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Introduction When we buy a computer, there is some thing that we certainly need to know about its most significant part, its brain, its grey matter and that is the CPU. The Central Processing Unit, often called the processor, is where the brain of the computer is located. That is where every thing, every process of thinking by the computer happens. Re arrangement of the input, processing of the information and the passage of the data through the different mechanisms within a computer, all these things happen within the CPU. Manufacturers Integrated Electronics (now INTEL) and their competitor AMD are the...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Researchers at Intel Corp. and the University of California, Santa Barbara, are claiming a breakthrough in creating lasers on computer chips, a development that could lead to sharp reductions in the cost of ultrafast data communications, according to a media report Monday. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is initially targeting communications between components inside computers and within computers in data centers with the new chips, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. See Wall Street Journal story (subscription required). .The speediest such connections now send about eight gigabits to 10 gigabits of data per second...

<p>A coalition of chipmakers have produced successful prototypes of next-generation chips, marking a milestone for an emerging business model as well as for technology.</p> <p>The four companies -- IBM (IBM - commentary - Cramer's Take), Chartered Semiconductor (CHRT - commentary - Cramer's Take), Samsung and Infineon (IFX - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- said Tuesday that they have established a process for manufacturing chips with 45-nanometer circuitry, two generations ahead of the current standard.</p>

Chilly chip shatters speed record The world's fastest silicon-based microchip has been demonstrated by scientists in the US.The prototype operates at speeds up to 500 gigahertz (GHz), more than 100 times faster than desktop PC chips. To break the world record, the researchers from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology had to super-cool the chip with liquid helium. The team believes the device could eventually speed up wireless networks and develop cheaper mobile phones. "Faster and faster chips open up new applications and reduce costs for existing products," said Professor David Ahlgren of IBM. Exotic chips At the...

Acer, Fujitsu Siemens, Gateway, HP Among Leading Manufacturers Launching AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Mobile Technology-based Notebook PCs — SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- May 17, 2006 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced AMD Turion™ 64 X2 mobile technology, the first and only family of 64-bit dual-core processors designed for thin and light notebook PCs. AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile technology allows people to get more from their mobile lifestyle through long battery life and outstanding performance, even when using multiple applications simultaneously, including demanding digital media applications. Continuing its technology leadership, AMD also is bringing 64-bit computing to the Mobile AMD Sempron™ processor...

Energy-Efficient AMD Processors Enable Sleeker PC Designs; Help Consumers and Businesses Save Energy Without Compromising Performance SAN JOSE, Calif. -- May 16, 2006 -- Leveraging its leadership in performance-per-watt computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today unveiled a top-to-bottom energy efficient AMD desktop processor roadmap at the In-Stat Spring Processor Forum. Consumers and businesses alike are requesting smaller, more elegant PCs that aesthetically complement home and office environments, yet deliver the same performance as larger systems. Energy efficient AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core, AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Sempron™ processors, based on the upcoming socket AM2, are designed to provide for new...

AMD is working on a way to make a multi-core processor appear to the host operating system as a single-core chip, it has been claimed. If true, the move turns on its head the drive to develop multi-threaded apps the better to take advantage of multiple cores. The technology is aimed at the next architecture after K8, according to a purported company mole cited by French-language site x86 Secret. It's well known that two CPUs - whether two separate processors or two cores on the same die - don't generate, clock for clock, double the performance of a single CPU....

HANNOVER, Germany--IBM is showing off to the CeBit crowd a prototype blade server based on the Cell processor. The company demonstrated the Cell blade server running visualization software to display real-time, 3D video footage of a beating heart. This allows a researcher to rotate the image of the heart and observe it from any angle, or filter out elements such as blood or certain tissue to give a transparent view into the center of the heart. The demonstration requires a huge amount of data processing, but a blade server using the nine-core Cell chip is well equipped to handle such...

Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce three new 2.6GHz Opteron models Monday, the newest step in its steady effort to encroach on a market that rival Intel once had to itself. The new dual-core Opteron models 185, 285 and 885 run at 2.6GHz and show performance improvements of about 4 percent to 15 percent compared with earlier top-end models running at 2.4GHz, said Brent Kerby, AMD's Opteron product marketing manager. The announcement comes a day before AMD's top competitor begins its twice-annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The 185 model is for single-processor systems and will be available within...

Just as the bragging rights for dual-core chip supremacy are dying down, Intel gave the first glimpse of a quad-core chip coming next year. Clovertown, a four-core processor, will start shipping to computer manufacturers late this year and hit the market in early 2007. Clovertown will be made for dual-processor servers, which means that these servers will essentially be eight-processor servers (two processors x four cores each). The company will also come out with a previously announced version called Tigerton around the same time for servers with four or more processors. Core expansion will be a dominant theme for Intel...

The world's leading chip-maker Intel Corporation on Monday announced a multi-year investment plan for India, totalling over $1 billion, including $800 million over the next five years for business expansion. The investment roadmap includes a huge chunk ($800 million) for expanding the company's business operations in India, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett told reporters in New Delhi. The investment would focus on expanding the research and development centre in Bangalore, in addition to marketing, education and community programmes. The investment roadmap also has a provision for setting up a $250 million venture capital fund in India. "The investment demonstrates the company's...

The winner is... It wasn't even close. After reading the round-by-round account of our dual-core desktop CPU prizefight, it should come as no shock that AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips are the runaway victors here, laying out the Intel Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition 840 chips pins up. If we had to call out one chip, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is an outstanding bargain given the competition, but as our results show, any AMD dual-core CPU will serve you better than its similarly priced Intel equivalent. If you're wondering why there's such a striking performance difference between...

Introduction Recently, the computer industry has struggled with power consumption and heat dissipation. Part of this was because architects had assumed that system builders and consumers would be willing to deal with 100W chips, in order to have the highest performance. While the general purpose computation market has been heating up, the embedded market has always been far more conscious of cost, heat, power and space. At the 2005 Fall Processor Forum, P.A. Semi, a three year old start up has come out of the shadows to present a brand new system on a chip (SOC) architecture for high...

Forty years ago, Electronics Magazine asked Intel co-founder Gordon Moore to write an article summarizing the state of the electronics industry. The article outlined what became known as Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors--tiny on/off switches that churn out electrical signals that get represented as 1s and 0s--on a chip can be doubled in a short period of time. Adopted as a yardstick by the tech industry, the concept is one of the reasons the industry evolved into a high-growth, but high-risk, affair. This FAQ explains the impact and consequences of the principles set down in the...

CHANDLER, Ariz. (Reuters) - From a wind-swept industrial site in the Sonoran Desert, Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , appears to be gearing up for battle. Construction crews hammer away at an unprecedented $2 billion upgrade to one of Intel's two Arizona factories, preparing the world's largest chip maker to safeguard its lead in manufacturing from resurgent rivals and to put recent costly missteps behind it. The stakes are high: If Intel can pull off its complex renovation of the 8-year-old Fab 12 plant, it could pioneer a much cheaper alternative to building chip fabrication facilities from scratch. For...

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The recession's toll notwithstanding, the upcoming 15th annual Hot Chips conference drew a near-record number of paper submissions. But the scheduled lineup shows that Hot Chips, like the industry it examines, has distinctly changed its flavor. "The focus in design now is on applications and their solutions, not on general-purpose CPUs for everything," said Pradeep Dubey, manager of innovative platform architecture at Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and program co-chairman for the conference, which will convene Aug. 17-19 on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif.Hot Chips traditionally has been a showcase for general-purpose CPU...

Intel says that its Tri-Gate transistor, a futuristic transistor that will let electricity flow more freely inside chips, is moving closer to reality. The Tri-Gate transistor, one of the tools that may let Intel continue to follow Moore's Law in the second half of the decade, has been placed on the "pathfinder" development path at Intel, said Ken David, co-director of components research in the Technology Manufacturing Group at Intel. That means that it is one of a select few design alternatives that will get incorporated into chips by 2007. "We've moved beyond the research stage and are in the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Intel Corp INTC.O , the world's largest chip maker, said on Sunday it cut the prices of its fastest microprocessors for desktop and laptop PCs by as much as 38 percent on Sunday, following its regular pattern of slashing the cost of its chips in advance of faster models. The price of Intel's Pentium 4 microprocessor running at 3 gigahertz was cut 32 percent to $401 from $589. The price of the mobile Pentium 4 chip running at 2.4 gigahertz was cut 38 percent to $348. Intel last made price cuts in February. The cuts came...

 Jan. 21, 2003 – Houston's Mission Control will play a diminished role in future space flights as new ships are equipped with advanced supercomputers from Purdue University. With a $15 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Purdue will establish a center to design a new generation of compact, high-performance computers that will free spaceships from their dependence on ground-based intelligence. The NASA center is one of two being created at the Birck Nanotechnology Center planned on Purdue's campus in West Lafayette, Ind. The other collaboration will be funded with $10.5 million from the National Science Foundation...

IBM, AMD to co-develop microprocessor technologies 8 Jan 2003, 3:28pm ET - - - - - (Updates throughout with background, executive, analyst comment, changes dateline, previous SUNNYVALE, Calif./EAST FISHKILL, N.Y.) By Elinor Mills Abreu SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD) on Wednesday said they would jointly develop next-generation microprocessor technologies in a bid to keep pace with market leader Intel Corp.(NASDAQ:INTC) The details of the agreement, which extends a technology-sharing arrangement the two companies have had for the past several years, were not released. But the alliance will...