Free Republic

November 15th is the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first commercially available microprocessor — the Intel 4004. Our industry can trace itself back to this seminal event, and it’s amazing the progress the industry has made in 50 years. Intel has created a site dedicated to the anniversary that will have links to videos by the early designers and a wealth of information on the development of the chip. You should be familiar with the story of how Intel engineers Marcian “Ted” Hoff, Stan Mazor, and Federico Faggin, pitched a new design for the Busicom calculator that reduced...

While the crashes remain under investigation, preliminary reports showed that a new stabilization system pushed both planes into steep nosedives from which the pilots could not recover. The issue is known in aviation vernacular as runaway stabilizer trim. In simulator tests, government pilots discovered that a microprocessor failure could push the nose of the plane toward the ground. It is not known whether the microprocessor played a role in either crash. When testing the potential failure of the microprocessor in the simulators, "it was difficult for the test pilots to recover in a matter of seconds," one of the sources...

Incredible Microprocessor Protein Acts as Genome Guardian by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Researchers recently studied a highly sophisticated cellular machine that acts as a guard for the genome against harmful mutations and that evolution cannot explain.1 Humans have two sets of 23 chromosomes, and a mutational deletion in chromosome 22 causes a disease called DiGeorge syndrome in which heart and immune system defects occur, in addition to learning difficulties, mental retardation, and psychiatric disorders. The deletion eliminates a protein and stops the formation of a key piece of cellular machinery called a "microprocessor." The microprocessor is actually a working complex...

Victor Poor, a largely self-taught computer engineer who played an early role in the development of one of Intel’s first commercial microprocessors, died on Friday in Palm Bay, Fla. He was 79.

Today on the 40th anniversary of the 4004, the world’s first microprocessor, the world should salute Intel and the three inventors of that microchip for the accomplishment. But let’s not forget that a little bit of luck and good lawyering helped too. The 4004 was essentially a contract engineering assignment.

Lawsuits wrapped up with cash, promises of good behavior If you were looking forward to a long and protracted antitrust battle between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, you're out of luck. The two companies have buried the hatchet and settled all outstanding intellectual property and antitrust lawsuits. Under the settlement between the rival chip companies, Intel and AMD have signed a five-year cross licensing agreement and are letting go of any claims they made against each other with regard to breaches of previous cross-licensing arrangements. Oh, and AMD gets $1.25bn and Intel agrees to "abide by a set of business...

I spoke too soon. Earlier today I outlined AMD’s roadmap for 2010 - 2011. In 2011 AMD will introduce two next-generation microarchitectures: Bulldozer for the high end desktop and server space and Bobcat for the price/power efficient ultra mobile market. I originally said that AMD wasn’t revealing any more about its next-gen architectures, but AMD just proved me wrong as they unveiled the first block diagrams of both cores.****************************snip****************************** First up, Bulldozer. I hinted at the architecture in this afternoon’s article: “A major focus is going to be improving on one of AMD’s biggest weaknesses today: heavily threaded performance. Intel...

The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce quotone-to-manyquot parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce "one-to-many" parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. For years, researchers have been building tiny nanobots that could one day serve a variety of purposes. But, until now, nanobots couldn't work together. Recently, scientists Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Somobrata Acharya from the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have built the first ultra-tiny, ultra-powerful...

Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics reached a key industry milestone today as they began shipping prototype samples of a future product using a new, innovative memory technology called Phase Change Memory (PCM). The prototypes are the first functional silicon to be delivered to customers for evaluation, bringing the technology one step closer to adoption. The memory device, codenamed "Alverstone" uses PCM, a promising new memory technology providing very fast read and write speeds at lower power than conventional flash, and allows for bit alterability normally seen in RAM. PCM has long been a topic of discussion for research and development, and...

Intel´s Tukwila chip contains more than 2 billion transistors - twice the number from two years ago. Intel has just announced the first microchip that contains more than two billion transistors - tiny switches that together perform the calculations in computers. The chip, known as Tukwila, marks a milestone in chip density technology. Intel explains that the quad-core chip is designed for high-end servers rather than personal computers. Many of the chip´s two billion transistors are used for on-board memory, helping the system process data faster. According to a news report by the BBC, the chip is based on...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Intel Corp. has designed a computer chip that promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center — while consuming as much energy as a light bulb. The world's biggest chipmaker said Sunday it developed a programmable processor that can perform about a trillion calculations per second, or deliver a performance of 1.01 teraflops. It accomplishes this feat while consuming 62 watts of power when the chip is running at a frequency of 3.16 gigahertz.A similarly powerful supercomputer in 1996 at Sandia National Laboratories took up more than 2,000 square feet, used nearly 10,000 Pentium...

Thursday November 30, 2006 AMD Demos Native Quad-Core Server CPU AMD demonstrated native quad-core processors earlier today at the AMD Industry Analyst Forum. AMD Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Henri Richard is pictured below holding a native quad-core Barcelona processor next to Intel’s Clovertown processor that uses two separate processors on one package. AMD today demonstrated the industry’s first native quad-core x86 server processor, achieving four x86 processing cores on a single die of silicon. At the annual AMD Industry Analyst Forum, a server powered by four upcoming Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors (codenamed Barcelona), manufactured on 65nm silicon-on-insulator process technology,...

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/21/amd_open_opteron/AMD opens Opteron to all some By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View (ashlee.vance@theregister.co.uk) Published Thursday 21st September 2006 17:46 GMT AMD has expanded its friends and family program in an obvious way by allowing partners to plug their CPUs, accelerators and other components directly into Opteron processor sockets. AMD's unveiling today of Torrenza 2 - aka the Torrenza Innovation Socket - builds on an existing deal that let third parties tap into the company's Hypertransport technology. Now, AMD has agreed to open up the entire Opteron socket specifications to preferred partners willing to pay a licensing fee. As a...

The PC market was emerging fast, and IBM wanted to hit the ground running. Rather than reinvent the wheel, IBM took what was already available. A 12-man design team was authorized to use off-the-shelf components and an open architecture, which meant that other manufacturers could build compatible machines. A bevy of new PC makers soon entered the market. It was a radical departure from the past, when companies designed and manufactured all their products in-house. As the tech industry grew, companies like Sun Microsystems (SUNW) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) also teamed up with contract manufacturers in order to save time...

IBM has unveiled its first servers powered by the high-performance Cell processor, which at first was earmarked for next-generation gaming consoles. The new servers, which will be available in June, initially will target customers doing graphics-intensive data-crunching. Big Blue's new blade systems are based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) with a configuration that is significantly different from typical desktop or server chips. Cell can handle significantly more floating point operations than other processors, said Darryl Solie, distinguished engineer in IBM's Systems and Technology Group. Cell technology, which was developed jointly by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba, is optimized for...

THE CEO OF Intel said that an advert AMD took out today challenging it to a dual core dual quite spoilt his cup of coffee. The advert, in broadsheet the San Francisco Chronicle, challenges Intel to match it on performance for dual core chips. But Paul Otellini, CEO pf Intel turned down the challenge with some disdain, refusing to pick up the gauntlet the chipsters threw down. We’ve often noted the resemblance of both Intel and AMD to the Tweedledee and Tweedledum characters in Alice through the Looking Glass. These brave warriors were forced to live a sort of mock...

Last week, Michael Kanellos published this FAQ on the 40th anniversary of Moore’s law, which is famously known as the phenomenon that computer processing power will double every 18 months. Actually, Gordon Moore only said that transistor count would double every 24 months and it was David House (a former executive of Intel) who extrapolated that performance would double every 18 months as a result of the increase in transistors. Ironically, it is House’s unofficial reinterpretation of Moore’s law that has become the popular definition of Moore’s law. Over two years ago, Tomshardware released this excellent article showing the historical...

LATEST NEWS 2:11 PM PDT Monday Intel ships billionth chipRemember the 8086? That was Intel Corp.'s first microprocessor for personal computers in 1978, back when a "hand-held" was a transistor radio, computers were immobile mainframes, and the Internet was a project by a handful of research scientists. A quarter-century later, Intel has shipped its 1 billionth computer chip, according to figures compiled by semiconductor industry analyst firm Mercury Research and verified by Intel. "From the 8086 to today's Intel Pentium 4 processor, Intel Xeon and Intel Centrino mobile technology, the Intel architecture has brought the benefits of digital intelligence...

William Safire writes a New York Times column entitled "On Language" in which he explores the evolving meaning of commonly used words. His March 9 installment discusses our favorite word: embedded. Unfortunately, to read it you register on the site and pay a fee. Mr. Safire tackles a usage rooted in the current Iraq conflict. He quotes Newsweek's Verne Gay: "[embedded is] military jargon for a reporter who is to be stationed with a 'unit', which is more jargon for a division, or corps, or perhaps an aircraft carrier group. Hundreds of reporters will be embedded in units during a...