AMD has recently cooked up a little something they like to call the Phenom II X4 TWKR Black Edition, a hand-picked, limited edition processor that is designed to be overclocked "to the extreme." Currently labeled "Not for Sale," with no serial numbers and only one hundred of these bad boys in existence, just a few lucky folks have got their hands on one, so we've dug up some reviews (and previews) so you can see what the fuss is all about. According to the company, one of these guys could be pushed by 100MHz with air cooling, which doubles to about 200MHz with "extreme cooling." As far as impressions go, the reviewer at Neoseeker quickly decided that the units aren't meant to be overclocked on air only, and that dry ice isn't much better. Hot Hardware says pretty much the same thing. Though they weren't able to test with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium (the only way to get real speed) they did put a Koolance LN2 pot (and about 20lbs of dry ice) to the test for 4.73GHz. For best results, according to Tom's Hardware Guide, bench the processor at -190°C or cooler. But for the real overclocking experience you simply must check out the video of the "world renowned overclockers" K|ngp|n, chew*, and Gomeler as they run the gamut of "extreme overclocking techniques" after the break.

Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Edition CPU Preview
Read - AMD's Phenom II X4 TWKR: We Give It The LN2 Treatment
Read - AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR Black Edition Processor
Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition Processor

Intel has been doing a lot of talking about big new processors and platforms as of late, and it's now gotten official with one that's soon to be ever-present: its next-generation Atom platform, codenamed Pine Trail. In case you haven't been tracking the rumors, the big news here is that the processor part of the equation, dubbed Pineview, will incorporate both the memory controller and the GPU, which reduces the number of chips in the platform to two, and should result in some significant size and power savings. As Ars Technica points out, the platform is also the one that'll be going head to head with NVIDIA's Ion, which is likely to remain more powerful but not as affordable or efficient, especially considering that NVIDIA can't match Intel's on-die GPU. Either way, things should only get more interesting once Pine Trail launches in the last quarter of this year.

We've been hearing about Intel's Medfield processor for some time now, but much of the talk so far has been about it being an Atom-replacement for netbooks and MIDs. A seemingly recent Intel presentation obtained by the folks at UMPC Portal is now shedding a bit more light on the matter, however, and it's looking like smartphones could actually be at the heart of Intel's long-term plans. As you can see above, and in the complete presentation at the link below, Intel sees its base of devices getting larger and larger as its processors get smaller and more power-efficient, and it looks like "mainstream smartphones" could become a reality as soon as 2011. That's due largely to the 32nm manufacturing process used for the smaller Medfield processor, which also makes uses a smaller board size that leaves more room for keypads, batteries and whatnot. Of course, we are still talking about Intel predicting the state of devices two years out, so who knows how things will shake out in the interim.