Self-Organising DNA Helps Create More Closely Spaced Devices

Small pieces of DNA known as DNA Origami have been made to self-organise onto silicon forming the scaffolding for new electronic components.  Current micro fabrication techniques can create surface features with a spacing of 45nm. Creating the transistors and electronic components closer together will ultimately lead to faster computers.

In this image, we see the DNA origami looking like the triangular shaped spaghetti hoops. The hope is that the DNA can be used to manipulate the tiny parts that will go into future devices such as carbon nanotubes. The DNA origami can be made to fill regularly spaced holes etched into the silicon carrying their cargo when they are added to liquid and this is made to contact the sillicon.

As microfibrication techniques move to a smaller scale the cost of fabrication becomes increasingly more expensive as features must be resolved using light of smaller wavelengths. The components features are made from the top down. This new technique has the scope to create parts and then introduce them to the substrate. A more bottom up approach if you will. This research and has a great deal of potential but to develop the process to a useful stage, where it might be used on a large scale may take more than ten years.

Asus plans phase out of 7-inch Eee PC netbooks in mature markets

Asus chairman Jonney Shih announced phase out of company’s 7-inch screen Eee PC netbooks, at the CeBIT technology show.

He informed that Asus would concentrate on manufacture of 10-inch netbooks, which is widely preferred by customers. He ruled out phase out of 8.9-inch netbooks. Read more

European Commission receives monopoly complaint against IBM

There are accusations of mainframe monopoly against IBM. A complaint regarding abuse of position in European market has been filed with the European Commission by T3, a US supplier of mainframes.

T3 in its statement alleged that IBM has history of abusing its monopoly position in the mainframe industry. Read more

Intel to consolidate research operations around Europe

Intel has undertaken consolidation of its research operations in Europe under one name, Intel Labs Europe.

It aims to bring 800 of its development and research staff under one umbrella organisation. Read more

Technology companies agree on common crypto standard for storage devices

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) comprising of major technology companies that include Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Intel, Seagate and AMD have agreed on common cryptographic standards to prevent data loss on storage devices. Read more

Dell to present ‘Adamo’ laptop in first half of 2009

Dell, the second-largest producer of personal computers in the world, introduced a 10-inch netbook and revealed briefly about its ultra-thin black laptop called ‘Adamo’. Read more

AMD launches chip bundle for ‘ultra-thin’ laptops

The launch of a chip bundle for ‘ultra-thin’ notebooks by AMD is going to provide laptops which will be costlier and more powerful compared to netbooks, but much cheaper than ultraportable laptops. Read more

Sony launches ultraportable computer in P-series

Sony has launched Vaio P, an ultraportable, lightweight PC which it claims has the feature of running Vista in a system weighing just 638g. Read more

ARM’s technology will now be utilised in netbooks

ARM-based processors have conventionally been used in small devices like mobile phones. But it emerged that ARM’s technology will now be utilised in netbooks, which is the new class of small, low-cost notebook PCs.

ARM’s vice president of marketing, Ian Drew, said that the partnership between ARM and Canonical will extend to fundamentals like drivers and graphics support. It basically involves moving Ubuntu from one instruction set of x86 to another.

The netbooks that have been selling till date have had either Windows or Linux operating systems. Some reports have shown that Linux-based netbooks have a considerably higher rate of return. However, Canonical suggests this is due to a lack of expertise with Linux on the part of consumers, instead of a problem with the open-source operating systems.

Jane Silber, Canonical’s chief operating officer, said that driven by the demand from producers for an ARM technology-based version, this is a very logical development for Ubuntu. Going by reports of ARM and Canonical, the Ubuntu ARM distribution for desktops and netbooks will be publicly available from April 2009. The Ubuntu distribution is available to the ARM ecosystem. It provides a very wide choice for consumers who are looking for the best operating system for their digital lifestyles.

IBM, HP struggle for market leadership hots up

An ongoing struggle between IBM and HP for market leadership is getting hotter with IBM claiming that it had replaced 5,000 HP systems along with EMC systems and Sun Microsystems since 2004.

The announcement was made as part of IBM’s marketing strategy on launch of its Migration Factory to demonstrate benefits of its platforms. The main among IBM’s initiatives was to convince customers about importance of its Series Z mainframes.

IBM claimed that more than 150 customers had migrated to Series Z during the current year. It has also registered 1,300 customers in its Power Systems and 2,900 in storage worldwide.

According to IBM’s system consultant Doug Nielson, key to company’s success was greater awareness among its customers about IT costs. He claimed that IBM systems were vastly different form others in the sense that customers could be migrated to systems which used one tenth of power and space of the older systems. Nielson who works with IBM mainframes believes that his area was now getting right attention.

Analyst Tony Lock at Freeform Dynamics considered this as a tactic which he had seen many times in the past. They take pop at each other; the only change is that they were earlier indulging in such tactics for customers’ benefit, now they are doing it in public on web.

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