Intel AppUp Center and Atom Developer Program

Apple's iTunes-based App Store represented a major shift in the distribution model for mobile applications, creating a single storefront where various developers could showcase their apps for the iPhone/iPod touch devices. Since then, the app store model has become the accepted and preferred software distribution method for most mobile platforms, with Microsoft, Google, RIM, and Palm all boasting their own app stores. Intel joined that list earlier this year with their Atom Developer Program and the AppUp Center (Beta) for Windows.

Intel is now releasing their AppUp Center (Beta) for the Moblin v2.1 operating system, the Atom-specific Linux distribution started by Intel in 2007. Intel is also announcing the availability of the AppUp Center in 27 European countries on March 31st. The AppUp Center is a new ecosystem for delivering consumer-centric applications to Atom-based systems, including netbooks, slates, and tablets. It offers a number of different apps, with multimedia, casual gaming, basic productivity, education, and web-apps specifically optimized for the smaller screen sizes and increased portability of netbook and tablet devices.

Netbooks and MID-style slate tablets have always been caught in between smartphones and laptops, both size-wise and feature-wise. While the Atom-based devices do run Windows, they are not as capable as fully powered Windows machines, making the user experience somewhat fragmented and not as cohesive as on a mobile platform with device specific development. With the AppUp Center, Intel hopes to change that, with applications developed specifically for the Atom device platforms, like mapping applications for slates and a Boxee client for netbooks. With applications developed with content consumption in mind and delivered in a consumer-friendly app store, the AppUp Center serves to bridge the netbook user experience between smartphones and notebooks.

AMD's 12-core "Magny-Cours" Opteron 6174 vs. Intel's 6-core Xeon

If the Westmere Xeon EP were a car engine, it would've been made by Porsche. With "only" six cores, each core in the new Xeon offers almost twice the performance of the competition. A 32nm CPU that only occupies 248 mm² the Westmere Xeon EP embodies pure refinement and intelligent performance, both Porsche traits. It's just made in Portland, not Zuffenhausen.

AMD's offering today is very different. Magny-cours is the CPU version of the American muscle car. It's a brutally large 12-core CPU: two dies, each measuring 346mm² connected by a massive 24 link Hyper Transport pipe. AMD's Magny-cours Opteron has almost two billion transistors and 19.6MB of cache on-die.

12 cores, 692 mm² die, 19.6MB of cache on-die

It's not all raw horsepower though. At 2.2GHz this 12-core monster is supposed to be content with only 80 precious watts, and 115W at most. HT assist also makes an appearance to keep CPU-CPU accesses to a necessary minimum, a problem that could get out of hand with 12 cores otherwise. AMD originally added HT assist with its first 6-core Opterons. So Magny-Cours is a like hybrid V12 Dodge Viper with traction control. Will this cocktail of raw core muscle and energy savings be enough to beat the competitor from Portland?

For once we could not resist the temptations of car analogies. As interesting as we found the Xeon Westmere EP, something was missing: a challenger, a competitor to make things more exiting. In the last review, we just knew that the Xeon X5670 would crush the competition. This time is going to be close. AMD still won’t have a chance if your application does not scale well with extra cores. In that case you are better off with the higher clocked and better per-core performance of the Intel CPUs. But it is unclear if Intel will prevail in truly multi-threaded software now that a grim and determined AMD is willing to offer two CPUs for the price of one just to win the race.