Science & Technology

Today Intel added Atom Z670 microprocessor to official price-list,which, we presume, means that the processor and Oak Trail platformwill be officially launched on Monday or later next week. Firstreports of upcoming tablet-oriented Atom Z670 CPUs emerged as early aslast November, and one of the first Oak Trail-based products, SamsungSliding PC 7 Series tablet, was announced at Consumer Electronics Show inLas Vegas in January 2011. The Samsung 2.2lb tablet has 10.1″ display,2 GB of RAM, up to 64GB SSD drive, and is powered by Windows 7 HomePremium operating system. More tablets with Intel Z670 were announcedin the recent month, including Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q550 and ECS ElitePadV07-I.

Apple

What has become interesting in the PC CPU marketplace is the emergence of Apple’s tablet computer, the iPad, and the seeming hundreds of brands of clone tablets made by others. Here is another critical note from the IHS iSuppli paper: “The year 2010 was marked by the rise of a new platform: the media tablet, led by Apple’s iPad, which employed a [chip] at its heart designed by Apple.”There are a couple of interesting parts about that statement. The first is that the CPU in the iPad is made by neither Intel or AMD. It is made by Apple.New features include Intel? Quick Sync Video, and a new version of the company?s award-winning Intel? WiDi, which now adds 1080p HD and content protection for those wishing to beam premium HD content from their laptop screen to their TV. ?The new 2nd Generation Intel? Core? processors represent the biggest advance in computing performance and capabilities over any other previous generation,? said Naveed Siraj, Country Manager, Intel Pakistan. ?The built-in visual capabilities enabled by these new processors are stunning. This, combined with improved adaptive performance, will revolutionise the PC experience in a way that is obvious for every user to see and appreciate – visibly smarter performance.?

Oracle

Here’s what’s going on behind the PR wall and, more important, what to expect. Oracle isn’t moving as much Sun hardware as it needs to in order to justify the billions of dollars it paid for those assets. That’s not just my opinion. Oracle on Thursday released its fiscal third-quarter earnings, which showed that new hardware sales, which came in at about $1 billion, missed earlier guidance from the company by $100 million.