Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Chip manufacturers are in a race to the bottom in terms of die size, and while this kind of one-upsmanship is good for fostering competition, it may prove unsustainable, industry-watchers say. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has led the way last year with its move to 32 nanometers (NM) later this year, and is now targeting 28nm. IBM and its Technology Alliance, which includes partners like ST Microelectronics, AMD/Global Foundries, Samsung, and Chartered Semiconductor, have been at 45nm and planned to move to 32nm later this year. Also, AMD's (NYSE: AMD) Globalfoundry business announced its own plans to move to 32nm independent of the alliance. AMD spun off its foundry business as a separate, stand-alone company earlier this year. It had been at 45nm as well for the latest generation of AMD processors. Full story

The company's vice president of engineering made the comments during a wide-ranging discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. "We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business," said Vic Gundotra. SearchEngineLand editor Greg Sterling agreed: "If done right, it could be a valuable strategic feature for Google." Mr Gundotra acknowledged to the audience that "voice recognition in the early days was a nice trick but not very usable". There were early complaints that Google's offering could not understand accents other than American and that results were often garbled. Full story

We haven't heard anything official, but images of an Archos 2 flash player have turned up in a few places on the web today, along with word of an Archos 4. The 2's already listed on Amazon -- it's not going to rock worlds, but it's not bad for $60, with 8GB of storage and microSD expansion, a 1.8-inch 128 x 160 display and a voice recorder all in a .035-inch thick package. There's also a 16GB version on Full story