Will AMD become more like Intel?

A.M.D. to Acquire ATI Technologies - New York Times

Now that AMD has entered the graphics arena, will they begin to make integrated chipsets? Or is this just a move to enter the lucrative HDTV and portable device market? ATI has long been a favorite with Apple computer. Will Intel's primary (only) rival acquiring ATI affect that relationship? Or will this increase the likelihood of Apple using AMD chips in the future? Many Mac fans were offended (to put it lightly) that Apple chose Intel over AMD, but AMD has no chipset offerings to match Intels, regardless of how superior their chips may be.

The personal computer market is mature. The HDTV and portable device markets are still in the growth phase. They're highly competitive, but component providers such as ATI/AMD can do well. That more than anything else may be behind AMD's desire to acquire ATI. As Intel's primary competitor AMD has done remarkably well, but profits are dropping. Spreading into other, growing markets makes good sense. Only time will tell if the video processor market is the right market, but at this point, it looks like a good one.

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No operating system is bulletproof

According to ZDNet Australia someone hacked the Debian servers. Debian may not be the most secure of the Linuxes - they've been hacked before - but they are one of the most popular of the many flavors of Linux. Security is one of the selling points for Linux as well as other non-Windows OS'es such a Apple's OS X. This just points up that no matter what OS you use security is ultimately your responsibility. So lock down your system with only the services you need, get a virus checker to protect against that threat, and use the most secure browser you can find (I like Flock - download it here.)

Be alert and don't trust anything you get online without double checking it. Stay secure and stay safe.

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Freescale Semiconductor has done what no one else has been able to do, they have brought MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) to market. Technology review has a very informative story here. I'm pleased that it was Freescale that produced this chip. They're somewhat dear to my heart as one of the two companies that produced the PowerPC chips used (until recently) by Apple computer.

But the fascinating thing about this development is that MRAM is nonvolatile not only in respect to power loss, but also to time. In other words, it would make a great "hard drive" for a no moving parts computer. It doesn't suffer degradation over time the way flash memory does, and, unlike flash memory, and it accesses in nanoseconds instead of hundreds of nanoseconds the way flash RAM does. The one downfall is that right now the chips max out at 4 megabytes. But there is hope that the capacity can be increased 100 fold, which would make an instant-on, no moving parts computer a real possibility. Since there would be no need for a hard drive, battery life would increase dramatically for laptops. Another energy saving feature of MRAM is it's ability, like flash RAM, to keep data without a constant supply of power. That means that anytime RAM isn't being accessed, MRAM doesn't need to be supplied with power.

It's not all fast and easy, though. The magnetic fields required to set the memory and the materials used in the chips may not scale well to chips with smaller feature sizes. The magnetic fields used have distinctive shapes and it may be difficult to find shapes that work with smaller sizes and/or other materials.

But even with the potential problems, this is a huge accomplishment, and could change computing as we know it.

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MRAM: A paradigm shift in the making?

Freescale Semiconductor has managed to produce a marketable magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM), something that the industry has been working on for years. The Technology Review has a good article here.

MRAM uses magnetism instead of electricity, so it doesn't need constant power to keep from losing data. It has an access time of nanoseconds, so it's faster than flash RAM. It also doesn't degrade over time the way flash RAM does, making it a good choice for computer applications. Someday your laptop may have no moving parts and have a battery life measured in days. Or at least in tens of hours instead of 4 or 5 (on a good day ;).

There is a down side. Currently the chips max out at 4MB, and although the belief is that capacity could increase a hundred fold. The questions at this point are:

Will the materials currently used in the current chip scale down as chip features scale down?

Will the magnetic fields scale down, or the proper shape of the fields be easily determined, as the chip features scale down?

Assuming that the answer to both questions is yes, or that the solutions are relatively easy to find, MRAM is the answer to the instant-on computer and the no moving parts computer. If this pans out in the long run, the computer you use in five or ten years may have nothing in common with the computer you're reading this on.

Here is my blog on technical matters that catch my attention. Here we go.