AMD Realizes That Bulldozer Has 800 Million LESS Transistors Than It Thought!
AMD's new flagship Bulldozer "FX" series of processors have turned out to be mediocre performers in almost every review and benchmark going, sometimes even getting bested by the existing Phenom II and certainly no match for their Intel competition. To add to this tale of fail, it now turns out that AMD didn't even know how many transistors they have! Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech received an email from AMD's PR department and this is the revelation he had to share with us:
This is a bit unusual. I got an email from AMD PR this week asking me to correct the Bulldozer transistor count in our Sandy Bridge E review. The incorrect number, provided to me (and other reviewers) by AMD PR around 3 months ago was 2 billion transistors. The actual transistor count for Bulldozer is apparently 1.2 billion transistors. I don't have an explanation as to why the original number was wrong, just that the new number has been triple checked by my contact and is indeed right. The total die area for a 4-module/8-core Bulldozer remains correct at 315 mm².
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(PR) WD Updates Dec. Quarter Outlook, Reports on Recovery Effort in Thailand
Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC) today is updating its financial outlook for the December quarter and the progress to date of its operations recovery effort in Thailand. The company is also providing its view of the industry conditions for the December 2011 quarter and beyond.
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AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II
AMD's new Bulldozer "FX" series of processors may be very lacklustre performers in reviewer's benchmarks and have garnered considerable scorn in enthusiast circles, but they're a very good performer for AMD's bottom line. Incredibly, they are selling out as soon as shops get them in stock - and they are not even priced very competitively against Intel's offerings, so perhaps the "It's an 8 core CPU!!" marketing is working well on the uninformed "enthusiast" after all? Mind you, what enthusiast, however uninformed, wouldn't know exactly how these products perform? Every tech website and computer magazine has covered these chips by now. The mind boggles.
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(PR) IBM to Produce Micron's HMC in Debut of First Commercial, 3D Chip-Making Capability
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that Micron will begin production of a new memory device built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs). IBM's advanced TSV chip-making process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology.
Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube features a stack of individual chips connected by vertical pipelines or "vias," shown above. IBM's new 3-D manufacturing technology, used to connect the 3D micro structure, will be the foundation for commercial production of the new memory cube.
IBM will present the details of its TSV manufacturing breakthrough at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting on December 5 in Washington, DC.
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R&D: Diamond Qubits Are A Quantum Computer Enthusiast's Best Friend
A qubit is the quantum equivalent of the 'bit', which can have the values, or 'states' of zero or one. However, because of their quantum nature, qubits can be in both states at once, due to a property called entanglement, the "spooky action at a distance" so disliked by Einstein. It's this remarkable property that gives quantum computers their huge processing power, such as the ability to crack all encryption schemes based on classical methods. If only mankind could build them. Quantum computers are still very much in an embryonic research phase and have been stuck there for decades, due to the difficulty of producing and working with entangled particles. The best that scientists have been able to do so far is to entangle just a few particles at extremely low temperatures, to reduce thermal noise corruption, to create qubits and research their behaviour. Now, it looks like mankind is a tiny step closer to building such quantum computers and this is where diamond comes in.
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HDD Parts Shortage Lessens: HDD Prices To Drop?
Nidec Corp, manufacturer of hard disc drive motors and other HDD components, has reported that after just six weeks since the Thailand floods hit, nine out of its ten factories are operational again, although not all are yet at full capacity. Supplies of HDDs should therefore slowly improve as the parts shortage eases, hopefully with the welcome consequence that the price should drift downwards. Nidec issued this statement about the situation:
We will continue our efforts to further improve the utilization of the factories whose operations have resumed and to bring the company's other flood-stricken factories back into operation to the earliest extent possible. The exact amount of damage and the effect of the floods on the company's performance are being assessed currently. We will continue to report on any actual or potential impact on the company's business performance in a prompt manner.There's more info in this Nidec update (PDF) and at xbit labs.
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