November 07, 2009 | Follow TG Daily: RSS
Going head to head with Intel
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Hardware

Lone Star Briefings Death to SysMark, terminate 3Dmark

altIntel and Nvidia might not be the best of chums at the moment, but it seems that the USB3  standard is turning into a handbags at dawn fight between them.

Lone Star Briefings While AMD rolled out its future strategy for notebooks, the conversation turned to categories of PCs.

Chipmaker AMD has dragged out several of its Phenom II X4 900 series CPUs for a long walk in a Berlin forest after which they will never be seen again.

altRumors that the new HD 5900 series could be just another chip refresh have been knocked on the head.

Unidentified bug causes massive CPU spike on 27-inch iMacs

Owners of the recently introduced 27-inch iMac have encountered an unidentified bug that reportedly causes massive spikes in CPU usage.

Taiwanese manufacturer Asustek said it has introduced a mobo for PCs that incorporates two USB 3.0 ports.

Hello mom

Intel and Numonyx say they've achieved a breakthrough in the research of phase change memory (PCM), a non-volatile memory technology bringing together the benefits of a range of different memory types.

There are clear signs of recovery in the graphics chip market although there remains some time before sales return to the pre-credit crunch days.

Column
We were delighted to have reported the fantastic growth of Q3 (21.4% over Q2, 7.3% year-to-year.) That clearly indicated the recession was over for graphics chips, and since they are a predictor of PCs, it forecasts a great holiday season for our desktop and portable companions. It’s also a bellwether of consumer confidence and the improvement in the economy in general -  and take note – it’s the consumer, not IT, that’s leading the recovery.

PC vendors are setting their sights on the booming smartphone market to offset a slump in computer sales.

Everyone who doesn't work for Apple is hoping against hope that the Cupertino company puts us out of our misery soon and tells us whether or not it's going to introduce a tablet computer.

More Kindle rivals on the way

MSI chairman Joseph Hsu let slip that the company is currently working on an Nvidia Tegra-based e-book reader, but details won't be released until sometime in the first half of next year.

Kingston accelerates Windows boot sequence with 40GB SSD

Kingston has introduced a bootable 40GB SSD drive. According to company spokesperson David Leong, the SSDNow V drive is "aimed primarily" at desktop users as a "performance upgrade" for existing systems.


Japanese giant Toshiba, long at the forefront of developing fuel cells, said it will sell its first direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) product for mobile products in a limited edition on the 29th of October.

It looks like graphics chip maker Nvidia is building its own x86 development program using staff from Transmeta.

Lone Star Briefings Rick Bergman, general manager of AMD’s product group waxed long about the Fusion family of products today.

Lone Star Briefings Chip firm AMD said here in Austin today that the current model of benchmarks for notebooks, on both speed and battery performance are fatally flawed.

Maingear Shifts into overdrive with hard-core gaming machineMaingear has unveiled a personal "supercomputer" for PC gamers and enthusiasts.

altAn outfit that makes 3-D touch controllers for video and computer games has just been recruited by the US Army to make controls for its war droids.

Nvidia: Our nForce chipsets are

Nvidia has claimed that its nForce chipsets are "better" than Intel's. A company spokesperson also criticized the chip manufacturer for allegedly postponing USB 3 introduction until 2011.
The Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) said it had problems with making chips using its 40 nanometer process and yields are not up to scratch.

Sony has issued a safety recall for AC adapters for its Vaio desktops and docking stations. Around 69,000 of the faulty units are believed to be in use.

Intel: Windows 7 offers

An Intel spokesperson recently told TG Daily that Microsoft Windows 7 offers "improved performance and stability" compared to Vista and the veteran, yet aging XP operating system.

The US Army is ordering bipedal robots that can walk and crawl like a human, in order to test chemical protection clothing.

Strong demand for LEDs for backlit applications and lighting has created a shortage in the supply chain that will last until the first quarter of 2010.

The world's largest supercomputer, dubbed Roadrunner, has gone online, and is starting with a terribly simple little task - modelling the composition of the universe.

The September shipments of large area TFT-LCD panels hit 52 million units, an augury of better times ahead.
Tilera challenges X86 architecture with 100 core-processor

Tilera has launched an advanced line of TILE-Gx processors that reportedly offer "ten times better" compute efficiency than Intel's next-generation Westmere chip. The processors - fabricated in TSMC's 40 nanometer process - operate at up to 1.50 GHz with power consumption ranging from 10 to 55 watts.

AMD joins Windows 7 launch party

AMD has congratulated Microsoft on the official launch of its long-awaited Windows 7 operating system. According to AMD spokesperson Margaret Lewis, the two industry heavyweights "closely collaborated" on the optimization of both hardware and software for the new OS.
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