A Processor Especially For Television

Television is now at an inflection point. For a new set of processors that are designed especially for the television are on the anvil, promising to revolutionize our outlook towards the idiot box.

Santa Clara, California-headquartered Intel Corporation has announced the launch of a new System-on-Chip (SoC) called Atom CE4100 which will bring Internet content to digital TVs, DVD players and advanced set-top boxes.

The CE4100 processor is a 45nm-manufactured SoC that is exclusively designed to support internet and broadcast applications. Clocking a speed of up to 1.2 Ghz, the chip supports hardware decode of up to two 1080p video streams and advanced 3-D graphics and audio standards, besides decode for MPEG4 video for DivX Home Theater 3.0 certification, an integrated NAND flash controller, support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory and 512K L2 cache.

Integrated within the SoC is a display module, graphics module, video display controller, transport processor, a dedicated security processor and general I/O including SATA-300 and USB 2.0.

The SoC comes with a software framework called Widget Channel for the development of Internet applications, or TV Widgets.

Read more about how Intel is converting the television into yet another internet portal, here.

New Processors For Laptops From Intel

Santa Clara, California-headquartered Intel Corporation has launched a new set of processors for the laptop market.

These are called Core i7 Mobile Processor and Core i7 Mobile Processor Extreme Edition. OEMs such as Asus, Dell, HP and Toshiba have begun putting out their laptops based on these processors on the shelves of stores. For benchmark, the pricing for 1,000 pieces of i7-920XM processor is USD 1,054. The i7-820QM processor costs USD 546 per piece for a lot of 1,000 pieces, and the i7-720QM is quoted at USD 364 per piece for 1,000 pieces.

The i7 mobile processors were codenamed “Clarksfield” in the company’s internal documentation. These processors have in their design Intel’s Turbo Boost technology, which is said to accelerate the clock speed of the processor by up to 75% when the workloads so demand. The processors include two-channel DDR3 1,333 Mhz memory and full 1X16 or 2X8 PCI Express 2.0 graphics support.

The processors come with their own PM55 Express Chipset which are geared towards high-end workstation and gaming environments. For the user, this translates to some best-quality gaming experience while on the move.

Read more about the latest processors to hit the laptop market, here.

Microsoft Releases New Version Of Embedded CE OS

Richmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft Corporation has announced the release of the latest version of its Operating System for embedded technologies with small footprint.

The new version is Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3. This version incorporated Microsoft’s Silverlight RIA platform in the UI of the Embedded framework. Part of Microsoft’s aggressive thrust in the consumer internet devices (CID) market, the new version also gives access to OEMs to the company’s cutting-edge technologies such as Visual Studio, Expression Blend and Windows 7, besides Silverlight.

Silverlight for Embedded will be slightly different from the typical version available from Microsoft, in that it will be an out-of-browser native code implementation. The product can be deployed by OEMs to develop standardized UIs for their devices. The product also separates the UI from the core functionality, thus reducing the time to market these devices.

With Windows 7 too being made available in this release, it will now be possible for end-users to connect their internet devices to desktop machines seamlessly.

The consumer internet devices market is likely to see a lot of action in the coming years, as internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous.

Read about the latest release of its OS for embedded technologies by Microsoft, here.

Cisco To Jointly Develop HD IP Video Security Cameras With Pelco

San Jose, California-headquartered Cisco Systems Inc has entered into a strategic tie-up with Clovis, California-headquartered Pelco Inc, a Schneider Electric Company. The tie-up is for development of a product in the domain of video security cameras.

Pelco is a leader in the design, development and manufacture of video and security systems. Cisco is a leader in IP networking technology. Together, the two aim to bring out the next generation of high-definition Internet Protocol (HD-IP) equipment aimed at the high-tech surveillance market. Pelco will supply Cisco with a complete line of HD imaging technologies that will be deployed by the latter to extend its existing camera line and network-centric video surveillance systems.

The video security camera shall be co-branded. The product will feature full-frame-rate video, H.264 compression, advanced low-light performance, embedded analytics, auto-focus and easy installation which are elements of Pelco’s Sarix technology. Cisco’s own IP networking features will be incorporated in this technology.

With security and surveillance becoming the need of the hour for both governments and private corporations, the market is likely to see more such collaborations in the near future.

Read more about the strategic technological tie-up between two IT biggies to complement strengths for a new product, here.

CA Announces Acquisition Of Network Performance Management Company

Islandia, New York-headquartered CA Inc has announced the acquisition of a network performance management company as part of its strategy to achieve fast-track inorganic growth.

The company in question is Austin, Texas-headquartered NetQoS Inc. NetQoS is a software and services company in the domain of network performance management. The company boasts as its clients more than fifty percent of Fortune 100 companies, where its software products are utilized to monitor application service levels. The company has two offices outside the US – in London and Singapore, and research centers in Austin and Raleigh in North Carolina.

The company was founded in 1999 by Mr. Joel Trammell who is its present Chairman and CEO, along with Dr. Cathy Fulton, its CTO and Executive VP. The company is wholly private.

CA’s strategy behind the acquisition is to strengthen its ability to help enterprise IT organizations and services to deliver network flow monitoring, unified communications management and response time analytic network solutions. NetQoS products will be integrated into the company’s existing suite in network management.

The cost of the acquisition is said to be USD 200 million.

Read more about the latest inorganic growth happening in the IT industry, here.

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