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AMD's Opteron: Does it measure up? Is the mainstream IT media in Intel's pocket? By Mario Rodrigues: Thursday 19 June 2003, 12:17WITH ALL OF the delays, Hammer (AMD64) has been a long time coming. Since its formal announcement some four years ago, Hammer has generated a truck load of hype, but has the wait been worth it? If allegations of Intel strong- arming are true, then the chip giant takes Hammer to be a very serious threat indeed. When AMD launched Opteron, it was pretty much a server product launch, as there were no workstation boards available. Of course, this...

The interface between human and computer is less than ideal, especially in an age when computers are becoming more portable. Researchers from the University of Glasgow and the Canadian National Research Council have devised a pair of interaction techniques that allow people to manipulate mobile computers without looking at or talking to them.The first technique is a three-dimensional audio menu that presents users with sounds or speech that seems to come from different directions. Users select items by nodding in the direction of the audio choice.The second technique involves tracing shapes like X, N, and / onto a screen. Key...

Microsoft, Intel and IP to Bring Changing of the Guard in VOD Server MarketsCompanies that make Distributable Servers are expected to take over the VOD server market with lower cost points and smaller form factors.In-Stat/MDR Research HighlightMay 19, 2003With Video On Demand (VOD), Subscription Video On Demand (S-VOD), Network Personal Video Recorders (N-PVR), and "Anything On Demand" (X-VOD) all being made ready for wide spread deployment by service providers throughout the world, the market for VOD Servers is heating up, reports In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com). The high-tech market research firm expects that efforts on the part of Concurrent Computer Corporation, SeaChange International,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. said on Thursday it used microscopic carbon molecules to emit light -- a breakthrough some scientists say might one day make faster and smaller computers. In the quest for ever-smaller computing devices, researchers are seeking to replace silicon as the foundation for chips. Researchers at IBM have been studying tiny carbon nanotubes -- molecules resembling rolls of chicken wire that are 50,000 times narrower than a human hair. By engineering the carbon nanotube, IBM said it was able to not only conduct current, but to create light that could someday be used...

Is WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) here to stay or merely a passing fad, ripe for replacement by more flexible and capable technologies?There is no doubt that it is one of the hotter developments of the past year endorsed by a string of leading companies including International Business Machines, Intel and Microsoft. It is expected to a be a powerful talking point at the Cannes 3GSM World Congress this month.The Boston Consulting Group says it: "threatens to spark a new revolution in the telecommunications industry." WiFi products are already numbered in the hundreds and some pundits predict it could undermine the...

Patents a virtue for IBM By John G. SpoonerStaff Writer, CNET News.comJanuary 12, 2003, 9:00 PM PT IBM will announce on Monday that it was the top recipient of U.S. patents in 2002.Big Blue was awarded 3,288 patents during the past year, making it the top recipient among private sector companies for the 10th year in a row, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Canon ranked second during in 2002 with 1,893 patents. IBM has generated just over 22,000 patents during the last 10 years, but those patents have changed with the times, IBM researchers said. Many of...

JAPANESE WIRE the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that a coalition of academics and electronics combine are designing an optical disk that will eventually be able to store 1.5TB (terabytes) of data. Although we're unlikely to see such devices until 2010, the consortium, which includes Matsushita, Ricoh, Pioneer, Mitsubishi, and three universities, is plunging $25 million into an R&D project which will start in Spring of 2003. Reports said that optical disk will use "3D" optical technology likely to use a technique which stores the data in multiple layers. It will also be backwards compatible with standard DVDs, the reports said,...

<p>Tokyo, Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Toshiba Corp. will begin commercial production as early as 2004 of a new processor capable of handling sophisticated graphics and sound over the Internet, the first product of its collaboration with International Business Machines Corp. and Sony Corp.</p>

By Mike MartinNewsFactor Network December 9, 2002 In science fiction, from Star Trek to The X-Files, silicon-based life forms have proven deadly to carbon-based humans. In the real world, however, carbon-based transistors may prove fatal to the future prospects of silicon wafers. Xerox (NYSE: XRX) researchers in Canada claim they have stabilized polythiophene, a normally unstable, yet highly flexible, semiconducting polymer that can be etched with electronic circuits in place of rigid silicon chips , promising newspaper-thin computer monitors and televisions you can pin to your wall. Carbon-based "printable organic electronic" devices have eluded manufacturers because the polythiophene compounds synthesized...

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 9 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. will announce on Monday the smallest ever working silicon transistor to serve as the nerve center in electronics ranging from televisions to PCs and cars.For the past 30 years the industry has been shrinking microprocessors -- the brains of computers -- and other chip components to put more function into smaller and smaller cell phones and other computing devices.Transistors, basically the on-off switches that regulate the flow of electronic signals used for computing and other processes, are key parts of the chip.Reducing the size of the on-off switch in the...

Hexus.net Press Releases Company: AMD Title: AMD ANNOUNCES "AMD ATHLON 64" AS BRAND NAME FOR NEXT-GENERATION DESKTOP AND MOBILE PROCESSORS- Upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processor will bring simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit computing to desktop and mobile users - LAS VEGAS - NOV. 19, 2002 - At Comdex, AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced it has selected "AMD Athlon 64" as the brand name for its next-generation processor for desktop and mobile PCs, formerly code named "Clawhammer." The upcoming AMD AthlonÔ 64 processor is expected to be the industry's first and only 64-bit, x86 PC processor for desktop and mobile computing. Desktop...

Innovation is focus of Comdex show Knight Ridder Newspapers /TABLE>About 1,100 tech companies are showing off their wares at the Comdex trade show.That includes high-end gear like GeForceFx graphics chips from Nvidia and a $2,999 laptop from PC Laptops that runs at 2.8 gigahertz. On the low end are $15 IXLA disposable digital cameras. Nvidia is showing its much-delayed graphics chip, which sales executive Dan Vivoli says will be up to twice as fast as graphics chips from rival ATI Technologies (no way, says ATI) and able to come much closer to the lifelike quality of animated films. Another leading-edge...

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 15 —  Each fall for more than two decades, the high-tech world has descended upon Las Vegas to hype the industry’s hottest wares and ideas at the Comdex trade show. Whether focused on the first PCs of the ’80s, the Internet in the ’90s or the wireless gadgetry of recent years, exhibitors were assured hordes of executives, buyers and reporters. But at the 23rd annual show, which starts Monday, the crowds will be smaller, the exhibit area more compact and the mood subdued. Comdex, like the rest of the high-tech industry, is sputtering.

<p>Computer company says new electronic switch can run three times as fast as current technology.</p> <p>EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. said Monday that it had built a transistor, or an electronic switch, that can run at speeds of 350 billion cycles per second -- three times as fast as current technology.</p>

Apple, IBM, and Sun have opened up their software code to the public in their battle against Redmond. It just might work. While the appeals court ruling last week upholding Microsoft's (MSFT) settlement with the Justice Department was a molar or two away from being toothless, Microsoft faces a bigger potential check to its dominance today than it did at the height of the browser wars five years ago. This comes not from an ever-vigilant judiciary but (more fittingly) from an ever-adapting market. And it is taking the form of Linux and other types of open-source software being developed by...

AMD's new CEO, Hector Ruiz, has one hope to save his company, a new microprocessor technology called Hammer. But first he has to shake AMD's spotted history -- and a ferocious competitor named Intel. Hector de Jesus Ruiz, the new chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is a short, balding fellow who is so quiet and soft-spoken that his sentences often disappear into an inaudible mumble. In fact, sitting at a conference table in his office in Sunnyvale, Calif., hands folded in his lap, describing his company's "long history of being resourceful and sticking with it," the 56-year-old Ruiz...

—Giant supercomputer to use more than 10,000 AMD Opteron processors for high-level simulations— SUNNYVALE, CA -- October 21, 2002 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the upcoming AMD Opteron™ processor based on Hammer technology is planned to power a supercomputer developed by Cray, Inc. intended for nuclear weapon engineering simulations by the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Cray has been selected to develop the massive parallel processing supercomputer, code-named “Red Storm.” The supercomputer is expected to be at least seven times more powerful than Sandia’s current “ASCI Red” supercomputer on Sandia’s 3D, full-physics simulation codes. The...

IBM today announced a newly-developed, high-performance PowerPC microprocessor for use in a variety of applications, including desktops, workstations, servers and communications products. The new chip, called the IBM PowerPC 970, is derived from IBM's award-winning POWER4 server processor to provide high performance and additional function for users. As the first in a new family of high-end PowerPC processors, the chip is designed for initial speeds of up to 1.8 gigahertz, manipulating data in larger, 64-bit chunks and accelerating compute-intensive workloads like multimedia and graphics through specialized circuitry known as a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) unit. IBM plans to build...

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct 14 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) on Monday announced a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected by industry watchers to be used by Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) Apple was not available to comment, and IBM declined to comment on which PC makers would use the chip, but its plans would mark a change for the industry, which has emphasized the importance of the speed of a chip rather than its ability to handle heavy workloads.IBM said its new PowerPC chip...

While "gigahertz processors" are using 400-MHz external clocks with internal multipliers to obtain 1.2- or 1.6-GHz clock rates, that doesn't mean system designers aren't experiencing problems with data pumping. Chip-to-chip memory transfers, clock trees and printed-circuit-board data paths, computer buses and backplanes are all packed with threats to signal integrity. Each step of the way, the data communicated is threatened by noise, crosstalk and false triggers. While developers of optical-trunk lines will wring their hands over the technology hurdles associated with 40-Gbit/second transmission rates-not to mention the current shortage of investment capital-engineers are offering testimonials to the monumental task of...