Intel Corp, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, said computer manufacturers have begun selling desktop products equipped with its latest chip design.
Three models of the Core i7 chips, based on a design called Nehalem, will initially be available and cost US$280 to US$999 each, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement on its Web site. Intel was to show machines made by 18 companies, including Dell Inc, yesterday at an event in San Francisco.
The release of the chip is part of chief executive officer Paul Otellini’s plans to protect the company’s lead over Advanced Micro Devices Inc, as slumping demand forced Intel to cut its sales forecast last week. Ottelini is seeking to avoid a repeat of 2006, when falling behind AMD in introducing new technology led to a 9 percent decline in sales.
Server versions of the Core i7 chips are scheduled to go into production this quarter and make their way into computer systems that run corporate networks and Web sites in the first three months of next year.
For the first time, Intel is combining memory and processing functions in one chip, instead of two, speeding up computing.
AMD has had a memory-controlling chip available since 2003. Its current mainstream design, called Barcelona, was about a year late, initially performed worse than expected and had an error that further slowed adoption by computer makers. Last week, AMD released an updated version that makes the chip about a third faster, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said.
Microprocessors run software in computers and use memory chips to store data while they make calculations. Intel controls 81 percent of the market for PC processors, according to researcher IDC Corp in Framingham, Massachusetts.
AMD holds all of the rest except for the less than 1 percent of Taiwan’s Via Technologies Inc (威盛電子). In servers, Intel has an 85.6 percent market share.
Intel on Nov. 12 cut its fourth-quarter sales forecast by about US$1 billion because of significantly weaker demand across its entire product line, stoking concern that the financial crisis is stifling global technology spending.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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