips, two regular quad-cores and a Core i7 Extreme that can run as fast as 3.2GHz in Turbo mode, which selectively shuts off cores and uses the extra power to speed up the remaining cores while preserving battery life. The parts were demoed working in shipping-ready form on stage, but pricing and availability weren’t mentioned — we’ll let you know what we can dig up.