SAN FRANCISCO — At the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) here on Monday (Dec. 11), IBM, Macronix and Qimonda will claim that they have developed a phase-change memory prototype that boasts switching speeds at more than 500 times faster than traditional flash-memory technologies.

AMD took a big step today in its efforts to close the gap that rival Intel created when it came out with its line of quad-core processors this fall. AMD on Thursday marked its own spot in the quad-core market by demonstrating the first native quad-core x86 server processor at its annual Industry Analyst Forum in Berkeley, Calif.

What will be the next big evolution in AMD's processor family won't be ready to ship until mid-2007, but the company hit a milestone by showing industry analysts and customers that it's moving along in its production cycle.

The Quad Core wars have begun. Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday launched its Quad FX platform, a direct response to an earlier quad-core processor released by rival Intel.

AMD's dual-socket, multicore desktop platform is designed to take full advantage of Microsoft's Windows Vista, which also officially launched on Thursday. What has analysts talking, though, is the platform's performance for what they're calling megataskers—people who run multiple high-performance and power sucking applications at the same time.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Word on the street is that Intel Corp. is trying to sell its Dialogic unit, a supplier of computer telephony products, according to sources in the industry.

CHICAGO — Performance Technologies Inc. executives came to Globalcomm this week to promote a Liquid-Cooled Embedded Computing (LCEC) Initiative with partner Pentair Electronics Packaging.

ZICHRON YAACOV, Israel — New biometric technology developed here can identify individuals by sensing unique electronics signals generated by a beating heart, brain function or breathing.

MANHASSET, N.Y. — The technologies responsible for displays ranging from near-to-the-eye to large flat-screen TVs will take center stage at the upcoming SID 2006 International Symposium, Seminar, and Exhibition.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Troubled Intel Corp. has put several of its loss-ridden communications-chip businesses on the block, including its network processors, XScale chip lines and other products, according to a report from the San Jose Mercury News on Saturday (June 3).

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Thursday (June 1) said it will license its processor bus, the coherent version of the HyperTransport interconnect.

Other chip makers can use the link to build co-processors that plug into one of AMD’s CPU sockets or, someday, even become blocks in one of AMD’s chips, the company announced at its twice yearly analyst day here.

 

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. unveiled a new photo format it claims will provide better quality at half the size of a JPEG image. Windows Media Photo (WMP) will be built into the next-generation of Windows, called Vista.

"One of the biggest drivers for upgrading computers is digital photography, so anything we do to make digital photography better is good for Windows," said Bill Crow, senior program manager for WMP.

BANGALORE, India — Intel Corp. is negotiating with India about setting up an assembly and test facility there, but the microprocessor giant would not give details, according to its president and CEO, Paul Otellini.

Intel is working on a system-on-chip implementation to drive down the cost of computers over the long term, Otellini said. In the short term, Intel plans to repurpose its processor technology to help make computers more affordable.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Proving that an old technology still has legs, IBM Corp. on Tuesday (May 16) claimed to have demonstrated a world record in data density on linear magnetic tape.

IBM's Almaden Research Center, based here, packed data onto a test tape at a density of 6.67 billion bits per square inch — more than 15 times the data density of today's magnetic tape products.

LONDON — Processor and chip design technology licensor ARM Holdings plc has launched the Cortex-R4. the latest processor in Cortex range. 
 
ARM (Cambridge, England) previously codenamed the Cortex-R4 Serval-E. The processor sits between the previously launched high-end Cortex-A8 and the Cortex-M3 32-bit microcontroller range and is intended to be used in the next generation of mobile phones, hard-disk drives, printers and automotive designs, targeting more than one billion units in the embedded market.

Apple Computer's security update train rumbled into the station late May 11 with fixes for a whopping 43 Mac OS X and QuickTime vulnerabilities.
 
The company's Security Update 2006-003 patches 31 flaws in the Mac OS X, most of them serious enough to cause "arbitrary code execution attacks."

TOKYO — Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., and Sony Corp. have jointly proposed specifications for high definition (HD) video cameras named the AVCHD format, which enables consumers to shoot and record HD video images using 8-cm DVD recordable discs. 
 
The AVCHD format is an HD digital video camera format for recording 1080i and 720p signals onto 8-cm DVD media.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Yahoo! BB, the Japan Yahoo! broadband service launched by Softbank BB Corp., is the first to use a native 40-Gbit/sec interface on the Cisco CRS-1 core router.

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel Corp. has unified its next-generation desktop and notebook multicore processor families under the name Core2 Duo as part of a new naming convention for multicore products, the company said 
 
Intel unified the desktop and notebook multicore processor brands, formerly codenamed Conroe and Merom, respectively, under the Core2 Duo brand as part of a new branding strategy.

AUSTIN — Mexico is building a network of technology incubators, including branches in the United States and Canada, said Alejandro Hernandez, under secretary for small and medium businesses at the Ministry of the Economy. 
 

BUDAPEST, Hungary — As more functions are embedded in the mobile phone, the communications industry is facing a power consumption problem — and unfortunately it is one that cannot be answered by the fuel cell or other battery alternatives, according to Yrjo Neuvo, formerly executive vice president and CTO for Nokia Mobile Phones, who now serves as a technology advisor to the company.

AUSTIN, Texas — Advanced Micro Devices is turning up the heat on rival Intel by turning down the power. 
 
AMD CEO Hector Ruiz welcomed Dell Inc. as the newest member of The Green Grid, a group of companies seeking to reduce power consumption in data centers.