Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Intel gets into digital TV market
JOHN MARKOFF at the New York Times is predicting that when Paul Otellini, Intel's president, takes the floor at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show, he will stagger the world by announcing its first digital TV chip.
According to Markoff, Otellini will show off a chip marrying liquid crystal to silicon. Intel is going head to head against the US titan Texas Instruments.
He writes that the Chipzilla approach is to make "vast arrays of tiny electronic shutters" which change the characteristics of reflected light. The chips will be used to make huge TVs using back end technology much cheaper than plasma or ordinary LCD screens, Markoff writes, Full Article>>>
According to Markoff, Otellini will show off a chip marrying liquid crystal to silicon. Intel is going head to head against the US titan Texas Instruments.
He writes that the Chipzilla approach is to make "vast arrays of tiny electronic shutters" which change the characteristics of reflected light. The chips will be used to make huge TVs using back end technology much cheaper than plasma or ordinary LCD screens, Markoff writes, Full Article>>>
Silicon based fuel cell
A UNIVERSITY in Tokyo is claiming that it has made a fuel cell based on silicon, according to the Nikkei Business Daily.
The newspaper reports that the invention, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, uses very thin silicon layers interleaved with an electrolye film, with a unit measuring a quarter of a millimetre.
Each sheet of silicon has, according to the report, trenches which act as conduits for oxygen, methanol and hydrogen, and plated by platinum and ruthenium, which act as catalytic agents.
The cell can generate 50mw, which ain't going to power your notebook for long, but the paper said the units can be stacked to throw out more juice. Full Article>>>
The newspaper reports that the invention, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, uses very thin silicon layers interleaved with an electrolye film, with a unit measuring a quarter of a millimetre.
Each sheet of silicon has, according to the report, trenches which act as conduits for oxygen, methanol and hydrogen, and plated by platinum and ruthenium, which act as catalytic agents.
The cell can generate 50mw, which ain't going to power your notebook for long, but the paper said the units can be stacked to throw out more juice. Full Article>>>
Shell Shows Web-Controlled Home
Shell Oil wants to help control your home's heating--and not by lowering the price of oil. The company will be at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to demonstrate its upcoming Web-based home automation system, hoping to carve out a business with a type of service that has so far been slow to catch on.
Called Shell HomeGenie, the service will let customers adjust their central heating, switch small appliances on and off, and monitor their homes with a wireless security camera, all while on the road. Customers control the home equipment through a PC browser or a cell phone with Internet access.
A residential gateway acts as a central control for the system and hooks up to the Internet through a home PC broadband connection. The system includes a programmable thermostat that Shell says works with most heating systems and power switches that connect to home appliances, and can be turned on and off wirelessly. The thermostat, power switches, and security cameras hook up to the gateway using a radio frequency wireless module. Full Article>>>
Called Shell HomeGenie, the service will let customers adjust their central heating, switch small appliances on and off, and monitor their homes with a wireless security camera, all while on the road. Customers control the home equipment through a PC browser or a cell phone with Internet access.
A residential gateway acts as a central control for the system and hooks up to the Internet through a home PC broadband connection. The system includes a programmable thermostat that Shell says works with most heating systems and power switches that connect to home appliances, and can be turned on and off wirelessly. The thermostat, power switches, and security cameras hook up to the gateway using a radio frequency wireless module. Full Article>>>
Sun fuels cosmic research
Sun Microsystems has agreed to fund the next generation of SETI@Home, the University of California's distributed computing project that lets computer users donate unused processor cycles to aid the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Since 1999, SETI@Home has allowed computer users to download a screensaver that can automatically download, analyze and resend data units collected from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
The SETI@Home project has so far cost $500,000, but on a daily basis it provides the equivalent of 15 teraflops--more raw computing power than the $110 million IBM ASCI White system, rated at 12 teraflops. A teraflop is a measure of a computer's speed, which can be expressed as1 trillion floating point operations per second. Full Article>>>
Since 1999, SETI@Home has allowed computer users to download a screensaver that can automatically download, analyze and resend data units collected from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
The SETI@Home project has so far cost $500,000, but on a daily basis it provides the equivalent of 15 teraflops--more raw computing power than the $110 million IBM ASCI White system, rated at 12 teraflops. A teraflop is a measure of a computer's speed, which can be expressed as1 trillion floating point operations per second. Full Article>>>
Open Source Is Not Limited to Software
Speaking before a group of 30 representatives from the hardware industry Monday night at the Freedom Technology Center in Mountain View, California, Lampret unveiled the organization's most recent development: a functional system-on-chip microprocessor, developed entirely from freely available open-source blueprints.
The announcement, Lampret claims, marks the first time an organization has bypassed patented technology to manufacture a complete system-on-chip. Such microprocessors are desirable because they contain multiple control units and enable manufacturers to build computers with fewer separate components.
Lampret believes the open-source innovation could lead the hardware industry to develop cheaper and more cutting-edge devices in coming years. Full Article>>>
The announcement, Lampret claims, marks the first time an organization has bypassed patented technology to manufacture a complete system-on-chip. Such microprocessors are desirable because they contain multiple control units and enable manufacturers to build computers with fewer separate components.
Lampret believes the open-source innovation could lead the hardware industry to develop cheaper and more cutting-edge devices in coming years. Full Article>>>
