Featured Posts

Intel rolls out Dual Core processors for netbooks

Posted by Mike Redrobe | Posted in PC Hardware | Posted on 24-08-2010

Tags: , , ,

2

Intel has just launched a new dual-core Atom processor, the N550. This new processor is geared toward enhancing the processing power of highly portable devices. This means the new dual-core CPU will be found in netbooks, and possibly even some tablet PC’s. To add to this, there are some big names such as Acer, ASUS, Fujitsu, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, MSI, and Toshiba already shipping netbooks using the new core.

Along with the additional core, the N550 supports DDR3 memory, comes clocked in at 1.5GHz and has a TDP 8.5W. With these specifications the Intel Atom N550 will have improved multi-tasking capabilities, but still only create minimal heat. Additionally, the low TDP will also prolong the battery life of netbooks, which is due to the N550 having a similar power requirement as the single core, N450.

The netbook market has grown in leaps and bounds over the last few years, so it makes sense Intel is aggressively pushing its Atom processor line.

“In their short history, the netbook category has experienced impressive growth,” said Erik Reid, director of marketing for mobile platforms at Intel. “Having shipped about 70 million Intel Atom chips for netbooks since our launch of the category in 2008, there is obviously a great market for these devices around the world.” and will see action in netbooks that arrive from next month onwards.

Full specs below:
Atom N550

Probability Processors Say Maybe

Posted by Mike Redrobe | Posted in Technology | Posted on 20-08-2010

Tags:

0

Newcomer Lyric Semiconductor has announced its rather novel approach to dominating the processor industry: a chip that can say “maybe.”
probability processor
In a video interview with tech news site V3.co.uk, company founder Ben Vigoda revealed details of his company’s planned “probability processor,” which dispenses with the black-and-white world of binary logic for a series of ever-shifting greys.

During the interview, Vigoda described the processors as “[taking] in numbers between zero and one […] instead of zero and one they have ‘maybe.’ [The] transistors are like dimmer switches.

Flying in the face of decades of traditional processor design – which relies on the simplicity of binary logic, simply adding more and more transistors to the mix to ‘brute-force’ solutions to increasingly complex mathematical problems – the company’s probability processor allows, Vigoda claims, specific instructions to be built to solve specific tasks far more efficiently than with binary logic.

The company’s research will come to fruition in a product known as the “Lyric Error Correction chip,” a processor for solid-state storage devices which aims to cut data transmission errors to one per thousand trillion – down from the estimated one in a thousand achievable with current binary logic processors.

As well as improving data transmission quality, Vigoda claims that the reduced complexity of the probability processor means companies can “cut the size and cost of the silicon, reduce the power consumption [by] twelve times, and still get your data faster.

Beyond the LEC, Lyric – an MIT spin-off – is looking to produce a more general purpose probability processor – and, while Lyric Semiconductor isn’t looking to replace CPUs with PPUs just yet, the company is hoping that its probability processors will become an essential component of modern motherboards in much the same way as math co-processors were before becoming integrated into the CPU.

Gold from old motherboards

Posted by Mike Redrobe | Posted in Technology | Posted on 04-08-2010

Tags:

0

How much gold can you get from old PC motherboards ?

Find out in Tom’s Hardware experiment here:
http://tlnk.me/8089