Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

One thing was made crystal clear today by Microsoft. Windows 8 on ARM will not be the same experience as Windows 8 on Intel-AMD--despite a big effort by Microsoft to be consistent.

Windows 8 ARM devices will run on processors from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Nvidia--marking the first time that a mainstream Windows operating system will run on processors from ARM chip suppliers in addition to those of Intel-AMD.

Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky said today that Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) will launch at the same time as Windows on Intel-AMD (x86)--though he didn't say when--and that ARM-based more

The New York Attorney General has agreed to terminate its antitrust lawsuit against Intel.

Intel and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the AG's lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009, Intel said today.

The agreement, which follows a December 2011 court ruling that reduced the scope of the New York lawsuit, "expressly states that Intel does not admit either any violation of law or that the allegations in the complaint are true, and it calls for no changes to the more

Will Apple's next iPad reach performance nirvana with a monster quad-core chip? Nirvana, maybe, but not necessarily via quad-core.

But let's put aside whether Apple's latest chip will be quad-core for a minute and look at what others are doing. (See a post at The Verge on this topic too.)

One of the leading lights among ARM processor suppliers is Texas Instruments. They've made it clear that they're not going quad-core this year and not even next year (necessarily) with their first next-gen OMAP5 chips.

In a CES demo, TI showed off the next-gen OMAP5 more

Nvidia and Rambus have settled a longstanding patent license dispute.

The agreement covers a "broad range" of chip products offered by Nvidia and settles all outstanding claims, including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations, the companies said. The term of the agreement is five years.

Though neither financial nor technological details were disclosed, the dispute between the two companies has not exactly been private.

In 2008, Rambus sued Nvidia, accusing the graphics chip supplier of violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers. At that time, Rambus claimed that chipsets, graphics processers, and media communication processors across six different more

Asia-based DigiTimes posted another in a series of articles that call for Intel to lower its chips prices. In this case, for Windows 8 gadgets.

This isn't the first time DigiTimes, which has close connections to Asia-based device makers, has expressed the sentiment of Taiwan's manufacturers (aka, OEMs and ODMs). It has been a recurring theme with ultrabooks. Device makers obviously want lower prices so they can turn more of a profit.

This time, the publication is calling for Intel and Advanced Micro Devices to lower prices of their most power-efficient processors that will go into, among other more

Traditional PCs are in crisis over in the U.K. and France--and Apple and tablets are picking up the slack.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, shipments in the U.K. PC market fell to 2.9 million units, a decline of 19.6 percent compared with the same period in 2010 (see table below). PCs run the Microsoft Windows operating system.

That marked the fifth consecutive quarterly shipment decline, and also the worst decline in five quarters, Gartner said. For the whole year, the U.K. market declined 15.9 percent, shrinking by nearly 2 million units from 2010. more

Sharp's high-resolution IGZO display technology may not be out of the running for the iPad 3, according an analyst at DisplaySearch.

Though there have been rumors claiming that Sharp's IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) technology did not make the cut for the iPad 3, Charles Annis, a Kyoto, Japan-based analyst at DisplaySearch, thinks Sharp still has a good shot at the iPad 3.

The iPad 3 is expected to sport a 9.7-inch 2048x1536 resolution LCD, a much higher resolution than the iPad 2's 1024-by-768 panel.

Annis spoke with CNET on Monday.

Question: So, what is the more

One unmistakable theme in Super Bowl ads this year was manufacturing in America. Is it time for Apple to reconsider all of the production it does abroad?

GE's ad, which highlighted Appliance Park in Louisville, KY, tried to show that the U.S. is still perfectly capable of making big-ticket consumer products.

"We're on the forefront of revitalizing manufacturing," a production line worker says. "We're proving that it can be done here and it can be done well," he adds.

The Chrysler ad starring Clint Eastwood echoes the same theme of making things in America and how more

Are we in a post-PC era as the late Steve Jobs famously claimed? Not really, says IDC.

This ivory-tower debate resurfaced this week when market researcher Canalys said Apple had become the world's largest PC supplier in the fourth quarter with about 17 percent of the worldwide market.

So, how did reigning PC king Hewlett-Packard suddenly drop to a distant No. 2 with only 12.7 percent? The iPad, of course. Apple shipped more than 15 million of those in the quarter, dwarfing any other so-called "client PC" device.

"We're going through the biggest shift the PC industry more