intel

I had a great time over the weekend at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival, which took place in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

In addition to the exhibits of vintage computers--including the largest collection of Radio Shack Pocket Computers I've ever seen--and the marketplace, where I managed to avoid buying any slide rules, Vectrix video games, or Cray supercomputer circuit boards--there were several notable presentations.

On Saturday, Tim McNerney spoke about his work to reimplement the Intel 4004 microprocessor, which led to a 130x-scale working model of the chip composed of individual transistors on a large … Read more

The mini-laptop from Taiwanese computermaker Asus made its official U.S. debut Thursday.

In an outdoor courtyard of the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif., the computer's intended audience--schoolkids--were in ample attendance. Like most animated Disney films today, the Eee PC is on the surface intended for children, but has plenty to keep the attention of adults too.

The Eee PC is similar in idea to the XO from the One Laptop Per Child initiative and Intel's Classmate PC. But unlike the former two, the primary audience for the Eee is not children in developing nations. Instead, … Read more

Perhaps it was in observance of Halloween, but whatever the reason there was something a bit ghostly about Intel's October 31 announcement of its latest Itanium processor.

You had to peer hard to catch even a glimpse of the Intel Itanium Processor 9100 announcement--formerly known under the "Montvale" code name. Neither Intel nor HP (which sells something like 90 percent of the Itaniums that go out Intel's doors) held briefings on the new processor iteration, and even simple press releases dribbled out belatedly. It's the sort of treatment usually reserved for announcements of new sales … Read more

We were recently lamenting the vaporware status of many of the small, low-cost laptops tech types have been buzzing about this year. Apparently, this whole blogging this really works, 'cause less than a month later, two of our MIA systems are sitting right here in the CNET Lab.

First up is the Asus Eee PC. The company's 2-pound, 7-inch, Linux-based laptop built up a lot of buzz for promising a reasonably functional machine for about $200. In reality, it ended up costing $399 (for the middle-of-three model we got), but it's still a creative take on the ultraportable … Read more

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is not having an easy time of its efforts to bring low-cost computing to the masses. Costs are up and it is struggling to get the scale necessary to lower costs and improve its momentum. OLPC is therefore offering a new program to bring in dollars and pump out laptops (and remove shortages).

Like the Give 1 Get 1 initiative, the Foundation's new philanthropic initiative appears to be aimed at building scale for the program. Originally envisioned to cost $100 each, the OLPC's manufacturing costs have since climbed to $188, and the project is having a hard time getting countries to commit to buying the laptops.

The OLPC Project is also looking at more competition than was envisioned when the project first got off the ground. Last week, Asus officially launched its 7", Linux-running Eee laptop at a $299 price point, and Intel's Classmate PC project offers another alternative to the OLPC XO.… Read more

Sun keeps moving toward commodity software and hardware, today announcing its first Intel workstation since the 1980s when Duran Duran were hip and pegged pants were de rigueur.

Sun announced today it will release its first Intel-based workstation since the late 1980s**.

The new Sun Ultra 24 Workstation is a single socket machine based on Intel's Garlow platform and, according to Sun, made for users that do some hard core technical design work....… Read more

Advanced Micro Devices is not delaying 45-nanometer manufacturing, according to the company, which is trying to correct an erroneous report on a blog.

"We are still on track to produce the first (45-nanometer) products by mid-2008," said Gary Silcott, an AMD spokesman. The company will have "pretty good volumes" of 45-nanometer chips by the end of 2008, he added.

The statement comes after a blog post on the Fabtech site. On its quarterly conference call, Eric Meurice, CEO of semiconductor equipment maker ASML, said that the initial wave of orders for immersion lithography tools, which many … Read more

One tidbit mentioned during Intel's blowout third quarter was the promotion of long-time Chief Financial Officer Andy Bryant to something called "chief administrative officer."

Bryant has been the CFO at Intel for 13 years and will step up to his new title effective immediately, so that Stacy Smith can become CFO in a move planned for some time, said Tom Beermann, an Intel spokesman. The move frees Bryant up from the day-to-day responsibilities of running Intel's finances, which is actually a quite-complicated exercise of making sure Intel's factories are running at optimum capacity in order … Read more