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Modding in Germany

Michael Johnson — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 06:50:47 +0000

“d-frag” from Germany attended the DCMM, Deutschen Casemod Meisterschaft (German Case Mod Championship) show in Dortmund, Germany last year. He shares pictures of some of the incredible mods from Germany and other EU countries. Attendance at years show is expected to break records, and feature even wilder designs.

To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the Intel Design Challenge, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: d-frag, DCMM, Case Mod, IntelDesignChallenge

High-Tech A-Tech

Catherine Girardeau — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:21:42 +0000

A-Tech Fabrication’s Glenn Lirhus talked with PodTech about his company’s Intel Core 2 Challenge PC design. A-Tech’s design was inspired by a remote control, and is intended for the home-theater enthusiast. Like many of the Core 2 Challenge contestants, A-Tech had a unique solution to the cooling problem. The aluminum chassis dissipates the heat across its entire surface area.

Tags: A-Tech Fabrication, Glenn Lirhus, Intel Core 2 Challenge PC design

NS Optimum’s Gavin Rose: The Argon PC

Michael Johnson — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:54:37 +0000

Gavin Rose, CEO of NS Optimum Ltd. in the UK talks about “Argon”, a PC shaped like a skull. This is their first venture into case making, and Rose explains the pain staking process for his entry in Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design competition.

It’s just as much sculpture as it is a PC.

To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out:
www.intelchallenge.com

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Gavin Rose, Optimum, Argon, Intel Core 2, IntelDesignChallenge

Kapsel Goes for Unconventional Form

Catherine Girardeau — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:54:26 +0000

Founder of Swedish company Kapsel Multimedia, Wilhelm Lagerkranz, wanted a small, quiet computer he could use as a home media center. He looked around the marketplace and didn’t find what he wanted, so he decided to make it himself. Lagerkranz and his design team drew hundreds of sketches, trying to hone in on a form factor that didn’t look like anything else in the conventional world of PC design. Their Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design has passive cooling, and curves. See for yourself.

To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Kapsel Multimedia, Wilhelm Lagerkranz, Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design, IntelDesignChallenge

One Billion PCs

Michael Johnson — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:14:22 +0000

Originally released in 2002, this video shows how the PC went from science fiction to science fact. It took 25 years for the first billion PCs to be deployed. The second billion are estimated to ship in less than 10 years.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: IntelDesignChallenge

The PC Turns 20

Michael Johnson — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:04:39 +0000

See what the PC looked like when it turned 20. Here’s a look back at the history of the PC

Originally released on: 3/7/2001

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: IntelDesignChallenge

Not Your Parent’s PC

Michael Johnson — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:29:59 +0000

Originally released in 2006, this video shows how the PC has become an all-in-one home entertainment device.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: IntelDesignChallenge

Behind The Scenes at BICOM

editor — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:59:31 +0000

With the Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design contest deadline looming, tea-drinkers drank coffee, testers didn’t sleep, and boxes got packed in overdrive. This video, produced by BICOM, takes you behind the scenes, during the race to the finish, at the Connecticut company whose three PC designs, the HMS1, HMS7 and HMS8, made it into the Top Ten.

To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design, BICOM, HMS1, HMS7, HMS8, IntelDesignChallenge

iONYX: PC Design from the Old Country

editor — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:20:06 +0000

Paddy White, CEO of RealTime Technologies, in Dublin, Ireland, sent us this video about his company’s entry in Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design competition. The iONYX imitates the look of stone, appropriate for geologically-rich Ireland. White contends this design will “look well in any room of the digital home.” See for yourself.

See more about iONYX here. To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Paddy White, RealTime Technologies, Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design, iONYX, IntelDesignChallenge

Vivid, Luminous, and Guiness

Catherine Girardeau — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:11:31 +0000

Vivid, luminous, precious - these were some of the terms Paddy White and his design team at RealTime Technologies came up with over a couple of pints of Guiness in a Dublin pub. The iONYX, RealTime Technology’s design entry for the Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design, is made of plastic, but looks like a jeweled, precious stone. RealTime’s goal was to create a wall-mountable or a table-mountable home media center running Intel Viiv technology, with a small form factor, in a pleasing design. Producer’s note: Paddy White suggested we use Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major to go with the iONYX, but we had to settle for the Nocturne in F Minor — still fitting, we thought.

See more about iONYX here. To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Paddy White, iONYX, Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Design, Intel, Viiv, IntelDesignChallenge

Asono Merium: Scandanavian Sensibility

editor — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:43:18 +0000

Industrial designer Anthony Forsythe talks about Norwegian company Asono’s Merium, entered in the Intel Core 2 Challenge PC Designs. The Merium can be done in custom colors, using a material usually found in kitchen countertops — corian. “As far as we know, this is the first time corian has ever been used in consumer electronics,” Forsythe said.

To see some of the designs that made it to the semi-finals in the competition, check out www.intelchallenge.com.

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Anthony Forsythe, Asono, Merium, Intel Core 2 Challenge, IntelDesignChallenge

Intel Scientists Talk Tereflops

editor — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 01:47:13 +0000

This is a video of Intel engineers talking about their research into 80-core chip technology. PodTech’s interview with Intel CTO Justin Rattner about the company’s 80-core announcement can be found here.

Commissioned by Intel.

Intel Proposes 80 Core… For Your Laptop

Jason Lopez — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:44:57 +0000

Intel says it has developed an 80-core microprocessor chip that could enable PCs and chip-enabled devices to perform Teraflop level computing. The company will offer more details of its research in a series of scientific papers at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference this week in San Francisco. The chip maker says the result of providing such chips to the market could help usher in artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games, multimedia data mining and real-time speech recognition. The demonstration model unveiled last week in San Francisco, however, is not a prototype for a product. Still, the company says the technology would be built into future chips designs. Jason Lopez of PodTech spoke with Intel CTO Justin Rattner.

Here’s an interesting video produced by Intel at their research facility in Hillsboro, Oregon featuring engineers who are working on 80-core technology.

Intel Says 45 Nanometer Microprocessors Due Later This Year

Jason Lopez — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 08:20:06 +0000

This video was commissioned by Intel.

Intel announced that it will begin making 45 nanometer chips, code-named Penryn, in the second half of the year. The new microprocessors are the culmination of years of R&D using new materials to improve the efficiency and performance of silicon-based semiconductors.

The company says the new chip technology maintains Moore’s Law, the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the late 1960s that the number of transistors doubles on chips every two years. Intel scientists say that transistors are now so small that more than 300 can fit on a human red blood cell.

In a recent earnings announcement, Intel officials said they expect to rebuild a lead in the computer chip market through innovation and manufacturing efficiency. Intel’s current line of microprocessors includes the Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, and Core2Quad.

In this video podcast, PodTech’s Jason Lopez visits Intel’s Hillsboro, Oregon research facility and fab.

Related Stories: IntelMooresLaw

Transcript:
Host: Jason Lopez – PodTech
Guests: Intel Spokesperson
Guest: Kelin Kuhn - Intel

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Transistors are the miniature machines of the heart of computers. The first transistors built on silicon in the 1960’s were relatively large compared to those of today. But in the last few years, scientists have sensed The End of Moore’s Law as the quest to double a number of transistors on a chip every two years has pushed the limits of physics.

This test wafer is used to measure the reliability of billions of H transistor and interconnect features, the blue prints for making microprocessors. For nearly 40 years, transistors have been made from a polysilicon gate and silicon gate oxide, the materials used to create the switch inside that turns it on and off. But with 65 nanometer technology currently in production, those materials have been pushed to their physical limits. To go smaller at 45 nanometers scientists said Intel chose new materials a Metal gate and High-K gate oxide based on the element hafnium. These materials have enabled yet again the doubling of the density of transistors within a two-year timeframe.

Intel code names its new family of 45 nanometer chips ‘Penryn’ which deliver a significant improvement in power efficiency and performance.

Speaker
This is a really tremendous accomplishment to get all the way down to 45 nanometer dimensions. When I joined Intel five micron dimensions were common. 45 nanometers is more than a 100 times smaller than that. So, quite remarkable.

Kelin Kuhn - Intel
If you think about it, if you look at the Intel 45 nanometer device technology, we can fit 400 transistors on something about the size of the human blood cell.

Speaker
So, it allows us to continue scaling and maintain this Moore’s Law type of evolutionary built up we’ve seen.

Speaker
Well, developing smaller transistors or technologies with smaller feature size is very key, because it allows you to pack more transistors on a chip which means you can do more things with that chip, that also means that these transistors when they’re smaller can use less energy when you switch them on and off. So, you have better power efficiency, you can get certain computational functions done using less energy, less power.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Intel’s drive to adhere to Moore’s Law is as much an economic decision as it is a scientific one. It’s one thing to make the Metal gate and High-K gate oxide technologies work. It’s another to make 45 nanometer chips enlarged volumes to satisfy the market. Intel’s lead in the chip industry is based on its ability to deliver cheaper and faster microprocessors.

Speaker
Well, one of the key things that Intel does very well is what’s called Design for Manufacturability and the key there is to make sure that the product design and the process manufacturing technology are able to work together and produce high yielding, high quality products and because we’re an integrated device manufacturer, we do the design in-house, we do the process development in-house, we’re able to do a really good job at Design for Manufacturability up front and produce these chips in high volume.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Metal gate and High-K gate oxide only atoms thick are more electrically efficient helping to reduce heat and power lost from leakage and improving transistor performance by 20%. The idea to use new materials has been around for more than a decade, but the technologies to deploy them were developed by hundreds of engineers over the past few years.

Kelin Kuhn - Intel
Okay so, if you think about how we build gate oxides, historically, we’ve used very simple silicon dioxide materials basically glass, and as we’ve developed our technology expertise over the years we started doing very elegant things to this glass to make ever better oxides basically the gate of the transistor.

When we introduced the Intel 45 nanometer process we moved a hafnium-based material as a radically different way of resolving our gate leakage issues and so it’s a very novel material system that’s intrinsic to the type of leakage improvements we see. Chip design was simple once and we don’t do that anymore. It’s complicated now because we already did the simple stuff that’s my humorous answer, but I think in today’s world if you look at a modern microprocessor. We’re talking hundreds of millions of transistors and it’s incomprehensible that humans can build this to be honest.

Every time we have a success in the fab. I sit back and look at this and we’re looking at devices that are one-tenth the wavelength of light. Little tinnie winnie devices and humans can build these very complicated things and if you think about it, a yielding dye in our process technology means every single transistor worked. Every single one of those 100 million transistors worked and that’s when we sell them. Can you believe it? Humans can actually make something where every single one of a hundred million plus devices worked, it’s remarkable, and we don’t do it as individuals, we do it as an international team.

Speaker
We had the fly of the wafers to Arizona, get them assembled and then fly them back to Folsom, California in order to actually test them.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
So, what was the feeling of the team when you booted up that first OS?

Speaker
I would say one word it was ‘Euphoria’. The team was just tremendously excited. When you considered a number of people involved in the two–and-a-half years that culminated in this boolean of major Operating System with Penryn, it was an awesome feeling.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Is that simply because it worked or is it because a number of things work?

Speaker
Yeah, it really represents the fact that a number of things worked. Coming out of reset is not so monumentous as say (Inaudible) up to boot Windows XP, or Windows Vista or Linux because there is a lot of functionality that has to be working to reach that level of capability. So, the team was obviously excited for that. All this happened around. I believe we booted around 3:30 in the morning and there was just a lot of adrenalin in the lab at that time and this is a lot of excitement.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
It’s like a moon shot only you didn’t have the big screen looking.

Speaker
Yeah, you could say that. Maybe on a smaller scale, but yeah, that’s equivalent to us on the engineering team as our moon shot.

Tags: Intel, 45 nanometer, Penryn, microprocessors, semiconductors, Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore, Intel, Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, Core2Quad, Jason Lopez, IntelMooresLaw

The Esquire House 360: The Ultimate 21st Century Bachelor Pad, With Intel Inside

editor — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:32:56 +0000

Stars and celebs turned-out recently for a hip housewarming party at Hollywood’s coolest new crib. The Esquire House 360° is a 17,000 square-foot Italian villa set among the stylish and exclusive mansions of Beverly Hills. This hip home is situated on three-acres of land with panoramic views of Southern California. Built and decorated with the latest materials and craftsmanship, the house seamlessly incorporates technology into each room, demonstrating how high fashion and high tech together are essential to the modern man.
(more…)

Tags: Esquire

PCs in Bed & Beyond: Genevieve Bell, Intel’s Top Anthropologist

Michael Johnson — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:00:05 +0000

Mobile computing is literally going to bed with users, so at the cool BED club in New York, PodTech’s Michael Johnson literally hopped into bed with Genevieve Bell, a senior researcher and anthropologist for Intel. She’s the director of Intel’s user experience group for Digital Home. (more…)

Tags: Genevieve Bell, Digital Home

Intel Inside, Outside, In Your Home, In Your Car…

Catherine Girardeau — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:13:06 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO, September 26, 2006 (PodTech News) — Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini said his company is committed to bringing out new silicon manufacturing processes and chips every two years. Essentially, according to Otellini, Intel will prove that Moore’s Law can continue well into the next decade. The opening keynote address this morning — heard by an audience of some 3,000 software developers, analysts and members of the press — lasted about one hour, and saw Otellini run through a laundry list of Intel’s recent industry-significant innovations. PodTech’s Catherine Girardeau was there.

Tags: Paul Otellini

Video: Meet the Professional Girl Gamers, the Frag Dolls, at the Intel Core 2 Duo Launch Party - Sponsored

editor — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:40:32 +0000

Meet the professional girl gamers, the Frag Dolls and others, as Eddie Codel wanders the floor of the Intel Core 2 Duo launch party at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California. See demos of Intel’s new processor in action and hear from those who have already had the chance to try out the Core 2 Duo.

See articles and reviews of the
Intel Core 2 Duo

Sounds of the Intel Core 2 Duo Launch Party - Sponsored

editor — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:47:59 +0000

Intel launched its family of Core 2 Duo processors at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. PodTech’s Michael Johnson was there and gather a few moments from the event floor.

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Intel Core 2 Duo

Tags: Intel, Core 2 Duo

Intel Struts Core 2 Duo’s Stuff At Multimedia Press Event

editor — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:16:18 +0000

SANTA CLARA, July 27, 2006 (PodTech News) – Intel Corporation showed off its new Core 2 Duo processors today at a press event at the company’s Santa Clara headquarters. The Core 2 Duo processors will power desktop and laptop PCs and workstations for both consumer and business uses. “This is not just incremental change,” said Paul Otellini, Intel’s president and CEO.”It’s a revolutionary leap.” Catherine Girardeau reports.

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Intel Core 2 Duo

Tags: Intel, Core 2 Duo, Paul Otellini

Video: Inside Intel’s Performance Benchmarking Lab With The Intel Core 2 Duo - Sponsored

editor — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:53:24 +0000

Eddie Codel shows you what it’s like inside Intel’s Performance Benchmarking Lab by interviewing Matt Dunford, Intel Worldwide Chief Benchmarking Manager, and Regina Wu, Performance Engineer & Mad Gamer.

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Intel Core 2 Duo

Developing the Core 2 Duo - Intel’s Stephen Smith - Sponsored

editor — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 04:56:57 +0000

Stephen Smith, Intel Corporation’s VP & Director of Desktop Platform Operations speaks with PodTech’s Michael Johnson, about the development of the new line of Intel Core 2 Duo processors, at Intel’s “proving ground”, the Benchmark Lab in Santa Clara, California.

See articles and reviews of the Intel Core 2 Duo

Tags: Stephen Smith, Intel, Core 2 Duo