During Intel Developer Forum there was a lot of talk about Ivy Bridge (coming in H1 2012), and here is what we know up to now. In research and development of Ivy Bridge three teams were talking part, including one from Israel which originally designed first Core processor. As with Sandy Bridge, they are continuing their 2 chip platform (one CPU, one GPU). A bit more surprising is that it will be usable in same socket as Sandy, which wasn’t often case in past few years. New, smaller, 22 nm processes will be used, together with new, tri gate transistors. Graphic part of the chip will receive most improvements, included but not limited to full DirectX 11 compatibility. If you are familiar with Intel nomenclature Tick and Tock part of development will be familiar to you, and while CPU part is Tick, for GPU they are saying as it is Tick + as it beside smaller manufacturing process also bring some improvements architecture. It will support up to three displays at the same time, which was by Intel words very desirable to customers, and in some way giving nice credit to AMD Eyefinity technology.

One of the very interesting new technologies implemented will be Configurable TDP. That means that it will be possible to have multiple TDP levels within same processor part, and configuring in line with requests, cooling solution etc. Ivy Bridge processors will have three TDP options for each CPU model: the minimum TDP, the nominal TDP and the maximum TDP. It means that with proper cooling and sufficient power supply the CPU can significantly exceed its nominal frequency without any concerns for the limitations of the nominal TDP. This is something that the Turbo Boost technology the way it is today doesn’t allow, because it is closely connected with the TDP settings. The opposite is also true: if for whatever reason you need to save some power, then you can always switch the processor TDP to a lower level.

To further improve battery life with better power management (optimized voltage choice for all operating frequency) and low power mode, DDR3L comp ability is introduced, where it stands for Low voltage DDR3 memory support. It was specifically with Ultrabooks in mind that they decided to integrate DDR3L memory support into their current memory controller. DDR3L is the memory with lower power consumption that uses only 1.35 V voltage feed. And we are talking not just about lower signal voltages, but also about the ability to shut off I/O power to DDR memory in deep sleep states. Another new word was used – PAIR which stands for Power Aware Interrupt Routing, chooses best core to service interrupts based on its status e.g. not to wake up sleeping core if there is no need for that.

The biggest improvements are expected to be in Graphic chip of new Ivy Bridge. If you were asking yourself if that means that Intel continues with its two chip strategy, it does means exactly that. And while CPU chip is regular tick process (no design change, smaller production process) Intel thinks that GPU improvements are big enough to call it tick+. What is change or added you may ask? Well, a lot of things for sure. First, it will be full DirectX 11 compatible graphics, which is quite improvement comparing to now quite old DirectX 9 compatibility in available chips. Hardware Tessellation unit will be added enabling nice performance boost in latest games, as well as adding L3 cache which wasn’t all that necessary in previous architecture. This will result in roughly 60% better performance compared to current offering, and they believe that will significaly narrow gap between them and competition in GPU performance.

The only exact number which is publicly available at this time is the number of transistors inside the Ivy Bridge die. They will increase to 1.45 billion. It means that the upcoming processors will be 45% more complex than Sandy Bridge and a significant contribution to the transistor count will come from the graphics core. It will now occupy more than 30% of the semiconductor die.

One interesting question was asked during this presentation: in light of recent trend of IT companies suing each other over patents, do they think that AMD can take similar steps. It appears that last year dill to end all legal disputes between two companies is still active as Intel representative told us that “Intel and AMD won’t sue each other over patent claims”.

These were the words that Mooly Eden, Intel Vice President, General Manager of PC Client Group shouted to crowed, explaining why Intel believes that Intel is next big thing in Personal Computing. According to him, more than 1 million of PCs are shipped every day. And while biggest figures are sold in countries like China and Brazil instead US or Germany, this is still a huge number by any account. Intel is well aware that consumption is big thing these days, but they want Ultrabooks to be best of the two worlds, for consumption as well as for creation. Ultrabooks should be great for different usage models, for playing games, editing videos, office apps, etc… Problem with today’s PC models is that they constantly are offering some kind of trade off, not realizing that overall experience is dictated with weakest component. That’s why Intel want to create a new kid on the block, Ultrabook as balanced device capable at the same time to offer portability, performance, great gaming, battery life, connectivity with other devices, effortless content exchange etc…

To demonstrate new possible usages Mooly demoed a virtual shop for buying glasses. As you can see from not so sharp picture (terrible lighting conditions) idea is that you have your face pictured in a real time and, again in real time a model of glasses you are interested in rendered on top of your nose.

To demonstrate improvements in terms of hibernate and sleep function support he used Acer Ultrabook which waked up from hibernation in less than 5 seconds. This kind of achievement is possible with latest SSD devices, and is quite impressive. Waking up from sleep that took 2 to 3 seconds wasn’t that much impressive at first moment, until we didn’t find out that this sleep is a bit different than one we are used to. While this Ultrabook was sleeping, it still waked up from time to time to connect to network and sync data. So, whenever you are ready to go, you can do it and still have latest emails, social network updates and other time sensitive data with you.

Another thing that Intel was working on was data security. Almost all of us encountered this horror stories about laptop theft at airports, and we heard that somebody forget his laptop somewhere, and it was never found. While it is really bad that all that data is lost, good bet is that you have all or at least most of that data synced somewhere else. Even worst if this data comes to the wrong hands, and Intel with Ultrabook concept is trying to prevent that. It will be enough to log on via Internet and owners can remotely erase all data on stolen device, and not only that, they can initiate a kind of lockdown mode to prevent usage even of the hardware part of stolen property. Several other anti theft technology were demonstrated, some of them to prevent key logging software to record your passwords, and some enabling banking servers to directly communicate with VGA controller, not allowing malicious software to grab screenshots from frame buffer.

For us, one of the best parts of the presentation was when Mr. Mooly started to talk about hardware challenges that Intel needed to overcome together with their partners. To make Ultrabooks so thin, there are a lot of other things needed to become thinner too. You can count in there thinner panels, keyboards, hard drives, batteries and so many other things. If you stumbled upon express “prismatic batteries” you will know exactly what are we talking about, as they are have tendency to occupy a lot less space compared to regular round batteries. And yes, we are talking about battery cells here. Anyway, to solve these problems, Intel invested $300 million in research intended for their partners to speed up Ultrabooks adaptation. On a display, there were several Sandy Bridge based models made by Toshiba, Lenovo, Asus, Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and LG. And no, there were no models from HP or Dell. At the same time, there were several pre production samples of Ivy Bridge models made by Pegatron and several other companies.

Battery life is a big concern for Ultrabooks, and with little help from LG and their Shuriken screens they made big improvements at that field. Mr. Mooly demoed eDP 1.3 PSR screen which has ability to show same picture without constant updates from VGA card. This ability alone lowered average consumption from 2450 mW to 2050 mW, which resulted in battery life increase of about 45 min to full hour.

Best was left for the last, as Mr. Mooly presented Haswell chip, which should be available in 2013 and should bring amazing improvements in power consumption field. Even more impressive is that on the scene there were working PC system with this chip, meaning that Intel already have its architecture finalized.

All this sounds nice and dandy, but we must say that despite Intel efforts to convince us that Ultrabooks time to market is perfect, we don’t see it that way. While we like the idea, and really support it full hearted, it wouldn’t be bad that Ultrabooks are already on the market for full year. And not only that, seeing how much improvements will upcoming Ivy Bridge platform bring, we feel that most of the people who want to buy some of the Ultrabook models in coming holiday season should wait a bit more for Ivy Bridge model. That is true if Ivy Bridge models start showing on the market at early spring, and despite not having a solid date for Ivy Bridge launch it looks like realistic forecast.

Paul Otellini, Intel CEO, held a first keynote, touching multiple subjects and demonstrating several new technologies. Main message is that the user is in the center of everything, and that “Computing should be Engaging, Consistent and Secure, anywhere, anytime, at any device”. We already take care of the first part, as Otellini stressed that every minute YouTube sees 48-hour of video uploads, that we are witnessing 200 million Tweets every day, and that 7.5 Billion of photos are upload on Facebook every month. To be sure that computing power can match future demands, Otellini claimed that Moore’s law must stay on track. He did mention that, from time to time, we can hear that some kind of physical limitation is reached and that Moore’s law can’t go forever, but he dismissed this claims, telling that Intel engineers have new technologies like 3D transistors at hand to assure the performance increase continuum.

Consistent experience is again a key for more enjoyable tech usage, enabling users to have similar experience regardless of device in question. He displayed strong belief that upcoming Windows 8 OS will be a great leap in this direction, combining classic PC platforms with Tablets and Smartphones. Best part for him is that this OS will work on Intel architecture, regardless of device in question. Even now, with App extender, they demonstrated how good communication can be establish between different devices, where PC connected to smartphone becomes primary I/O devices taking care of regular smartphone communication like SMS, or social networks update. Of course, this is something that many phone manufacturers are offering for some time in one form or in another, but the point is in seamless integration regardless of device in question. Just to stress how much mobility is important for Intel, he demonstrated on stage a CPU powered only by really tiny photo cell. He joked that they don’t have plans to commercialize this product, at least not yet.

Security is becoming more and more important and with that in mind we were witness to the new McAfee security product that uses Intel DeepSafe technology to do its magic without much performance issue. Demonstration takes care of one of most feared exploits today, rootkit, which was effortlessly detected and eliminated.

Here on the IDF, one of the biggest surprises was Andy Rubin appearance during Paul Otellini keynote. Andy is Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, and his appearance on stage is important indication of strong cooperation between two companies. He and Intel' CEO Otellini on stage demonstrated smartphone based on Atom Medfield architecture. Presentation was brief, but enough to see that it is working on latest Android OS for mobile phone 2.3.5.

Otellini said that Android is now optimized for Intel architecture as well, and that they are on the track to see Atom based Android smartphones to the market in H1 2012. It wasn’t only Android surprise, as Cisco demonstrated their new business oriented VoIP, working on Intel Architecture. Phone was working on Android OS, and beside business oriented apps available through Cisco market application, it also support all regular Android market apps. Best part is that screen can be detached from the base and carried around and used as a tablet.

In short, Bulldozer-powered AMD FX series are coming for real. Together with the CPUs, 9 series chipset family and Radeon HD 6000 graphics will form new AMD enthusiastic platform named Scorpion. AMD FX series will be quite a bunch, with 4, 6 and even 8-core CPUs to choose from. There are several things that are still not announced, such as pricing and launch date. While launch date is still not known, with some degree of certainty we can say that some other Internet websites which published date as September are wrong, and that it won’t be this month.

In line with AMD policy, we expect that pricing will be aggressive. Still, we believe that the AMD hold few more aces in a sleeve, which will be published as a launch date close in. Behind closed doors, we were able to play with one AMD FX based configuration, but beside very personal feeling that everything worked as it should be, we will still wait for test sample to give you performance figures, clocks and other goodies.

At Showstoppers, Sennheiser tried to get everyone’s attention with the „True sound“ slogan. The highlighted product is their new wireless headset RS 220 which brings high quality audio experience via wireless transmission. The stylish stand has a variety of connectors, including optical and coaxial S/PDIF pass trough (in-out). While on stand, headset is being charged. There are indicators about active audio input, and all the commands can be found on headset itself. Frequency response of RS 220 is from 19 to 21000 Hz, and wireless transmitter has a range up to 100 m.

The HD 200 series headsets also got their stylish new look with different colours. These models can now fit your current clothing style, and you can choose from HD 219 and HD 229 to top of the class (and price) HD 239.

Until the end of June, NVIDIA managed to sell ten millions of Tegra 2 SoCs (system-on-chip), which is not a small achievement by any measure. Even more interesting is that just with upgrading from Android 3.0 to 3.1, you can expect performance jump from 10 up to 40% on this platform, depending of application.  Another thing is that while Tegra 2 was development platform for Honeycomb 3.0, newer versions bring support for other platforms. One of the slides that got our attention is dated from February this year. We are not sure what is bigger surprise, the fact that mobile phones are leading gaming platform, or the fact that PC is more common gaming platform then consoles, and by the healthy margin too. Of course, games in question are mainly casual games such as those on Facebook, but nevertheless the results are still interesting.

If you have a Tegra base device, you probably have Tegra zone installed. That’s practically Android market in small, but for the games that are optimized for Tegra platform. Right now, there are 18 games, which don’t sound as such big number but still, these games look much better compared to their not Tegra optimized counterparts, making them more appealing for gaming. Good thing is that NVIDIA is in close communication with developers, and they promise that number of the games will increase up to 50 by end of the year. While we are speaking about Tegras, next Tegra codename Kal-El is still scheduled to make appearance by the end of this year. New GPU part with support of 3D stereo will use 12 stream cores and is promising 5x better performance compared to Tegra 2. CPU part will be a quad core instead of dual core utilized in Tegra 2, with clocks unknown at this time, but probably a bit higher than 1GHz speed that common these days.

Intel’s presence on IFA fair can be characterized as strange. Small booth in hall where Euronics has its large booth is little bit surprising. We stumbled upon few laptops an desktops based on latest Intel Core "i" product series, and also a few Smart TV solutions and Iomega TV & Boxee combination. But since Intel actually doesn’t have too many end-user products in its portfolio, this kind of modest presence on this years IFA is well understandable.

If you had any doubts that LG will focus on 3D at its IFA 2011 booth, those doubts will be dispersed the moment that you set foot at booth entrance. Every visitor got 3D glasses and even those with regular glasses got clip-on model. But, it wasn’t all about 3D and other interesting device could be seen also. One of those interesting concepts is Home Cloud Storage. Center of this system is storage device connected to the Internet and all other home digital devices like TV set and even Android powered phone. With dedicated Android phone application it is possible to stream media from phone to TV set, backup data etc.

Second interesting device is Dual Play 3D display. Looks like any other 3D display with one mayor difference. It can display 2 different pictures on one display, and each of two users can see its own picture using dedicated pair of glasses. Very useful in games where playing in split-screen mode will be just distant memory thanks to this LG technology.

Overall synergy of TV (displays) smart-phones and Internet is omnipresent and the best representation of that philosophy are Smart TV systems. Thanks to integration of small form PCs into TV sets and evolution of TV control sets, that nowadays resemble of Wii controller, concept where you need an tablet device in living room becomes questionable. New Smart TV sets have almost every feature of modern tablet devices. Only problem is nonexistence of dedicated application market (similar to Android market on Android devices) so you will not be able to easily add new features to it.

Yes, there were a lot of different displays shown on LG booth but so many models and sizes that we most definitely don't have enough space to just mention models and brief specifications. Things like IPS 3D panels with extreme viewing angles, 3D projectors, single speaker 3D surround systems, displays with pen as control device, 72’’ 3D display and so on, and so on...

At this year's IFA, Canon haven't located their booth in the fair halls, but opted for their own "tent" in the central park of Berlin Fair. This setting allowed them to to fully accommodate their needs, but it probably brought a smaller influx of "random" passers-by.

The full range of Canon products was present, of course. Printers and multifunction devices still make up a significant segment, with a noticeable shift towards business environment. The fact is that "home printing" is less and less frequent while in the business world's printed material is still needed. Multi-functionality and lowering the price of print are characteristics of new models as well as the apparent shift in design. Scanners were not present at the stand, as expected.

Of course, cameras and lenses have been the main focus at this year's booth. Complete product range was available with a few novelties. In "point and shoot" class of cameras, IXUS 230 and IXUS HS 1100 HS were shown. Price of around 250 and 390 € and 12.1Mpix represent an ideal device for a little more demanding users. HD video recording, decent zoom feature, the presence of DIGIC 4 processor and housing which looks like it would withstand less caring customers makes these devices ideal companions for many years. You only need to choose the color of your device.

Canon also introduced the PowerShot SX150 IS, model which offers similar features to 1100 HS IXUS, but for less money and in a larger enclosure. In addition, this model is powered by two regular batteries for those who are often unable tofind a power plug. Larger body will respond more to those with slightly larger hands, but do not expect to carry this model in your pockets.

In the segment of the DSLR, Canon presented EOS 600D. This model is positioned between the 550D and 60D and can be a very interesting choice for those who can spend more than 1000 € just for the camera body. Priced at around € 850-900 for the camera and lens (18-50mm IS) it truly offers much. 18Mpix sensor, DIGIC 4 processor, HD video recording and compact DSLR body - this could be the right solution if you are considering purchasing a camera of this price class.

Besides the full spectrum of video cameras and binoculars, we had the opportunity to play around with different lenses such as the monster EF 500mm 1:4 L IS USM.