AMD, Nvidia, VIA or SUN May Be Forced to Raise Prices
	With the Computex computer show waiting to begin, the biggest news coming from Taiwan isn't related to any of the hardware manufacturers’ product releases. Apparently, Taiwan is more concerned with a financial issue, one that could make GPU and processors manufacturers raise the prices for their products. According to an article posted by Reuters earlier this week, top contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manuf ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 04:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Chip Integrated Explosives Detector Created
	Most substances used in suicidal terrorist attacks are usually home made, that's why it is necessary that security enforcement benefit from the help of a small sensor to detect traces left behind by these chemicals. One of the commonest home made explosives is hydrogen peroxide. Researchers from the University of California claim that they have been able to create a penny-sized electronic sensor capable of detecting traces o ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 06:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Altair Delivers Half-Energy WiMax Chips
	Altair Semiconductor is not a name you usually see in the news. However, the fabless chip company claims that it managed to take a huge leap in the WiMax technology: world’s smallest and most power-efficient mobile WiMAX processor. According to the company, the Altair ALT2150 comes with integrated Wave-2 physical and Media Access Control (MAC) functionality, as well as other important boosts in performance. The most important ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 04:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

It's Official: HP Was the Biggest Chip Cruncher in 2007
	PC and server vendor Hewlett-Packard bought $15 billion worth of semiconductors during the last year, which positions the company as world's biggest semiconductor purchaser for the last year. The report has been issued by market analysis company Gartner, and includes a top of the greatest chip crunching companies. According to the report, the biggest 10 chip consumers have spent no less than $91 billion last year, which a ... [read more >>]
	26 February 2008, 04:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM Is Working on DNA-Based processors
	IBM scientists are currently researcher on linking DNA molecules with conductive carbon nanotubes. The procedure is extremely complicated because of the small scale the engineers are forced to work at. Once the carbon nanotubes are interconnected, the DNA can be shed off, leaving just an orderly grid of nanotubes. The grid itself is a data storage matrix, but at the same time it can perform basic calculations. "These are ... [read more >>]
	20 February 2008, 08:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Chip Minimization Through Dark State Light
	The biggest problem with computer chip minimization today is that the fabrication process of semiconductor chips only allows components larger than the laser light wavelength used in the photoresist process. Any attempts to create smaller structures than the light's wavelengths will ultimately result in the use of dangerous levels of light that could destroy the chip. A new technique promising to resolve the problem once and for all h ... [read more >>]
	14 February 2008, 07:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Researchers Create New Copper Connection Technique
	The ever-powerful computing devices need more and more circuit connections, which ultimately translates in longer links between individual electronic components, fact that determines frequency loss and an overall drop in performance, partially canceling the technological advancements obtained over time. In computer microchips, this is mostly determined by the fact that vertical connections between chips and boards are made by melting solde ... [read more >>]
	12 February 2008, 08:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nextreme to Give Chips the Peltier Chills
	North Carolina-based Nextreme corporation has announced a new cooling solution to offer an efficient alternative to the bulky, noisy and power-consuming classical cooling devices. The Peltier coolers are tiny, efficient, noiseless and can even be integrated into the chip's package. Moreover, the coolers can be strategically placed to ventilate the chips' hot spots only. Nextreme's technology seems to be a deriva ... [read more >>]
	11 January 2008, 10:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Chips Are About to Reach Miniaturization Limits
	The transistor has just celebrated its sixtieth anniversary and it's been about 50 years since it was first integrated into a silicon chip. These tiny switches make a true "neuronal link" inside a processor, but judging by the rapid evolution in the chip world they tend to become useless soon. The need for more and more computing power has pushed proportional amounts of transistors in the same silicon space. They demanded ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 05:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM to Join the 32-nm High-K 'Fab Club'
	IBM has announced that they have joined AMD, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon and Samsung in their efforts to extend the high-k/metal gate 32-nanometer node. Previously, the same companies have collaborated for achieving the same technology for the 45-nanometer node. The companies' attempt is part of the response to Intel's being in production of the 45-nanometer processors based on their high-k technology. In order t ... [read more >>]
	11 December 2007, 03:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New USB 2.0 Controller for Simultaneous Port Transfer
	Seiko Epson Corporation has announced the availability of their new product, the S1R72V18, a USB controller LSI product that supports the USB 2.0 High Speed Mode standard (480 Mbps). Taking advantage of the low power consumption inherited from the S1R72V series, the chip features isochronous transfer mode (The USB 2.0 feature equal timings) when used in conjunction with a portable music player. The chip supports all the USB 2.0 ... [read more >>]
	04 December 2007, 09:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

AMD Ponders Over New Chip Plant in India
	AMD has begun to munch over strange ideas lately. First, the AMD guys considered that it would be at least nice to grab Ageia and their PhisX engine for their own graphics technology, but things have gone in a nasty direction, so they postponed it. Threatened by the idea of being kicked out of the world’s top 10 chip manufacturers, AMD are now thinking that a new Indian plant to spit chips would suit them perfectly. This woul ... [read more >>]
	29 November 2007, 11:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Toshiba and Nec, Hand in Hand for 32 nm Chips
	The leading chip manufacturers on the Japanese market, Toshiba and Nec have recently announced their joint project to develop competitive 32-nanometer chip in order to maintain a tight competition on the chips market. This would not be the first partnership between the two semiconductor industry giants, as they have been working closely to achieve 45nm process technology development since February 2006. The 32 nanometer projec ... [read more >>]
	27 November 2007, 08:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

“Mr. Modchips” Gets Caught and Fined
	Piracy-related news surface every day, as the phenomenon has gone loose, giving massive headaches to all game and console producers. Taking that into consideration, every victory or justice over modders and hackers can be enjoyed to the fullest. This is also the case of "Mr. Modchips", or 39 ... [read more >>]
	26 October 2007, 08:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Small Chip Makes Big Difference
	So, it’s true – good things do come in small packages! MPs in the UK have been praising the "little chip that could" and the people who have been behind it. As Kablenet informs, they’ve said that the Identity and Passport Service is an excellent example of successful project management and procurement and also urged the Office of Government Commerce to spread the lessons learned from the project across the government. The chip ... [read more >>]
	11 October 2007, 09:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Toshiba Goes For 30nm Technologies
	Flash memory chips are very popular nowadays and they are used in many commercially available applications, ranging from music players to cameras and dedicated storage devices like memory sticks or being used to improve the qualities of other computer hardware parts as is the case with the hybrid hard disk drives. As the popularity of the flash memory chips grows and their use is increasing by the month, so does the need for b ... [read more >>]
	09 October 2007, 04:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sales of Computer Chips Rising Again
	While various branches of the computer manufacturing industry are facing problems like falling prices or critical parts shortage, the demand for computer central processing units is high and rising, translating into good news for the two most important chips in the world, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. According to a report from the Semiconductor Industry Association, SIA for short, the slower summer period did not affect the global tre ... [read more >>]
	24 September 2007, 05:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Realtek Presents a Host of New Products
	Realtek Semiconductor Corporation announced that it will present and demonstrate a number of new products and technologies at the on-going Intel Developer Forum which takes place in San Francisco. Among the Realtek products there will be the high performance and low power consumption RTU7105 UWB chip, a wireless USB host and hub as well as a gigabit Ethernet controller. The RTU7105 is a single chip solution that will provide a full seri ... [read more >>]
	19 September 2007, 11:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NASA Develops Chips That Withstand Extreme Temperatures
	When it comes to computer chips, few things are more damaging than excessive heat, and cooling solutions that attempt to bring the temperatures down at low or at least manageable levels are now having an industry of their own. What if a computer chip could run at temperatures so high that would normally fry any other hardware components? That would be sweet for system designers and overclockers but it would mean an even more important step ... [read more >>]
	12 September 2007, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel Losing the WiMAX Market?
	WiMAX is one of the several wireless networking standards that are active at the present time across the world and it has been heavily supported by the computer hardware manufacturing giant Intel since 2004. Since then it looks like Intel lost some of its interest in the new wireless standard as it now has a "backseat" position on the WiMAX market while smaller companies like Beceem, Sequans and Runcom are taking the lead in deve ... [read more >>]
	03 September 2007, 06:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel Prepares Another High-End Chipset
	The Tylersburg chipset is a HEDT (meaning high end desktop) product based on the 65 nanometer fabrication process that is designed at replacing the Intel Bearlake family of chipsets. The Bearlake is composed of the Logan and Bigby chipsets from the 3rd generation and they are intended for single and dual processor computing systems. Tylersburg is going to come out sometimes during the second quarter of 2008 and it will serve as the centerp ... [read more >>]
	17 August 2007, 03:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Benefits from The NAND Market Conditions
	After a long decline and recovery period, the NAND flash memory is finally beginning to get better and offer strong opportunities for memory manufacturers and vendors like Samsung Electronics. The Korean company used the favorable market conditions to increase its lead over its competitors on the NAND chips market, especially Toshiba. With a NAND market share fat approaching 50 percent, the electronics giant is by far the most important ma ... [read more >>]
	16 August 2007, 08:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A New Security Partnership: Symantec and Intel
	Computer security is one of the most dynamic areas of the entire IT industry, an area where two factions do battle: on the one hand, there are security software solutions like firewalls, antivirus programs and so on; and on the other hand, we have computer viruses, Internet based attacks, spyware and various other malware programs. Well, it looks like the good guys are going to get some more help from the underlying computer ... [read more >>]
	15 August 2007, 08:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

One Tiny Piece of RAM
	The Taiwanese computer hardware manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor is one of the well-established companies that are active in the field of computer memories, both video and system ones. While video intended memories do not get really big, there is a very strong tendency among computer users and manufacturers to use big system memories on just any types of machines now. Nowadays, computer systems sporting anywhere between 1GB a ... [read more >>]
	13 August 2007, 11:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

From Nvidia, with Love
	Nvidia became known as a world class graphics chips designer and manufacturer, but its computer chipset business is not too far behind either. Apart from the thoroughly disappointing nForce 1 chipset, which failed to deliver the promised performance for quite a spicy price, all nForce chipsets made by Nvidia, for both AMD and Intel processors, were always on the top of performance charts. Leaving behind even chipsets made by processor manu ... [read more >>]
	13 August 2007, 10:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nvidia Meets Supply Issues
	After posting a record profit and a very high market share, it looks like Nvidia is now facing problems because of its suppliers that cannot meet the high demand. Shares of Nvidia fell almost 2 percent immediately after the company announced the need to find more suppliers because of a high demand of graphics chips and other computer hardware parts that are made by it. According to Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's chief executive ... [read more >>]
	11 August 2007, 04:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Nanoscopic “Resonator” Gets Closer to the Next Generation Computer
	The development of nanotechnology brings us back to an old dream we had long before using silicon chips and transistors – namely a mechanical computer. This dream never came true, but now – when components of a computer can have such dimensions of a millionth the thickness of the human hair – it seems closer than ever. Some researchers propose even a fully mechanical computer based on electromechanical items. The reason for t ... [read more >>]
	10 August 2007, 11:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sun's Niagara 2 Chips
	Sun Microsystems announced the launch of its new chip, codenamed Niagara 2, that is intended as the first of a new generation of processors. The Sun company is probably best known around the world for its software products (the JAVA programming language is a prime example) and less for its server lines or processors. Now, Sun hopes to change this trend with the new Niagara processors that are intended to power high performance servers and ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 10:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flash Memory Can't Go Any Further
	Flash memory chips are very popular nowadays as they can be found in almost all electronic devices that are making our lives easier. From the portable music and media players, flash based data sticks, to the solid state drives, NAND chips are expanding their reach. They become very popular due to low overall costs and because they provide users with advantages like resistance, good read and write performance and small form factor. NAND ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 06:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Speeds Up Production
	Samsung Electronics announced that it will speed up production in order to meet its monthly targets, after the last week’s incident led to the complete halt of the NAND memory chip production. The power outage forced Samsung to shut down six of its NAND production lines and discard most of the flash memory chips that were in different stages of production on those lines. This causes a massive ripple effect on the entire NAND market, causin ... [read more >>]
	07 August 2007, 07:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

SanDisk and Micron Ride the Wave
	SanDisk Corp and Micron Technology received an unexpected boost of their combined market share of flash memory chips after the main NAND memory chips producer Samsung Electronics had to stop some of its production of flash memory chips after the facility near Seoul was hit by a power outage, according to ... [read more >>]
	04 August 2007, 04:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

32nm Chips Alliances
	The current technological process of building computer and general use chips is centered on the 45 or the larger 60 nanometer scale. This may soon change as a number for alliances and partnerships were agreed upon by most of the big players on the computer hardware market. One such agreement is between Toshiba, Fujitsu and NEC, all of them Asian companies, that wish to develop a technology to produce computer chips using the 32 n ... [read more >>]
	26 July 2007, 03:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nano Chips Using a 200 Years Old Concept
	A nano sized computer is not really a new and original idea as it has been around for decades in Sci-Fi books and magazines. The new idea is to actually construct them and to use a 200 years old concept, as the nano chip will be in fact a machine inspired by the works of the nineteenth century English mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage, who built a number of mechanical computers. Nano chips will be built from nanometer ... [read more >>]
	25 July 2007, 10:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Antique Engine Inspires New Energy-Efficient Nano Chip
	A new and energy-efficient mechanical computer is not only small and incredibly robust, but it was also inspired by the blueprint of a researcher, created by a scientist nearly 200 years ago. It would have been built in its time, it would have meant a computer revolution more than a century and a half before the invention of the modern ones. Scientists of the University of Wisconsin-Madison put together the computer based ent ... [read more >>]
	25 July 2007, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM Enters Yet Another Alliance
	STMicroelectronics is a Switzerland electronics manufacturer that recently signed up with IBM in order to jointly develop a new technological process for building computer chips using the 32 and 22 nanometer scales metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS) on 300 mm wafers. While now the standard is the larger 45 nm process used by Intel in the Xeon processor family and in its other quad core processors, IBM expects to have a ready for s ... [read more >>]
	25 July 2007, 04:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Quantum Computing – The Very Edge of Science
	A full-fledged quantum computer may sound like Sci-Fi but there are people (smart people by the way) that work to build it. "We're still 10 to 20 years away from a quantum computer," says Bells Labs' Steven Simon, as cited by the computer news site PCMag."But we're getting closer and closer." ... [read more >>]
	16 July 2007, 04:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Ultra-Low-Power Touch-sensor Chips
	Touch-sensitive devices have been the new trend to go lately when it comes to mobile technology. STMicroelectronics now brings several new ultra-low-power touch-sensor chips which can be successfully integrated in any mobile devices, such as cellulars, PDAs, notebook PC ... [read more >>]
	27 June 2007, 06:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Strongest Nanotube Adhesive Sticks Better than a Gecko's Foot
	Few people know that not all materials normally stick together, but many of you have had troubles sticking two surfaces together that no superglue seemed to be able to hold in place. Scientists encounter problems in their endeavor, and they usually turn to Mother Nature to solve their problems. The Gecko is a small lizard, one among the best climbers in the animal kingdom. Their ability to walk on walls and ceilings makes the ... [read more >>]
	19 June 2007, 09:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel Chips Allow Your Computer to Be Remotely Operated Even When It's Turned Off
	Intel Corp. introduced last year a new technology that allows authorized personnel to power up and repair turned-off PCs within the corporate network at virtually any time, in emergency situations, like when the computer suffered a major meltdown, caused by a failure of the operating system or by a virus that crashed the hard drive. At the time, the technology was highly praised, receiving impressive reviews from computer pro ... [read more >>]
	18 June 2007, 10:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Qualcomm Chips Have Been Banned in the US
	A federal government agency has decided to ban US imports of all mobile phones which include Qualcomm semiconductors due to patent row. This might result in profit falls for major wireless carriers in this country. The handsets which come with Qualcomm chips are mostly distributed by AT&T Wireless, Verizon and Sprint Nextel networks. Moreover, the main purpose of these semiconductors is that of accessing data services suc ... [read more >>]
	08 June 2007, 03:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fitness on the Nanoscale
	Carbon nanotubes, though a relatively recent invention, have fueled the imagination of many scientists, who strongly believe that they are the future of electronic circuitry and so, the successors of silicon, who by now has almost reached the limit of its applications. Now, a team of scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute presented a new technique for compacting carbon nanotubes into dense bundles. The results of the ... [read more >>]
	07 June 2007, 03:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Step Further Toward Cyborg
	Robocop is on the way of being produced. Or perhaps human brained robots are. A new research has revealed that it's possible to store multiple rudimentary memories in a culture of live neurons. The research made by Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob from the Tel-Aviv University further explains how our brain stores information, but also that a "cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips" could b ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2007, 03:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Strongest “Nanoglue” Ever Bonds Anything Together
	Few people know that not all materials normally stick together, but many of you have had troubles sticking two surfaces together that no superglue seemed to be able to hold in place. A new adhesive has been created, that nods with almost every type of surface on the nanoscale. It has been developed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and it's based on self-assembling nanoscale chains. The nanoglue has a thickness of less th ... [read more >>]
	17 May 2007, 04:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM's Self-assembling Chips Go the Nature's Way
	After designing some next-generation 3D chips, we see IBM experimenting with all sorts of materials in order to build more efficient and faster electronic components. As part of this experiment spree, IBM gets inspired by nature's wonders and plans on building chips with the aid of natural pattern-creating processes that form seashells, snowflakes and tooth enamel. This way, IBM claims that the next generation of electronic ... [read more >>]
	04 May 2007, 10:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Fastest Silicon-Based Optoelectronic Chips
	Optoelectronics is the science that studies the electronic devices that interact with light, in fact a subfield of photonics, that deals with light in both the visible and the invisible spectrum (gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared). It is based on the quantum mechanical effects of light on semiconducting materials, sometimes in the presence of electric fields and it is the basis in developing quantum computers. ... [read more >>]
	04 May 2007, 10:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Linux on Chip-like Computer Module
	After conquering the personal computers of thousands of users, Linux went further and now it claims its rights in the embedded computer modules field. Eliabs company, based in Bangalore, India has recently unveiled its new offer: a chip-like embedded computer module called LinSeed that comes with Linux 2.6.19 pre-installed. LinSeed measures only 1.2 x 1.6-inches (30x40 mm) and it is based on Atmel AT91RM9200 processor clocka ... [read more >>]
	04 May 2007, 05:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Plasmonics Could Revolutionize Computing Technology
	Dr Stefan Maier, member of the Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials at the University of Bath Department of Physics, wrote a 250-page book called Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications describing the basics of plasmonics. The plasmon is the quasiparticle resulting from the quantization of plasma oscillations. They are a hybrid of the electron plasma (in a metal or semiconductor) and the photon. Th ... [read more >>]
	27 April 2007, 06:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The New Generation of Cool Computer Chips
	One of the biggest problems with computers is the residual heat, which requires large, often noisy cooling systems, but can also physically damage internal components, and as portable devices become smaller and slimmer, finding a way to cool them down is an important challenge for manufacturers around the world. As part of their functioning process, chips inside an electronic device give off heat as a byproduct of power consumption whe ... [read more >>]
	30 March 2007, 05:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Rumor: Hardware H.264 Video Decoding AND Encoding for ALL Macs
	These speculations have been circulating the Web since columnist Robert X. Cringely wrote for PBS a piece about a rumor he believes to be a fact, according to which the Cupertino based company is willing to take the bold step of introducing H.264 hardware decoding in all their lines of computers, even for Mac Minis. This would happen in the near future, certainly this year. Could this be the much talked about all-line hardwar ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2007, 06:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia