Microscopic Marvels

Intel claims this new family of processors will consume half the power at the same switching speed but will be 37 per cent faster at the same voltage, particularly the lower voltages required for mobile computing devices. They will be 18 per cent faster on high-end consumer machines and servers. What does this mean? Well, it shows Intel continues to follow Moore's law - after Gordon Moore, one of Intel's founders, who famously stated way back in 1965 that the number of transistors on a processor would double every two years. But the increasing number of transistors have made computers faster, while the per-unit cost of processing power has gone down dramatically. The new 3D microprocessor will allow the processors on handheld and portable devices to become even faster. A smartphone today has the processing power of a standard desktop computer of half a decade back. The new Samsung Galaxy S2 and the upcoming iPhone 4S have dualcore processors. Whether this new technology will help Intel make a mark in the portable devices space remains to be seen, but the technology major is expected to introduce an Atom-class lowcost processor using this technology in 2012. What it means is that technology will become even faster and more pervasive than it is today. Vinod Dham was the brain behind the Pentium processor. Again, the person behind Intel's drive to make processors ever smaller is another Indian. Kaizad Mistry is an alumnus of the 1984 batch of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. And what about the technology that allows Intel to make the silicon cuts on microprocessers smaller and smaller? There is an Indian behind that as well: Kanti Jain, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur, who developed a technology in 1982 that allowed lasers to make smaller and smaller etches on silicon wafers.

Microsoft's Mobile Software Gets HTC

Microsoft's new Windows Phone platform won instant support from major manufacturers on Wednesday when China's ZTE and Taiwan's HTC Corp pledged to launch smartphones running the software. The U.S. software giant had stepped up its push into the cellphone market a day earlier with the launch of the new Windows Phone software, code-named Mango. It hopes a host of new features will help it close the gap on smartphone leaders Google Inc and Apple Inc. Microsoft has struggled for years to gain support from mobile phone manufacturers. All vendors in total sold just 1.6 million Windows Phones last quarter, giving it a market share of below 2 percent. Google and Apple together control more than 50 percent of the smartphone market. Windows Phone got a major boost in February when Nokia, the largest phone vendor by volume, said it would swap its own Symbian platform for Windows Phone. On Wednesday ZTE said it would roll out smartphones running updated Microsoft software later this year in Europe, and in 2012 in the United States. And Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC plans to bring out some models based on Microsoft's new software, its Chief Executive Peter Chou told Reuters on the fringes of an internet conference in Paris. "We are very committed to Windows phone products," he said. Analysts said Microsoft needed all the support it could get from handset vendors. "Increased support and competition can only help Windows Phone. It desperately needs more aggressively priced devices and a substantial promotional push to coincide with the Mango release," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight. ZTE, which is known for its agressive entrance into the telecom equipment market, could help to boost Microsoft's position among cheaper smartphones. ZTE expects to ship more than 80 million handsets this year, up by a third from last year's 60 million units, an executive told Reuters earlier this year. Key markets for ZTE's handsets include China, Europe and the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2010, ZTE became the fourth-largest handset maker by unit shipments globally, ranking behind Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, market research group IDC said.