intel

Podcast: Yahoo's growth plan, Facebook Chat, Intel cores, and Apple patches

This week on the EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss Yahoo's latest move to get Microsoft to cough up more cash for the company. We also talk about Facebook's new privacy options and chat service, which puts the social-networking upstart on a trajectory to collide with Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and others who offer complete communications services.

In addition, we chat about Intel's plans to produce six-core chips in the fourth quarter, and Apple's massive security update to its operating system.

Buzz Out Loud 683: Will you marry me?

EPISODE 683

Apple snags 14 percent of U.S.-based PC retail sales in February http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/ apple_snags_14_percent_of_us_based_pc_retail_sales_in_february.html

Yahoo: We’ll double our cash flow http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896609-7.html http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=300145

Justices turn down Microsoft appeal http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/ SCOTUS_MICROSOFT?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Amazon: Vista SP1 to ship Wednesday http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896597-7.html

Online oligarchy: Old guard dominates Net news coverage http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080317-online-oligarchy-old-guard-dominates-net-news-coverage.html

Returns, technical problems … Read more

Intel, Microsoft to back multicore research

There's nothing like a big challenge to bring a couple closer together.

Such is the case with Intel and Microsoft, which announced on Tuesday they are jointly backing university research to help address the challenges posed by a shift to processors with many brains.

The companies are committing a combined $20 million to fund parallel computing research centers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For years, the PC processor just got faster and faster, performance gains that software could easily take advantage of. In recent years, though, chip speed gains have … Read more

Intel, Samsung comment on flash, SSD reliability

In a recent interview, an Intel manager in the NAND products group discussed the "physical limitations" of flash data recording and the challenges of making solid state drives (SSDs) more reliable. Samsung also addressed SSD durability.

The comments from Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel, are particularly pertinent after a report was released Monday by Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities, stating that the "return rates of current SLC based SSDs at Dell are running 20 percent to 30 percent due to a combination of performance issues and failures." … Read more

Intel's future graphics chip adding a new vector

Intel released a few incremental details about its future graphics chip on Monday, but left a lot of unanswered questions about the company's push into uncharted waters.

Larrabee, a "many-core" graphics processor scheduled for 2009 or 2010, will come with a brand-new set of vector-processing instructions as part of its design, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group. Vector-processing instructions are used to improve the performance of graphics and video applications; you may have heard of previous vector-processing implementations such as SSE4.

These new instructions, combined with Larrabee's … Read more

Intel endgame is mobile phones

For an out-there 2009-2010 chip, Intel's Moorestown seems to get mentioned a lot by executives. If you consider, however, that this silicon may represent Intel's single biggest push into the "very large" mobile phone market, then all that jawboning is understandable.

At recent Intel conferences, CEO Paul Otellini and other high-ranking executives have dropped the Moorestown name frequently. Why? First, it will be Intel's showcase system-on-a-chip, combining the CPU, graphics, and memory controller on a single die, which, in turn, will be combined with other silicon. Second, it will probably serve as the main launching … Read more

Microsoft, Intel to sponsor multicore development research

Correction: The Microsoft and Intel press conference is scheduled for Tuesday.

Microsoft and Intel on Tuesday are expected to launch a joint research initiative to tackle programming for multicore processors.

The two PC industry giants sent out a media alert saying that they will host a teleconference to announce the research venture.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that the venture will focus on multicore programming and that the bulk of the work will be done at the University of California at Berkeley.

The need for more research stems from the emergence of processors with two or more processing … Read more

What makes the most valuable tech companies so valuable?

How do we value technology companies? Ingenuity and invention, quality of service, brand loyalty, manufacturing muscle, operating efficiency, supply-chain management, price, great place to work. There are lots of metrics.

For those unfamiliar with the wily ways of Wall Street, the stock market has its own way of expressing what it thinks of companies. It's called market capitalization or market cap for short.… Read more

Intel Centrino 2 chips coming in two waves

Intel will roll out its first wave of mainstream 45-nanometer "Montevina" Centrino 2 mobile processors by June then follow this up in September with additional chips including the first quad-core mobile processor.

Montevina--which Intel recently branded Centrino 2--will offer the option of integrated Wi-Fi and WiMax wireless technologies. The platform will also have a new Cantiga chipset with better integrated graphics, among other features.

Though some Montevina processor specifics are out there already, scheduling and other details have now been confirmed by sources close to Intel. In short, schedules posted on the site Vr-Zone, among other sites, … Read more