Intel discontinues old CPUs & prepares new ones, engineers are caught selling samples

Three news into one, all relating to a single company whose products we either love or hate, Intel.

Starting off with the announcement of even more CPUs being discontinued, most certainly this time to clear the way and make some room for the upcoming launch of the 22nm Ivy Bridge which is planned, last time we checked, for April 2012.

Over 25 existing desktop CPUs are included according to industry sources in Taiwan who told the DigiTimes. Intel hardware partners were notified of the schedule which will comprise the suspension of the supplies for the Core i5-661/660, Core i3-530, Pentium E5700 and Celeron E3500 which will cease the production of those models in the second quarter of 2012.

Other models that will see a cease in production are the Core i7-960/950/930/870/880S/870S, Core i5-2300/680/670, Pentium G960/E6600/E550, Core Duo E7500/E7600  and Celeron E3300, which is planned for the second quarter of 2012 as well.

Slightly earlier however, planned for the first quarter is the termination of production of the Core i7-875K/860S, Core i5-760/750S/655K and Celeron 450/430.

As previously reported, this will not only make way for Ivy Bridge, but Intel is also planning on launching 40 new processors in the first half of 2012, all of which will be Intel Xeon processors based off either Sandy Bridge-E architecture or Ivy Bridge architecture.

On a somewhat a side story, four Taiwanese engineers were caught by what would be the local equivalent of the FBI for selling engineering samples of CPUs on eBay.

As reported by EE Times:

Detectives had been tracking the suspects since September, conducting a raid on their homes last month, taking 178 sample CPUs – worth an estimated $82,500—into police custody.

According to the CIB’s statement, the suspects admitted to selling more than 500 Intel engineering sample CPUs since 2009.

Moreover, these four suspects who worked for “Intel’s OEM manufacturers in Taiwan” allegedly peddled “rare” chips with unlocked multipliers and sold them while trying to turn the entire thing into an industrial enterprise.

Although it hasn’t been said whether or not the suspects put any pre-release chips for auction, these “rare” chips are most probably prized among overclockers who took the chance when they saw it.

Source 1; Source 2