Tech Olive

That’s right, folks. In the midst of the CPU battle between Intel and AMD, Nvidia has decided to join in, but at the same time, move away from the x86 architecture. They’re currently “developing” the CPU in partnership with ARM and they’re calling it “Project Denver.” It will be a CPU/GPU combo chip just like AMD’s Fusion and it will be ARM’s first processor made for high-performance computing for desktops and laptops.

“Denver frees PCs, workstations and servers from the hegemony and inefficiency of the x86 architecture.  For several years, makers of high-end computing platforms have had no choice about instruction-set architecture.  The only option was the x86 instruction set with variable-length instructions, a small register set, and other features that interfered with modern compiler optimizations, required a larger area for instruction decoding, and substantially reduced energy efficiency.”

The project seems like it’s still in the drawing-board phase, so it’s mostly just ideas and goals being laid out by Nvidia. The big picture for the company is to provide a combination of high performance and power efficiency for both consumers and enterprises. Seems like a typical goal, but we can’t wait to see what the green team has in store for us.

[Nvidia Blog]

Apple’s MacBook Air isn’t the only razor-like laptop around. Samsung has unveiled what they say is “thinnest and lightest 13-inch notebook available.” We wouldn’t go that far, since it’s as thin as the MacBook Air (0.68 inches) and it only weighs a hundredth of a pound less (2.89 lbs.). Obviously you won’t find an optical drive, but it has one of those fancy new Sandy Bridge Core i5 processors, a 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, a black-lit keyboard, 13.3-inch LED display, 6.5 hours of battery life, and all of the usual ports including HDMI. Although Samsung hasn’t said anything as far when this bad boy will be available, they did say that it will cost around $1,600.

[Press Release]

This is by no means just another Arc Touch Mouse. This is in fact Microsoft’s extremely late entrance into the full multi-touch mouse market (seriously, Apple’s Magic Mouse was announced in October 2009, people). Embarrassment aside, Redmond announced the Touch Mouse. It’s got a “matrix of capacitive touch-sensing electrodes” that can sense all sorts of multi-touch gestures like flicks, pinch-to-zoom, and panning. It also uses Microsoft’s BlueTrack technology, so it can be used pretty much on any practical surface. It won’t be available until May and it’ll cost you $79.95. It’s up for pre-order now on Amazon if you so choose to break out the plastic.

[Product Page]

Hey, folks! Guess what? It’s that time of the year again. It’s CES time. Today (Wednesday) marks the official start of CES 2011 and we’re here to bring you as much PC coverage goodness from the event as possible. What are you guys most interested in this year? Sandy Bridge? Fusion? New laptops? Cool new peripherals and accessories? Maybe even some gaming?

Those new AMD Fusion chips aren’t going to run by themselves. They need a good motherboard to sit on first. Gigabyte will have you covered when you go out and purchase your Fusion. The GA-350N-USB3 is not only their first Fusion board, but it’s also their first ever mini-ITX board for the AMD platform. While it’s more on the small side as far as size, it packs some serious punch as far as features go. It has USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbps, HDMI, and three times the power for charging USB devices such as iPods and other various PMPs.

The motherboard will come with an AMD Fusion E-350 dual-core chip and Radeon HD 6310 graphics, which is powerful enough to play back Blu-ray content, Gigabyte says.

Pricing or availability is still yet to be had.

[Product Page via Press Release]

Now that AMD officially outed its new mobile offering of processors, it would be appalling on the desktops’ part if they didn’t announce new desktop processors. That’s not the case here, though. The company has just announced and released two new Phenom II CPUs, one being the 3.6GHz Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition and the other a 2.9GHz Phenom II X6 1065T. The new Black Edition is claimed by AMD to be their fastest yet and the 1065T is meant to be a power-saving offering which only squeezes out a 95W TDP.

While AMD says the processors are publicly available now, pricing is yet to be discovered.

via [AMD Blog]

In a direct effort to best Intel’s Atom chip for netbooks, AMD has announced their Fusion chips. To put it quite simply, the chips are a CPU/GPU combo (just like Intel’s Sandy Bridge) and according to AMD, they offer better CPU performance, better GPU performance (with DirectX11 support), dedicated 1080p HD video processing with HDMI out, and a monstrous 10+ hours battery life. Four models of the chip will be available, the highest being a dual-core 1.6GHz chip and the lowest a single-core 1.2GHz.

A couple of netbooks sporting the Fusion chips have already been announced (HP Pavilion dm1 and the Lenovo X120e) and we should definitely see more pop up within the coming days. AMD even says that Fusion tablets should be coming within the first half of 2011.

[Press Release]

We’ve seen a lot of leaks about Intel’s upcoming 2nd generation Core processors (codenamed Sandy Bridge), making it seem like it has already been announced, but Intel is just now officially officializing their next gen family of CPUs. So what new details do they have for us? Well, the entire family will consist of 29 total processors that will consist of desktop and mobile versions of new Core i3, i5 and i7 chips. All of the new CPUs will be built on Intel’s 32nm architecture and will be the first to have the processor, memory controller and graphics all on the same die, which means we’ll be see some mean laptops in even smaller packages.

So what can we expect? Intel says that around 500 machines will use the new CPUs. There’s already been a few systems that have leaked out and we should see a boat load of machines be unveiled at CES later this week.

via [Engadget]

While the Consumer Electronics Show is mostly focused on…well…consumer electronics, it seems that they’re going to set aside a space for purely gaming-related products. It’ll be called the CES Gaming Showcase and numerous companies are already on board to exhibit there such as AMD, Intel, Logitech, Microsoft, and HP. One surprise already is that Nintendo will also be there despite their no-show the last 16 years.

UPDATE: It turns out that Nintendo won’t really be exhibiting their new products on the CES floor, but will just be holding secret meetings in several of the show’s meeting rooms. Read the press release here.

CES 2011 will take place in Las Vegas, NV January 6th-11th. You’ll bet we’ll be covering as much as we can.

[Press Release]