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Tid-bits
11/19 - Sony has completed authoring "on the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) to contain a full-length, high-definition feature film". Never mind the name of the film. Intel and Microsoft recently sided against Sony's Blu-ray in favor of Toshiba and NEC's HD DVD (High Definition DVD). The Blu-ray film is "being shipped to BD hardware companies for player testing".
Yonah who? Alienware is taking orders for dual-core laptops. The laptop contains desktop processors, such as the AMD Athlon 64 X2. The notebook is a monster of a beast in other respects, too—17" LCD (liquid crystal display) and support for two SATA (serial ATA) hard drives capable of running in RAID (redundant array of independent drives) configurations. Laptop will "start shipping on January 18, 2006".
The memory business that Infineon shall spin off into its own company shall be "a wholly owned subsidiary", at least for the time being, if and when the new company does an IPO (initial public offering).
Five Japanese companies are considering setting up a common super plant for the fabrication of ICs (integrated circuits). As manufacturing processes have shrunk, the prices of these plants has skyrocketed (into the billions). One good thing about the high cost for chip companies is that it creates "a substantial barrier to entry into their markets".
Micron increased its sales of NAND flash memory last quarter by a whopping "400 percent".
Don't count out ATI from the competition yet. The company has dual CrossFire cards in the offing that are rumored to be very competitive. ATI requested that benchmarks not be published until the release of the card to the public. "Those of you who believe ATI is far behind nVidia are in for a surprise".