"Need more proof that the PC market is in trouble? Bellwether Intel has posted some rather lackluster results, disappointing investors, but still managing to beat analyst forecasts. In Q4 Intel saw its profit fall 27 percent, while revenues fell 3 percent, from $13.5 billion, down from $13.9 billion. The weak PC market is to blame for the weak results and analysts estimate PC shipments declined 3.5 percent in 2012..."

"Computer scientists have unveiled a computer chip that turns traditional thinking about mathematical accuracy on its head by fudging calculations.

The Rice University researchers say their “inexact” chip could be useful because it uses dramatically less power than conventional accurate processors.

The scientists claim the prototypes unveiled are 15 times more efficient because they allow occasional errors and could be used in some applications without having a negative effect."

"The company claims that the chip will be achieving a performance efficiency of 70 GFlops per watt. The flagship processor would produce more than five times the floating point performance of the ASCI RED, a supercomputer that used 9,680 Pentium Pro processors back in 1997, which was good for a total performance of 1 TFlops.

"Chipzilla is about to make an announcement about its solar powered processors at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next week. Word on the street is that Intel wants to extend the technology to hardware such as graphics processors, memory and floating point units. Last year we saw a low-power processor, charged only by the light, running Windows and Linux PCs. Intel is expected to share further details about the processor, which is code-named Claremont, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next week."

"The University of Manchester team have for the first time demonstrated how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future. By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitride, the team created the graphene ‘Big Mac’ – a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers. Because there are two layers of graphene completed surrounded by the boron nitride, this has allowed the researchers for the first time to observe how graphene behaves when unaffected by the environment."

"According to the details in the slide, Komodo CPU will feature up to ten Piledriver cores (most likely updated Bulldozer design), will feature Turbo Core 3.0 tech, support for DDR3 memory and will be based on FM2 infrastructure. As far as the Hudson D4 FCH is concerned, this one comes with support for four USB 3.0 ports and eight SATA 6.0Gbps ports. The Corona platform will be rounded up with next gen. AMD discrete graphics.."

"Earlier this week AMD quietly introduced new processor pricing lists and consumers can look forward to significantly lower prices, particularly in the mid-range.

Athlon II prices have dropped between 2 and 25 percent depending on the SKU. The popular Athlon II X4 645 dropped from $112 to $102, while the energy efficient 605e dropped from $122 to $98, making it a rather good deal. Dual core Athlons saw cuts between 3 and 12 percent, while triple cores dropped between 5 and 25 percent.

"Intel decided they would as well and recently they launched a speed bump of their flagship Extreme Edition Core i7 processor, known as the Core i7 990X. It's unlocked and clocked at 3.45GHz stock speed with a Turbo Boost top-end speed of 3.73GHz. Intel claims its the fastest desktop chip on the planet; like geek tiger blood for your PC.."

"Intel is currently producing and selling some 75 percent of 45nm based products, while some 25 percent of Intel's processors are 32nm. Sandy Bridge parts again in 32nm are already in production but the sales starts in Q1 2011 and already in this quarter the market share of 45nm will shrink to 65 percent while 32nm will grew to 35 percent..." | more

"AMD announced today three new processors to round out its Phenom II and Athlon II lines. All three CPUs are designed to work in AMD's standard AM3 and AM2+ sockets. The 3.3-GHz Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition, Dual-core Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition and Athlon II X3 455." | more