MicroTechXP

According to DigiTimes Nvidia has given in to its rivals and is closing it motherboard business. Mole’s from inside Taiwan top motherboard makers said.

“Nvidia called a meeting earlier this week with its motherboard partners to gauge support for it continuing to develop chipsets in the future. The motherboard makers’ response? Silence”.

It is expected that Nvidia will now concentrate on its GPU business and will move its resources from its motherboard development team to aid its GPU team.
Its assumed that Nvidia will be under pressure in the GPU field now due to ATI having crossfire support, while Nvidia now has to try and licence its own SLI technology.
With this impending withdrawal from the Motherboard market also casts doubt on the recent whispers about Nvidia developing a chipset for Apple’s new Macbook Pro. [Neowin]

Update: NVIDIA Not Getting Out Of Chipset Business. Well, that didn’t take long now did it? NVIDIA, in response to that DigiTimes article posted earlier, shot us an e-mail saying they are NOT leaving the chipset business and have no intention to do so. I guess you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. [HardOCP]

Speculation is mounting that Apple plans to enter the £500 laptop fray with a MacBook sporting a 13in screen. Gene Munster, an analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray, told Apple Insider  that the move is part of an overall strategy to cut gross margin to 31.5 per cent for the current quarter and down to 30 per cent for 2009.
“We believe there is an 80 per cent chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and possibly new MacBook Pros at lower price points,” he said. “Specifically, Apple may re-enter the $999 price point (currently $1,099) with the MacBook, or test the $1,799 price point with the MacBook Pro (currently $1,999).” The arrival of a £500 MacBook would bring further big name competition to the burgeoning netbook market.
View: The full story @ vnunet

Dirk Meyer, the new chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, said during a conference call with financial analysts that the company had initiated pilot production of microprocessors using 45nm fabrication process and that the chipmaker was on track to deliver actual products in volume in early fourth quarter.
“We are well on track with the 45nm plan as we have been telling this group about in the past. We have actually started production late last quarter and are on track to start buying shipments early in Q4,” said Dirk Meyer during the conference call. Earlier it was widely believed that AMD will only manage to start shipments of its 45nm microprocessors late in Q4, however, the company now seems to be a bit more optimistic about its 45nm transition.
View: The full story @ Xbit-Labs

Apple computers have enjoyed an excellent second quarter of 2008, with sales growing faster than any other manufacturer.
Gartner is reporting that Apple’s sales grew 38 per cent over the period and the company now has 8.5 per cent of the US market. HP consolidated its position as market leader with over 11 per cent sales growth, giving it a market share of 31.9 per cent. Overall the decaying economic situation has proved something of a boon to PC manufacturers.
View: The full story @ vnunet

AMD announced today that Hector Ruiz is stepping down from his position as chief executive officer in favor of President and COO Dirk Meyer, who was elected by the board of directors to fill the newly opened position; in turn, will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. Ruiz, 62, joined AMD as president and chief operating officer in January 2000 and became AMD’s chief executive officer on April 25, 2002. “AMD has fundamentally altered the industry landscape, leading the innovation agenda while delivering greater choice and better experiences for our customers and users,” said Ruiz. “Dirk is a gifted leader who possesses the right skills and experience to continue driving AMD and the industry forward in new, compelling directions. I am placing the company in excellent hands.” [Neowin]

“Dirk’s election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD’s board of directors and executive team,” said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. “Under Hector’s strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.“

Intel expects to see Moore’s law continue for the near future and also plans for its x86 processor architecture to extend across everything from small embedded devices right up to supercomputers, according to the head of its Digital Enterprise group, Pat Gelsinger. However, programming techniques are going to have to evolve to make better use of many-core chips.
Speaking at a briefing to mark Intel’s 40th anniversary, Gelsinger gave his predictions for the future of computer technology, focusing on the key areas of Moore’s law, many-core chips, the Intel architecture (IA), and visual computing. Gelsinger said that Moore’s law would continue to extend into the future, and said that Intel has a roadmap for 32nm, 22nm and 10nm chips.
“I can recall in the past we thought reaching 1 micron (1 micrometre) would be hard,” he commented, adding that as each milestone was reached, the way ahead became clearer, despite predictions that Moore’s law was running out of steam.
View: The full story @ vnunet

Intel expects to see Moore’s law continue for the near future and also plans for its x86 processor architecture to extend across everything from small embedded devices right up to supercomputers, according to the head of its Digital Enterprise group, Pat Gelsinger. However, programming techniques are going to have to evolve to make better use of many-core chips.

Speaking at a briefing to mark Intel’s 40th anniversary, Gelsinger gave his predictions for the future of computer technology, focusing on the key areas of Moore’s law, many-core chips, the Intel architecture (IA), and visual computing. Gelsinger said that Moore’s law would continue to extend into the future, and said that Intel has a roadmap for 32nm, 22nm and 10nm chips.

“I can recall in the past we thought reaching 1 micron (1 micrometre) would be hard,” he commented, adding that as each milestone was reached, the way ahead became clearer, despite predictions that Moore’s law was running out of steam.

View: The full story @ vnunet

Preempting Intel’s official launch of its latest Centrino 2 mobile processors, PC makers and chip resellers are leaking processor details by letting customers preorder the chip through channels and in laptops. The Centrino 2 platform, codenamed Montevina, is an upgrade to Intel’s current Centrino platform and will include five Core 2 processors running at clock speeds between 2.26GHz and 3.06GHz. The chip will also come with WiMax support.
Due by the end of June, the launch of the chip was later delayed to July due to chipset problems. It is now due July 14. The processors are being offered by Santech , a European PC vendor, in its X46 laptop. The laptop will support up to 4G bytes of RAM, include a 15.4-inch display, WiMax capabilities and wireless A/G/N networking. The X46 prices begin at €619 (US$963).
View: The full story @ InfoWorld

The head of BFG Technologies, a well-known Nvidia-exclusive supplier of graphics cards, admitted in an interview that Intel Corp.’s highly anticipated code-named Larrabee graphics processing unit (GPU) would change the market of graphics processors, however, he still said that Nvidia would be able to remain on top.
“Next year we’re going to see a completely different competitive landscape and it will change how people buy graphics cards,” said Scott Herkelman, the president of BFG Technologies, said in an interview with Hexus web-site.

View: The full story @ Xbit Labs

Intel plans to launch three Nehalem-based quad-core processors (Bloomfield) at the end of the fourth quarter this year targeting the company’s new LGA1366 socket, according to sources at motherboard makers.
Although official model names have not yet been set, the CPUs are currently identified by the codenames XE, P1 and MS3 with core frequencies of 3.2GHz, 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz, respectively. All three have a TDP of 130W, 8MB L3 cache and will support simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) technology, the sources detailed
View: The full story @ DigiTimes