Hardware

IBM has found a way to squeeze five times the performance out of a supercomputer at just 40% of the power. The newest version of the Power 575 draws chilled water into the computer and runs it through copper plates above processors to cool them, before expelling the heated water, reports CNet. This method reduces the need for air conditioning. More »

Advanced Micro Devices will shed 10% of its workforce this year and predicts a 15% first-quarter revenue drop, down to $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Slumping desktop sales and the company's line of defective chips and have hurt AMD, which will lay off workers worldwide at "all levels within the company," a spokesman told the San Jose Mercury News today. More »

The government Thursday lifted a week-old ban that prevented IBM from competing for new federal contracts. In exchange, IBM agreed to withdraw its protest of an $84 million contract with the EPA it lost last year, and to refund any attorney fees and costs the Government Accountability Office paid to fight it. IBM has placed five employees on administrative leave in the dust-up. More »

A US Attorney in Virginia has temporarily barred IBM from pursuing new government contracts while it investigates three 2006 IBM contracts with the EPA, MarketWatch reports. "The basic issue is whether certain information concerning a contract should have been provided to IBM employees by an EPA employee," said an IBM spokesman. More »

Your cell phone might soon be able to tell you if you’ve caught the flu. Researchers with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo have developed a workable method of “molecular communications”—a system for the transport of microscopic samples from a user’s sweat into their phone for analysis, Computerworld reports. More »

New research showing that it’s possible to make stretchable, bendable complex electrical circuits could open the door to wearable computers and to health-monitoring systems that can be implanted, Technology Review reports. Previous bendable circuitry was too slow for complex computing, but the new circuits, of ultra-thin silicon on plastic or rubber, perform as well as traditional rigid ones. More »

Semiconductor company AMD has revealed updates to its Phenom line and will launch four quad-core chips that “can improve performance for gaming and multi-threaded applications,” the company says. The California firm also said it would ship triple-core processors, which CNet reports is a first for the PC market, CNet reports. More »

Thomas Edison and associates might've been first to hear recorded sound, but scientists have revealed they weren’t the first to create it, the New York Times reports. A 10-second recording of “Au Clair de la Lune” made in 1860—17 years before Edison patented the phonograph—has finally been played back by researchers who discovered it in a Paris archive. More »

Sun Microsystems is moving toward connecting computer chips using lasers instead of wires, a move that could make computers 1,000 times faster. The company snagged a $44 million Pentagon contract to continue work that could also mean smaller, more energy-efficient machines. It won’t be easy, though: A Sun researcher told the New York Times the chance of success is 50%. More »

Intel will bring a bigger—and faster—solid state drive to market in the second quarter that will heat up the competition between chipmakers and launch a new generation of laptops and PCs based on SSDs rather than hard drives, reports CNET. Intel’s 80-160GB SSDs are twice as fast as current hard drives and outpace rival Samsung’s 100mbs SSD. More »

PC makers are increasingly setting their sights on markets outside the US, which are making up an ever-larger share of the worldwide computer market, USA Today reports. PC sales are growing in the US, still the world’s largest market, but are rising much faster elsewhere. Last year, the US accounted for 26% of worldwide sales, compared to 35% 5 years ago. More »

Imagine a computer chip that could literally have wires drawn onto it and erased like an etch-a-sketch. That’s what University of Pittsburgh researchers have been able to create, Technology Review reports. To demonstrate the technology, researchers drew the tip of an atomic force microscope across the chip like a pencil, leaving nano-sized, conductive wires in its wake. More »

Hewlett Packard is reorganizing its HP Labs in an effort to move more of the projects from the famed idea generator to market—and add to the company’s bottom line—more quickly,  Therese Poletti writes at MarketWatch. But even as HP looks for more commercial results from its legendary R&D facility, HP Labs continues to conduct theoretical research—its one-time core—as well. More »

Falling prices for flash memory prompted chipmaker Intel Corp to trim its first quarter gross-profit projection slightly yesterday, driving share prices down nearly 3% in after-hours trading, reports Bloomberg. Analysts said oversupply for NAND flash chips—used in cameras, music devices, and mini-storage devices—would likely persist into the third quarter, keeping prices soft. More »

Greener tech solutions are a focus of this year’s CeBIT technology trade fair, which opens tomorrow in Germany. Tech companies from around the world will showcase products like servers that use less electricity alongside their hot new gadgets, AP reports. The emphasis on green ideas sets the tone for the international industry, Microsoft Germany’s general manager says. More »

Smaller, faster and more precise are the goals of engineers who design microchips, those tiny, power-hungry processors at the core of modern electronics. But a Rice University professor is going against the grain, trading a little bit of precision for a major savings in power, and potentially leading a revolution in how chips are manufactured, reports Technology Review. More »

Dell posted a 6.5% decline in profits for its fiscal fourth quarter yesterday, citing slowed consumer spending and the cost of restructuring, which included slashing thousands of jobs, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Dell results are likely to cause concern about other tech stocks—especially those that rely on the US consumer market—and doubts about Dell's ambitious turnaround plan. More »

Accessing encrypted data can be as simple as chilling a computer memory chip, according to a Princeton research group. The researchers were able to break through encryption in Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems, reports the New York Times , calling into question the security methods that companies, government agencies, and individuals use to protect data. More »

Hewlett-Packard thumbed its nose at concerns over falling tech spending today, posting a 38% rise in earnings and 15% revenue jump in its first quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. The health of the tech giant, boosted by PC and overseas sales, is good news for an industry whose leaders, including Microsoft and Google, don’t expect a booming 2008. More »

A Silicon Valley company called Nanochip has a chip under development that can store over five times the amount of data as current flash drives, reports Tech Review. The Nanochip technology  stores memory by using tiny pins with microscopically sharp tips to polarize a film; it is cheaper to produce than flash memory, more long-lasting, and about the same speed.  More »