Playing on the Go

AMD, the other processor company decided to relaunch Puma, their mobile processor. Actually it really wasn’t a lanuch, more of an announcement saying that Puma will be launched in Q2 this year. AMD demonstrated Puma’s capabilities vs an Intel processor.

Puma might be all fine and dandy, but it’s having a very difficult time of getting out of the factory and into laptops. Puma was initially announced last year but it never came. Its “relaunch” in Q2 is expected to be delayed as well.

The only thing definite are Puma’s specifications, which haven’t changed since last year at its first announcement. For ideal power efficiency, Puma will be able to dynamically scale each core independently while executing a thread. Puma also sports a DirectX 10 graphics controller that puts Intel’s X3100 controller to shame. Puma-based systems will range from $699 to $2,500 later this year….hopefully

Recently, Intel announced the first step to a new generation of mobile processors, the Centrino Atom. Although mobile processors have been around for decades, the intention of the Atom is much different. Today’s mobile processors in cell phones, mp3 players, and hand-held gaming devices can only handle one task at a time efficiently, however, if they are commanded to preform a extensive task, they fail miserably. This is not so with the Atom.

Intel engineers are constructing a seamless integration in not only the hardware, but the software as well. Their final objective is to achieve the performance of a PC and the simplicity of….any product made by Apple (pretty darn simple). A processor of this power and capability will revolutionize the mobile market. Soon, all devices utilizing this technology will have abilities far greater than the iPhone for hundreds of dollars less. Such a device would combine: Navigation, Entertainment, Communication, and stunning user interface without the user noticing any limitations. One universal device would greatly assist the nerd who fills his pockets with many “necessary” gadgets by freeing up some pocket space and lightening his load (just in case he has to run away from a jock).

In the past decade, many different innovations in the nano-technology sector have to left us discover copious amounts of chips in our daily lives.

Example: Wifi, it became a standard in laptops some years back. Since then, engineers have been able to shrink it down to fit inside of cell phones and other small devices. All this development to add a convenience to your life and another chip in your pocket.

Moore’s Law states, “The number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.” Basically, all electronics are inherently becoming exponentially more complicated, expensive, and smaller. Moore’s Law was originated by by Intel’s cofounder Gordon E. Moore in 1965.

Today, Intel still holds true to Moore’s Law. It costs $3 billion to $5 billion to build a single semiconductor fabrication plant but in a few years, that number could rise to $12 billion. Processors are simply becoming smaller and smaller, to the point that transistors in a high-end chip are no wider than the nucleus of a small cell. Intel is destined to carry on this process till it’s death or until another, more economical, process is discovered.