Intel is taking the high road and its rival Advanced Micro Devices the low one in search of market share in different business segments, according to announcements on Monday.

Intel unveiled a partnership with the Cray supercomputing company. In an industry first, their engineers will work together on creating a new supercomputer for release around 2012.

They aim to reduce dramatically processing times for intensive applications such as medical imaging, cell modelling in genome research and hurricane forecasting. The high-performance computing market was worth $11.5bn last year, according to the IDC research firm.

Kirk Skaugen (pictured left), head of Intel’s Server Platforms group, and Peter Ungaro (right), Cray chief executive, told me that synergies between the two companies’ research teams would help them solve problems where components interconnected.  This was key to keeping processors fed with data and operating at maximum performance.

They would also work on how to take advantage of what is expected to be a grouping of as many as 1m processing cores in a single supercomputing system.

The two companies say they will work with academic institutions and government bodies to test their products.

Meanwhile, AMD introduced its AMD Business Class, aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. This is a new platform of chips designed to help PC makers target this segment with products. Both dual, triple and quad-core processors are featured combined with AMD and non-AMD graphics and chipsets.

Acer, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens and Lenovo all announced their support for the initiative.

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It’s interesting to see not just how dramatically page size has increased since 2003, but how much steeper the rate of change was from 2003 to 2008 compared to the 1995-to-2003 period.

Dial-up users are basically the online equivalent of medieval-era leprosy victims, tossed aside and left for dead by Web site developers solely interested in catering to broadband users.

But broadband isn’t as ubiquitous as you might think: only about half of U.S. households currently have high-speed Internet access.

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The Malaysian leg of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay has concluded, and the Olympic Flame is now in Vietnam. Samsung Malaysia Electronics (SME) Sdn Bhd is proud to have been a part of the Olympic Torch Relay together with our selected role model torchbearers Nicol David, Datin Paduka Sharifah Mazlina, Ras Adiba Radzi, Lee Chong Wei as well as six other Samsung selected torchbearers.

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Silly headline: serious topic. Organic Light Emitting Diodes — tiny, glowing plastic-based gizmos — can make far prettier pictures than any of today’s big players: LCD, DLP, and plasma.

They may also be several orders of magnitude thinner, lighter, cheaper and more energy efficient than the competition.

There’s only one problem. OLED’s are almost all promise and almost no delivery. Only one OLED TV has reached store shelves — an 11-inch model from Sony that provides an incredible picture in a thin and light package.

It’s not cheap, though. It’s incredibly expensive. And although OLED is a theoretically efficient technology, Sony’s model needs more power than an LCD that’s twice as large.

But several big manufacturers apparently think OLED is about ready for prime time.

Samsung said Tuesday that it would begin selling OLED HDTVs — along with OLED computer monitors — by next year. Cooler still, Samsung may be selling flexible OLED screens (yes, OLED can bend) by 2010.

Two days later, the folks at LG said they’d begin selling OLED monitors by 2011.

As these two giants work to get into the OLED market, Sony is refining its technology. The Japanese giant recently showed off a monitor that’s only one fifth of a millimeter thick.

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The upcoming Lenovo IdeaPad U110 Ultraportable is a 11 inch wonder that will fit in any purse or bag for that matter. Not that I fancy small display notebooks since I’m still so in love with my Dell 1520 notebook. The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 Ultraportable is the smaller amongst its bigger versions - the 17-inch Y710, and the 15.4-inch Y510.

I’ve found out that IdeaPads have textured lid finishes (unglossiness ?), sleek “frameless” screens, media contro keys on the top side of the keyboard and a bright orange button, called the Shuttle Key, which can be used on its own to control volume or other functions (sort of a Fn key). Also included will be a Shuttle Center media software, Dolby Home Theater sound, built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam, face off biometric security and quick system recovery in case viruses strike.

Watch the Lenovo Idea Pad U110 video on CNET TV.

via gizmonews

pic credit - Lenovo

Tags: Lenovo IdeaPad U110 Ultraportable

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The new graphics wonder card - Nvidia Geforce 9600 GSO is coming out soon and the product info has been loaded on Engadget.

Gamers will love this card as it features DirectX 10, PureVideo HD support and the SLI capability of the GeForce 9600 GSO GPU. Lets hope the GeForce 9600 GSO will kill the others with superb performance and a cheaper price for consumers.

via i4u - pic via www.nvidia.com

Tags: Nvidia Geforce 9600 GSO product info

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I am a sucker for sliders nowadays since I got a Nokia N95. The newly upgraded Motorola Z8m phone now comes with HSDPA features faster download speed up to 7.2 Mbps, 2.2-inch QVGA display, 2-megapixel camera, 80MB internal memory, microSD card slot (4GB max), one-touch music access, photo viewer, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, and GPS functions in case you get lost. Right now its out only in S.Korea for about $500 USD.

via gadgetell

pic source

Tags: Motorola HSDPA Z8m phone

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Sometimes I forget to take my own advice.

When I posted the video I shot last week of my visit to Lockheed Martin, I was less than thrilled with the visual quality of the final result on YouTube.

I had started with a 1920×1080 HD video with crystal clear images and ended up with what looked like a recreation made with Lego blocks and shot by a Fisher Price My-First-Video-Camera with Vaseline smeared on the lens.

Here’s a screenshot from the original YouTube video:

However, when I clicked on the “watch in high quality” button, it was a revelation:

Bottom line, always check to see if that button is there. Unfortunately, that button isn’t on the embedded version of the video. You can only get the high quality video by clicking on the embedded video (which takes you to the video on youtube.com), and clicking on the button there.

Here endeth the lesson.

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Photo: Pioneer

LCD televisions have been gaining market share over plasma models during the past few years. This puzzles me because plasmas consistently look better in all but the brightest rooms.

Nonetheless, plasma’s woes have convinced Pioneer to abandon much of its own manufacturing and use Panasonic’s plasma panels. The partnership should cut plasma manufacturing costs for both companies. More importantly, cooperation between the research teams should lead to even better televisions.

Pioneers’s prototype plasma screens were easily the most impressive televisions on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. But Panasonic had some interesting models, too.

While Pioneer has developed incredible contrast ratios between the darkest and lightest parts of the screen, Panasonic has developed very rich colors and energy-saving technology. Panasonic has also built Internet connectivity into its newest line of high-end plasma televisions.

Add all those benefits up and you get televisions that will destroy anything the LCD camp has announced to date. The real competition for image quality may come from Laser TV or OLED, which I’ll be blogging about tomorrow.

Alas, the fruits of the Pioneer/Panasonic partnership won’t appear on shelves until late 2009 and they still might not be able to beat the LCD machine. LCD costs seem to be falling faster than plasma costs and apparently most Americans are too blind to appreciate differences in picture quality.

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Say you’re in Uptown and you’re looking for pizza. You could search for “pizza in Dallas” but you’re really looking for something more specific. You want the name of the closest good pizza place.

If you know your specific address or the nearest intersection, you can type that into any search engine, but you often don’t know that, particularly when you’re in unfamiliar territory.

So how do you find the closest pizza parlor? Yahoo has devised a pretty clever solution.

Whenever you do a local search on Yahoo, a gray disk now appears over the map. If you want to concentrate your results in any one place, you can adjust the size of the disk and slide it over your target zone.

It takes about a second, and edits out everything but relevant results.

Yahoo’s map blog has all the details about this new search tool.

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