Chips and Semiconductors
Smartbooks Prepare to Compete in Mini-laptop Space
PC World, Aug. 31, 2009, by Agam Shah
Mini-laptops based on Arm chips are set to make their way to users, which could heat up the battle in a space dominated by netbooks with Intel's Atom chips. Sharp last week announced the PC-Z1, also called the NetWalker, which will be one of the first mini-laptops based on an Arm chip to reach store shelves. The device has a 5-inch touch screen and a 68-key keyboard and offers 10 hours of battery life. It is designed for those who rely on the Web for computing, and it will start shipping in Japan by the end of September.
Read more…Betting on WiMAX chips
Telecoms.com, 04/30/09, Ken Wieland
The WiMAX chipset ecosystem can boast a number of heavyweight players, including Intel, Motorola, Samsung and Fujitsu. Intel, as WiMAX’s principal financial backer, is making particularly strong progress in lowering the cost for WiMAX-embedded laptops, netbooks and MIDs (mobile internet devices) through developments at the chipset level.
Read more…
Intel Preps Chips for Thin, Light Notebooks; Is it ripping off Atom
ZDNet, 04/17/09, Larry Dignan
Intel CEO Paul Otellini earlier this week highlighted the chip giant’s plan to move upstream from its Atom netbook chips to focus on “consumer ultra low voltage products” to power thin and light notebooks.
Read more…Intel details future graphics chip at GDC
CNET, 3/27/09, Brooke Crothers
On Friday, Intel engineers are detailing the inner workings of the company's first graphics chip in over a decade at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco--sending a signal to the game industry that the world's largest chipmaker intends to be a player.
Read more…A Fascinating Future in Chip Design
PC Magazine 2/01/03 by Cade Metz
Someday, Moore's Law, the famous axiom coined by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, will cease to be true: We'll no longer be able to double the number of transistors on a microprocessor every 18 months. But rest assured, we'll reach that day only when every conceivable manufacturing method has been tried.
Read more…AMD Taking a Wait-and-See Approach to Low Cost Netbook Market
Quote: "We are not saying it's not an important segment and we're not saying it's not a growing segment. What we are saying is that we are a smaller company and we have to focus on what we do well at this point. We are watching that segment rather than playing in it, but as it matures we'll see where it goes," said Nigel Dessau, AMD's chief marketing officer.
Read more…
Researchers Battle to Keep Moore's Law Alive
Wired, 9/28/08, by Priya Ganapati
Ever left a laptop running on your lap for too long? The heat you feel is the feeling of physics hitting the limit.
Quote: "Heat dissipation is the most imminent and dangerous limit to Moore's law," says Avik Ghosh, assistant professor at the department of electrical and computer engineering in the University of Virginia. "If we don't do anything about it, at our current pace of miniaturization, in next 10 to 20 years laptops will become as hot as the temperature of the sun. Though of course they would have melted long before that."
Read more…
