Following news of NVidia's plans to rival Intel in the processor game, Intel decides to shake hands with NVidia-- signing a 6-year licensing agreement with the company.

The agreement involves the payment of $1.5bn in licensing fees by Intel. The 2 companies will also make up by dropping all outstanding legal disputes.

The deal gives Intel access to NVidia's patent portfolio. Likewise NVidia gets the same from Intel (without Intel's x86 designs and some other areas).

NVidia technology already Continue reading...

Intel's Sandy Bridge gets approval from an unexpected source-- Hollywood, Reuters reports.

Warner Bros. and other studios will offer HD content to Sandy Bridge users (at the same time as the DVDs are released) as the chips include built-in content protection.

As well as protecting IP, Sandy Bridge should improve multimedia processing, as it unites central and graphics processing on the same silicon-- resulting in faster, more energy efficient and probably more profitable hardware.

Intel says Continue reading...

Coming up at CES will be the first shots of the struggle to shift 3D TV consumers from shutter glasses 3DTV systems to film-type patterned retarder (FPR) polarized glasses 3D panels.

A press conference in Beijng held by LG Display marshaled support from a number of makers, industry associations and state-run research institutes.

Chinese and some global LCD-TV makers plan to offer a full lineup of LCD 3D-TV sets featuring FPR panels in early 201. Present at the conference were Skyworth, Konka, Continue reading...

Zagg becomes an International CES Innovations 2011 design and engineering honoree for its upcoming Zaggmate iPad stand.

At first glance the Zaggmate appears to be a simple aluminium iPad cover. Inside however it has a handy adjustable hinge, turning it into a stand in either portrait or landscape modes.

In addition, the company offers a version with an in-built bluetooth keyboard. It comes with a number of function keys for music control and shortcuts.

Go Zagg Named as CES Innovations Honoree Continue reading...

Attachmate is a winner as it walks away as the new owner of Novell, after a $2.2 billion buy-out. Attachmate, a smaller software company than Novell, is owned by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thomas Bravo.

It was Microsoft who opened the door for the $2.2b sale by organising a consortium to add $450m cash into Novell's coffers in return for surgically removing some of its IP rights portfolio. This was not generosity on the part of Microsoft (did you think?) but an action to keep tr Continue reading...

Marvell unveils its quad-core cloud computing platform, the Armada XP. The Armada carries Arm's latest-- and what Marvell describes as "fastest"-- processor.

The Armada XP platform combines x4 1.6GHz Arm v7 compliant cores with a host of I/O peripherals (x4 PCI-e Gen 2.o units, x4 gigabit networking ports, x16 Marvell Serdes lanes, multiple USB ports).

The company say it delivers the best performance per watt for cloud computing applications. Arm's processor offers 16600 DMIPS performance at less Continue reading...

In an interview Bob Muglia, Microsoft server and tools president, says the company's "strategy has shifted" when it comes to Silverlight.

He describes HTML5 as "...the only true cross platform solution for everything, including iOS."

This confirms Microsoft is pushing for HTML5-- Internet Explorer 9 carries many HTML5 features, Bing will carry new HTML5 powered features, and H.264-encoded HTML5 video delivers live video on its 360 game console.

Silverlight will remain Microsoft's Windows Phone Continue reading...

Dell wants to rival Apple - image-wise, at least. The PC maker seeks to shed its "value" image and portray itself as a premium brand.

Its newest advertising campaign costs "hundreds and hundreds of millions" and coincides with next Monday's new product launches.

Products include a tablet-converting laptop and smaller tablet devices.

Dell's Steve Felice is emphasising customer choice. This comes in reaction to Steve Jobs' predictions earlier this week on how 7" tablets are "dead on arrival". Continue reading...