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Acrosser has a new PC/104 form factor SBC. The AR-B1622 offers "superb energy efficient and excellent performance, accompanied with rich features include DDR SODIMM memory support, COM ports, USB 2.0, EIDE interface, Watchdog timer, 10/100 Ethernet, Compact Flash slot, and 24bit TTL LCD interface." Powered with the AMD Low Power Geode LX 800 500MHz CPU, the AR-B1622 is a high efficiency, high reliability, PCI-104 CPU module.

In mid-2008 we can expect to see the first 45nm products from AMD and IBM using immersion lithography and ultra-low-K interconnect dielectrics. "Current process technology uses conventional lithography, which has significant limitations in defining microprocessor designs beyond the 65nm process technology generation. Immersion lithography uses a transparent liquid to fill the space between the projection lens of the step-and-repeat lithography system and the wafer that contains hundreds of microprocessors. This significant advance in lithography provides increased depth of focus and improved image fidelity that can improve chip-level performance and manufacturing efficiency. This immersion technique will give AMD and IBM manufacturing advantages over competitors that are not able to develop a production-class immersion lithography process for the introduction of 45nm microprocessors. For example, the performance of an SRAM cell shows improvements of approximately 15 per cent due to this enhanced process capability, without resorting to more costly double-exposure techniques."

EpoX has a new mainboard which is tailored to meet the needs of enthusiast and die-hard performance users. The EP-AF570+ Ultra is "based on NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra media and communications processors (MCPs), the EP-AF570+ Ultra features AMD Socket AM2 processor support through a 1GHz HyperTansport link. It supports 4 DDR2 SDRAM DIMM slots in dual-channel mode and ready for the ultra high speed DDR2-800 up to 16GB system memory. With 6 SATA ports enabled through the SATA 3Gb/s RAID controller, the EP-AF570+ Ultra satisfies favorable high bandwidth data transfer and the all-important data security. Armored with 10 ports of USB2.0 expansion for I/O peripheral will never be a problem."

AMD is switching things up a bit. They have formally begun renaming ATI's CrossFire 1600 and 3200 chipsets as AMD products. The two parts will now be called the 480X and the 580X, respectively. "The single-chip 480X supports two 8x PCI Express slots for graphics and four more lanes for general-purpose 1x boards. It can host ten USB ports, four 3Gbps SATA drives and two parallel ATA peripherals. The 580X - also a single-chip part - bumps the graphics card support up to a pair of 16x PCIe slots. Other specs are the same as the 480X."

EE Times had a chance recently to speak with Mario Rivas , the new executive vice president at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. They hit on topics such as "AMD's strategy for developing its chips in the near future, ranging from the current Opteron platform, to which "AMD is absolutely committed," he said, to its Fusion chips--the silicon-level integration of CPU and GPU-- which are scheduled for launch in late 2008 or early 2009." Regarding Fusion, AMD hopes to deliver multicore products using different kinds of processing blocks. "Instead of rolling out its Fusion chips at the 65-nanometer node, AMD will wait until 45-nm process technology becomes available. Rivas said, "65 nm is not the right spot, because other products are already in development at 65 nm," referring to the plans AMD put in place prior to the company's acquisition of ATI Technologies, which it announced earlier this year."

The new Athlon 64 X2 processors from AMD, the 5400+ and 5600+, bring an increase of clock speed and are strategically aimed at Intel's Core 2 Duo processors. "What makes these two processors interesting is not the fact that AMD was able squeeze more clock speed out of Toledo - at 89 watts, which remains level with the 90 nm 5200+ and 5000+ - but the fact that these are strategically important CPUs for AMD. If you were to spend about $500 for a new processor, and you were open to any processor available today, then Intel's Core 2 Duo 6700 was the obvious choice. While we do not have the performance numbers of the X2s yet, AMD feels confident enough to price the 5400+ and 5600+ right against the E6700. Intel's fastest mainstream processor currently lists for a tray-price of $530 (retail: $525), while AMD charges $485 for the 5400+ and $505 for the 5600+. At least from that perspective, AMD is able to place itself again in the very lucrative segment of $400+ mainstream CPUs."

AMD has added two new processors to its price list: 5400+ and 5600+ variants. The clock speed for both is 2.8GHz, with the difference being the amount of L2 cache per core. "While the 5400+ comes with X2-typical 512KB per core (total: 1MB), the 5600+ comes with 1MB of L2 cache per core (total: 2MB) giving it equal specs to top-of-the-line AM2 CPU, the Athlon 64 FX-62 and the newly introduced FX-72 (the one using Socket 1207FX)." In addition, they have "renamed the Radeon Xpress 1600 and 3200 into 480X CrossFire and 580X CrossFire, and added the products on the Once-Red-Now-Green ATI homepage, featuring the renamed line-up."

AMD described their road to 45-nm processors this week in academic papers. The strategy is based on three fundamental techniques: "the use of immersion lithography, which uses a lens of purified water to help manufacture the components; an "ultra" low-k dielectric, which lowers the capacitance of the chip, allowing lower power consumption; and an improved version of "strained silicon," which has applied four different "stressers" to recoup some of the benefits lost through the process shrink." IBM fabs in East Fishkill, N.Y., as well as at AMD's fabs in Dresden, Germany will host the 45-nm lines.

The most 'powerful laptop in the world' is on the market and it's the CompAmerica TIGER SHARK 9500 X2. "The new CompAmerica TIGER SHARK 9500 X2 is equipped with Turion X2 and Sli Dual 7950GT Video Adapters which makes it a treat for gamers, videophiles and graphical professionals. The laptop is also outfitted with a 20 in. WSXGA+ Glass View Display and draws it juice from a dual core Turion 64/X2 CPU. The laptop is available in "Extreme CAD CAM Workstation" or "Extreme Gaming / Multimedia Workstation" editions and Tiger Shark 9500 x2 offers an optional edition with DUAL SLI nVidia Quadro FX Go 2500M Open GL Video with 512MB DDR3 each."

Megatasking - 'the work style of those on the verge of needing second desktops or workstations to accomplish their heavy mix of foreground applications and background tasks.' Solution - AMD FX-74 Quad FX, a dual socket, quad-core client platform developed in partnership with graphics and chipset shop NVIDIA. PC World has a post from an early adopter, and had this to say: "Quad FX points the way to the next horizon of commercial client systems. What AMD is showing now as a rip-Intel-a-new-one mean, but not particularly green desktop platform will emerge with balance when it's tuned for widespread commercial use. Wait if you want to, but I'll tell you this: If you take your first drive of 64-bit Vista on Quad FX, you may move up to Opteron, but you will never go back to Intel."