Reviews
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.
Chicago (IL) - Consider it official. Intel will be officially introducing the Xeon 5100 processor, the first version of a new generation of CPU"s built on the firm"s "Core" micro architecture on 26 June.
With Windows Vista up and coming, makers of motherboards and VGA cards are now worried they will incur losses from their inventory of low-end products that do support Microsoft"s new operating system (OS), according to industry sources.
Amsterdam (Holland) - Web analytics firm OneStat published figures last Sunday claiming the combined usage share of Firefox and Mozilla browsers (which now is mostly comprised of Firefox, but not Netscape) has climbed to nearly 13% worldwide, and almost 16% in the US. The company claims usage share of Microsoft"s Internet Explorer series, including the IE7 betas, dropped by 2.12% in the last two months.
ASUSTeK has announced that analog phone to Skype adapters will be included with its M2N and P5B TeleSky motherboards. With the adapters, users can plug their analog phones into the Skype VoIP service and make cheap or even free calls to friends.
Gateway today extended its widescreen LCD portfolio with the addition of a 19" display. The FPD1975W comes with similar features like its 21" (FPD2185W) sister model, including 300 cd/m2 brightness, a 8ms refresh rate, a 700:1 contrast ratio as well as an (optional) height-adjustable stand, which allows the user to rotate the screen from landscape to portrait mode. We will leave it up to you, if you consider HDCP support as a "feature." It will restrict the way you can watch or capture high-definition content, but it is a necessary function that is required to watch in HD under Windows Vista.
Windows XP and Vista to get European browser choice too.
Cisco has announced the winners of it Lifestyles of the Tech Frustrated competition which encouraged customers to write creatively about their network problems and how they were solved
Moscow (Russia) - The Russian news agency Novosti has confirmed that Charles Simonyi, the retired Microsoft programmer who designed the word processing engine for the original Microsoft Word, and whose original concept for Multiplan paved the way for all multitasking business software to follow, will be the fourth tourist to head to space on board the International Space Station.
Someone"s made a Pirate Bay out of Google
Nvidia will launch upgraded versions of the GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7900 GT graphics cards that support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) between July and the middle of August, with the cards continuing to be manufactured by Flextronics, according to sources at Taiwan graphics card makers. For mid-range and entry-level graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia will offer HDPC support as an option, indicated the sources.
Dallas (TX) - According to a new report out by technology research firm Parks Associates, the amount of money spent on digital living products and services, like mobile phone and Internet costs, will reach $300 billion within four years.
Fontana (CA) - Today 43 autonomous vehicle teams entered the qualifying round of the DARPA Grand Challenge. In the next tension filled week, the driverless vehicles must steer though a 2.2 mile course at the Fontana Speedway filled with speed bumps, parked cars and tank traps. The top twenty teams will start the 150 mile Grand Challenge event on Saturday October 8 and the winner will take home a $2 million cash prize.
Westlake Village (CA) - The famous Optimus OLED keyboard may actually be coming to the market in May, but only in a miniature version for now. Dubbed the Optimus mini three, the keyboard will have three keys with miniature OLED screens on top. Art Lebedev Studios, the makers of the keyboard, has begun taking pre-orders and says it will ship the keyboard on May 15.
Microsoft is readying a new, highly configurable firewall for its upcoming Windows Vista operating system that is designed to give administrators much greater control over which applications are allowed to run on the systems they manage.
The Office of the Attorney General yesterday won what itň€™s describing as a ň€śgroundbreakingň€ť lawsuit against Dell and its affiliate, Dell Financial Services.
Steve Ballmer had another "developers, developers, developers," moment this week at Microsoft"s partner conference in New Orleans.
Westlake Village (CA) - 3D monitors may be coming sooner than you think. At the recent Blizzcon convention, Neurok Optics showed off their prototype iz3D monitor can display simulated three-dimensional graphics from ordinary 2D games. With the use of polarized glasses, attendees gawked at World of Warcraft in 3D. We wanted to find out more after trying on the glasses and seeing the images ourselves.
Tracesmart in-line for Chamber of Commerce eBusiness Honour
Islandia (NY) - Social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook may pose more security risks than physical threats such as sexual predators contacting kids and teenagers. A survey raises the concern that fraud, identity theft and computer spyware and viruses combined with negligent user behavior could flourish on social networking sites.
Chicago (IL) - Georges Fornay, president of Sony computer Entertainment Europe, provided the first credible information on a possible price of Sony"s next-generation game console. According to media reports, Fornay predicted a price range of 500 to 600 Euro, which could mean a price of at least $500 and as much as $750 for US consumers.
Itň€™s no secret that the four men on trial in the Pirate Bay case want to appeal the ruling. The lesser heard news, however, is that movie and music makers in Sweden have also appealed the verdict, because the damages were too low.
Microsoft has withdrawn its request for an oral hearing to respond to antitrust charges from the European Union.
Mountain View (CA) - Inquisitive Internet users will no longer be able to ask new questions on Google Answers, as the search giant announced on its blog that the online Q&A service is officially canned.
San Francisco (CA) - Stanley Burrell, better known as rapper MC Hammer, will come back into the music industry, but this time as the chief strategy officer of the new website DanceJam.com.
People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said. "It"s one of the big bets we"re making," he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company"s daily operations in July.
Scotts Valley (CA)
A senior vice president of Nvidia has denied rumours that the company is planning an entry into the x86 CPU market. Though the company has never formally suggested it might build a CPU, commentators have noted that its major competitors, AMD and Intel, offer integrated CPU and GPU platforms, and speculation has been rife that Nvidia might develop a platform of its own.
Mobile phone users may not need to squint at their mobile phone screens anymore. Samsung claims it has developed a new display chip that makes LCDs brighter in daylight. The chips can also lower the brightness when the screens are indoors, which can save battery life by up to 30%.
With an improved site and online tool, the Columbus Chamber encourages new and current business in the area.
Western Digital (WD) today announced a 120 GB version of its portable "Passport" hard drive series. The model comes with a stylish case that houses a 2.5" 5400 rpm drive of WD"s Scorpio drive series. The drive is equipped with 2 MB of cache and is available with an USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 port. The list price is $200.
Early birds are more like lucky birds.
Las Vegas (NV) - You didn"t think that Intel would leave all that dual-socket fame for itself, did you? At CES, Intel showed off an 8-core desktop system build on a 2P workstation board with two quad-core processors. Intel claims that the system trumps AMD"s fastest Quad-FX by 61% in one key benchmark. And yes, we do have pictures of this beast.
Las Vegas (CA) - Digit Wireless showcased what could potentially be one of the widest disseminated products to come out of CES 2007 at the Unveiled event last night. Their Fastap keypad, which fits onto normal sized mobile phones and in a sequential alpha-numeric order, could help to revolutionise the way people interact with their phones for sending text messages.
Microsoft has released a beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials, the companyň€™s latest attempt at producing an antivirus software package.
One of the oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) services, iMesh, is offering instant messaging and an enhanced search function in its upcoming client. iMesh 6.5 will allow users to send messages and share songs with other users. In addition, friends can simultaneously listen to the same songs with the "Listen Together" feature.
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ViewSonic is showcasing more than a dozen new displays at CES 2008, including desktop monitors; high definition (HD) 1080p LCD TVs, a complete line of digital photo frames and a high-end home theater projector.The VLED221wm, a 22" widescreen desktop monitor, sports a 12000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
Samsung has unveiled what"s possibly the world"s largest plasma monitor screen - a monster 255cm (102in) high density panel codenamed "Atlas".
FabulaTech updates Virtual Serial Port Kit. The program goes 5.2.2 and the new version features improved virtual serial port driver and CodeGear RAD 2007 and 2009 controls added to SDK.
While Microsoft still will not confirm there will be a third service pack for its Windows XP operating system, a preview version of the software update has been made available on the Web.
Acer revealed two notebook models, one of which can offer 3D capabilities.
New figures from Internet monitoring firm NetApplications shows upstart browser Firefox has lost nearly a tenth of its market share between the months of August and September.
While shrinking transistor sizes to ever decreasing nanometer lengths is a popular topic in the industry today, several companies are working towards removing physical copper connects altogether, replacing them with super high speed laser connections
College Park (MD) - Researchers found that electrons can travel substantially faster in graphene than in silicon, a standard material used in semiconductor products today. The fairly new material is believed to accelerate the electron flow by a factor of 100x and bring big advantage for applications that require rapid switching.
Now more (hard)core.
Sony Europe will start shipping blank Blu-ray discs next month. Rewritable single-layer discs will be available in retail stores in mid March, while write-once discs will start selling in April. Sony also plans on selling blank dual layer discs later in the year.
Chicago (IL) - Market research firm Gartner predicts that PC manufacturers will be able to grow their business in the double digit-range in 2006, but should expect a substantial slowdown from the momentum the industry reached in 2005.
Microsoft has released an interim build of Windows Vista to its usual testers as well as to some 100,000 of the participants in its Customer Preview Program. Build 5728 includes ongoing fit and finish work based on the feedback Microsoft has received on Vista Release Candidate 1 since its release on 1 September.
Cupertino (CA) - Your iPod not only connects into the stereo system of your car, but will soon also hook up to the in-flight entertainment systems in airplanes of Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United.
Once again LandMark ASP Solutions proves itself to be a price leader in the eLearning space. The rapid eLearning development tool set, Atlantic Link, can now be purchased for under $5,000.
Apple, Dell, and HP laptop owners are tag-teaming Nvidia with a combined lawsuit stemming from issues with faulty GPUs
After shifting part of its DDR2 capacity to NAND flash at the end of last year, Samsung Electronics moved 20,000 to 30,000 wafers of NAND flash capacity back to DDR2 memory prior to Chinese New Year, with the move expected to start influencing the memory market from April, according to many downstream sources. The decision was not caused by a change in the market outlook for DRAM and NAND flash.
Following the trend of external harddrives dedicated to simplify the function of backing up data, Iogear released the "Combo Ion Drive". The 3.5" device offers both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and includes a "Tri-Select button", which lets users configure an automatic backup process. By the push of the button, the drive can back up a single file or an entire directory, for example.
Chicago (IL) - Big November consumer electronics releases are to be expected, with the looming holiday season and almost guaranteed attention to products even from those who know nothing about electronic gadgets. However, very few holiday shopping seasons have seen hotly anticipated gadgets released closely together.
Seoul (Korea) - MP3 players and memory cards could soon see a substantial upgrade with the arrival of higher-capacity Flash chips that recently have entered mass-production. Samsung says it will ship 8 GB NAND Flash memory chips this quarter and heats up the speculation about a possible 8 GB Ipod Nano to be announced in the not too distant future.
Redmond (WA) - Microsoft has released its regular monthly security update and issued a wave of ten patches. Microsoft encountered problems with the initial distribution of the patch yesterday, but the sftware maker"s security team was able to fix some problems that were widely publicized.
Google Apps drop the beta tag so businesses can rest easy.
Less rigor in Web programming, an increasing variety of software, and restrictions on Web security testing have combined to make flaws in Web software the most reported security issues this year to date, according to the latest data from the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project.
This week, the Mobile Antivirus Research Association, a collection of professors, authors and security professionals, announced it had "characterized" the first program to spread from PCs to a mobile device, a virus dubbed Crossover. In a rare occurrence in computer-virus circles, MARA appears to be the only organization to obtain a copy of the program - normally, such virus samples are sent by the creator to the major antivirus firms and shared among virus experts.
Washington (DC) - In a markup session of the Senate Commerce Committee this afternoon, where the current version of the US digital television transition bill is being debated, an amendment by Sen. John McCain to move the date of transition up from the currently supported 7 April 2009, to 7 April 2007, has been defeated. The Committee vote has not yet been publicly recorded.
San Francisco (CA) - Ask.com"s latest service will allow users to keep their search data from being saved for several months, giving it an advantage over Google and other search portals.
CNMEX plans to implement a new software program
Las Vegas (NV) - Ebay announced several new features that are designed to create an improved communication among Ebay sellers and buyers. Member blogs and a Wiki application will bring more user-created content to the auction site, while Skype IM and VoIP functionality is making a first, cautious step into Ebay listings.
The French police force plans to ditch Microsoft"s Internet Explorer as its preferred browser software and replace it with Firefox by the end of the year. Up to 70,000 desktops will be switched over to a Firefox and Thunderbird email client set-up because of the combo"s "reliability, security and inter-interoperability with other state services"," General Christian Brachet, IT director of the French police force said.
Zygote, a company that is mostly know for providing image data biomedical, entertainment, scientific and animation markets, announced that it has launched a beta online store
Oxford Semi said it has released a bridge chip which will speed up the ability to create external hard drives and optical drives for the Macintosh and the PC.
Even Windows pirates get the security support from Microsoft.
Nanya Technology is observing buoyant PC OEM demand for DDR2 memory and the company expects the DDR2 shortage to increase to 30-40% in February, with related contract pricing continuing its rise, according to company president Jih Lien. Nanya also plans to start construction on its first 12" fab in March, Lien said.
Google today announced that it will be sending out thousands more Google Wave invitations to users eager to preview the service.
WorkforceTrack introduces mini-ERP web-based hosted solution which is easy to use and doesn"t require extensive setupintegration costs for small businesses.
MIT researchers have started putting entire gas-turbine engines on tiny silicon chips. With the help of some military funding, researchers have fashioned millimeter-sized compressors, combustion chambers and turbines and placed them on layers of silicon wafers. The new engines promise to run more than 10 times longer than batteries of the same weigh and could help lighten the load for future soldiers.
Intel plans to start offering an entry-level Core 2 Duo processor, the T5200, for OEM notebook makers in October, in order to compete with AMD"s entry-level Mobile Turion 64x2 CPUs, according to sources at Taiwan notebook makers. The planned launch of the T5200 CPU, which is not on Intel"s initial roadmap for its Merom-series processors, apparently follows a previous Intel practice, when it launched two "unofficial" Core Duo CPUs, the T2250 and T2050, in June for the entry-level notebook segment, the sources noted.
SEMI has reported that worldwide semiconductor equipment billings reached US$9.58 billion in the first quarter of 2006. The billings figure is 20% higher than the fourth quarter of 2005 and about 3 percent above the same quarter a year ago.
Just how clean is your computer keyboard and mouse? If you work in a hospital or have small kids who like eating junk food and rolling around in the front yard then your mouse could be covered in germs and grime. Unotron is selling a line of keyboards and mice with their "SpillSeal" technology that can be fully immersed and washed.
Asus today launched two new notebooks, the F50 and the F70, both geared toward the consumer entertainment market.
Stratix was again recognized by Inc. magazine in its annual ranking of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in America. This is the third consecutive year that Stratix has been recognized by Inc.
Hitachi said that it agreed with Fujitsu on further financial terms for the joint venture Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display (FHP). H
In 2007, networking products based on a preliminary version of the IEEE 802.11n standard (so called "pre-N" products) will replace 802.11g devices faster than it was earlier expected, and they will likely dominate the consumer WLAN market in North America by the end of this year, said Ken Kao, chairman of D-Link. Since the pre-N market has been in stagnation for a while, WLAN device vendors are expected to resort to aggressive pricing strategy to stir up demand, and this would help accelerating the migration from 802.11g to 802.11n, Kao stated.
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Tokyo
Samsung Electronics was number one in the global TV market in terms of unit and revenue shares in the third quarter, while worldwide TV unit shipments grew 7% on-quarter and 3% on-year to 45.5 million units, according to research firm DisplaySearch. Average TV prices were up 25% on-year to $548 as flat panel TVs continued to take share.
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Apple events always have even the most jaded computer user somewhat curious as to what the Cupertino company could be coming out with next, and todayň€™s MacBook event delivers on nearly all from the rumor mill.
Despite that touch panels are still believed to post buoyant demand in 2008, demand for related components has slowed down recently, prompting industry players to believe that meaningful touch panel demand will only take off from the second quarter. Citing comments from LCD module (LCM) makers, sources at Taiwan IC design houses indicated that demand for touch panels from Europe and the US seems to be slowing.
With 95% of handsets already utilizing LED backlighting, LED makers estimate that LED shipment growth will slow next year to a 10% range, a growth rate just slightly ahead of forecasted 9.1% growth for the overall global handset market, according to data from Digitimes Research. Market analysts expect LED shipment growth in the handset market to be driven by the white-box handset market, which will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 25% between 2006 and 2010, with shipments of white-box handsets in China market reaching 40-60 million units this year.
Notebook makers said recently it is unlikely that prices for 14" to 15.4" notebook panels will continue rising despite tight supply for the segments. The ASP (average selling price) of 15.4" notebook panels fell from $150 in January 2006 to $96 in July, before rebounding to $102 in September.
BenQ recently announced two of its 19" LCD monitors, DP93GX+ and DP93GS, have received Windows Vista Basic certification. BenQ expects its 22" widescreen (FP222WH) and 24" widescreen (FP241VW) monitors to also meet the requirements of Microsoft"s Vista Premium in mid-November, the company said.
Kingston announced that it will offer its ValueRAM product family with versions for Intel server platforms. The memory modules can be identified by the addition of the letter "I" and are available as DDR-266, DDR-333 and DDR2-400 versions. Pricing begins at about $105 for a single-rank 512 MByte DDR2-400 module, 1 GByte versions are priced between $226 and $295, and 2 GByte modules $550 and $708. (THG)
Sunnyvale (CA)
Paris (France) - The European Space Agency (ESA) has published hundreds of 3D images of Mars, which give a spectacular impression of the terrain of the planet.
The ARM processor will utilize Handshake Solutions" Handshake Technology, which is the industry"s first production proven methodology for using self-timed circuitry in commercial applications. Handshake Technology has been used for more than five years in tens of millions of products including smart cards, advanced pagers, In-Vehicle Network transceivers, and cordless handsets. The compact asynchronous ARM processor will be particularly useful in the smart card, consumer electronics, and automotive markets because of its very low-power consumption and low Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI).
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Santa Clara (IL)
See the AMD AM2 processor slide show ..
Thanks to strong demand, plasma display panel (PDP) makers have secured orders through the first quarter of 2006 and the shortage of PDPs is not likely to ease in 2006, according to unspecified PDP makers.
By the end of 2007 the number of cellular connections will reach three billion, having passed through 2.5 billion during September 2006, according to research firm Wireless Intelligence.The majority of the world"s cellular growth will continue to come from Asia-Pacific, but the fastest rate growth there will shift from China to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, said Wireless Intelligence.
It seems that Dell isnň€™t the only one looking to strip Psion of its ň€śnetbookň€ť trademark. Now Intelň€™s part of the liberation party.
A silicon chip that faithfully mimics the neural circuitry of a real retina could lead to better bionic eyes for those with vision loss, researchers claim.
ViewSonic has quietly added a 17" widescreen LCD monitor to its widescreen monitor portfolio. With a manufacturer"s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $205, the model (VA1703wb) has a resolution of 1440ç—900, a contrast ratio of 500:1, a brightness of 250cd/m2 and a response time of 8ms, according to the company"s website.
Samsung Electronics announced today that it has developed the industry"s highest density MultiMediaCard (MMC)-format flash-memory card, based on its most advanced multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. It has also developed the highest performing MMC card, based on SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash, in rounding out its large portfolio of MMC memories.
San Francisco (CA)
Landmark figure achieved by Tracesmart to fight identity fraud
There was definitely a theme this year when it came to Computex this year; mobility.
evocos, a leading provider in event management software has released v3.1 of its event & delegate management system
Kingston has announced new low-latency HyperX DDR3 memory modules for performance notebooks.
Chicago (IL)
ATI expanded its 2300 series of standalone graphics processors for cellphones. The new models 2380 and 2388 are capable of running OpenGL ES 1.2 applications with a display resolution of up to 640x480, play MPEG4, H.263, H.263+, H.264 and Real Video with up to 30 frames per second (fps) in 352x288 pixel and play audio formats MP3, WMA, MIDI, Real Audio and AAC, among others.
Taiwan memory module makers indicated that current oversupply of NAND flash in the market has provided them with more freedom to adopt various types of memory card platforms. In the past, NAND flash giant Samsung Electronics was able to aggressively lobby its customers not to adopt its NAND flash chips for use in SD cards, but to only use Samsung-made NAND flash in MultiMediaCard (MMC) cards.
Robots could become as common as televisions in the coming decade for South Koreans. Faced with an aging population and the rising cost of skilled labor, the South Korean government is funding research into robots that could perform more menial jobs like guiding customers or doing security patrols. South Korea"s Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), the same agency that spearheaded the country"s successful broadband initiative, is leading the charge with their IT839 strategy.
Toshiba and Sandisk today announced an 8 Gbit NAND flash memory chip fabricated with 70 nm process technology. According to the two firms the technology will pave the way for a new wave of "GByte chips". The 8 Gbit prototype chip has an areal density of 20 billion transistors per square inch of silicon and is roughly five percent larger than the previous generation 4 Gbit chip that is manufactured in 90 nm.
To enhance the absorption of medicines, researchers are creating nanoparticles that can hook onto the gut and thus stay longer, increasing drug uptake. For instance, Sinko noted, the herpes drug Valtrex and the AIDS drug Retrovir hook onto nutrient transporters in the intestines, giving them higher rates of absorption.
Infineon Technologies is now evaluating the possibility to outsource production of handset-use radio frequency (RF) transceivers, considering United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) as a possible partner, according to Arun Palwankar, marketing director of Infineon"s RF business in the Asia-Pacific region. Infineon"s handset RF chips are currently produced in France and Germany, utilizing 0.13-micron CMOS process.
Raleigh (NC) - Red Hat released its latest version in the Fedora Project, Fedora Core 6. The software incorporates new features, including new GUI management tools, better and faster updating tools, and accessibility to third-party Red Hat Package Management (RPM) repositories, according to Red Hat.
ULi Electronics was spun off from ALi, to focus on core-logic chipsets, about two years ago. DigiTimes recently met with ULi CEO and president Alex Kuo to talk about how the company evolved in that time from a notebook-chipset maker to a niche player in the desktop market, specializing in southbridge chips and single-chip K8 AMD core-logic solutions. Kuo also spoke about partnerships and the challenges he faces managing a niche player in a competitive market.
Markham (ON) - ATI today introduced its Crossfire 3200 chipset, which was formerly code-named RD580. The dual-graphics chipset offers two x16 PCI Express slots and allows users to install two graphics cards without the need for a master/slave configuration, at least if they are not X1800 or X1900 versions.
Semiconductor research analysts released their third quarter market share figures for DRAM showing that revenues remained almost static in the third quarter.
Geneva
Though often ignored by the largest online sellers, GoldenMars still provides PC memory modules to the U.S. market.
Yahoo! Autos cooking oil-powered car set a land speed record over the weekend at the El Mirage Dry Lake Bed near Victorville California. The heavily modified six-cylinder, "Lipid Lightning" truck reached 98.155 mph which, according to Yahoo, is a record for a grease car.
IBM is due to unveil its first two 64-bit servers based on Intel"s dual-core Xeon chip, formerly code-named Paxville DP, when the chip giant launches the processor Monday. Under a promotional deal to last through year-end, Big Blue will sell one of the servers for the same price as the single-core model it replaces, according to an IBM executive. The move is designed to provide an additional incentive for users to adopt dual-core computing sooner rather than later.
Here"s TG Daily"s 2-minute rundown of the week. Click through our handy slide show to get an overview of the news to know of the past five days.
Summit Corporate Services has secured a new facility to accommodate its growing client base and expanding service offerings.
Intel is currently seeking PBGA (plastic ball-grid array) substrate suppliers in Taiwan through its domestic IC packaging and testing contract makers, as the chip giant"s major IC substrate suppliers in Japan are shifting more capacity to flip-chip (FC) substrate production, sources at Taiwan IC packaging firms indicated.
Celerant Provides Integrated Retail and E-Commerce Platform
Demand for mainstream graphics card recently began picking up, driven by Intel"s integrated chipset shortage according to Paul Sun, general manager of Nvidia Taiwan Sales. The rising demand is expected to contribute an additional one million graphics card shipments to the industry every month in the second half of this year, Sun said.
Although solar cells based on monocrystalline silicon deliver better performance than multicrystalline silicon, industry players believe that the latter should rise as the mainstream material for solar cells due to its lower cost. It is commonly agreed that monocrystalline silicon has a better power conversion rate than than that of multi-crystalline silicon solar cell by about 1% and this brings relatively higher average selling prices (ASPs).
IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company"s microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100 TByte of data.
Yahoo today launched a service that is similar to Google"s Answer site by asking web users to assist other users in finding questions to their answers. In contrast to Google"s service that counts on selected and experienced Googlers that provide their service typically for a fee, Yahoo"s Answers (beta) site is free of charge.
Remember those days of 64 megabyte USB flash drives? Those days are long gone as evidenced by Kingstonň€™s latest DataTraveler drives that can store up to 64 GB of data for under $200.
Munich
The Toronto Agile Software Development Community will host Agile Tour Toronto as a one day conference that will take place Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency on King in the heart of downtown Toronto.
AMD aims to ship a total of 1.41 million of Socket 754 Sempron CPUs in emerging markets in the third quarter, trying to clear the present inventory as well as enlarge its market share, according to sources at Taiwan-based motherboard makers. AMD plans use the effort to fight back pressure from Intel that recently resumed offering Celeron D 315/326 desktop CPUs to channel partners, the sources said.
Planning your roadmap to Core i7? Kingston has just announced it is launching its HyperX Triple Channel DDR3 kits today, with 3GB kits to ship first, 6GB kits to ship following shortly.
New home network management software will improve ease-of-use for consumers and reduce the level of customer support required, reported In-Stat. The hardware-agnostic consumer network management and setup software market will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of well over 100% for both aggressive and conservative forecast scenarios, the high-tech market research firm said.
Motherboard maker Micro-Star International (MSI) yesterday introduced the DRE16-B, an external DVD/CD burner that supports single- and dual-layer DVD solutions as well as the DVD-RAM format.
Sun Microsystems announced its latest microprocessor, which is more powerful than its predecessors, uses less electricity and is one of the cornerstones of the computer maker"s plan to return to sustainable revenue and profit growth.
Sharp will invest 500 billion yen (about $4.26 billion) to build a tenth-generation (10G) TFT LCD plant, with construction to begin in the third quarter of 2007 and volume production to begin in mid-2008, according to the Japanese-language Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Samsung says it will sink $1.9 billion dollars to increase DRAM memory production in its factories in South Korea. The company will upgrade 14 existing plants in addition to building a 15th factory. Samsung believes DRAM demand will increase by more than 75 percent and hopes to increase DRAM shipments by 30% versus last year.
Today at the Embedded World 2006 exhibition in Nuremberg (February 14 -16), Infineon Technologies announced the availability of new microcontroller (MCU) products - 8-bit, 6-bit and 32-bit TriCore family of devices - for the automotive market. The Infineon MCUs, well suited for motor control systems, can reduce system-level costs by up to 40% compared to conventional solutions with external components including DSP, PWM ASIC, Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), external oscillators, and others.
With its DDR2 in all densities already being fabricated at the 80-nanometer node, Samsung Electronics today announced the mass production of 1 Gbit DDR2 DRAM.
In addition to scheduling 80nm production at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for September, ATI Technologies will begin producing its graphics processor (GPU) on an 80nm manufacturing process at United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) in the second half of 2006, according to industry sources.
Nvidia will announce its new operational plans after taking over Taiwan-based chipset maker ULi Electronics by the end of the first quarter, 2006, according to the company. ATI Technologies, in the meantime, is preparing new replacement southbridge chips for when ULi suspends its supply, sources at Taiwan motherboard makers hinted.
Intel has told its motherboard customers and OEM partners that it will release six versions of its 65 nanometre Yonah dual core notebook chip in the first quarter of next year.
A team of British and U.S. scientists has demonstrated the first working "invisibility cloak," although don"t expect it to appear in the Halloween costumes aisle just yet.
Yesterday, Lexar Media announced during CES that it"s shipping the highest-performing solid-state drive for end consumers--the Crucial RealSSD C300 drive--this month, with the drives expected to arrive at resellers in February. The new SSD supports the new high-speed SATA 6Gb/s interface that pukes tasty read speeds of up to 355 MB/s.
Although several leading global brands have already launched or will soon offer 18x DVD burners, CMC Magnetics and Ritek, Taiwan"s top two makers of optical discs, currently produce 18x DVD+R/-R discs only in limited volumes and the supply may fall significantly short of global demand, according to industry sources. Plextor, Lite-On IT, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Sony, NEC and BenQ currently offer 18x DVD burners while Pioneer and Asustek Computer will do so soon.
ATI is preparing for the release of its high-end graphic chip, the R600, with the chip expected to hit the market between the end of March and beginning of April, according to Taiwan-based graphic card makers. The R600, which will compete head to head against Nvidia"s G80, is manufactured on 80nm node, supports DirectX10 and features DDR4, the Taiwan makers added.
Iwill announced a server board supporting dual AMD Opteron and PCI Express architecture, based on the NVIDIA nForceTM Professional 2200 media and communications processor. The DK8ES provides dual PCI-Express x16 slots (one with x2 bandwidth), dual Broadcom PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet controllers, AMD"s 8131 PCI-X chip, and an integrated graphics controller. The product is available immediately. (THG)
The social networking site MyTimelineOnline.com recently got a major overhaul in its latest release. MyTimelineOnline, a site aimed at helping internet users share their life story in timeline format, was completely rewritten.
Maryland is moving to ban internet hunting as legislation goes before lawmakers this week. The practice of hunting via the internet is a relatively new one which has attracted a lot of fire (excusing the pun) from those on both sides of the hunting divide.
If you"re an official in charge of the Frisian Nuon Solar Challenge - the world"s biggest solar powered boat race - which will take place between June 26 and July 1 in the Netherlands, you"ll do the five-day trip on the first Dutch fuel cell boat. This electrically powered boat will use hydrogen as fuel and will cover the 220 kilometers of the race without refueling.