TSMC founder Morris Chang spoke out about AMD's plans to spin off its fabs into a new foundry, claiming it makes little sense to build fabs in NY or Germany:
But at a Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) dinner earlier this week, Morris Chang, who formed the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in 1987, criticised AMD’s plans to use a future fab in New York State and an existing one in Dresden, Germany, as the basis for the Foundry Company.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Chang received the highest gong the SIA could offer – the Robert N. Noyce Award – from the fair hands of Hector Ruiz, the chairman of AMD.
While Chang rather gracefully accepted the gong from Ruiz, and said he never ignores competitors – which the Foundry Company will be, he predicted problems ahead for such a foundry. Last month, AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer (right) said that creating the Foundry Company would relieve the firm of the capital burden of constantly building new fabs.
He said, according to the Journal, that the Foundry Company will be too far away from both suppliers and customers and if he was going to build new factories they wouldn’t be in either Germany or New York State.
If you're getting a lot less e-mail recently it's not because your mail server is malfunctioning, but because spam levels have dropped enormously since the shut down off a webhosting firm that was used by many big spammers. Hosting firm McColo was taken down on November 11, and SpamCop statistics unveil spam levels are still a lot lower than they used to be.
This week SpamCop detected an average of only 10.7 spam mails per second, compared to an average of 27.9 messages per second since the start of this year.
TorrentFreak reports the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, is by far the most pirated movie of this week. The site states DVD-rips of The Dark Knight have been downloaded well over a million times in BitTorrent in under seven days and predicts it will be the most pirated movie of 2008.
Amassing over a million downloads in under seven days, ‘The Dark Knight’ is by far the most pirated movie of this week. Earlier this year, Cam and DVD-screener versions of the latest in the Batman series already found their way onto the Internet, making this blockbuster the most pirated movie of 2008.
The Dark Knight has been a huge success in theaters, grossing a billion dollars worldwide. The movie currently holds the record for the best opening week, and weekend, and later this year is expected to surpass ‘Titanic’ as the greatest grossing movie in history.
OCZ has released 3GB and 6GB triple channel DDR3 memory kits for the Intel Core i7 processor. These new modules are clocked at 1333MHz, they run at 7-7-7-20 timings and require a voltage of only 1.5V. The modules have black XTC heatspreaders and OCZ allows you to overvolt the modules to 1.65V, without invalidating the OCZ lifetime warranty.
“Intel’s Core i7 architecture is superior in every possible way,” commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ Technology, “and the world’s best CPU deserves the world’s best memory as a complement. OCZ’s new Triple-Channel XMP kits are a perfect match for the Nehalem platform to unleash performance we could only dream of just a short time ago.”
This latest memory solution implements a high-performance specification optimized and predefined for the Intel X58 chipset. The new 3GB and 6GB kits are rated at DDR3-1333 and feature the all-new Intel branded black XTC heatspreader. With a long history of providing the most innovative products to the enthusiast community, OCZ is excited to take advantage of Intel’s latest development of latest platforms with this new memory series.
These new modules feature Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP), a proprietary extension of SPD (Serial Presence Detect) settings that act as an integrated “plug and play” overclocking feature. The new Extreme Memory Profile options on the new OCZ DDR3 modules allow the end user to select extreme or ultimate performance through a framework of predefined and validated optimizations of individual settings without the hassle of manually adjusting each parameter. Each kit is configured to run aggressive latencies and features a second enthusiast profile to enable the modules to run at an even more aggressive balance of speed and timings.
Game developed GRIN announced they're working on a video game based on the upcoming Terminator Salvation film. GRIN is a Swedish game developer, they are best known for their two Tom Clancy: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter games.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Equity Games Production and Halcyon Games announce Terminator Salvation – The Videogame, an action-packed, third-person shooter, to be released in conjunction with the highly anticipated Warner Bros. Pictures and Sony Pictures film, which opens nationwide on May 22, 2009.
Based on the upcoming “Terminator Salvation” film, the game offers players the chance to assume the role of John Connor, a soldier in the resistance, battling for survival against the far superior forces of Skynet. Terminator Salvation – The Videogame is a third-person action game with concentrated armed combat against all of the Skynet enemies from the film while encountering new enemies specifically designed for the game. The game was developed by GRIN Studios, published by Equity Games, co-published by Evolved Games and distributed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
“Terminator Salvation – The Videogame allows players to battle for survival against Skynet enemies utilizing an incredibly fluid and realistic control set,” said Cos Lazouras, President of Halcyon Games. “The player will be led through a visceral story with extremely polished production values to create a fully interactive Terminator experience.”
“Building on the incredibly strong franchise, Terminator Salvation – The Videogame will be a cinematic gaming experience that complements the upcoming film,” said John Quinn, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Operations, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “Working with Halcyon and Equity Games, we will expand on the Terminator universe on next generation consoles with action packed gameplay and detailed environments.”
The Gmail developers announce users can now choose between more than 30 themes for the web-based e-mail service:
We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred.
NASA scientists announced the discovery of massive glaciers on Mars, the ground-penetrating Radar of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found numerous huge glaciers up to one half-mile thick buried beneath layers of rock and debris, outside the Martian polar region. AFP reports one of the glaciers is three time the size of Los Angeles in area and scientists speculate the frozen water deposits are remnants of a Martian ice age millions of years ago.
The buried glaciers reported by Holt and his 11 co-authors lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars' southern hemisphere, and scientist said even larger frozen water reservoirs may exist in Mars' northern hemisphere.
"The fact that these features are in the same latitude bands -- about 35 to 60 degrees -- in both hemispheres points to a climate-driven mechanism for explaining how they got there," said Holt.
Another member of the research team noted however, that a basic mystery about the glaciers remains unsolved. "A key question is 'How did the ice get there in the first place?'" said James Head of Brown University.
Unanswered questions also persist, Brown said, about what might be contained in the frozen water. "On Earth, such buried glacial ice in Antarctica preserves the record of traces of ancient organisms and past climate history," he said.
Dell announced a 5 percent decline in net income and a 3 percent drop in revenue for its fiscal third quarter. The Round Rock PC maker says almost all of the businesses they are in are slowing, but the firm was able to beat Wall Street expectations by cutting costs, buying back shares and boosting profit margins. WSJ reports:
The revenue decline -- Dell's first year-over-year drop since the beginning of 2007 -- wasn't a surprise. In September, the company said it was seeing weakness in corporate PC spending. Still, Dell's revenue missed a consensus of analyst estimates by about $1 billion.
"Cost cutting efforts helped offset falling revenue growth," said Bill Kreher, an analyst at Edward Jones. One troubling sign, he added, was Dell's revenue in laptop computers, which grew less than 3%; he said laptop growth was expected to be more robust.
But after weeks of lowered expectations and bearish projections, Dell cleared a low bar: Its earnings beat subdued Wall Street forecasts, thanks to cost cuts and share buybacks. That sent Dell's shares up 5% in late trading to $10.30, after closing down 5% in 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
DigiTimes reports ASUS has outsourced the production of the 15.6" Eee Top nettop system to Quanta Computers. The site also reveals 20" and 22" Eee Top nettops are expected to be launched in the first half of 2009, these systems are also expected to be made by Quanta.
According to component makers, the 15.6-inch model will be launched first in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the UK with an initial volume of 100,000-200,000 units. Other models are planned and Asustek expects to ship five million units in two years, indicated company chairman Jonney Shih.
Asustek's 15.4-inch notebooks are outsourced to Foxconn while the company's Eee Box is produced by Pegatron Technology.
Acer and Lenovo are also expected to join Asustek and Micro-Star International (MSI) in the all-in-one market which may help Taiwan notebook OEMs such as Quanta, Wistron and Pegatron, the sources noted.
GeIL Memory released a new memory cooling solution that shows the real-time temperature and fan RPM on the fan blades, similar to the ThermalTake BlueOrb FX processor cooler I reviewed more than a year ago. The GeIL EVO Cyclone LED logo fan will display "GeIL" / "EVO Cyclone" in one cycle and then automatically switch to "Temperature / RPM" in the next cycle.
GeIL says the EVO Cyclone has a height-adjustable clip design to fit memory module heatsinks of all sizes. The cooler has a small 3400RPM 50mm fan, which moves 4.04CFM of air at a noise level of 21dBA.
The product folder claims the Cyclone reduced the RAM IC surface temperature from 48.5°C to 36°C in one of GeIL's tests, while cooling the heatspreader temperature from 44.9°C to 33°C. The ambient temperature at the time of this test was 27°C.
Recommended: Click here to Update all your outdated drivers
