Intels Atom D945GCLF mini-itx

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors, Motherboards on 19. May, 2008 | No Comments

The first online retailer to release Intel’s Atom powered motherboards was announced today. The UK based firm Tranquil PC are selling the units ten pounds cheaper than the estimated retail price. The company have stated that the boards will start shipping within the first week of June.
The Intel D945GCLF mini-itx main board yes ITX not [...]

AMD Fusion

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors on 01. May, 2008 | No Comments

I’m un-aware where Fusion actually sits within the hardware community but AMD has an interesting future ahead of them. Apparently The Director of Sales and Marketing at AMD ATi stated that the next-generation architecture of their C.P.U will change dramatically.
AMD are currently behind in the Processing race with Intel. I imagine Intel is already heading [...]

AMD or Intel for Cray HPC

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors on 29. Apr, 2008 | No Comments

Cray has decided to develop its future HPC around Intel’s silicon. This has become a problem for AMD. Cray did in fact have fabrications from AMD which included XT3, XT4 and XT5. Unfortunately for AMD the organisation was hoping that Cray would strike a 5 year deal with the company securing their current [...]

Apple Buy Out PA Semi

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors on 24. Apr, 2008 | No Comments

I’ve always been interested in Apples stand in their product architecture, when Apple decided to make the move to the x86 platform openning new leases to Linux based OS not to mention being able to run windows. Any way moving back to the topic!
Apple have bought the Chip manufacturer PA Semi. On behalf of Apple [...]

Graphene to replace Silicon transistors

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors on 18. Apr, 2008 | No Comments

The University of Manchester (My Home City) have managed to carve transistors using the material Graphene one atom by 10 atoms in size.
Graphine is a one atom thick sheet which consists of a densely packed honeycomb crystal lattice. In basic terms under a microscope it is said to look like chicken wire! Simple.
By using this [...]

Microprocessor hacking

Posted by Simon Whiston in Microprocessors on 18. Apr, 2008 | No Comments

Hacking software is said to be the old technique to gaining access to someone else’s computer system. The University of Illinois say the next level is for microprocessor hacking itself.
The research found that altering the processor could actually leave computer systems helpless to back-door attacks. Apparently hacking the chip was the easy part. The process [...]