So Intel will officially be rolling out a new version of its Classmate PC at CES – this one, called the Convertible Classmate PC. It’s a tablet netbook with a touchscreen and an accelerometer that adjusts the display for use in both portrait and landscape modes.

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Andrew Grove, former Intel Corp chairman, is pushing the world’s biggest maker of microprocessors to diversify business by becoming a manufacturer of advanced batteries for plug-in electric cars. This emerging industry is attracting Chinese and Japanese companies like BYD Motors, Panasonic, and Sanyo.

According to an Intel spokesman, Intel already has investments in battery-related companies through its Intel Capital Unit. It is unknown whether they will increase their presence in this field, especially in these weak economic times when corporations are leaning towards cash conservation instead of new investments. Intel is also expecting a 12% decline in sales for the fourth quarter.
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The hard science behind your processor may not be interesting to you now, but if Intel were to say “Sorry, it’s physically impossible to go any faster,” you’d get real interested real fast. Or not. At any rate, it shouldn’t be a problem yet, as even the major quantum-physical barrier posed by the move (still far distant) from 22nm to 16nm appears to be surmountable, according to research by some guys who probably know what they’re talking about.

And in the meantime, the stage is set for Intel to deliver their next “tick” and “tock” in the form of a shrinkage (giggle) of the Nehalem architecture to a 32nm process late next year, then a move to the Sandy Bridge architecture some time in 2010. After that it’s anybody’s guess, but it’s been like clockwork so far.

Intel has developed a device, called the Avalance Photodetector (APD), that will boost optical communication speeds to get devices to communicate faster. The APD senses light pulses and amplifies output signals for faster data transfer over long distances.

Researchers claim that this is a big advancement in the field of silicon photonics, where silicon is used to transfer light pulses for data exchange between chips and devices.  Technologies like APDs could enable high-bandwidth applications like 3D virtual reality and telemedicine.
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By this time next year, the line between netbooks, UMPCs, handhelds, palmtops, netblets, MIDs, and whichever other portable internet doodads you can think of might get all the more blurry with Intel’s 32-nanometer “Medfield” Atom chip. The current “Diamondville” chip is 45 nanometers, which is already pretty small.

The Medfield chip is thought to be aimed more at the handheld market than the netbook market. Intel will apparently be pairing Medfield CPUs with a graphics chipset called PowerVR, which is currently used for ARM-based devices and is specialized to consume minimal power. That’s not to say that this same setup won’t be found in future netbooks as well, but it does point at a potential move by Intel into smaller and smaller device categories.

[via Reg Hardware]

Australia, land of kangaroos and terrible actors, must be beaming today, what with the news that someone there was able to overclock an Intel Atom processor to 2.38GHz. That’s the fastest we’ve ever seen an Atom run, as a matter of fact.

Of course, getting the processor, found in an MSI Wind, to run that was quite the challenge, as it should be. Not since Frankenstein pieced together his monster did someone go to such lengths to accomplish anything.

What does running an Atom at 2.38GHz gain you, aside from bragging rights? Nothing, I would guess, which is about par for the course when it comes to overclocking. It’s the old Slashdot axiom, “Because you can.”

I liked the Nokia n810 when I saw it at last year’s CES, and now there’s a little more competition in the mid-size internet device area as Gigabyte enters the stage with the M528. Bigger than a full-touchscreen mobile phone but smaller than a netbook, these devices comprise a questionable subgenus of the compact computing market. The question is, does this device do anything my G1, or say a Touch Pro or Tilt doesn’t?

Is there a value to the extra diagonal inch of screen, or are they attempting to fill a demand that doesn’t exist? Well, with 800MHz Atom processors in them, they’re certainly more powerful than other pocketable items, but until I have one in my hands I can’t decide.

And yes, I called it a notelet.
[via Computer World]

Without fanfare or press releases, Dell has launched desktops featuring Intel’s Core i7 CPU. The Studio XPS lineup gain the Core i7-920 2.66GHz or 2.93GHz and start out at a reasonable $1,499. Gamers can opt for the latest Intel CPU and the Dell name (without the Alienware premium) with the XPS 730x starting at $2,599 with the same Core i7-920. Or, spend a bit more cake with the 730x and 730x H2c desktops to buy into the Core i7-965 Extreme overclocked to 3.73GHz starting at $3,999. The only issue is you are going to have to wait a bit with the Studio XPS desktop not shipping until 11/29/08 and the gaming models not going out until 12/19/08.

Studio XPS & XPS via electronista

PC Pro got a chance to put Intel’s dual-core Atom 330 chip through the wringer and found some interesting results. It seems that the 330 indeed outperforms the single-core N270 processor from Intel as well as the C7-D from VIA in all key areas except one: Microsoft Office 2003 performance.

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There’s word that Acer may well release a nettop, sort of a headless netbook, without the Intel Atom processor early next year. It’s not that Acer is tired of the Atom or anything, but because sales of its Aspire series of netbooks are doing so well that the company doesn’t want to jeopardize the supply of Atom processors. So, it’s reportedly looking at using processors from the likes of AMD and VIA Technologies.

Or, if the supply turns out to be in tip-top shape, Acer might just continue with the Atom.

And maybe after that we’ll find out exactly who nettops are designed for!