AMD leaves the domain of digital TV   Posted on 26/08/2008 at 12:09 by Nicolas

	AMD has announced the sale of its digital TV (DTV) section to Broadcom, a partner of long date specialized in chipsets and network equipment. The transaction for an amount of $192.8 million notably concerns Xilleon and Theater 300 DTV chips and therefore products developed by ATI. In terms of employees, some 530 people work in six "design centers" throughout the world and they are welcome to join Broadcom. This announcement isn’t really a big surprise because AMD had recently paid out a depreciation cost of $876 million after its abandonment of DTV activities. AMD’s directors are now proving to be quite realistic and since the company no longer has the means to carry out its ambitions on this market it has been necessary to abandon them. Now we will just have to wait and see what Broadcom plan on doing with this section...

Elpida: DDR3-2500s @ 1.5V   Posted on 12/08/2008 at 20:16 by Nicolas - source: Elpida

	The Japanese memory manufacturer Elpida has just announced that it has developed the first PC3-20000/DDR3-2500 128 MB chips. What's more they can run at a normal 2.5Gbps at 1.5V (or even 1.2V for DDR3-1800) whereas at the moment it's generally not possible to find better than PC3-17000/DDR3-2133 at 2.0V or higher. In order to achieve these levels of performance Elpida uses copper interconnect technology instead of aluminium, which improves conductivity. Sample shipments are expected to begin by the end of August and the manufacturer has already announced smaller chip structures which will allow it to produce even faster chips. It remains to be seen what the latency will be and above all, what the chip modules will be priced at...

Elpida makes a 16 GB module   Posted on 06/08/2008 at 19:14 by Marc

	Elpida is the first to launch 16 GB capacity modules. In FB-DIMM format- and therefore limited to servers -these DDR2-667 or DDR2-800 modules are actually comprised of 64 DDR2 dies which are packaged using stacked FBGA technology in order to reduce bulk. Sampling is planned for this month and mass production in the last quarter. Otherwise, no price information was given.

Intel launches the Centrino 2: what's new?   Posted on 15/07/2008 at 21:23 by Nicolas

	It was finally yesterday that Intel launched its Centrino 2 platform a little more than 5 years after the introduction of the first laptop PCs based on the first version of this flagship brand for the mobile segment. The concept is basically the same as it still includes a CPU, chipset and WiFi controller. In terms of processors, six new models were launched: While these are all still Penryns (already found on the Centrino "Santa Rosa Refresh") they now use an FSB 1066 which should be amply sufficient given the fact that they only have two cores. Concerning the chipsets, there will first be the PM45 and GM45 (which has a DirectX 10 graphic circuit) sold for $39 and $43, respectively, combined with an ICH9M. One interesting innovation is that they support DDR3-1066 whose voltage is 1.5V (following JEDEC recommendations) versus 1.8V for DDR2. This should enable reducing power consumption in addition to the obvious performance increases. Otherwise, PCI Express 2.0 support is finally a reality with the Centrino 2. For WiFi, Intel offers its Link 5000s whose prices vary between $19 and $30 depending on the model. Being prudent, the Santa Clara giant mentions support for the 802.11n specification project which offers five times the bandwidth (up to 450 Mbit/s) and double the range on a Wireless N network compared to wi-fi 802.11a/g norms. We’ll just have to wait and see what this means in practice because the 802.11n is supposed to be everything but new for the Santa Clara company. An optional element has appeared on the Santa Rosa. Intel Turbo Memory is still present but this time there are 2 GB modules sold for $27 to $30. You may recall that this consists of integrating flash memory interfaced via the PCI-E bus. Otherwise, we can now use Vista’s ReadyDrive and ReadyBoost technology that adds gains in performance and autonomy. Finally, on the professional segment the Centrino 2 vPro supports AMT 4.0 which should facilitate administration.

Rambus vs Nvidia: patent violations   Posted on 11/07/2008 at 19:57 by Nicolas - source: Rambus

	Yesterday, Rambus, a company specialized in technologies used by the latest generation of memory as well as its intensive "legal activities", announced that it would take Nvidia to court for the violation of 17 of its patents. These involve SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3-SDRam memory controllers and it concerns chipsets, GPU as well as media communication processors, multimedia applications processors and other products from at least six NVIDIA product lines. In short, this means almost all of Nvidia’s products except software. In addition, the plaintiff is seeking an injunction that will forbid the sale of concerned products as long as the case is unsettled. Tom Lavelle, Senior Vice-President of the company, says that they tried to find a friendly solution with Nvidia for six years which only led to unsatisfactory results. While it seems that it’s been possible at times to find an agreement with Rambus (for example, AMD signed one with the firm in early 2005), we should keep in mind that the former Intel partner is under investigation by the European Commission for abuse of dominant position involving "patent ambush". Evidently, the Commission isn’t any more pleased with this company than certain manufacturers that have to pay significant royalties…