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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 16 (Reuters) - In a high-tech horse race to shrink circuits on semiconductors, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) will announce on Monday that it is in the final phases to create a next-generation 90-nanometer chip for Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) The new 90nm technology, which measures less than one one-thousandth of a human hair, can cut the size of chips by 50 to 80 percent, said IBM Microelectronics of East Fishkill, New York. Chips serve as the brains of electronic devices ranging from cars to PCs to networking equipment. However, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) says it has bragging rights...

Cell, a radical new processor designed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba and dubbed a 'supercomputer on a chip', could enter production in 2004 . Collaborating engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba have wrapped up the design for the inner workings of a mysterious new chip called "Cell." The new multimedia processor, touted as a "supercomputer on a chip," is well on the way to completion, IBM says. The chip could end up inside the PlayStation 3, and elements of its design will be seen in future server chips from IBM. Cell has nearly "taped out" -- an industry term meaning...

Intel says nothing these days THE EDITOR of the High Tech Strategist claims that AMD's Hammer chips will give the firm as much as a three to four year lead over competing technology from Intel. Fred Hick is quoted in the the August 5th edition of the Wall Street financial weekly, pushed out by Barron's. His argument is that the AMD Hammer family is backward compatible with 32-bit applications as well as having the ability to run specially compiled 64-bit code. Intel's Itanium, by contrast, has a special instruction set and while it will run 32-bit instruction code this is...