Intel vs. AMD: Better computer chips raise laptops' abilities

SAN FRANCISCO - The hot laptop market has sparked a war among computer chip companies - and they're not just fighting over who can build the fastest processor.

Intel (INTC) on Monday rolled out Centrino 2, its next-generation laptop chips. Centrino 2 laptops are faster than their predecessors. But their biggest benefits are other features, such as better graphics and battery life.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel's chief rival, released a similar set of laptop chips last month. Graphics-chipmaker Nvidia, best known for desktop components, also rolled out a laptop line.

"It's a big shift," says AMD Vice President Patrick Moorhead. The number of laptops sold will outpace desktops by 2009, Intel CEO Paul Otellini predicts. (Laptop revenue already exceeds desktops, because laptops are usually more expensive.) That's prompting chipmakers to put new emphasis on the problems that arise in small, portable computers.

They include:

•Battery life. The best laptop in the world isn't worth much when its battery dies. Intel's new chip line features an ultra-low-power processor and other energy-saving tools. AMD's chips can detect whether a computer is plugged in and adjust power levels accordingly. (Other features also help.)

•Graphics. Laptops traditionally used low-end graphics chips that piggyback off other components. But now 26% have powerful stand-alone graphics chips, says semiconductor analyst Dean McCarron at Mercury Research. Demand has risen as more people watch movies, play games and use graphics-intensive programs such as Google Earth on their laptops, he says.

Nvidia (NVDA) now makes so many laptop chips that when a problem developed in some of them last month, the company said it must take a charge of at least $150 million. AMD's new chip line has a vastly improved graphics processor.

•Wireless Internet. Intel's new chip line features the latest version of Wi-Fi, known as 802.11n. Later this year it plans to roll out chips using a new wireless Internet standard, WiMax, which can send a signal over several miles. Chipmaker Atheros Communications and others are also pushing new wireless standards.

Chipmakers "are putting an awful lot of effort into their (laptop) solutions," says semiconductor analyst Matthew Wilkins at researcher iSuppli. An emphasis on features, instead of just processing power, is a way to stand out, he says.

source: news.yahoo.com

Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Cell-derived Chip

The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July.

Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning.

The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops.

The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.

Among them, Toshiba said the two computers will be able to upscale standard-definition video to high definition; transcode in realtime digital TV to MPEG4 so that the resulting files are cut down in size by one-eighth and burn video to DVD in half the time of current machines.

A novel feature is face navigation. Faces that appear in video are recognized and displayed as thumbnail images to create a visual index to the video. Users can find the person or scene they want by glancing at the thumbnails and then click on the respective one to watch that portion of video. The computer can also divide up the scenes in user-shot video so they can be viewed one-by-one and analyze and display the volume or the clip across its entire length so, for example, excitement in a sports event can be more easily found.

Finally, by analyzing images from the computer's built-in camera it's possible to control video playback with hand gestures.

The Qosmio G50 is a multimedia laptop and has an 18.4-inch high-definition screen, 500G bytes of hard-disk space, NVidia GeForce 9600M graphics processor, dual digital TV tuners and wireless LAN including 802.11n. It weighs 4.9 kilograms and measures 45 centimeters by 31cms by 4.8cms. Battery life is about 4 hours.

The Qosmio G50 will be cost from ¥290,000 (US$2,700) and the F50, which has a 15-inch screen and 250G byte hard-disk drive, from ¥250,000. Toshiba plans to put the machines on sale overseas but has yet to announce launch details.

Source:news.yahoo.com