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So, for that matter, have AMD and Via, so running to them won't help much.

AMD is supposedly making their hardware DRM entirely optional, though. :-)

Okay, Im too lazy to open an account here. dont care if they call me a coward. Wanted to reply to the Bose thread quickly.

Just search rec.audio.opinions, rec.audio.high-end and tons of other sites to realize that Bose is about mediocre quality and great marketing. I cant believe people at slashdot would fall for Bose. Check out http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html for a criticism of Bose Acoustimass systems.
Wave Radio ? Check out this head to head comparison on geek.com :
http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/conel/tabrads/

People dont criticize Bose just for the high price. Bose loses on sound quality, thats why so much criticism. Bose is about psychoacoustics, not accurate reproduction of sound.

This is hardly new or innovative. I'm pretty sure the company itself has been mentioned before as well.

Projecting images onto a rotating plane or helix is old stuff.

Intel has already demo'd a Pentium 4 running at 3GHz. Yesterday they showed a Pentium 4 running at 4GHz! This time the demo processor was liquid-cooled, however (the 3GHz demo was air-cooled). [...] Talks centered around upcoming Pentium 4 solutions and down-the-road products, such as Prescott and its 0.09 micron architecture. Prescott will enable air-cooled Pentium 4s to arrive sometime next year (2003) at speeds of 4GHz.

Apparantly so, but geek.com says:

"AMD could be positioning itself as the "good guy" in this whole scenario by allowing users to optionally disregard DRM. I would suspect this would be something like Intel's serial number scheme, except that AMD will most likely leave it off by default and would require enabling it via the motherboard BIOS setup or something similar."

In any case, I disagree that the attraction to Myst was the beautiful landscape. Everyone I know that fell in love with the game say it was the immersion. Think about it: this was the first game for most people where they walk around and have this great story and feel like they're really a part of this strange world.

...in what way was Revenge of the Sith ripping people off?

I actually liked Revenge of the Sith, so I let others argue over whether the ticket price was a ripoff to see that particular movie. :-)

However, I don't need to argue about that. I can think of a few other ways we're being ripped off pretty quickly:

• The studios diligently working to illegally take away my fair use rights of the movie.
• The studios screwing movie theaters by making unreasonable monetary demands of the theaters that show their movies during the opening weeks. (Thus forcing theaters to pass the cost on to us by making us finance popcorn if we actually want a snack.)
• The studios undermining my Constitutional freedom to copy the movie after a limited time.
• Imposing excessive fines and punishment on a minor crime when copyright violators are caught. (I can't dig up the link offhand that I saw comparing the punishment for downloading a movie vs. stealing it from a store. Can anyone else help?)
• The corporate executives at the studios screwing the vast majority of the people who worked on the film to keep most of the profit in the hands of a very small minority of people who did nothing to contribute to the film. (A big problem in big corporations, not limited to the film industry.)
• The studios working together to keep the prices of DVDs artificially high.

That's just off the top of my head. Anyone else care to add to the list?

So no, not all profit-making is a ripoff. But that doesn't change the fact that some of it certainly is. And no, illegally downloading and/or sharing movies isn't legal or ethical. But in the grand scheme of things, I think it's a hell of a lot less serious an offense than what the movie studios and especially the **AA are doing.

I used to use a Psion series 3 (http://www.psion.com/) as a portable PDA/word processor. In fact, when I was at university, I wrote entire chapters of my projects on it while in a coffee bar or any area away from the network. It was portable, had a usable keyboard once you got used to it, and had some great applications. PC connectivity was over serial and I just dumped all my edits in plain text and imported them later to whatever app I was using on the desktop system.

One good thing was that I was using LaTeX at the time, and just marked up the text appropriately. Therefore, when it was dumped to my Linux desktop, I could just build the LaTeX and it was ready formatted.

The Series 5 was a good step forwards from the 3, with more power, better screen, stylus input etc. There's some info on it over at Geek.com: http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/pda/psionser5.htm.

If you can pick one up off Ebay, there's a great user community still there. Cheap now, too.

UGeek

Lets just hope that the STS can support upgrades easier than the shuttle can, as I recall there was a story not so long ago about NASA having to scrounge off e-bay to find replacement 8086 chips that are no longer made.

IBM? Don't you mean Lenevo?

Good thing it hasn't happened then.

Sure it has. Still does, past and present examples.

Joke or not, your comment is indicative of the denial most Mac users seem to live in- "If it's not Windows, it's secure" and "If I don't hear about it, I must be OK" but the fact is that Mac OS X uses BSD, BSD has holes == Mac OS X has holes. Mac OS X is written by people who want users to have the easiest possible experience using their Mac. As a result, some of the things in place to make usability easier open up holes. This is the same for any OS. Anytime you cater to the user first and security second (or later) you will always ALWAYS provide someone else a way in.

I have no problem with using one OS or another, I use whatever the hell I need to get the job done- to me it's a tool, not a lifestyle. As such, I make sure my tools are safe and pay attention when someone says my OS has a hole or exploit or vulnerability, rather than just refusing to believe it's true.

A number of "quality" capacitor manufacturers have been having problems recently. There wasn't much Apple could do about it.

References:
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Feb/bch20030 207018535.htm

http://home.earthlink.net/~doniteli/index27.htm

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb0 3/ncap.html

did I say handout? I mean "investment," yeah, that's the ticket

It's rather tough to find the actual details, as they seem never to have been published, but the "conventional wisdom" is that the $150M was part of a larger settlement. Most sources say that it was a lawsuit for snagging code from QuickTime, but I'd always thought it was a lawsuit for snagging code from the NeXT kernel to use in NT, and by the time it was settled, Apple owned NeXT.

There is some decent info in this Wikipedia article about Apple and some interesting but very much unverified speculation at the bottom of this page, but cold hard facts are rather tough to come by, and that's a Google search that yields staggering amounts of crap.

They do. Try printing a dollar bill on a high end color laser printer some time.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Nov/gee20041 124027979.htm

Some of the color laser copiers/printers used in printing shops, as i understand, actually have circuitry to recognize US currency and prevent it from being copied in the first place. (This could be urban legend, however...i learned of it while working at an office supply store with a copying center, and it's possible the story was invented to discourage us from "supplementing" our paychecks)

Actually many researchers are in fact seriously pursuing using diamond as a future replacement for silicon. Both diamond and silicon are *very bad* conductors in their pure state. Both have to be doped (with phosphorous, boron, etc.) to become p-type or n-type semiconductors, which makes them useful as a substrate for microprocessors (note that when doped they are semiconductors, not conductors... your microchip would just short-out if the entire wafer was made of a metal/conductor).

Diamond's superior thermal, optical, and chemical-resistance properties make it attractive for future microprocessors... but unfortunately it is more difficult to make it work as a semiconductor, which is why silicon has always been the substrate of choice.

It's very interesting research, and we'll see where it goes. For more info, this C&E News article is good, or check here, or here and there's a bit here.

Actually, diamond is looking better and better for use as a replacement for silicon.

see here for more info.
(This was reported extensively at the time)

- Ken Beyer (ILM production engineering manager): "Six hundred Linux desktops will be used for Star Wars: Episode III to be released summer 2005."
Sequence supervisor Robert Weaver noticed a tremendous performance boost upgrading from RISC (Sun/SGI) workstations to Linux PCs during Star Wars, Episode II:

AMD64 used for Episode III
Alias/wave Maya used for Episode II, Lord of the Rings, and Spiderman

Xp64 used on episode III. Don't know how much though.
Episode 1 hardware and software. Yes,Pixar's Renderman and Alias|Wavefront`s Maya . SGI computers.

The linux cluster used at Industrial light and magic.

I can't say about the demographic you're referring to, but for the younger girls...
One would hope, however, that Mattel puts a bit more thought into it then they did the Barbie/HotWheels PCs a few years back.

Therefore...

All I want is an iPod/iPaq/HP-48 that runs GNU Emacs!

As for playing mp3's, almost anything with a headphone jack (including iPaqs) can do that.

I just hope that a mod-chip type device will be able to save the day bypassing region coding in both games and movies.

Sony already stated that games will not be region-locked (last paragraph). They rarely are on handheld consoles anyway.

But I agree you still have a problem with movies...

"The RIAA also filed suits against Daniel Peng of Princeton University and Joseph Nievelt of Michigan Technological University. According to The Detroit Free Press, Nievelt holds over 652,000 MP3s on his own computer, a number that yields a total fine of $97.8 billion, or 120 times last year's CD sales, if the RIAA is granted the amount it requested."

is this just a blip in Microsoft's dominance in controlling government software decisions?

Perhaps you've forgotten that Microsoft owns a sizeable amount of Corel and stands to profit from this deal anyways.

Woaa! I haven't seen such a troll in a long while!

I know the EU is a fucked up idea.

Ah yeah? And how did you discover that? through your own research maybe? Or by developing a patented software? Or maybe it's "fucked up" because economists predict it's going to be a more influent market than the US? Or maybe you are just plain ignorant.

By the way, software patents are GOOD.

For whom? Big corporations? Or innovation? So far it didn't work for both (remember SCO)

They DO protect the small developer.

As a small developer who has a couple of software patents that I have successfully licensed, I can PERSONALLY vouch for them.

Of course, the slashbots don't want to hear this.

The current issue with patents isn't the fact that there are software patents,

but maybe the fact that there are cases where they have been granted without a good reason.

Saying that "patents are bad" is just silly.

This patent system has failed in many instances. There are no reasons to cripple an industry with its weight when it's already is not working in some places like the US. Moreover, patents are about innovation in technology and "technique", NOT in science, theories, applied science, etc.

Last but not least, it's the open door to lawyer's stupidity. Check SCO...

This is bullshit. Just how did Intel copy AMD? In fact, Itanium was designed from the ground up and that is a bloody FACT! Hell, Itanium was being worked on far longer then when AMD had plans for a 64 bit chip. I can site proof of this, can you back up your claim. How you got modded informative is beyond me. And yes, I will flame anyone who post such BS without the facts to back it up.

http://www.geek.com/procspec/features/itanium

Hilarious that a couple of years ago a judge ruled that they have to open up their network before offering advanced features such as Video IM. They stubbornly stayed their ground and the FCC finally lifted the ruling once they lost some market share to Yahoo/MSN IM clients. And now they're opening it up anyway, shows how times have changed. I remember there being a slashdot article about this ages ago but I couldn't find it. Easy karma for anyone who does.
- Cary
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

I think in a few years' time, we'll see technology that could be adapted to a garage electronics shop. Some things might still have to be purchased from a commercial vendor, like silicon wafers and such, but I've seen plenty of articles in MIT Technology Review during the last 5 years that really look like they could allow hobbyists to cheaply produce their own microelectronics.

I think the hard part is going to be getting our hands on the software needed to design the things though. Here's some info that might might get you started if you want to browse for more ideas - http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004May/bch20040 525025304.htm

And keep in mind that the beta of IE7 is due out this summer, so we may get just what you're suggesting.

the shitty 8-track like sound quality of an iPod ...

Awww; still pissed you spent that c-note on your 32MB Rio?

Sorry, man ...

(btw - try an iPod with different headphones next time ... it really is near audiophile-quality.

There was also the ping of death that Apple just simply ignored for a couple of years. And when they finally fixed it in System 8, it was a $75 "upgrade".

Lets also not forget about 4 new vunerabilities that came out last week. These were discovered back in June 2004.

Blind faith of apple uses amazes me, apple loves to screw over its customers. From having my macplus burn out its power supply($300) because apple was too cheap to install a fan, to not providing upgrade paths for any of their machines even though they had a fricking slot. Luckily 3rd parties stepped in with upgrade daughter cards. Or when apple decided to switch to PPC, leaving everyone else who bought 680xxx mac screwed. Then doing same thing when going over to OSX, screwing customers that had legacy apps to run in slow/unstable emulated mode.

You know what I can do with my PC today? Use software that was written back in the early 90s. The other day I was playing "XCOM planetary defense" on my PC, game I used to be envious of pc users back when I was apple fanatic. Luckily the koolaid wore off and switching over to PC has my made my wallet fatter. And upgrade means simply buying a processor or a new video card.

Just one story because I am bored to search more

Here is the text:

News broke last week of Microsoft having quietly bought patents from SGI last year that include major core 3D technology. A strange item in SGI's SECC listing for last year shows an income of $62.5 million for "intellectual property" paid by Microsoft.

Representatives from SGI, when they are willing to comment, claim that the properties sold were "non-core" technologies, but The Register received evidence proving otherwise. A reaction to the initial story gets a bit heated, including The Register being called the "closest thing you can get to a computational version of the National Enquirer."

Experts point out that Microsoft is not in the PC hardware industry, but acquires assets like this for the advantage of influence. OpenGL, a competing technology to Microsoft's, depends on hardware manufacturers' loyalty.


insightful for showing an inability to google, I don't have to quote everything I write!

As I recall, the US Army was suffering from a shortage of bugle players to play taps for the passing generation of soldiers. They developed a digital bugle that can play taps even if the bugler is incompetent, drunk, or both.

Since Toyota has now developed a vastly more complicated technology that can be used to solve the same problem as the slightly complicated one above, I look forward to future Pentagon procurement hearings.

Note to self: Sarcasm in this post often results in massive retribution.
df

No I don't think you are.

If you install WinXP Volume licenced edition with the famous FCKGW RHQQ2 (Genius!) serial number then install IE critical updates from Windowsupdate, the computer will start crashing on an occasional basis

Not true. That serial (released with a pirated version of XP that apparently came out before the official release) was disabled when SP1 came out. I have ... a friend who was using that serial, and sure enough, SP1 refused to recognize it. Check here for a short article on the topic.

Check out this picture, it's worth a thousand words. The key got leaked very early on, and it was one of the keys blacklisted starting in SP1.

First I got bit by the m5xx USB bug and had to buy a torx tool just to perform the necessary power cycle. (A hard reset doesn't erase the USB misconfiguration.) Then I discovered that the latest Palm Desktop upgrade had screwed up my Install conduit. After a frustrating hassle with PalmOne tech support (who used to be very good), I discovered that the only fix was to totally remove Palm Desktop (including registry entries!) and re-install. I still haven't got all my conduits back.

Time to look for alternatives. Alas, none of the English-language Linux PDA sites have been updated in a while. Nobody seems to be working on that stuff in this country. It appeared that my only option was to buy a Windows-based PDA and either live with a crappy OS or hack in Linux myself. Neither prospect appealled.

So this latest Dynamism offer caught my attention. But it has two things I absolutely don't want in a pocket device: a keyboard (I can't do thumb-and-peck, I need a stylus) and a hard drive (too big a point of failure; the 16-meg of solid-state storage in my m515 is already more data than I need to carry in my pocket).

But what's really discouraging is that this is only available from Dynamism. Nothing against them, but their speciality is selling Japanese stuff that nobody else thinks is worth selling in North America. Which means that all the talk we had a couple years ago about Linux-based PDAs was just talk. Too bad.

This month's Scientific America (sorry, can't link to print material, and they don't put the feature stuff on the web site) talks at length about carbon nanotube RAM technology. Quite cool, and worth the issue's cover price. Not news, of course - just a nice profile, and they do mention the approach's native radiation tolerance, ideal for this.

Here 's a quick intro.

This is not the first motion controlled phone: MyDevice came out 18 months ago.

what is he talking about?

He was probably remembering the old IBM PowerPC roadmap from 2001 which clearly discusses the G3, the G4, the G5, the G6, and makes fuzzies about the G7.

He was probably talking about THAT G6. The one that was due in 2003 (DOH!).

cheers,

RS

And here's a handy way to start up the talking points.

Can't you just see El Presidente saying "Allowing possible terrorists the ability to contribute to software used here in the United States is a serious threat to national security."

who's to say it's not Sprint?

palminfocenter.com for one

geek.com for another.

Yes, the Treo 600 supposedly didn't have the wiring to drive a wifi card, but "legal issues" are what's cited as the main concern. These links are the first couple of hits on a quick google search, but I spent a couple of days researching this in early 2004. Back then, SanDisk had more info on their site about the legal battles with PalmOne that were preventing the driver releases. SyChip, who wrote the drivers, wanted to release them, as did Sandisk, but Palm was claiming that due to the Palm / PalmOne split, there was confusion about who owned the rights to the code, and who could authorize the drivers.

It was pretty clear that Palm didn't want wifi support out there, unless they were the ones charging a premium for it.

Might interest you to know that in July 2002 a Sun (vendors of StarOffice, which is an OOo derivative) VP announced that Apple were going to produce a native OpenOffice port to OSX - then was apparently forced to retract his statement.. refusing to comment further.

Cant find an exact link but this should help

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

Level: Introductory

Kane Scarlett (kscaratibm[[at]yahoo[[[dottt]]]]com)
Technology journalist
22 Dec 2004

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. This article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

Microprocessor themes of 2004
2004 was all about process and research. On the one hand was the struggle to find alternatives to lead solder, since lead will be banned from electrical and electronic equipment by EU legislation set to take effect on January 1, 2006 (WEEE/ROHS (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment / Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and because disposal of lead-containing waste in Japan already warrants a hefty surcharge.

On the other hand, practical, traditional-physics limitations in manufacturing (quality and yield issues) and operating (cooling, electron leakage, and so on) in ever-shrinking, more densely packed chips, prompted paths into the quantum computing world, requiring companies to experiment with materials as well as architecture and implementation. The long-awaited and much-debated tech including spintronics, the use of light instead of electricity for digital logic -- and even clockless CPUs -- all got more serious attention than heretofore. Nanotechnology and dual cores also took the stage, and everybody wanted to have some 90nm process.

A month-by-month glance at the microprocessor space shows these themes in finer detail. Each month begins with a brief summary to give context to the listed items.

January
In January, research gets off to a rousing start, especially research into new materials to thwart the problems that arise when you create smaller transistors and pack more of them in tinier areas -- problems such as electrical leakage and overheating. An openness that comes with adopting an open systems philosophy also seems evident as one chip manufacturer hires another to produce its microprocessors and several companies use chips from competitors in various products.

• Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology announce that strontium titanate is considered the best candidate to replace silicon dioxide since it should scale to smaller dimensions without losing its insulating properties and reduce electrical leakage in sub-100nm transistors.
• Berkeley University researchers create a silicon Metal Oxide semiconductor integrated circuit with nanotube transistors with unusual molybdenum interconnects (instead of copper or aluminum), rendering an interesting but unusable chip.
• The European Commission funds NanoCMOS, a project to develop 45nm and smaller integrated circuits with the goal to produce 45nm prototypes by 2005 (and 32nm versions soon after).
• Intel® funds start-up NanoSys to get a jump on developing inorganic logic circuits.
• Intel invests to perfect the difficult and expensive Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography mask technology for 32nm chip generation.
• American Technology Research predicts that Sun® and IBM® are well positioned to capture the 64-bit desktop market since both use the Opteron processor as an integral part of upcoming product lines

There's an interesting article about it here.