Intel shows off a breakthrough in making faster and more energy efficient wifi-- integrating a 2.4GHz wifi radio and a dual-core Atom processor on the same chip, codenamed "Rosepoint."

The chip was seen at the 2012 IEEE Solid-State Cicuits Conference (ISSCC), San Francisco.

The wifi radio inside Rosepoint is digital RF, and uses only 2 voltage levels. The chip itself is built using a 32nm process, and Intel tells Wired Magazine it brings Moore's Law to the world of RF and radio circuits.

The integrated wifi technology will not hit the market until a few years, and Intel is already working on a version carrying a cellular radio and a built-in antenna. Such technology can result in the more energy efficient internet-connected devices of the future.

Wireless radio and CPUs do not make ideal partners-- radiation from a CPU corrupts data the RF module is receiving, while radio waves mess with microprocessors. The wifi radio and the Atom processor also happen to operate using similar frequencies, demanding the use of noise cancelling and radiation-shielding.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation announces the first batch its intriguing low-cost Linux micro-PCs has just entered production-- and pre-orders should start shipping from February 20 2012.

Designed as an affordable PC ideal to get children into computer programming, the Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer the size of a credit card. Currently a simple open board, it carries an ARM processor (running at 700MHz) on top of a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, together with a Videocore 4 GPU the Foundation says is capable Continue reading...

Gartner reports Q4 2011 W. Europe PC shipments total 16.3M units-- a -16% Y-o-Y decline-- while total 2011 shipments are also down by -16% from 2010, reaching 58.5M units.

Clearly consumers prefer to spend their money on smartphones and tablets rather than PCs (despite dropping prices) as Q4 2011 represents the 4th consecutive quarter of shipment declines...

Particularly hard hit in Q4 2011 are the PC markets in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, with Y-o-Y declines of over -30%. The UK sees the worst Y-o-Y decline in 5 quarters (-19.6%) according to Gartner, while French and German PC shipments drop by -11.8% and -8.2% Y-o-Y.

Lenovo gets flexible as it announces two transformable offerings at CES 2012-- the IdeaPad Yoga ultrabook/tablet combination and the IdeaCentre A720 all-in-one desktop/surface hybrid device.

The IdeaPad Yoga is not just an ultrabook with a screen that flips over like a spiral-bound book-- it is also the first Windows 8 tablet from the company. It has a 13.3" 1600x900 multi-touch display, weighs around 1.47kg, is 16.9mm thick and will carry a "next-generation" (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core processor.

A weak economy, the death of the industry's leading personality, even a new version of Windows-- the year had it all.

We received plenty of gloomy news regarding the state of the PC industry-- not to mention the economy in general. The EU economy growth forecast bears the title "Growth at a Standstill" while all analyst figures point at an EMEA PC market sliding downwards.

The only upwards trend? Tablets, but only those of the Apple variety, really... even if the cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire might shake the market a bit.

Rivals will be rivals-- while Intel blames the recent Thailand floods for slashing Q4 2011 forecasts, AMD CE Rory Read claims HDD supply in the channel is actually "going pretty well."

Such statements leave no doubt that tensions are still high on the PC making front.

Intel says “the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases,” predicting HDD shortages will continue until Q1 2012 before supplies recover sometime around H2 2012.

As a result, Intel reduces Q4 Continue reading...

The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) awards the upcoming Intel 7 and C216 chipset families with SuperSpeed USB certification-- allowing manufacturers to easily incorporate SuperSpeed USB into their systems.

The chipsets include x4 integrated SuperSpeed USB ports, all of which are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices.

The USB-IF says SuperSpeed USB delivers data transfer rates of up 10x over that of Hi-Speed USB (up to 4.8Gbps), with increased bus power and new power management features.

The Continue reading...

Will the post-PC era bring about the end of digital freedom and the innovation? Jonathan Zittrain certainly believes so, in his essay in the MIT Technology Review-- "The Personal Computer is Dead."

Zittrain is a Harvard professor and co-director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He says "we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand, to operating system vendors on the other... This is a little for the better, and much for the worse."

As the PC dwindles, a replacement emerges in the shape of iOS and its ilk. While the Big Brother-esque walled-garden model might "just work" by eliminating some of the more annoying aspects of PCs (viruses, spam, identity theft, crashes) security comes at a high cost-- freedom.