IDF: Larrabee, Xeon 3000, Gulftown, Westmere...

A slight pres release malfunction at IDF has led to the afternoon keynote from Sean Maloney appearing in the pigeon holes of the press room a little before its time. It would be impolite to reveal what it says. So here goes.

Expect Larrabee and a new enthusiast chip called Gulftown running ray-traced versions of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Larrabee has shipped in small numbers to developers, and the manycore x86 device is now firmly positioned as a next-gen graphics chip. Integrated graphics will also get a look-in, with Larrabee intended for integration with other functions "eventually" and Sandy Bridge 32nm processor demonstrated running video and 3D in a 'far-future' configuration.

Westmere, Intel's first 32nm processor, will get an outing and a pat on the back. Includes AES encryption on-chip, Turbo Boost and hyperthreading.

Servers get a look-in, after being practically ignored in Otellini's talk. Nehalem-EX will be better than the Xeon 5500 by an even greater margin than the 5500 was from its predecessors. Today's hot enterprise fashion, the converged datacentre, gets some new fabric based on Intel's 10GbE networking, there'll be a Xeon 3000 ultra-low voltage server chip running at 30w thermal envelope, a new 'micro-server' reference platform, more stuff on Jasper Forest embedded media/CE processor, and a vPro KVM remote control.

At least, that's what the press release says...