San Francisco (CA) - Toshiba, Sony and NEC announced that the companies have completed the development of a mass-production platform for 45 nm LSI devices.
Despite their dominance, workstation industry leaders Dell and Intel were in a tailspin 12 months ago, both steadily losing ground to their respective rivals Hewlett Packard (HP) and AMD, according to Jon Peddie Research (JPR).
AMD's graphics division (formerly ATI) today released what will most likely be the last graphics driver update for this year. Catalyst 6.12 brings DirectX video acceleration for Crossfire configurations as it main update.
Media reports are in that Intel is ready to release a new quad-core processor, marking yet another new product for Intel this year. The Xeon E5335, which was originally scheduled for a February 2007 release, takes its position as the fifth quad-core processor since Intel first released the Kentsfield/Clovertown cores earlier this autumn.
While all eyes are on Microsoft for the upcoming Vista and Office 07 product launches, the software giant today made another announcement aimed at a completely new audience - robotics engineers. Microsoft Robotics Studios was released yesterday, which gives developers a universal platform for robotic programming.
Dell has expanded its recycling efforts worldwide and now offers free recycling of its products in Asia, Brazil, and Mexico. Customers will be able to either recycle or donate old computers to support local non-profit organizations. According to Dell, it is the first computer make to have such a far-reaching program.
Google is open sourcing the same software that helped to produce popular sites like Google Maps and Gmail. The company has released the Google Web Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 open source license. Independent developers can now use the toolkit to make and debug their own Java applications.
AMD and IBM presented first details of its 45 nm production process at the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) today. While practical data for the consumer remains scarce, the two companies indicated that their production approach will bring performance improvements of about 15%.
Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD today launched new dual-core mainstream processors in order to regain at least some of its competitiveness in the segment of higher-end mainstream processors. The new 5400+ and 5600+ bring an increase of clock speed and are squarely aimed at Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors.
See the AMD AM2 processor slide show here...
Seiko Epson has announced a new high-temperature polysilicon (HTPS) LCD panel that will boost the performance of 3LCD front projectors and large-screen LCD projection TVs.
Broadcom has announced what it claims to be the industry's first high-definition (HD) digital TV silicon solution designed on 65nm node that supports full 1080p display resolution.
Chicago (IL) - Russian design studio had some bad - or good, depending on your perspective - news over the weekend. The Optimus LED keyboard, which was announced to be made available for pre-order in a limited edition for $1200 a piece later this year - has been canceled. The good news here is that design studio perhaps figured out that $1200 for a b/w LED keyboard that was originally promised to come with color LED keys to cost as much as a good cellphone did not make much sense.
Sunnyvale (CA) - If you considered the impact of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) on hard drives, as rather negligible so Fujitsu's announcement this morning may change your opinion: The company said it will begin shipping monstrous 250 GB and 300 GB notebook hard drives in the first quarter of 2007.
Lite-On IT recently launched its LH-2B1S serial ATA Blu-ray Disc (BD) Triple Writer, the company's first BD burner, in Japan at a retail price of 70,000 yen (US$600), with the price significantly lower than BD burners offered by other vendors, according to industry sources in Taiwan.
El Segundo (CA) - The introduction of Windows Vista will have an immediate impact on the investment that is required to build a PC. The often discussed memory upgrade that is required to achieve a decent Windows Vista experience, will increase the bill of materials by about 20%, market research firm iSuppli estimates in a report released today.
Nvidia will introduce its first integrated graphics processor (IGP) chipset (MCP 73) for the Intel platform in the first quarter of 2007 at the earliest, according to industry sources.
We've always brought you news about new hardware and software, but wouldn't it be great to actually learn how to use the darn stuff? Our new HowTo video section contain short, high-quality videos that clearly explain new features or show how to perform important tasks.
Adobe Acrobat, the popular PDF reader and creator, is getting a face-lift with its new version 8. Adobe has just released new versions of its Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Professional which includes a streamlined menu bar, GPU acceleration and built-in document security.
