Chip refreshes typically don’t add many new features aside from a speed bump here or there and a bit more cahce to make things run smoother. Some chip manufacturers want to shake things up.

Intel’s Core i7 980X brings 6 Hyper-Threading capable cores and 12MB of cache to the party with some mighty impressive results for multi-threaded applications. Here are some of the reviews floating around the web:

The Core i7 980X Review: Intel’s First 6-Core CPU – AnandTech
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition Review – bit tech
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme 6-Core Processor – Hot Hardware
Intel Core i7-980X Gulftown Hexa-core Processor Review – PC Perspective
Intel Core i7-980X 32nm LGA-1366 Six Core CPU – TweakTown
Intel’s new Gulftown Six Core CPU meets LN2 Extreme Cooling – TweakTown

The Tech Report has delved into Intel’s latest press briefings and pulled out some interesting information on the company’s upcoming 6-core processors and funk stuff they have going on in their labs.

Most notable are the massive power saving tweaks Intel has put into their Gulftown design which should help keep its heat output in check. One nifty design the company is working on should be of great interest to companies wanting to interface two high bandwidth devices using nothing but ribbon cable.

Intriguing technology any hardware head should be interested in.

Every year Intel likes to gather up lots of interesting bits of technology they’re working on and showcase them at their very own Developer Forum. This year sports the usual dizzying array of nifty technologies from the company and other vendors using their products.

Here’s a collection of links offering in-depth coverage:

World’s First Larrabee Demo, More Clarkdale, Gulftown – AnandTech
Intel Shows off 22nm & 32nm, Sandy Bridge Demoed – AnandTech
Intel Developer Forum Day 1 Coverage, The Continuum – Hot Hardware
IDF 2009: Keynote with Paul Otellini – Legit Reviews
Maloney keynote and first Larrabee demonstration – PC Perspective

The steady, onward, progression of chip improvements allow a company to put out handy roadmaps for all of the technically minded people out there to follow along and drool at the possibilities. AnandTech has gathered up a number of Intel roadmaps and information they’ve gathered in order to break down what the company has planned over the next few years. Here’s a peek:

At the very high end, Core i7 users have
little reason to worry. While Intel is expected to bump i7 up to
3.33GHz in the near future, nothing below i7 looks threatening in 2009.
Moving into 2010, the 6-core 32nm i7 successor should be extremely
powerful. Intel’s strategy with LGA-1366 makes a lot of sense: if you
want more cores, this is the platform you’re going to have to be on.

Now
although I said that nothing will threaten Core i7 this year, you may
be able to get i7-like performance out of Lynnfield in the second half.
A quad-core Lynnfield running near 3GHz, should offer much of the
performance of an i7 with a lower platform cost. Remember back to our
original i7 review; we didn’t find a big performance benefit from three
channels of DDR3 versus two.

There’s some interesting work being done to the Core i7 line which should make it an even more insanely powerful platform.