Intel hosted its developer conference on October 27 and 28, bringing back the spirit of the now-discontinued Intel Developer Forum (IDF).
Unlike IDF in the past, this year’s Innovation event was a virtual event, and gamers and PC fans can watch the livestream to follow Intel’s announcements — with a particular eye on the launch of the company’s 12th-generation Alder Lake processors.
Intel’s Innovation 2021 conference began with an opening keynote from CEO Pat Gelsinger, which you can watch a replay of below.
Unlike other keynotes from competing companies that were scheduled during the pandemic, Intel’s presentation was live — and not prerecorded — filmed from Fort Mason in San Francisco, California.
Intel has officially launched its first 12th-gen Alder Lake processors, which include six new chips as of now. These new processors come at a surprisingly low new price and will ship on November 4.
Along with the basic specs, Intel has also provided more information on the advanced overclocking features in this generation, including XMP3.
The debut of the 12th-gen comes on the heels of Apple announcing its new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. The company is now in the second year of its transition away from Intel’s x86 processing architecture and has been making great strides in performance, efficiency, and the strengths of its integrated graphics core. Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake mobile processors are expected to compete against Apple’s M1 series, which includes the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max.
As Intel has made clear, Apple has become its biggest competitor on the consumer computing front.
In addition to Apple, Microsoft is also rumored to be working on its own custom silicon for Surface devices, and most recently, Google debuted its new Tensor processor for the Google Pixel 6 series. Google’s chipset could potentially find its way onto ARM-powered Chromebook devices in the future, putting pressure on Intel to develop stronger processors in the client computing space.
Intel also provided a few details on its Arc Alchemist graphics cards. The company announced the first two games that will support the generation’s XeSS upscaling feature — Hitman 3 and The Rift Breaker. We still don’t have details on performance yet, though.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.