IT News HeadLines (Elite Bastards) 13/05/2010

AMD and Acer: It's too early for 3D

While NVIDIA have been keen to push their 3D Vision (and later their 3D Vision Surround) technology at every opportunity, it appears that their major graphics board rivals AMD are a little more cautious when it comes to trumpeting 3D viewing technology as the next big thing - An opinion shared by system builder Acer.

Gianpierro Morbello, Marketing and Branding Corporate Vide President Acer Group, said that "3D is going to be another important technology, and we as Acer will use that. What is important from our point of view is to make sure that each of these products can talk to each other." He used the example that we're seeing at the moment, with some companies (notably Nvidia, Samsung and Panasonic) using active, switching glasses while the cinemas and other entertainment technology companies are using passive polarised lenses for thie 3D glasses. The two technologies are incompatible, and Acer doesn't want to dive and support one standard only for the other to win as this would leave Acer customers dissatisified.

AMD took the same line, with Nigel Dessau, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, also pointing at the conflicting standards surrounding 3D. This is somewhat odd, as we've seen official AMD/TI demos of 3D using passive glasses. However, Dessau clearly said, "the point was made that we're still early in the standards wars, so what none of us wants to do is stand up and say we're the only standard, because that's never going to work." Dessau cited collaboration with partners as the best way to bring a single standard to 3D that everyone can support. This if fair enough – just look at Toshiba and HD-DVD.

bit-tech has the full story.

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Microsoft Project Natal launching in October?

Things have all been rather quiet on the Project Natal front of late, as we haven't been hearing anything new about Microsoft's forthcoming motion control system. However, an interview with the marketing manager of Microsoft's Saudi Arabian division has suggested that we could see Natal hit the retail market this coming October.

Microsoft's Project Natal, an Xbox 360Â add-on that will allow gamers to use their bodies to control on-screen action, will be released in October, according to comments made by a Microsoft representative in a recent interview.

"So I do have great news to share with everybody," Syed Bilal Tariq, a marketing manager at Microsoft's Saudi Arabia division told Saudi TV station KSA 2. "Project Natal will be launched in Saudi Arabia the same time it will be launched in the world. That is going to be somewhere in October."

Gamertag Radio, a video game enthusiast site, posted the video on Monday.

c|Net News have more on the story.

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TSMC board approves US$1.65 billion for capacity expansion

We've reported previously on how TSMC have found themselves limited by their capacity of late, but it appears that the required funding to alleviate this situation has now been agreed by the firm's board of directors.

The board of directors of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has approved plans to allocate US$1.65 billion, including US$210 million for construction of a new chip plant, to expand capacity in 2010. The budget will make up more than one-third of the foundry's projected capex for 2010.

TSMC said the board approved a budget of about US$1.05 billion to expand advanced process capacity at Fab 12 and Fab 14, and another US$385 million to expand and upgrade eight-inch wafer fab capacity. The plan to build its third 12-inch fab - Fab 15 - at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) with US$210 million also received the nod from the board.

DigiTimes have all the details.

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