Today AMD shared more details of its upcoming Fusion processors for the first time. Chekib Akrout, general manager of AMD’s Technology group, said the company is creating two very different new x86 cores: Bulldozer, designed for servers and mainstream desktop and notebook clients, and Bobcat, a very small design for low-power applications
Akrout said Bobcat has [...]

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Silicon foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) is still having yield issues with its 40-nm process, according to analysts.
TSMC’s 40-nm yield problems surfaced earlier this year, but the company claimed it largely resolved the problem. However, during a conference call on Thursday, graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp. discussed 40-nm capacity and yield constraints [...]

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by Brooke Crothers
Despite persistent rumors, Nvidia’s chief executive says the graphics chip supplier is not working on an Intel-compatible chip.
In an exclusive interview with CNET Thursday, Brook Crothers asked CEO Jen-Hsun Huang about the possibility of Nvidia coming up with its own x86 (Intel-compatible) chip technology, after the company reported strong third-quarter earnings. A [...]

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Micron Technologies Inc. has introduced a multi-chip package (MCP) memory for smart phones, personal media players, and mobile Internet devices (MIDs) that includes a 4-Gbit NAND flash memory die and a 2-Gbit low-power DDR die.
The 4-Gbit NAND flash memory is implemented in 34-nm process technology while the DRAM is implemented in a 50-nm process. The [...]

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In a splashy New York City event, Juniper Networks announced its next generation of silicon, systems, software and partnerships around a family of networking products geared to serve businesses and service providers. Details are still scarce on the products that the company will use to attack archrival Cisco Systems.
The products are based on Junos Trio, [...]

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The information provided to me so far about the ARM-Xilinx programmable systems collaboration was long on canned quotes and short on detail which of course leads to all sorts of questions and speculations.
ARM has worked with programmable logic vendors in the past, such as Atmel and Actel, but in heavily prescriptive ways. There have even [...]

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A $5.5 million contract has been awarded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to Raytheon to design, fabricate and test self-healing mixed-signal ics.
The HEALICS contract, as it is known, could be worth $11million for Raytheon if both project phases are completed. Phase one involves the demonstration of a self-healing mixed-signal core; and [...]

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NEC Electronics Corp. and Renesas Technology Corp. will continue to move forward with their own, respective leading-edge technology alliances despite a merger agreement between the two companies. As reported, after several delays, Japan’s NEC Electronics and Renesas last month said they have finally merged.
Japan’s Renesas and Panasonic recently said they will continue their ongoing joint [...]

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Researchers have developed a ‘hybrid microchip’ that could advance electronics beyond the limits of Moore’s Law. According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, leading to an exponential improvement in electronics. However, as devices get smaller, it is increasingly difficult for manufacturers to continue the trend on [...]

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by Mark Hachman
Historically, both the Hot Chips conference here as well as the Microprocessor Forum have been two key venues for the introduction of new processors. Over time, however, the vendors themselves have preferred to stage-manage their own conferences. Two exceptions to the trend will by the IBM POWER7 and the Sun “Rainbow Falls” [...]

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Intel will focus on its next generation of smaller and faster chips at a conference next month as it prepares to ship new chips for systems in 2010.
Intel plans to shed more light on the Westmere architecture at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), which will be held Sept. 22-24 in San Francisco. The company is [...]

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Scientists at IBM are experimenting with using DNA molecules as a way to create tiny circuits that could form the basis of smaller, more powerful computer chips.
The company is researching ways in which DNA can arrange itself into patterns on the surface of a chip, and then act as a kind of scaffolding on to [...]

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Ultra-high forwarding performance: NMC-8102 series adopts Cavium high-performance multi-core MIPS64 CPU, main frequency up to dual-core 700M, up to 1000M wire-speed for complete PC, 600Kpps forwarding rate for 64-byte packets.
Advanced multi-core technology: NMC-8102 adopts multi-core processor with multithreading software technology. It can assign the task of security gateway forwarding and function load to multiple [...]

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The quest to mimic the best parts of human brain function on a highly intelligent computer to decypher tons of data quickly is heating up.
IBM this week got $16.1 million to kick up its part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency research program aimed at rapidly and efficiently put brain-like senses into actual hardware [...]

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By John Blyler and Pallab Chatterjee
Consumers love ever-smaller electronic products that have longer battery life and more features. For the chip developer, these “loves” translate to increased circuit performance and higher transistor density at lower and lower technology nodes, such as 45nm, 28nm and beyond. But these nodes are fraught with design and manufacturing challenges [...]

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Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have developed a microprocessor based on the ARC600 32-bit configurable architecture from ARC International plc. (St. Albans, England). A working prototype has been demonstrated in the laboratory.
The microprocessor has been named EnCore and it is touted as being capable of reducing power consumption of portable gadgets such as MP3 [...]

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Researchers at IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) and the University of Ghent (Belgium) are claiming a major breakthrough in optical processing and thus all optical routing.
They have demonstrated repulsive and attractive nanophotonic forces, depending on the spatial distribution of the light used, and suggest the results might have major consequences for high data rate communications and optical [...]

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The semiconductor memory industry is about to experience major technological changes as three-dimensional multi-gate structures push transistors and memory architectures forward, according to a one-day memory workshop held last month in Grenoble, France, by leading researchers from around the world.
Traditionally, CMOS downscaling has had the double benefit of increasing device performances and reducing power consumption. [...]

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By John Blyler and Pallab Chatterjee
Consumers love ever-smaller electronic products that have longer battery life and more features. For the chip developer, these “loves” translate to increased circuit performance and higher transistor density at lower and lower technology nodes, such as 45nm, 28nm and beyond. But these nodes are fraught with design and manufacturing challenges [...]

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To enable chip scaling, there is always brute-force lithography. During a presentation on Friday (June 26), chip-making consortium Sematech outlined other and futuristic ways to enable Moore’s Law.
Here are some of the proposed options for transistor-level scaling:
1. Zero low-k interface
2. Single metal gate stack
3. Gate stacks on III-V semiconductors
4. Quantum-well MOSFETs
5. 3-D chips using through-silicon-via [...]

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