intel

There's nothing like allegations of predatory conduct to bring two organizations together.

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project has decided to bring Intel on board as a partner and a possible future supplier, just a few months after Negroponte went on 60 Minutes and essentially accused the chip maker of trying to destroy his low-cost PC project. Intel has agreed to join the board of the OLPC and work with the organization on possible "collaborations involving technology and educational content," according to a press release Friday morning.

Negroponte had taken issue with Intel's own … Read more

Bruce Sewell, Intel's general counsel, has a great op-ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal [Subscription req'd]. This is just one of those things that everyone seems to agree upon, but no one (except perhaps IBM) will unilaterally act upon.

Sewell elucidates the problem, and proposes support for US legislation that would go a long way toward fixing it:

Unfortunately, under current law, parties that want to innovate in areas covered by questionable patents have only two options, both of them bad: an ineffective, rarely used re-examination process, or litigation -- the average cost of which is, … Read more

BusinessWeek has an interesting, frightening article on patent reform. Frightening because it's the BigCos who are advocating reform and, apparently, it's the VCs and entrepreneurs who are fighting it:

Since the mid-1990s, America's largest computer and software companies have been trying to rewrite U.S. patent law. The goal was to stem the tide of patent litigation, much of it generated by inventors and small companies trying to protect their intellectual property. But each time Big Tech tried to sell Congress on reform, it ran into an even mightier constituency: Big Pharma. Drugmakers had no problem with the current system, and they had the ear of Republican leaders.… Read more

I was in the Air Force in 1983, serving at Hahn AB in Germany (now a civilian facility somewhat misleadingly renamed Frankfurt Hahn Airport, although it's 110 km-- 68 miles-- away from Frankfurt).

In March, I was given a temporary duty assignment back to the US, and I was able to take some leave to go back home to Miami.

I dropped in at the old Radio Shack Computer Center, where I used to hang around-- yeah, I was the kind of kid who would hang around at a Radio Shack Computer Center-- and they had this new gizmo for sale.… Read more

Toshiba launched Tuesday a new line of notebooks powered by chips from Advanced Micro Devices, marking the first time in seven years the computer maker has ended its exclusive arrangement with rival chip maker Intel.

The Toshiba Satellite A215 series will feature several versions of AMD's dual-core processors, such as AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology Gold Edition TL64 and the Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL56 version.

Toshiba cited consumer and retailer demand as the reason for striking the deal with AMD. Two years ago, Toshiba and a number of other Japanese computer makers found themselves … Read more

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," apparently still has legs as a business strategy.

Intel has been trying for years to get PCs with its chips inside living rooms, trying to offset the slowing growth of the PC market by creating a new way to use PCs. That hasn't worked, as Media Center PCs and their Viiv successors have sold fairly well but few consumers are actually using them in place of their digital cable or satellite boxes at the center of their entertainment systems.

So Intel announced Monday that it will incorporate the OpenCable … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Sophisticated motion sensors are part of an Intel project to help couch potatoes monitor their physical activity from the, um, couch.

Beverly Harrison, a senior research scientist at Intel, did a lot of jogging in place Wednesday at Research@Intel Day, the company's science fair of ongoing projects inside its labs. She was demonstrating how someday sensors could be used inside mobile devices to measure the frequency and intensity of a person's daily physical activity as part of a weight-loss program or to help someone rehabilitate an injury.

Sure, gyms these days have all kinds … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--There's always one guy who seems a little too good at mowing down players in a Quake 3 session. Intel thinks future PC gamers might be interested in technology that helps level the playing field.

The company showed off a research project into "anti-cheat technology" during its Research@Intel Day at Intel headquarters. The idea is that Intel and the PC gaming industry would build technology into gaming rigs that could detect when common cheats--such as "aimbots" that handle targeting while the player just holds down the trigger--are used in an online … Read more

Intel has released an early version of drivers for its G965 integrated graphics chipset, and is on schedule for an August release of the final version.

The G965, released last year, was supposed to be a huge leap forward in integrated graphics performance for the company. But to this point it's been unable to write drivers that would unlock the performance built into that chipset.

The drivers spotted by The Inquirer are actually something called "pre-beta," which is not a formal beta, according to Intel (not alpha?). Pre-beta drivers aren't recommended for novices, and tech-savvy folks … Read more