Electronic signaling using copper is officially old-and-busted—or at least Intel thinks it will be soon. The company announced today that it has constructed a silicon-based optical connection with an integrated laser that's capable of moving data at 50Gbps. The term "integrated laser" refers to the fact that the optical data connection...Read more...
The new 2010 iMac may be the most consumer-centric piece of Apple's July 2010 hardware refresh, but for power users it's the Mac Pro that'll get the attention. Apple's heavyweight has been refreshed this morning, but as with the iMac, no real major exterior changes are happening. Instead, it's all in the inside. Intel...Read more...
While the recent talk surrounding Apple has been focused on the iPhone 4 and its well documented reception troubles, the company is today focusing on bigger and brighter things. Namely, new hardware. The consumer-centric iMac line is seeing its first major update since late last year, and while it's not a complete design overhaul, the internals...Read more...
Acer's Aspire "Predator" gaming PC line has only been around a couple of years now, but it has already gained a huge following in the sector and is widely viewed as a legitimate rival to Alienware and other high-end gaming PC companies. Now, the company is ready to unveil their newest beast, which boasts a chassis...Read more...
Usually, it's rather difficult for a new operating system to find traction. There's already quite a few options on the market, and people are rarely out searching for new operating systems when the ones available to them seemingly handle their needs quite well already. But MeeGo, which was created out of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo converging,...Read more...
Apple users often have to wait longer than us PC folk for top-end upgrades or features to become available, but this time the Macolytes might steal a march on the rest of us. According to rumors on the other side of the pond, the next-generation of iMac and Macbook Pro systems will feature both USB 3.0 and the heretofore dark horse candidate—FireWire...Read more...
At the time of this writing, the FTC's investigation into Intel's alleged monopolistic abuses is on hold as the government attempts to negotiate a settlement with the CPU and chipset manufacturer. If these negotiations don't result in a deal by July 22, the case returns to court, with arguments currently scheduled to begin on September 15....Read more...
TSMC officially began building its next-generation Fab 15 foundry on Friday. The facility, or 'gigafab' in TSMC parlance, will begin coming online in 2012, long-term capacity is said to be upwards of 100,000 wafer starts a month. In contrast, GlobalFoundries New York facility currently under construction is targeting 60,000 wafer starts /...Read more...
One of the major points of AMD's conference call (we apologize for missing it) was news that the company's Llano processor—a hybrid GPU/CPU product meant to clock in over 3GHz in dual-core and quad-core configurations—has been pushed back into the first half of 2011. Company CEO Dirk Meyer delivered the news on Thursday, even as...Read more...
If you own a Matrox DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go Graphics eXpansion module, there's some good news to be heard today. Matrox, a long-standing member of the graphics card industry, has just announced enhanced resolution compatibility for the cards mentioned above when using Intel HD GMA chipsets. Maximum...Read more...
AMD announced its second-quarter earnings yesterday and the company's results, while not perfect, imply continued strong execution. The company's revenue was up 40 percent year-on-year on strong demand for server and mobile parts. Total revenue was $1.65B, up five percent from the first quarter. "Robust demand for our latest mobile platforms...Read more...
According to the analysis firm IDC, PC sales were up 22.4 percent in Q2, in line with the 22.9 percent growth expected by industry analysts. The strongest market was the Europe, Middle East, and Africa market (EMEA), despite fears about the future of the Euro earlier this quarter. Both US and Asia/Pacific sales surged, although not quite to...Read more...
One other additional tidbit of information from Intel's recent conference call offers some tantalizing rumors about the upcoming Core i7 architecture, codenamed Sandy Bridge. Officially, Intel isn't expected to launch SB until the end of Q4, but the chip is ramping well enough that Santa Clara might opt to pull the...Read more...
Amazon has long touted its ECS (Elastic Compute Cloud) as a flexible service for companies that need a certain amount of server time to test programs or features, but don't want to invest the time and effort themselves. Now, the company has added additional HPC (High Performance Computing) capabilities that are typically targeted towards large-scale...Read more...
Intel released its quarterly earnings last night, revealing yet another record-breaking quarter. This is the third time in four quarters that the company has managed to break one record or another; the results imply that the IT industry continues to recover slowly. All of Intel's financial indicators were up; the company earned $10.8 billion...Read more...
Toshiba's Singapore division recently launched a new Portégé notebook that features a Honeycomb Structure and Fresh Air Cooling Technology. Thanks to the new Honeycomb Structure beneath the palm rests and base of the laptop, the Portégé R700 is able to feature a light and durable magnesium...Read more...
Decide for yourself whether this is a good thing or not, but according to Intel, reports of the Celeron's death have been greatly exaggerated. Responding to Internet rumblings that Intel would phase out the Celeron brand in 2011, the world's largest chip maker said the rumors are false, plain and simple. "The rumor is not true, Intel has no...Read more...
USB 3 is one of the best standard updates the computer industry has come up with, but reports indicate Intel may not support the standard natively until 2012. That's particularly surprising since Intel designed much of the USB 3 standard—by all rights, Santa Clara should have been one of the first companies out the door, not one of the...Read more...
Rumors around the Internet suggest that Intel may be planning to cancel the Celeron brand in 8-12 months, due to significant overlap with Atom prices. At present, the Celeron P4500 (1.86GHz, dual-core) is $86 as is the T3100 (1.9GHz, 1MB L2). The upcoming Atom N550, due to launch in the third quarter, is a dual-core chip running at 1500MHz,...Read more...
When we last checked in on Project Offset, the visually impressive game was facing an uncertain future. Intel recently released an update on PO's development status, but unfortunately it's not what we were hoping for. Having completely abandoned Larrabee as a GPU product, Intel saw no further reason to keep the dev...Read more...
Last week, we discussed new documents that had been unsealed in Advanced Internet Technologies' ongoing lawsuit against Dell. The newly public evidence was fairly damning, as it showed Dell was aware that the Nichicon capacitors used in 2003-2005 OptiPlex machines had an astonishing 97 percent failure rate according to the company's own internal...Read more...
Nokia use to be a key player in the mobile market. While the Symbian platform still accounts for more than two-fifths of the global smartphone market, Nokia hasn't enjoyed the same success that it once did. In hopes of fixing this, Nokia is shaking things up a bit. Anssi Vanjoki is Nokia's new head of Mobile Solutions, and he's ready to get...Read more...