With the price of NAND flash memory continuing its steady sequential decline, Apple Inc. this month cut the price of its Solid State Drive (SSD)-equipped MacBook Air by half a grand, AppleInsider has discovered.

The high end MacBook Air comes equipped with a 1.8GHz upgrade (from 1.6GHz) and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD). The total price for the high end laptop is $2598. Compare this to the original price of the 1.8GHz/SSD MacBook Air at $3098 just last week.

The base price for the 1.6GHz 80GB Hard Drive MacBook Air remains at $1799. The difference in price appears to be a combination of price drops in both the processor upgrade ($200 vs $300) and SSD ($599 vs $999).

SSD products and deployments have been a hot topic of late, but consumer SSD options are still confined to the extreme high end of the market. Faster drives and a falling cost-per-gigabyte should help bring drive costs down  into a price bracket more consumers can afford but the focus in the manufacturing world right now is on boosting storage capacities and performance, not reducing costs.

Source: Appleinsider

A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Traditional computers shuffle information in the form of binary numbers, the digits 1 and 0, which are remembered by the “on” and “off” positions of tiny switches, or “bits“, on the circuit boards. Quantum computers use atoms and subatomic particles as the switches that perform the memory and processing tasks. This is called “qbits” ((quantum binary digits). The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties can be used to represent and structure data, and that quantum mechanisms can be devised and built to perform operations with this data.

Despite the dazzling potential of such technology, quantum computers have remained little more than a possibility on paper. Building a quantum computer has proven far more challenging than the theory, leading scientists to doubt whether they would ever find a practical purpose.

But the world’s foremost experts in the field are now revising their predictions and believe that we could see quantum computers within years.

“A few years ago, I would have said that quantum computing would be of little use for anything practical,” says Professor Anton Zeilinger, a quantum physicist at Vienna University, who is regarded as one of the godfathers of quantum computing.

Thereby, quantum computers will emerge as the superior computational devices at the very least, and perhaps one day make today’s modern computer obsolete.   Quantum computation has its origins in highly specialized fields of theoretical physics, but its future undoubtedly lies in the profound effect it will have on the lives of all mankind.

Source: The Telegraph

Dell has released a new line of notebooks aimed at multimedia creators. The Studio laptops will sport a number of features designed for high-end multimedia users, such as an optional blu-ray drive and a high-resolution 17-inch screen.

The Studio notebooks are available in seven colors and start at $799 for the 15-inch model and $999 for the 17-inch version. Both models feature built-in Webcams and optional LED displays, which offer higher quality graphics than standard LCD screens.

The new notebooks will also come with Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 2.5ghz and offer the option of up to 3GB of memory and a 256MB ATI Radeon graphics card.

Dell’s vice president of consumer sales and marketing, Michael Tatelman, said in a news release, “These products are built for today’s digital nomad based on the millions of conversations we have every year on dell.com, Ideastorm and community forums. With Dell Studio we’re answering the call for personalization, connectivity and simplicity.”

The new notebooks will feature a navigation tool known as the ‘Dell Dock.’ Similar to the MacOS X Dock feature, the semi-translucent Dell Dock will sit on the edge of the desktop screen and allow users to store commonly-accessed applications and features directly from the dock rather than navigating through the Windows interface.

Source: vnunet

Toshiba Corp. today launched an ultraportable laptop, Portégé R500-S5007V that it claims is the world’s lightest laptop. The device weighs 2.4 lbs with one 128GB Solid-State drive.

SSD has no moving parts like a hard drive, so it consumes less power that can give the battery more runtime.

Toshiba’s “recommended” $2,999 R500-S5007V configuration includes a 1.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 12.1-in. screen, and integrated SuperMulti optical drive. It also ships with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Bluetooth. Previous Portege models had 64 GB SSD storage for the same $2,999 price tag. It will have the Windows Vista Business operating system, which can be downgraded to Windows XP Professional. The laptop includes a SuperMulti optical drive that can read and rewrite DVD and CD media. It also features wired and wireless 802.11 a/g/n networking, Bluetooth 2.0 support and built-in safety features to protect data during falls.

The laptop can run for an eight-hour runtime on a single battery charge, according to Toshiba. The laptop runs on a lithium-ion battery. Battery life is also preserved by the laptop’s transreflective 12.1-inch screen, which can shut down the LED backlighting by reflecting the sun’s rays to illuminate the screen, according to Toshiba.

The laptop will start shipping in the third quarter this year, according to the company. The company didn’t comment on worldwide availability.

Source: Computerworld

Following growing consumer demand for larger capacity, high-speed memory cards Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a global leader in flash memory products and DRAM memory modules, today unveiled its new Extreme Speed 300X a worthy addition to Transcend’s award-winning line of high speed, ultra-reliable flash memory cards.

The beauty of this interface enables Transcend’s new 300X CF cards to hit read/write speeds of up to 45MB per second on average - now that’s pretty fast. At that speed, it is imperative to ensure that data transfer will not result in corruption or missing files, which is why Transcend’s 300X CF cards comes with an advanced ECC (Error Correction Code) that will correct errors during data transfer automatically. You will be able to choose from 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

Transcend takes advantage of top-tier SLC NAND chips and premium quality components which deliver robust, long-life durability and guaranteed as well as performance. Also, it fully complies with CF 4.1 standard.

Product Features

Extreme Speed 300X performance, read/write speeds up to 45MB per second

Hardware ECC (Error Correction Code)

Supports IDE PIO mode 6 and Ultra DMA mode 5

Fully complies with the new CF 4.1 standard

Multi-platform compatibility and low power consumption

100% tested for quality, speed and reliability

Warranty: 3 years

Source: Moneycontrol.com

Advanced Micro Devices releases four more versions of its quad-core Opterons server chip, adding more performance to the company’s product line. The four quad-core processors now available are the 2.5GHz Opteron 2360 SE, 2.4GHz 2358 SE, 2.5GHz 8360 SE, and 2.4GHz 8358 SE. AMD also released three new Barcelona processors for single-socket servers earlier in June.

“These Opteron offerings are for users who are most interested in maximum performance and are not concerned as much about wattage,” said Steve Demski, AMD’s Opteron product manager, “people who may have used high-end Unix systems and mainframes and want that kind of performance at a lower price point.”

To be specific, workloads typically benefiting from four- and eight-socket server processing (the AMD 8000 series) include large databases, business processing systems (enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and supply chain management) and business intelligence, as well as other IT infrastructure applications including heavy-duty Web serving and messaging, according to AMD.

The new quad-core AMD Opteron SE processors use registered memory and can support up to eight memory sticks per CPU. The chips are available from global OEMs and vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc., Dell Inc. and IBM.

The three single-socket chips that make up AMD’s new Opteron 1300 series are all quad-cores, comprising the 2.1GHz Opteron 1352 ($209), the 2.2GHz 1354 ($255) and the 2.3GHz 1356 ($377).

Source: Data Center

A Supercomputer, Roadrunner built specifically to crunch military data has been unveiled by IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory boffins. It is capable of sustaining 1,000 trillion operations per second. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the new computer will also be used to help solve global energy problems and “open new windows of knowledge” in basic research.

The Roadrunner is twice as fast as the old BluGene/L champ. The $133 million supercomputer achieved the milestone with the help of 12,960 “improved” Cell processors (like those powering your PS3) and a smaller number of AMD Opteron processors — 116,640 processor cores in total. The supercomputer is based on advanced parallel computing technologies. It takes up 6,000 square feet, weighs 500,000 pounds total, uses 57 miles of cable and requires 3.9 megawatts of power. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing.

To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.

Petaflop machines like Roadrunner have the potential to fundamentally alter science and engineering, supercomputer experts say. Researchers can ask questions and receive answers virtually interactively and can perform experiments that would previously have been impractical.

Current supercomputers measure performance in teraflops, and IBM along with Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cray and Silicon Graphics are all competing to be the first to bust through to the petaflop, one thousand trillion calculations per second.

Source: The New York Times

FTC started a formal investigation today to find out whether Intel, world’s largest chip maker has used its dominance to suppress its competitors.

FTC will be able to get access to documents with this probe, disclosing Intel’s communications with certain customers — documents Intel couldn’t voluntarily provide because of a protective order that is part of a sweeping antitrust lawsuit AMD filed in 2005 that isn’t expected to go to trial until 2010.

“It’s illegal for a monopoly to keep its customers from doing business with its competitors, and that’s what the issue here is,” Tom McCoy, Advanced Micro Devices executive vice president and chief administrative officer, said in an interview.

AMD claims the rebates and financial incentives Intel offers to those companies for buying more Intel chips are designed to prevent AMD from gaining market share — and that Intel threatens those manufacturers that it will retaliate if they introduce models based on AMD’s chips.

The FTC has been reviewing Intel’s business practices off and on for years, and the move to open a formal investigation follows a political shift in the commission’s leadership. Deborah Platt Majoras stepped down as FTC chairman in March and was replaced by William E. Kovacic, who has served in several capacities in his long career at the FTC.

Source: AP

The unveiling of multi-touch features in Windows 7 is part of an orchestrated effort this week to begin detailing the upcoming operating system, which is due in late 2009 or early 2010. One of the first companies was Albatron who demonstrated on this year’s Computex a 22″ touchscreen LCD display which would retail for roughly 120% of the price of a usual LCD without touchscreen feature. That surely sounds promising and a little bit surprising at the same time. It would make touchscreen LCD monitors affordable to the mass market.

“Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere, including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more,” Chris Flores, a director on Microsoft’s Windows client communications team, wrote in a blog post. “What becomes even more compelling is when this experience is delivered to the PC, on a wide variety of Windows notebooks, in all-in-one PC’s, as well as in external monitors.”

Albatron integrated the technology into a 22″ LCD providing a resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels. According to Doncevski, multi-touch is not affected by typical touch-screen limitations. Screen sizes of 24” and above simply require a third sensor on top of the screen. That’s it.

The demonstration was not running on a Windows 7 system obviously at the time of the fair. It should be working fine on Windows XP and Windows Vista and this would lead to the prediction that most touchscreen features of Windows 7 will sooner or later be ported by dedicated Open-Source and freeware developers to those other two operating systems.

The unveiling of multi-touch features in Windows 7 is part of an orchestrated effort this week to begin detailing the upcoming operating system, which is due in late 2009 or early 2010. Pricing and availability of Multi-touch screen has not been announced, but TG Daily reported that physical price of this multi-touch screen is only 20% above a regular LCD.

Source: Yahoo News

The new Nano Processor family from Via, based on Isaiah CPU architecture is going to hit the market very shortly. The Nano processors offer a significant performance boost over Via’s existing C7 line of processors and will compete against Intel’s Atom processors. Via Nano is also pin compatible with C7 processors allowing them to be used in existing motherboards and integrated systems

The new range of 64-bit processors are built using Fujitsu’s 65nm process technology and have an idle power draw of just 100mW, making them well suited to miniature notebooks.

“The Nano is definitely faster,” said Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology, the Via subsidiary that designed the processor. “I said that originally and I’m very sure of that now.”

The Nano’s performance boost is because of the manufacturing process that shrinks the size of transistors on the chip to 65 nanometers versus 90 nm for the C7. More transistors on a chip translate into higher power-to-performance ratios. VIA designs the chips and contracts manufacturing with Fujitsu.

The Nano line supports a full 64-bit instruction set and has a 1-MB L2 cache. The chip’s VIA V4 Front Side Bus has a speed of 800 MHz. The processors have on-die hardware cryptographic acceleration and security features.

Source: PC World