intel

Apple CEO Steve Jobs usually waits until the end of his keynotes to deliver the real news. We'll start from the start.

This post kicks off One More Thing, a personal blog in which I'll share with you my take on Apple, the chip industry, and the gradual evolution of mobile computing as the PC starts to look more and more like the clock radio. It's going to be a combination of news and commentary, mostly on Apple but also on the chip industry and the development of the truly mobile computer.

If you're looking for … Read more

Hopefully, a shift in Intel's marketing strategy will put the Core 2 Duo dancers on hiatus later this year, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said Tuesday.

After Intel realized its fortunes had begun to turn last year, the company immediately began a marketing blitz called "Multiply," based almost exclusively around the Core 2 Duo brand. It was an interesting--if not somewhat perplexing--departure from the platform branding strategy that previously governed Intel's marketing, but any baseball manager will tell you that you've got to go with the hot hand while it's hot. The Core 2 Duo's performance … Read more

Intel CEO Paul Otellini's 2006 cost cuts, painful as they were for Intel employees, paid off Tuesday as the company's second-quarter profits rebounded compared with last year.

The chipmaker posted a 47 percent increase in net income during its second quarter, up to $1.3 billion or 22 cents per share. The Wall Street crowd had been expecting 19 cents per share. Intel said it had 90,300 employees during the second quarter, way down from the 102,500 employees it had at this time last year.

Revenue was also a little stronger than had been expected, up … Read more

In addition to bringing its "Extreme" high-end CPU brand to laptops, Intel also announced a handful of new desktop quad chips today. The highlight is the top-end $999 Core 2 Extreme QX6850, a 3.0GHz chip with a new 1,333MHz front side bus. Intel also announced three dual-core CPUs that also get the newer, faster bus, the 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 ($266), the 2.66GHz E6750 ($183), and the 2.33GHz E6550 ($163). Rounding out the announcement, a new 1,066MHz front side bus Core 2 Quad chip makes its debut as well. The Q6700 … Read more

Mobile gaming just got sweeter: today, Intel announced the Core 2 Extreme X7800, its first laptop CPU under the Extreme Edition brand. The 2.6GHz dual-core processor features 4MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz front-side bus, making it the highest-end chip in Intel's mobile lineup. Of greater interest to gamers, though, is the fact that the chip's overspeed protection has been removed, meaning laptop manufacturers and users will be able to overclock the X7800 for even more performance (Intel, of course, denies any responsibility for the consequences of overclocking).

Like Intel's other mobile product offerings, the … Read more

According to the US Census Bureau, there are over 1.8 billion children in the world under the age of 14.

Intel would like to sell them all a processor. And, ideally, a chipset with graphics, some flash memory, and networking.

If there are going to be 1.8 billion $100 laptops, Intel might be able to earn $25 each, or $45 billion for the chips inside them.

Of course, AMD would also like to earn that revenue. Before this week, it looked like AMD had the inside track. AMD was in the right place at the right time when … Read more

There's nothing like allegations of predatory conduct to bring two organizations together.

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project has decided to bring Intel on board as a partner and a possible future supplier, just a few months after Negroponte went on 60 Minutes and essentially accused the chip maker of trying to destroy his low-cost PC project. Intel has agreed to join the board of the OLPC and work with the organization on possible "collaborations involving technology and educational content," according to a press release Friday morning.

Negroponte had taken issue with Intel's own … Read more

Bruce Sewell, Intel's general counsel, has a great op-ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal [Subscription req'd]. This is just one of those things that everyone seems to agree upon, but no one (except perhaps IBM) will unilaterally act upon.

Sewell elucidates the problem, and proposes support for US legislation that would go a long way toward fixing it:

Unfortunately, under current law, parties that want to innovate in areas covered by questionable patents have only two options, both of them bad: an ineffective, rarely used re-examination process, or litigation -- the average cost of which is, … Read more

BusinessWeek has an interesting, frightening article on patent reform. Frightening because it's the BigCos who are advocating reform and, apparently, it's the VCs and entrepreneurs who are fighting it:

Since the mid-1990s, America's largest computer and software companies have been trying to rewrite U.S. patent law. The goal was to stem the tide of patent litigation, much of it generated by inventors and small companies trying to protect their intellectual property. But each time Big Tech tried to sell Congress on reform, it ran into an even mightier constituency: Big Pharma. Drugmakers had no problem with the current system, and they had the ear of Republican leaders.… Read more