Intel

Former Intel rival under attack

Transmeta, the erstwhile x86 chip competitor, is coming under attack from shareholders.

The fact that the company posted revenue of only $44,000 in the third quarter, "which included $43,000 of services revenue and $1,000 of license revenue for royalty payments" may or may not have anything to do with Friday's proposed buyout by Riley Investment Management, which owns over 6 percent of Transmeta shares.

The investment firm does have serious questions about the business model based on the LongRun2 technology--described by Transmeta as a suite of technologies for advanced power management and "… Read more

Flash drives: faster, tougher but still in pursuit

The hard drive will not die. Let's get this on the record now, at the beginning of 2008, because readers may see a fair number of stories proclaiming its demise. Though Friday's Intel-Micron high-speed flash memory announcement points to increasing use of solid state drives (SSDs) in digital products, flash is chasing prey that has eluded imminent death for years. SSDs are gaining acceptance selectively not broadly. SSDs in standard notebooks? No. And even if you're, for instance, a PC vendor trying to compete in the ultra-thin notebook market, chances are you will still opt in most … Read more

Phenom-based PCs signal AMD-Intel quad-core rivalry

Let the quad-core competition begin. The arrival of consumer systems based on AMD's quad-core Phenom processor at retail stores will finally bring much-needed four-core rivalry to the high-end PC segment, where, until January, there was only one choice: Intel. Gateway Computer's Phenom-based models had a widely publicized debut at Best Buy this week, making the Irvine, CA-based company the second major U.S. PC vendor after Hewlett-Packard (HP) to adopt the Phenom processor. Earlier in January, Wal-Mart began selling the HP Phenom-based Pavilion M8330F desktop (which, according to Wal-Mart's Web site, is now out of stock).

Gateway'… Read more

Lenovo, Fujitsu planning to use Intel's MacBook Air chip

The PC industry is wasting little time getting in line behind Apple to use Intel's spiffy new notebook chip.

CNET News.com has learned that Lenovo and Fujitsu are in the process of putting together systems based on the special Core 2 Duo chip that Apple is using in the MacBook Air. The new laptops should be out shortly, according to sources familiar with the companies' plans, and will give customers a chance to see what the rest of the PC industry can do with the power-thrifty chips.

Representatives for Lenovo and Intel declined to comment, while a Fujitsu … Read more

Making sense of tech's winter of discontent

Correction, 2:05 p.m. PST: This blog initially misstated Google's 52-week high. It is $747.

On his way to China last week, RSA's top executive, Art Coviello, stopped off in San Francisco for a meet-and-greet with customers in the financial sector. What with all the pyrotechnics on Wall Street, you'd think the banks would be cutting back spending on everything from encryption software--RSA's bread and butter--to thumb tacks.

Maybe that's happening and they're just not 'fessing up, but Coviello says he's not seeing evidence of a big pullback in technology spending.

Like … Read more

Eye-tracker lets you get location information by staring

Someday soon, you might be able to figure out where you are in the world by staring.

Researchers from South Korea's Yonsei University will present a paper at the International Solid State Circuits Conference next week on a system that spits out two-dimensional coordinates for the object or place that a person is focusing on. The same group has worked on several eye interfaces in the past, mostly for people with disabilities. By integrating eye interfaces with GPS information, users can apparently get geographic information. The group presents its paper on Monday, February 3.

ISSCC is one of the … Read more

Intel reaches back in time for its ultralow power chips

It appears that Intel has turned the clock back several years in terms of chip architecture to reduce power in the upcoming Silverthorne mobile chip.

At the International Solid States Circuits Conference next week, chip designers from the company will discuss a mobile processor based around the x86 Intel Architecture that uses an "in-order pipeline" among other features.

To most people, "in-order pipeline" doesn't mean doodly-squat, but in chip design it's a big deal. Chips with this sort of pipeline, sort of a microprocessor's assembly line, have to perform tasks in a specified … Read more

Recession-proof Red Hat?

As Wall Street gets nervous about a looming recession (and only perks up when the government throws more ill-advised ways for people to spend more money on the table), and as more and more companies give cautious to negative outlooks for the future (e.g., Intel), it's worth remembering something that Frank Lara of Stockmasters writes:

Well here's what should be turning investor's heads and help them not worry about selling enough iPods, iPhones, and just overall iRecessionDontNeedCrap items: Red Hat also raised its fiscal 2008 revenue outlook to between $521 million to $523 million, up from $510 million to $520 million.… Read more

SAP and Intel invest $15 million in Endeca

Endeca Technologies announced Wednesday it landed a $15 million investment from industry titans Intel and SAP, signaling yet another sign that enterprise search is gaining serious traction.

That investment appears a bargain, compared to the price Microsoft is paying for search company Fast Search & Transfer. Earlier this month, the software giant announced it would acquire Fast Search & Transfer in a deal valued at $1.2 billion, according to a report in the New York Times.

For Endeca, this $15 million investment adds to the more than $50 million the company has raised to date. Back in 2001, for … Read more