CPUs

Intel on Monday announced price cuts across a wide range of chips used in mobile and desktop PCs, including cuts of up to 40 percent for its quad-core chips.

The European Union's antitrust investigation of Intel is "discriminatory and partial," the chip maker complained in an action that's detailed in a recent edition of the EU's official journal, saying it's not being permitted to properly defend itself against the charges.

Microsoft Thursday said the next upgrade of its Windows Server operating system will scale up to 256 logical processors.

Intel has dropped the Centrino Atom brand after just five months, opting instead to use just the Atom brand across this part of its product line.

Consumer laptops and desktops could get faster and more power-efficient when Intel releases chips built around its new Nehalem microarchitecture in the second half of 2009.

Performance comparisons of Via Technologies' Nano processor and Intel's Atom chip conducted by several hardware-enthusiast sites Tuesday confirmed what many industry observers have long suspected: the Taiwanese processor company has produced a chip that outperforms Intel's offering for low-cost computers.

Intel Sunday announced that it has dropped the price of seven processors by up to 31%.

The popular Intel Atom microprocessors made for netbooks, or mini-laptops, costs 52 percent more per chip than the desktop version of the same processor.

The European Commission Thursday sent Intel a new set of antitrust charges, the second such charge list within a year, Europe's top regulator said in a statement.

Intel on Monday launched Centrino 2, its latest mobile platform, which the company claims will increase laptop battery life while delivering speedier performance and faster wireless connectivity.