A very interesting feature of the Ivy Bridge architecture is a new digital random number generator code-named Bull Mountain, which uses teetering as an integral part of its workings. [1]<p>While consumer-oriented reviews rightfully ignore such things, I reckon that the HN crowd would be pleased to know more about such a nifty hardware solution.<p>[1] <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/behind-intels-new-randomnumber-generator/0" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/behind-intels-ne...</a>
I guess I don't really understand why this is impressive - the GPU is still not good enough to handle modern gaming and apparently has some issues with media encoding as well (although I will admit that that section confused me somewhat), and it sounds like the CPU is just a modest upgrade in efficiency.<p>I'm not saying it's bad, it looks like solid progress form Intel as we all continue to expect, but I don't get why this is considered 'tick+' when it seems less exciting to me than Nehalem.
Agreed this report comes across a bit underwhelming, but the integrated GPU boost is really what I've been waiting for. And it's more power efficient to boot.<p>I don't play games, but I do have a crazy-big monitor and want a bit more oomph drive the display before I get a notebook without a dedicated graphics card. Still waiting on the dual core ...