Lenovo touts energy efficiency, UWB power notebook
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Blog: Several Lenovo X-, T- and R-series computers qualify for Energy Star 4.0, including its new T61p notebook.
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Big OLED screen, 802.11b, slick design, long-running battery...
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Best known for its ThinkPad business-oriented laptops, Lenovo is set to announce its IdeaPad line of consumer laptops.
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Banners hanging at&#160;Macworld Expo&#160;on Monday read, &quot;2008: There&#39;s something in the air,&quot; suggesting wireless news to come in CEO Steve Jobs&#39; keynote Tuesday morning.Faster cellular service for the iPhone is already on its way later this year, AT&amp;T&#39;s top executive reportedly said in November, but Apple could go beyond that plan and extend high-speed wireless WAN (wide-area network) capability to its MacBook notebooks and even a rumored &quot;ultramobile&quot; computer.Many consumers have been clamoring for more speed on the iPhone since it was announced a year ago with support only for Wi-Fi and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), a version of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) that generally runs below 200Mbps. U.S. iPhone carrier AT&amp;T Wireless and other operators around the world already have a set of faster systems called HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) that can deliver more than 1Mbps.At the same time, wide-area wireless has been moving into PC notebooks and smaller PC-like devices. The big notebook vendors, including Dell, Lenovo, and Hewlett-Packard, have rolled out products with built-in 3G. And the Asustek Computer Eee PC and some other small UMPC (ultramobile PC) devices are slated to ship with WiMax.Apple hasn&#39;t made the leap. Mobile Mac owners can hook up to Wi-Fi hotspots but have to buy dongles or other add-on devices from third parties to get fast wireless elsewhere. Offering a built-in 3G card would give MacBook users access to broadband in far more locations.However, that leap would take Apple into a market that hasn&#39;t attracted a large percentage of notebook buyers, analysts said.At least in the U.S., 3G radios are associated with a particular carrier and usually sold along with two-year data contracts. Users keep notebooks longer than they do phones and don&#39;t want to lock them down to a particular carrier, said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. In addition, many notebooks are purchased by enterprise IT departments, which demand more flexibility, Golvin said. He doesn&#39;t expect to see another iPhone phenomenon.&quot;I don&#39;t think that laptop users would be as interested in aligning themselves formally with one particular carrier,&quot; Golvin said. One alternative would be to build in a chip that could handle more than one carrier and 3G technology, he added.Avi Greengart of Current Analysis believes Apple&#39;s proven ability to streamline could change the picture.&quot;They have not been in the forefront of 3G on notebooks. However, it wouldn&#39;t surprise me at all if they came out with a simplified offering that just made a lot of sense and became the catalyst, as the iPhone is,&quot; Greengart said. Apple simplified the iPhone experience for customers by sticking with one carrier and letting subscribers sign up with AT&amp;T through iTunes.Apple could also jump-start the market by offering an alternative to the expensive monthly service model that carriers typically use, said Gartner&#39;s Ken Dulaney. Most consumers don&#39;t travel frequently enough to justify spending US$30 or more per month for cellular service on their notebooks, but they might be willing to buy a system with built-in 3G and pay for service as they need it, he said. Verizon has a little-known offering like this, in which users can pay $15 for 24 hours of service, according to spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.Because of its greater mobility, a rumored Mac that&#39;s smaller than a notebook but bigger than the iPhone would be an ideal candidate for 3G. If the company unveils it on Tuesday, that product could lead Apple&#39;s new wireless charge.But that &quot;something in the air&quot; could be a number of other things, too, analysts said. Apple is expected to make its SDK (software development kit) for third-party applications on the iPhone available next month, Greengart said. And the iPhone could gain GPS (Global Positioning System) capability, or some iPods could get Wi-Fi, he said. As always, it&#39;s all speculation until Jobs speaks.&#160;
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SAN FRANCISCO - Backers of two different types of UWB (ultrawideband) networks next week will announce moves toward consumer products that use the short-range wireless technology.
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A cache of flash in a new Samsung notebook hard-drive series will halve boot times and slash power usage, giving battery life a nice bump, the company says. In Gadget Lab. In Gadget Lab.
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Intel Monday officially launched Penryn-based dual-core processors for notebooks, but also indicated that users expecting quad-core mobile processors may have to wait until issues surrounding power consumption are resolved.The company&#39;s Core 2 Duo processors will be delivered to laptops based on the Centrino mobile platform. Manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, the new CPUs (central processing units) will provide laptops with better performance and improved battery life, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager, Intel Mobile Platforms Group.Intel&#39;s dual-core processors are good enough for notebooks at present as they perform required tasks and do not strain battery life, Eden said. Quad-core processors have power-consumption issues and are not ideal for laptops yet, Eden said.Although Eden did not talk about Intel&#39;s mobile quad-core processor road map, he said notebooks in the near future will continue to see energy-efficient dual-core processors. Quad-core processors may first make their way to the high-end gaming and workstation notebooks that require heavy processing power, Eden said.To preserve battery life, the Penryn-based Core 2 Duo processors have an advanced power management state called Deep Power Down Technology, which reduces a processor&#39;s power when not functional.While cutting down on power usage, Penryn processors jump to higher clock rates and feature cache and design improvements that boost the processors&#39; performance compared with earlier 65-nm processors, Intel has said. The improved processors deliver better video performance with the help of instruction sets designed to process graphics and high-definition video tasks.Penryn processors feature smaller transistors and cut down on electricity leaks, according to Intel. The processors use high-k metal-gate transistors, which make the processors faster and less leaky compared with earlier processors that have silicon gates.The improved Centrino mobile platform, called Santa Rosa Refresh, will feature the Intel Mobile 965 processor and support for 802.11n wireless networking. An upgrade to the platform code-named Montevina is already being planned by Intel, and is due out in the second half of 2008. The Montevina platform will include Echo Peak, a mini-card that integrates WiMax and Wi-Fi wireless technology on one chip.The new Core 2 Duo processors -- the T8100, T8300, T9300 and T9500 -- feature clock speeds between 2.10Ghz and 2.6Ghz, with 3M bytes to 6M bytes of shared L2 cache. Prices for the chips range from US$209 for the T8100 chip to $530 for the T9500 chip.Intel also introduced the Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor, which runs at 2.8GHz, includes 6M bytes of shared L2 cache and is priced at $851.No vendors made announcements of systems including the new processors at the time of press.Intel also added Penryn-based server and desktop processors on Monday.It released Core 2 Quad quad-core desktop processors with clock speeds of 2.5GHz to 2.83GHz and prices ranging from $266 to $530. Intel also released four dual-core desktop processors, including the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which runs at 3.16GHz, includes 6M bytes of L2 cache and is priced at $266.Intel will ship three new Xeon quad-core processors, with clock speeds ranging from 2.5Ghz to 2.83GHz and shared L2 cache from 6M bytes to 12M bytes, with prices from $266 to $530. The company&#39;s new dual-core Xeon E3110 processor, which runs at 3GHz and includes 6M bytes of shared L2 cache, is priced at $188.
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Wibree is cost effective and more power-efficient than Bluetooth.
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Nokia Corp. today unveiled "Wibree," a rival to Bluetooth wireless technology that is more energy-efficient and can be used in a variety of small devices.
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(InfoWorld) - A startup chip company is introducing a power-efficient processor it has been developing for three years, just as the market clamors for energy efficiency. P.A. SemiÂ is offering a dual-core, 64-bit processor Monday that it claims uses only 5 watts to 13 watts of electricity running at 2GHz, making it 300 percent to 400 percent more power-efficient than comparable processors. P.A. Semi is making its PA6T-1682M PWRficient processor available to companies that will test it for possible use as an embedded processor in networking equipment for telecommunications, military or aerospace customers, said Dan Dobberpuhl, co-founder and chief executive officer. The chip is based on Power Architecture technology, which the company has licensed from IBM. P.A. Semi claims the new product has a better performance-per-watt rating than an IBM 670MP processor, an Athlon 64x2 processor from Advanced Micro Devices and the Core 2 Duo from Intel. But P.A. Semi won't be directly competing with AMD and Intel because it won't be selling into the server or personal computer markets with its initial product. P.A. Semi's performance measures were not independently verified. P.A. Semi has improved power efficiency through advanced dynamic power supply regulation, Dobberpuhl said. In older chip design, power coursed through the processor continuously. About 10 years ago, chip designers introduced dynamic power supply regulation in the processor block to start and stop the flow as needed, a process also called "clock gating." But P.A. Semi gets more granular, clock gating not at the block level, but at the registry level within a block. "That level of fine grain clock gating inside the block, no one else has really done," Dobberpuhl said. "In our chips we have more than 25,000 gated clocks; most chips that do [block level] clock gating have maybe a few hundred." Although the 1682 is targeted only at networking equipment, the company has plans to later introduce other members of the PWRfficient family, including single-core processors that could find a wider market in blade servers and some portable devices. But even just in networking equipment, the chips could be a big help in energy efficiency, said Richard Wawrzyniak, senior market analyst with Semico Research Corp. "For all the people who are concerned with their power budget, or they have run out of power budget, and they are trying to figure out some way to increase their performance, this makes a lot of sense," Wawrzyniak said. Dobberpuhl was previously a vice president at chip maker Broadcom, which acquired his company, SiByte, in 2000. He also spent 20 years at Digital Equipment Corp. developing microprocessor technology. Other co-founders and executives of P.A. Semi, based in Santa Clara, California, and founded in July 2003, worked with Dobberpuhl at Broadcom or SiByte. Engineering samples of the 1682M sell for $700 apiece while an evaluation kit carries a price tag of $8,500. Power efficient operation of servers and other computers has become a top concern of data-center managers because of rising energy costs. It has long been a focus of P.A. Semi and its embedded processor development. Said Dobberpuhl: "We were doing this before it was cool."
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This morning, chipset Alereon announced its own attempt at a brute-force solution to dilemma of the lack of a global standard for wireless device connectivity.  It will produce a UWB chipset that supports all 14 of the world's known frequency bands simultaneously.
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Intel is displaying four new ultramobile PCs designed around its Menlow chips at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including highly anticipated devices from Lenovo and Toshiba.The Lenovo device runs a Linux OS from Chinese developer Red Flag Software and boasts a 4.8-inch touch screen, an onboard camera and other features. It also has what appears to be a phone dialing pad on the right side, but there were no Lenovo personnel around at Intel&#39;s CES booth to talk about the product, nor any spec sheets detailing features of the device.Intel personnel at a booth detailing its&#160;Menlow chips&#160;called the Lenovo device and two others &quot;Mobile Internet Devices,&quot; saying that their smaller screen sizes and use of the Linux OS make them different from ultramobile PCs, a category created by Microsoft. However, many companies have come up with new terms for small, mobile PC designs these days, and the new names given to them are becoming confusing.The devices all work with a wireless broadband Internet protocol called WiMax.Toshiba and Clarion, both Japanese companies, also showed off small handheld PCs with touch screens. The Clarion device runs a Red Flag Linux OS, while Toshiba&#39;s handheld has Microsoft Windows Vista.A portable PC designed by Taiwan&#39;s Gigabyte Technology was also displayed at the booth.Earlier this year, Intel launched the Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance in an attempt to solve engineering troubles associated with creating small devices able to connect to the Internet. A number of companies joined the alliance, and several are expected to launch handheld PCs using Menlow microprocessors in the first half of 2008.In October, Intel offered a glimpse of six other devices designed by alliance members and based on Menlow. Five of them were designed by Taiwanese companies: Asustek Computer, BenQ, Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Inventec. The final device shown was from Finland&#39;s Elektrobit.Menlow is the code name given to a set of chips that Intel is developing for ultramobile PCs and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), due out next year. Menlow will include a new low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, and a chip set code-named Poulsbo.One of the key aims of the chip package is to extend battery life in the small PCs now coming out. Many of the ultramobile PCs, Mobile Internet Devices, and other handheld PCs that have launched so far boast hefty price tags of as much as $1000, yet offer little to users that a laptop can&#39;t do better. Relatively short battery life on most of the initial devices and the lack of widespread wireless broadband Internet have also contributed to disappointing sales of the much-hyped gadgets.Companies developing ultramobile PCs and similar small handheld PCs hope longer battery life of six to eight hours, the ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly from just about anywhere, and features found on smartphones such as digital cameras and music players will entice more people to try them out.
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Via Technologies unveils the NanoBook, an ultraportable notebook that can run Windows Vista.
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(InfoWorld) - Sierra Wireless will provide embedded wide-area wireless modules to a new Intel ultra mobile PC (UMPC) platform that enabling devices to hook up to 3G (third generation) wireless telecommunications, creating a new way to use a UMPC. Until now, UMPCs from most companies, includingÂ Samsung Electronics and Asustek Computer, have included two wireless functions, WLAN (wireless LAN) for wireless Internet connections in a home, office, or other location near a Wi-Fi hot spot, and Bluetooth. Few other UMPCs, save Sony's Vaio VGN-UX50, which offers Cingular EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Environment) WAN capabilities, provide a way to connect to the Internet away from civilization. The wireless modules from Sierra, a Vancouver, British Columbia chip designer, will allow users to remain connected far out in the field, and lead to the development of many innovative, new UMPC devices, the company said. Intel plans to make itsÂ ultra mobile PC chip kitÂ available in the first half of next year, the company said at the Intel Developer Forum, which ended Thursday. The company said the microprocessors in the platform will consume just half the power of ones used in current UMPCs, and will be 25 percent smaller. The chip kit is designed to allow developers to make smaller, cooler running UMPCs with longer battery life and new possible uses, Intel said. The UMPC, code-named Origami earlier this year, is a new breed of handheld deviceÂ promoted by Microsoft and IntelÂ aimed at users requiring more PC-like functions and larger screens in a carry-around device. It falls somewhere between a tablet PC and a PDA in size, and runs on the Windows XP Tablet Edition OS. One of the first such devices was viewed by users at the Cebit electronics show in Germany early this year,Â Samsung's Q1. The device was running on a 900MHz Intel Celeron microprocessor and boasted 500MB of RAM.
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ThinkPads for consumers Lenovo's otherlaptop brandname, the 3000 series, doesn't quite have the same ring to it as ThinkPad. Enter, then, IdeaPad, the new name for the company's consumer notebooks, three of which debuted in the US yesterday.â¦
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The Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) has finished its ultrawideband (UWB) radio physical layer (PHY) specification. What this array of abbreviations means is that UWB chip makers can now finalise their designs
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Blog: Lenovo updates ThinkPads and the Lenovo 3000 line with the new Intel platform.