One note I haven't seen anywhere else that was mentioned in the Ars review is that the new Intel iMac supports monitor spanning, and has a mini-DVI connector. AFAIK, the iMac G5 only supported mini-VGA and mirroring. (Well, there is that hack to enable spanning, but with only an analog video-out, it isn't that that useful for me...) It always seemed like a trivial crippling of iMac to force users who want/need desktop spanning to upgrade to a PowerMac.
That Blue Gene/L machine being shown is only a small part of the full machine they are building for LLNL. When its complete, IBM estimates that it will run at 360 TFLOPS, at a fraction of the size and power consumption of the current #1 supercomputer. Even if they miss the mark by 50% it represents a fairly significant leap in processing and power consumption. And hey, since it will only occupy 64 racks, you can just about fit one in your garage! (Nuclear reactor to power it not included...)
Actually, 200mm is still the industry standard. After the intial build-out of 300mm fabs by the three I's (Intel, IBM, Infineon) its taking MUCH longer for other companies to financially justify building 300mm fabs.
In most cases, 200mm fabs cannot be retrofitted to 300mm, so entire new facilities must be built. Also, 300mm equipment is almost universally more expensive that its 300mm counterpart. (Our equipment runs anywhere from double to triple the cost.) A few 300mm fab runs about 4 billion US to build. In order to recieve the benefit of the larger wafers, chip makers have to run high volume chips with well defined processes. Few companies are as good as Intel or IBM at manufacturing chips. If you process is screwed, scrapping a 6 or 8 inch wafer costs you less lost (potential) revenue than a 12" wafer. I have heard of companies looking into running multiple devices of different sizes on wafers (alt-kerf) to better utilize 12" wafers, but I've never actually seen it work.
One interesting side-note about 300mm, it requires a huge amount of fab automation, due partially to the fact that a full cassette of 300mm wafers (25, generally) is too heavy for a fab worker to safely life unassisted. You can imagine the fallout of someone dropping a full cassette containing 25000 Pentium 4's. IBM's plant in New York state is one of the most advanced implementations of this. Quite amazing to see.
I don't much like the printer companies either, but not ALL of the money you spend is on the ink. For HP printers at least, the cartridge includes the actual print head, which is a fabbed semiconductor. HP doesn't even fab their own printheads, so there is some overhead there as well. This is the reason (generally) that HP carts are somewhat more expensive than, say, Canon, which uses a fixed print head on their bubblejet printers.
The page with the notes is down, here is a page from the Australian Gov with pics of their notes. The clear window part is kind of cool, except I like the feel of fresh American money. If I want to feel plastic, I'll rub my credit cards...
What about Buckaroo Bonzai? Clearly, none of the top 20 movies came close to this gripping tale of a neurosurgeon/particle physicist/kung fu master/rock star and his rocking scientist posse in their adventures into the 8th Dimension! I mean, come on, what other movie would suggest that putting a "oscillator overthruster" and a jet engine into a beat-up Ford pickup, driving straight into a mountain at Mach 1 plus could throw you recklessly into a parallel dimension (and save you at least an hour of driving AROUND the mountain!)? Some people just don't appreciate a TRUE vision of the future...
I might have missed some news, but I think Walter Hewlett was more of the thorn in Carly's side than Dave Packard...
At any rate, here's to a company I aspired to work for. May it rest in peace.
I always thought that Voltron was much cooler. Not that new computer animation stuff, but the old, anime one. I had the small set of lions as a kid, but always wanted the big, metal ones.
Course, the Transformers had those Decepticons that formed together to make Devastator, but it wasn't the same...
You know what they say about people who use too many elipses...
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One note I haven't seen anywhere else that was mentioned in the Ars review is that the new Intel iMac supports monitor spanning, and has a mini-DVI connector. AFAIK, the iMac G5 only supported mini-VGA and mirroring. (Well, there is that hack to enable spanning, but with only an analog video-out, it isn't that that useful for me...) It always seemed like a trivial crippling of iMac to force users who want/need desktop spanning to upgrade to a PowerMac.
That Blue Gene/L machine being shown is only a small part of the full machine they are building for LLNL. When its complete, IBM estimates that it will run at 360 TFLOPS, at a fraction of the size and power consumption of the current #1 supercomputer. Even if they miss the mark by 50% it represents a fairly significant leap in processing and power consumption. And hey, since it will only occupy 64 racks, you can just about fit one in your garage! (Nuclear reactor to power it not included...)
Hmmm, and all this time I thought 200mm wafers were 8 inches and 300mm wafers were 12 inches. Maybe the author is a former NASA engineer...
And I agree, clean rooms are no fun. Ever trying typing on a plastic-coated miniature keyboard with two pairs of gloves?
Actually, 200mm is still the industry standard. After the intial build-out of 300mm fabs by the three I's (Intel, IBM, Infineon) its taking MUCH longer for other companies to financially justify building 300mm fabs.
In most cases, 200mm fabs cannot be retrofitted to 300mm, so entire new facilities must be built. Also, 300mm equipment is almost universally more expensive that its 300mm counterpart. (Our equipment runs anywhere from double to triple the cost.) A few 300mm fab runs about 4 billion US to build. In order to recieve the benefit of the larger wafers, chip makers have to run high volume chips with well defined processes. Few companies are as good as Intel or IBM at manufacturing chips. If you process is screwed, scrapping a 6 or 8 inch wafer costs you less lost (potential) revenue than a 12" wafer. I have heard of companies looking into running multiple devices of different sizes on wafers (alt-kerf) to better utilize 12" wafers, but I've never actually seen it work.
One interesting side-note about 300mm, it requires a huge amount of fab automation, due partially to the fact that a full cassette of 300mm wafers (25, generally) is too heavy for a fab worker to safely life unassisted. You can imagine the fallout of someone dropping a full cassette containing 25000 Pentium 4's. IBM's plant in New York state is one of the most advanced implementations of this. Quite amazing to see.
I don't much like the printer companies either, but not ALL of the money you spend is on the ink. For HP printers at least, the cartridge includes the actual print head, which is a fabbed semiconductor. HP doesn't even fab their own printheads, so there is some overhead there as well. This is the reason (generally) that HP carts are somewhat more expensive than, say, Canon, which uses a fixed print head on their bubblejet printers.
The page with the notes is down, here is a page from the Australian Gov with pics of their notes. The clear window part is kind of cool, except I like the feel of fresh American money. If I want to feel plastic, I'll rub my credit cards...
What about Buckaroo Bonzai? Clearly, none of the top 20 movies came close to this gripping tale of a neurosurgeon/particle physicist/kung fu master/rock star and his rocking scientist posse in their adventures into the 8th Dimension! I mean, come on, what other movie would suggest that putting a "oscillator overthruster" and a jet engine into a beat-up Ford pickup, driving straight into a mountain at Mach 1 plus could throw you recklessly into a parallel dimension (and save you at least an hour of driving AROUND the mountain!)? Some people just don't appreciate a TRUE vision of the future...
I might have missed some news, but I think Walter Hewlett was more of the thorn in Carly's side than Dave Packard... At any rate, here's to a company I aspired to work for. May it rest in peace.
I always thought that Voltron was much cooler. Not that new computer animation stuff, but the old, anime one. I had the small set of lions as a kid, but always wanted the big, metal ones. Course, the Transformers had those Decepticons that formed together to make Devastator, but it wasn't the same...
You know what they say about people who use too many elipses...