Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Storage

Last we heard, IBM was busy extending optical lithography down to 30-nanometers in order to keep Moore’s Law intact, and some two years later, the process is still being honed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley. Reportedly, gurus there with IQs far greater than ours have developed a new patterning technique (plasmonic nanolithography) that could make “current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful.” Additionally, professor Xiang Zhang asserts that this same technology could eventually “lead to ultra-high density disks that could hold 10 to 100 times more data than disks today.” The secret to the madness is a flying plasmonic head, which is compared to the arm and stylus of an LP turntable; the setup enables researchers to “create line patterns only 80-nanometers wide at speeds up to 12-meters per second, with the potential for higher resolution detail in the near future.” In layman’s terms? That CPU you purchased last month will, in fact, be old hat in due time.

[Via Slashdot]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Hard to believe that Jack Kilby’s unsightly concoction (pictured above) turned 50 yesterday, but it’s true. Half a century ago, Mr. Kilby crafted the integrated circuit, which ended up having a monumental impact on taking computers from warehouse-sized to, well, not-warehouse-sized. As the story goes, the very first microchip was demonstrated on the 12th of September in 1958, and it passed its first test: “producing a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen.” Safe to say we all know how things progressed from there. Here’s to you, IC — and here’s to 50 more.

[Via MAKE]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Texas Instruments has a lot to do with the original microchip, if for no other reason than being the employer of inventor Jack Kilby. Now, however, TI is looking to produce chips and other related gizmos that require an infinitesimally small amount of energy to operate. The overriding theme guiding the engineers is “energy scavenging,” which alludes to grasping power from even the most unlikely of places — vibrations from a bridge as cars pass over, capturing wasted exhaust from a car or bottling up all that frustration your sibling shows when you own him / her again in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The possibilities are just about endless, with networked battery-free smoke alarms, solar-powered mobiles and gaming laptops that feed off of extraordinarily focused brain waves in the mix. Okay, so that last one is still eons from reality, but at least we’re headed in that direction.

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Filed under: Laptops

Bad news, Atom fans. That dual-core nugget of netbook-powering goodness that you were so looking forward to seeing in Q3 won’t begin shipping until Q4. According to some data picked up by Fudzilla, the Atom 330 will only be debuting in Q3 (September 21st, to be precise), but it isn’t scheduled to get a shipping label until a few months later. Also of note, we’re told that the chip will sell (at some place in the supply chain) for $43, but don’t count on those savings being completely passed onto you.

[Thanks, sinai]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’re pretty certain we’ll be hearing this same story each year, every year for the rest of eternity, but hey, not like we’re kvetching over that or anything. Once again, we’re hearing that mad scientists have developed a breakthrough that makes Mr. Moore look remarkably bright, as a new approach to chip making could carve features in silicon chips “that are many times smaller than the wavelength of the light used to make them.” Reportedly, the new method “produces grids of parallel lines just 25-nanometers wide using light with a wavelength of 351-nanometers,” although the grids aren’t functional circuits just yet. If you’re interested in more technobabble on the matter, head on down to the read link, but we’d recommend against if you’re easily frightened by terms like “photolithographic” and “nanotechnology.”

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless, Networking

Sigma Designs has been dabbling in wireless HD technologies for eons, so we aren’t going to get too excited until we see this here system-on-chip (SoC) actually hit some products that we care about. Still, the CoAir is a fairly sweet concept, wrapping integrated wireless, coax and gigabit Ethernet capabilities into one single chip aimed at whole home networking. Put simply (or as simply as possible), this chip is the world’s first to “simultaneously deliver multiple independent streams of video and data over coax cable, Ethernet cable and wirelessly without compromising quality of service and throughput.” Based on the WiMedia standard, it can reach speeds of up to 480Mbps with UWB (ultra-wideband) wireless streaming, and room-to-room linkage via UWB-over-coax can peg those same rates. What we have here is a great basis for building a whole home server on, but until said device emerges and performs flawlessly, we’ll just smile and carry on.

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Filed under: Desktops

It doesn’t look as if much has changed with Nehalem since Intel showed the thing off at IDF, but rather than staring at still images and imagining just how fast said processor can churn through data, TweakTown hosted up a video to really get the point across. According to them, the demo setup was wicked fast at everything it did, and while representatives wouldn’t divulge the clock speed, whispers have it right around 3.2GHz. Check out the vid just after the cut, and be sure to peep the full writeup in the read link below.

[Thanks, Lin Mei]

Continue reading Intel Nehalem system demonstrated at Computex

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Filed under: Networking

Intel, clearly not wanting to be left in the dust by the slew of new wireless technologies that are starting to converge, nasty-like, inside our shiny new devices, has begun testing on a chip which can effortlessly swap between WiFi, WiMAX, and DVB-H. The idea is that the chip’s radio would talk to your WiFi at home, hand over the data to WiMAX if you hit the road, and also allow you to pull down digital television while staying mobile — without having to use an array of separate radios or silicon. This should open up a whole new vista of possibilities for time-wasting activities, so whenever manufacturers want to get this into our phones / laptops, just say the word. We’re ready.

[Via Slashdot]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Oh AMD, you just can’t keep it together, can you? Advanced Micro Devices, a company known for its share of “issues,” has once again delayed its much-hyped, energy efficient Barcelona CPU. Apparently, a technical irregularity has caused the company to push back the release date for widespread availability of the chip until sometime early next year. The glitch, which causes the chip to fail, is just another line of setbacks on the product’s path to release (originally set for mid-2007). John Taylor, a company spokesman, says, “We’re continuing to ship it but only to specific customers.” The company is offering a workaround for the chips until the problems are solved, though users will see an impact on performance. In other heart-wrenching (though seemingly unrelated) AMD news, the chipmaker has decided to re-up its older K8 architecture, refocusing on “Brisbane”-based chips, and even adding a few new models to the line. Over the next two quarters, the company will release 11 new 65nm chips based on the older format, while just three new entries will be made in the “Phenom” — or K10 — line. Look, Hector, everyone is pulling for you (except maybe Intel) — just get it together, man!

[Thanks, Gary J]

Read - A.M.D. Delays Energy-Efficient Chip Again
Read - AMD Resurrects K8 Architecture for 2008 Roadmap

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

IBM is looking to save around $1.5 million per year and be a kinder citizen to the environment by instituting a greener method for recycling silicon. Previously, IBM would sandblast defunct wafers to make sure no trade secrets left the premises when they were sold off to solar-panel outfits or used as “monitors.” The new process, however, involves defacing the circuitry with an abrasive pad and water, which saves a few bills and leaves the silicon in much better shape for reuse. Reportedly, Big Blue has already implemented the new approach in its Essex Junction, Vermont facility, and the East Fishkill, New York plant is all set to follow suit shortly.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!