Technology

13 April 2007 - IBM has found a way to connect chips inside products ranging from cell phones to supercomputers, an advance that promises to prolong battery life in wireless devices and eventually speed data transfers between the processor and memory chips in computers. In IBM's solution, two chips are sandwiched on top of one another and held together by vertical connections that are etched in silicon holes that are filled with metal. The vertical connections are referred to as "through-silicon-vias," which allow multiple chips to be stacked together with greater information flow between them. IBM could have memory-on-processor technology by 2009 for use in servers, supercomputers and other machines.

10 April 2007 - TSMC would complete 45nm technology qualification and enter production as early as September 2007. The new 45nm process combines the most advanced 193nm immersion photolithography, competitive performance-enhancing silicon strains, and extreme low-k (ELK) inter-metal dielectric material. TSMC’s 45nm low power process (LP) provides twice the density of 65nm with significantly lower power and manufacturing cost per die. End products are expected to achieve 40 percent greater functionality or 40 percent smaller die size, with reduced power consumption. TSMC’s 45nm general purpose and high performance process (GS) provides more than double the density and a greater than 30 percent speed enhancement over the previous generation at similar leakage power, which is especially critical to support applications in PC, networking, and wired communication.

27 March 2007 - TSMC will start running its 55-nm process technology on a prototype basis in May, initially planning to offer it on a bi-monthly basis. The process is a 90 percent linear-shrink from its 65-nm to deliver "significant die cost savings from 65-nm, while offering the same speed and 10 to 20 percent lower power consumption." In the first phase, the 55-nm logic family will be offered in the company's so called "CyberShuttle" program and include general purpose (GP) and consumer platforms (GC). Initial production of the 55GP begins in May, followed later in the year by 55GC. ATi will be moving on to 55nm early next year for their M8x mobile GPUs that supports DX 10.1

26 March 2007 - Working to free the industry from the constraints of proprietary architectures and making it easier than ever for customers to manage today's increasingly diverse IT environments, AMD today announced new interoperability testing tools, codenamed "SIMFIRE," to help speed the adoption of the recently announced Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware ("DASH") specification. Addressing the need to shorten the time between the introduction of a new standard and the availability of interoperable solutions for end users, the new tools from AMD are immediately available to vendors to help accelerate interoperable solutions for DASH -- web-services based desktop and mobile client management standards announced last week by the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. ("DMTF").

26 March 2007 - Intel announced plans to build a 300-mm wafer fab in the coastal Northeast China city of Dalian in Liaoning Province. The $2.5 billion investment for the factory designated Fab 68 will become Intel's first wafer fab in Asia and adds significant investment to Intel's existing operations in China. When completed, Fab 68 will become part of Intel's manufacturing network that includes eight 300mm factories in 2010 with other fabs located in the United States, Ireland and Israel. Manufacturing with 300mm wafers dramatically increases the ability to produce semiconductors at a lower cost compared with more commonly used 200mm (eight-inch) wafers. The bigger wafers lower production cost per chip while diminishing overall use of resources. Using 300mm manufacturing technology consumes 40 percent less energy and water per chip than a 200mm wafer factory.

5 March 2007 - Futuremark Corporation, the world's leading developer of system performance analysis software and services for cell phones, handhelds and PCs, today announced the release of world's first benchmark for devices with Khronos(tm) OpenGL(r) ES 2.0 programmable mobile graphics API. 3DMark Mobile ES 2.0 has been developed in co-operation with members of Futuremark's Handheld Benchmark Development Program (BDP), an organization comprised of the industry's most influential technology developers, semiconductor companies, device manufacturers and vendors.

27 February 2007 - Chartered announced the extension of its joint development efforts with IBM to include 32-nm bulk CMOS technology. The joint collaboration has enabled Chartered to accelerate its technology roadmap for leading-edge manufacturing solutions, spanning four major generations of advanced process technology, including 90nm, 65nm, 45nm and 32nm logic processes. As with previous nodes, 32nm development activities will be conducted at IBM's state-of-the-art 300 mm semiconductor fabrication facility in East Fishkill, N.Y. Each company will have the ability to implement the jointly developed processes in its own manufacturing facilities.

9 February 2007 - D-Wave Systems will demonstrate the world's first commercial quantum computer next week, a supercooled, superconducting niobium chip housing an array of 16 qubits. D-Wave quantum computer, called "Orion," solves the most difficult problems—called "NP-Complete"—in a just a few cycles, compared to the thousands of cycles needed by conventional computers. Orion is fabricated out of the superconducting metal niobium using conventional lithography. It was then supercooled to near absolute zero to permit its qubits to maintain their quantum state throughout a calculation. Initially, D-Wave will lease time on its quantum computer, which will be accessed over a secure Internet connection. Eventually, the company plans to sell quantum computer systems.

12 April 2007 - IBM will link chips together in a relatively new way that the company says will improve performance and cut power consumption. The technology, called through-silicon vias, or TSV, involves connecting different components or different cores inside of two respective chips through thousands of tiny wires that will carry data back and forth. Now, chips mostly transfer data over channels called buses, which can get overwhelmed, embodied in wires. With TSV, far more data can be transferred per second in a less energy-intensive manner. IBM will deliver samples of communication chips with TSV to customers later this year and begin commercial production in 2008.

5 April 2007 - Intel will extend its innovative and popular features designed for desktop business PCs called Intel® vPro processor technology into its forthcoming high-performance laptop offering. IT departments will be able to reliably manage both desktops and notebooks and deal with what plagues them most -- security threats, cost of ownership, resource allocation, and asset management -- and do so wirelessly. "Intel Centrino Pro processor technology brings the best of our offering with Intel vPro processor technology and adds it right into our highly successful Intel Centrino brand for laptops," said Mooly Eden, vice president of Intel Mobile Products Group. "This is an ideal time for this product as we continue to see notebook penetration rates increasing in business."

27 March 2007 - micronDR (S) Pte Ltd (www.microndr.com.sg), the data recovery specialist, today announces the setting up of Southeast Asia’s first Class 10 certified clean room for data recovery in Singapore. The clean room, located at micronDR’s premises in Senoko, will enable the opening up of hard drive without the risk of contamination during the intricate recovery process. “A single speck of dust can completely ruin the delicate platters that hold information. Our proprietary media rejuvenation process helps to make it possible to read damaged hard drives. In most cases, data recovery only allows one attempt before the media becomes totally unrecoverable,” said Patrick Koh, Chief Operating Officer of micronDR (S) Pte Ltd.

26 March 2007 - According to Chinabyte, AMD made an interesting remark on Intel plans to set up a fab in China. AMD spokesman commented that Intel to build a fab in China is a good thing as it will propel China IT industry development and beneficial to the consumers. It will also boost the overall market competitiveness.

7 March 2007 - Futuremark Corporation, developers of 3DMark, the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking, went live today with the beta version of YouGamers, the World's First Intelligent Gamer Website. YouGamers (www.YouGamers.com) is a new destination site for PC gamers offering original game content, previews, gaming industry news, exclusive interviews, and full game reviews. In Version 1.0, YouGamers will provide a full gamer community with forums and blogs, offering users' homepages, personal profiles, game lists, and game hardware details. YouGamers' proprietary Game-o-meter gaming performance analysis service is the first of its kind in gaming websites. The free service is based on Futuremark's comprehensive database of over 13 million real world benchmark results. On request, the service scans a user's PC, and then estimates the system's gaming performance, providing the gamer with an accurate assessment as to how well their PC measures up on every game in the YouGamers' database. The game database contains approximately 100 top PC titles at launch, with ESRB ratings and publishers' system requirements.

27 February 2007 - Intel will invest $1-to-$1.5 billion in its Rio Rancho, N.M.-based site to retool Fab 11X for production on its 45-nm manufacturing process. Fab 11X will be the company's fourth factory scheduled to use the 45nm process, with production in New Mexico scheduled to start in the second half of next year. Initial production of Intel's 45-nm products will be done at its Oregon development fab, dubbed D1D. The company is currently building two other factories that will use the 45-nm process. The $3 billion Fab 32 in Chandler, Ariz., will commence production late this year; and the $3.5 billion Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat, Israel, will begin production the first half of next year.

14 February 2007 - IBM says it is developing new circuitry that could triple the data stored on a typical microprocessor, and thereby double the performance of computers. The computer maker's approach is based on exploiting the most widely used memory technology in a new way. IBM researchers will discuss their progress at a conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

8 February 2007 - By the fourth quarter of 2006, Chartered had managed to push its break-even utilization rate down to 70 percent, compared with 75 percent in 2005, while in the midst of a less-than-favorable pricing environment. The CEO cited a range of factors behind the company's ability to squeeze more revenue out of its factories, including the improved economies of scale brought in by its 12-inch facility, Fab 7, and the fast pace of its ramp at the plant. The company's efforts to develop a "common platform" with partners IBM Corp. and Samsung were going "very well." The expected qualification of the companies' jointly developed 45-nanometer low-power process in late 2007 will be "another big new step in closing the technology gap," he said.