People on/. seem to focus just on processors, but the reality is that Intel is much more than that. While AMD can't seem to make anything other than processors--they were losing so much money making flash memory that they had to spin off their flash business as Spansion--Intel is much more diversified with an eye to the future.
Intel's "digital health" group hasn't made a big splash yet, but with health care accounting for 15% of the U.S. GDP (and growing rapidly), there's clearly an enormous potential market for technology.
Also, Intel's Teach to the Future has already trained >3 million teachers on incorporating technology into their classrooms and lessons.
Intel is the main sponsor of the International Science and Engineering Fair.
They're doing cool research in silicon lasers.
They recently ponied up $2.5billion for NAND flash development and manufacturing.
They've invested >$4billion in ~1000 companies through their venture capital arm.
It's better to have solid state memory (like Matrix 3DM) vs. a DVD for a variety of reasons...
1) More durable.
2) Potentially smaller and more versatile form factor
3) Significantly less power to read the media since it only involves electricity, not a motor and laser.
4) More durable (or did I mention that already?:-)
Matrix 3D is a fraction of the cost of flash.
Also, while the semiconductor structure itself is proprietary (and heavily patented), the actual chip can be used in any sort of form factor, like SD, CompactFlash, etc. In other words, it can look exactly like your run-of-the-mill Sandisk flash card, but will function as a write-once media.
The advantage of putting it into a widely accepted formfactor, like SD, is that it can then be used in any device that accepts SD cards at a fraction of the cost of flash...
Matrix has already been mass-producing and selling their previous generation of chips, as described in numerous articles on the web and the Matrix website.
From what I remember reading in the articles, the 1Gb part will be volume-ramped by the end of this year.
On the other hand, there's no chance in hell that the Blu-ray/HD-DVD saga will settle down by the end of this year.
When the name originated in '99, Matrix consisted mostly of engineers. At the time, there was no budget to pay someone to come up with a name, so the engineers were assigned the task of suggesting names that would somehow reflect the technology. Sadly, none of my suggestions won, and I missed my chance to leave a legacy there. The winning suggestion came from one of the process engineers, who, as far as I can recall, received absolutely no compensation for it.
So, there you have it: The name describes the actual structure, was coined by a process engineer, and cost the company precisely $0 to come up with.
Great to see the Matrix Semi news on Slashdot! I was one of the early employees (but have since left), so it's cool to see something that I worked on coming to fruition.
Earlier posters were correct in stating that it's not a complete replacement for flash (yet?) but there are still many very cool potential applications: Game cartridges (much faster access time than CDs/DVDs), toys (i.e. a supercharged Furby with a massive vocabulary), replacement for CDs/DVDs, archival digital "film", etc.
I really like the idea of a kiosk that houses blank Matrix 3DM cards and loads of digital content. You could walk up to the kiosk and buy a game/software/movie/album/book, have it programmed right then and there, and walk away with your customized content in a few minutes. These kiosks could be everywhere...gas stations, grocery stores, etc. Extremely convenient for consumers, plus it would seriously cut down the overhead for retailers since they wouldn't need to keep inventory or have huge stores to house thousands of DVDs, etc.
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People on /. seem to focus just on processors, but the reality is that Intel is much more than that. While AMD can't seem to make anything other than processors--they were losing so much money making flash memory that they had to spin off their flash business as Spansion--Intel is much more diversified with an eye to the future.
Intel's "digital health" group hasn't made a big splash yet, but with health care accounting for 15% of the U.S. GDP (and growing rapidly), there's clearly an enormous potential market for technology.
Also, Intel's Teach to the Future has already trained >3 million teachers on incorporating technology into their classrooms and lessons.
Intel is the main sponsor of the International Science and Engineering Fair.
They're doing cool research in silicon lasers.
They recently ponied up $2.5billion for NAND flash development and manufacturing.
They've invested >$4billion in ~1000 companies through their venture capital arm.
And lots more...
It's better to have solid state memory (like Matrix 3DM) vs. a DVD for a variety of reasons... 1) More durable. 2) Potentially smaller and more versatile form factor 3) Significantly less power to read the media since it only involves electricity, not a motor and laser. 4) More durable (or did I mention that already?:-)
Matrix 3D is a fraction of the cost of flash. Also, while the semiconductor structure itself is proprietary (and heavily patented), the actual chip can be used in any sort of form factor, like SD, CompactFlash, etc. In other words, it can look exactly like your run-of-the-mill Sandisk flash card, but will function as a write-once media. The advantage of putting it into a widely accepted formfactor, like SD, is that it can then be used in any device that accepts SD cards at a fraction of the cost of flash...
Matrix has already been mass-producing and selling their previous generation of chips, as described in numerous articles on the web and the Matrix website. From what I remember reading in the articles, the 1Gb part will be volume-ramped by the end of this year. On the other hand, there's no chance in hell that the Blu-ray/HD-DVD saga will settle down by the end of this year.
When the name originated in '99, Matrix consisted mostly of engineers. At the time, there was no budget to pay someone to come up with a name, so the engineers were assigned the task of suggesting names that would somehow reflect the technology. Sadly, none of my suggestions won, and I missed my chance to leave a legacy there. The winning suggestion came from one of the process engineers, who, as far as I can recall, received absolutely no compensation for it. So, there you have it: The name describes the actual structure, was coined by a process engineer, and cost the company precisely $0 to come up with.
Great to see the Matrix Semi news on Slashdot! I was one of the early employees (but have since left), so it's cool to see something that I worked on coming to fruition.
Earlier posters were correct in stating that it's not a complete replacement for flash (yet?) but there are still many very cool potential applications: Game cartridges (much faster access time than CDs/DVDs), toys (i.e. a supercharged Furby with a massive vocabulary), replacement for CDs/DVDs, archival digital "film", etc.
I really like the idea of a kiosk that houses blank Matrix 3DM cards and loads of digital content. You could walk up to the kiosk and buy a game/software/movie/album/book, have it programmed right then and there, and walk away with your customized content in a few minutes. These kiosks could be everywhere...gas stations, grocery stores, etc. Extremely convenient for consumers, plus it would seriously cut down the overhead for retailers since they wouldn't need to keep inventory or have huge stores to house thousands of DVDs, etc.