Intel Stuffing More Than 8 Cores Into Westmere-EX

The more cores, the more hardcore.

Intel's octacore server chip, the Xeon 7500 Nehalem-EX, is built on the 45nm process. For the next big evolution of the Xeon line, Intel hopes to be pushing even more cores when it takes it flagship to the 32nm Westmere-EX generation.

While the Westmere 32nm technology is in the Xeon 5600, Intel plans to extend that technology to EX sometime next year.

Stephen Smith, vice president and director of PC client operations and enabling at Intel, said during a webcast speech that the upcoming Westmere-EX chips will be targeted at systems with four sockets or more. The good news is that the Westmere-EX chips will be socket compatible for those who have already invested in the latest Xeon servers.

"We are well along in development and we are confident that we have a product that will give us a great performance boost. It will go into the same sockets, so the idea here is the platform is an investment that the OEMs have made," said Smith, according to the IDG.

Although Intel didn't divulge any information on core counts or clock speeds, analysts see that hitting 12 cores (for 24 threads) is a likely possibility given that AMD already has its Magny-Cours product.

WB Expands DVD to Blu-ray Upgrade Program

Warner Bros. is expanding its DVD2Blu program and lowering prices to boot.

Warner Brothers is expanding the company's DVD trade-in program that allows consumers to trade in standard definition movies and pay $10 to upgrade to the Blu-ray version of the same movie.

Announced in November, Warner's DVD2Blu program made things easier for folks looking to upgrade their existing DVD library to Blu-ray by offering them cheap rates for movies they already own. When it first began, the program had just 55 titles, but this week, Warner is expanding the approved list of movies to 85. It's still not huge, but hey, an extra 30 movies is an extra 30 movies, right?

Aside from the small bump in titles, WB is also lowering the cost of some upgrades. When the program started late last year, titles cost between $8 and $10 (along with the original copy of the movie). Now, the prices listed go as low as $5 (plus original copy) and the most expensive is $7.

In case you're wondering, the disks and packaging sent to WB are processed and used for future packaging.

Intel Wins Simulated Moorestown vs. iPad Battle

Intel's Atom running Chrome in Windows XP beats the Apple iPad running Safari.

Earlier this week Intel launched a new generation of Atom system-on-chip processors that are aimed capturing a share of the mobile market. Current and previous Atom chips have done an amazing job at monopolizing netbook hardware, but now Intel wants to go after the devices such as cell phones and tablets – an area dominated by ARM.

Right now, the king of ARM processors for mobile devices appears to be Apple A4 chip, which is widely believed to be a Samsung Cortex A8 chip clocked up to 1GHz. Apple touts the iPad as being incredibly fast, and hands-on experience has shown that the device is incredible smooth with the iPhone OS. But a new simulated test shows that Intel is faster, even while running Windows XP.

UMPC Portal ran a browser test between an iPad and Viliv X70, which has its Menlow-based Atom platform running at 800MHz. While this isn't a test between Moorestown and the ARM-based A4, the practical architectures between Menlow and Moorestown should be quite similar.

In a webpage loading test, the 800MHz Atom Menlow running the latest Chrome on Windows XP matched the loading speeds of Safari on the iPad. When the Atom was cranked up to Menlow's 1.3GHz ceiling, the Windows XP tablet was able to load faster than the iPad – even with Flash enabled. The simulation leads us to believe that the Moorestown running at a 1.5GHz speed would be even faster.

New Yahoo! Ad Slams Google for Being Too Bare

Yahoo!'s latest ad criticizes Google for driving users away with its minimalist and bare homepage.

Yahoo! has definitely come up with a clever way to differentiate itself from the competition and the, "You go there to leave" line is very strong. However, Google has always prided itself on being minimalist and only allowing bare essentials onto its homepage. The company even has a limit on how many words can appear there. Yahoo! is the opposite, preferring to brand itself as a portal. Google could just as easily fire back that Yahoo! is far too crowded and distracts users from what they're there to do.! is launching a new, $85 million ad campaign based around the company's still relatively new 'It's You' slogan. The Wall Street Journal carries the first commercial from this campaign and Yahoo! certainly isn't taking any prisoners; this one targets Google and the fact that "you come to this place so you can leave."

The voiceover for the commercial explains a theory people supposedly have about homepages. This theory is that the homepage should get you where you want to go and there should be nothing more to look at than a box and a button.

AT&T to Pay You Money Back For Your Slow DSL

Get ready to roll in pocket change!

If you've been an AT&T DSL subscriber after March 31, 1994, you may be entitled to some money from AT&T thanks to a class action settlement.

According to the IDG news service, current and past customers of AT&T DSL who had their DSL speeds configured by AT&T at a lower speed than promised in the plan is eligible for $2.90 per month while affected.

Those who had their DSL speeds configured by AT&T correctly but still experienced slower than expected speeds are eligible for a $2 per month settlement.

Finally, those who said that they experienced slower speeds but AT&T believes received the service they paid for will be eligible for a single $2 payment.

If that applies to you, then hit up this website here to file your claim before June 1, 2010.

In addition to the settlement sums, AT&T will make a $3.75 million charitable contribution on top of paying $11 million in legal fees.