atom

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE -- I recently watched footage of the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in 1945. A black and white mushroom cloud built up in slow motion. Chills and prickles crawled up my spine.

Visiting Trinity Site One week later, I visit ground zero, where a device called "The Gadget" was strapped into a 100-foot-tall steel tower and set off. Two more nuclear explosions took place over Japan after that successful test, harbingers of the end of World War II.

This all happened a long time before I was born, but I feel a strange sadness as I stand here on a hazy spring day in the middle of the Jornada del Muerto, a desert basin full of scrub and pronghorn antelope. That name translates to "day's journey of the dead." … Read more

Physicists have engineered a significantly more stable laser, an advance which could lead to better atomic clocks for equipment, such as GPS satellites, and physics experiments.

Researchers at the JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, have built a prototype of a superradiant laser using 1 million rubidium atoms. Their work was described in a paper published in Nature yesterday.

Using a different structure than traditional lasers, the researchers believe they can build a laser which is 100 to 1,000 times more stable. These lasers could be used in … Read more

There is a new player in town--a new audio player, that is. The AtomicPlayer from Quux Software is a simple tool that lets you play your favorite audio files, as well as access numerous online radio stations. This free player will never be considered flashy by any means. The publishers have removed emphasis on what they consider to be irrelevant features (i.e., skins, visualizations, etc). What they do offer is a small, no-nonsense audio player interface that is intended as an alternative choice for individuals who just want to listen to music.

The AtomicPlayer may seem to be a … Read more

When Intel announced its newest chip for phones it also pre-announced, in part, the chip that will power future Windows 8 tablets from companies like Hewlett-Packard.

This week Intel disclosed details of the Z2580 Atom chip for phones. All in all pretty impressive: it's Intel's first dual-core chip for phones, uses Hyper Threading (which can allow a dual-core chip to act like a quad-core in some cases), runs up to 1.8GHz in burst mode, and, importantly, packs Imagination's speedy PowerVR SGX 544MP2 graphics processing unit.

That phone chip is what Intel calls "Clover Trail L.&… Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Intel has unveiled a number of new partnerships and chips as the company, which is dominant in the PC business, attempts to find the same success with mobile devices.

Intel said today it is working with ZTE, Lava International, and Orange on handsets, and with Visa on a multiyear partnership to build a mobile-payment service together. It also unveiled a trio of new Atom chips to fill out its mobile-centric product portfolio.

"We're not a stranger to the mobile market," CEO Paul Otellini said during a press conference at the Mobile World Congress trade show. He … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Just as Mobile World Congress was set to begin, Orange announced a new Android smartphone powered by an Intel Atom processor.

Code-named the Orange Santa Clara, the handset will launch later this year in France and the United Kingdom. At that time, Orange also will reveal pricing and the phone's official name.

Outside of the processor, which is pretty cool by itself, the Santa Clara brings a lot to the table. The candy bar handset measures 123mm long by 63mm wide by 9.99mm deep and weighs 117 grams. The 4.03-inch display has 600x1024-pixel resolution and shows … Read more

Intel will have to slog through a tough 2012 before it sees any real windfall from Windows 8, according to investment bank Piper Jaffray.

"We believe CY12 (calendar year 2012) is shaping up to be a difficult year for Intel.... We expect 2H12 (second half 2012) to be weak ahead of the launch of Windows 8, the most significant upgrade to the operating system since Windows 3.0," Piper Jaffray analyst Gus Richard wrote in a research note today.

Intel traditionally benefits from Microsoft operating system upgrade cycles as companies and consumers buy new Intel-based PCs along with … Read more

Intel's new chip for phones is surprising in many respects, but the biggest shocker is speed.

The "Medfield" Atom Z2460 chip for smartphones, announced at CES, handily beats some of the fastest phones on the market, review site Anandtech said in this post.

Is this fast enough to be smartphone-market disruptive? Will battery life measure up? Only Lenovo and Motorola know for sure (Anandtech thinks Medfield will be fine on battery life). One thing is for certain, though: neither of those companies are signing up for Medfield out of pity, as Anand Shimpi points out.

And--another shocker--the … Read more

Intel's new chip for smartphones handily beats some of the fastest phones on the market, according to chip review site Anandtech.

Intel's Atom Z2460 "Medfield" delivers "tablet-like scores" on the BrowserMark benchmark, wrote Anand Shimpi. "The Galaxy Nexus running ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) comes close, but once again Intel expects that on the same OS Medfield should be faster than any of the currently available SoCs (system-on-a-chip)," he said.

Intel announced the Medfield chip Tuesday at CES. The system-on-a-chip will be used in upcoming smartphones--and presumably other devices--from Lenovo and Motorola.

And … Read more