With current capacity for 28nm processes filled up, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is likely to expand the leading-edge process capacity later in 2012, according to industry sources. TSMC reportedly is running at full capacity at its 12-inch fabs due to strong orders for 28nm as well as 40nm and 65nm designs. In order to avoid orders to rivals such as United Microelectronics (UMC) and Samsung Electronics, TSMC will have to speed up the pace of its leading-edge capacity expansion in particular its 28nm capacity, the sources said.

A number of fabless and IDM companies has approached UMC and Samsung regarding capacity for 28nm processes, while finding out that TSMC is unable to satisfy their demand due to its tight supply, the sources indicated. Sources at fab tool manufacturers had speculated previously that TSMC would probably revise upward its capex target for 2012, as the foundry is ahead of schedule in its plans to spend US$6 billion on capex in 2012. TSMC said during its most recent investor meeting that 28nm process technology would account for 5% of total wafer revenues in the first quarter of 2012, up from only 2% in fourth-quarter 2011. The proportion for all of 2012 is forecast to reach 10%.

Seagate has become the first hard drive manufacturer to achieve the storage density of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch. The new technology is expected to double the storage capacity of current hard drives upon its introduction later this decade, while helping to increase the average HD capacity to a whopping 60 terabytes over the 10 years that follow. According to Seagate rep Mark Re, the HD manufacturer reached the landmark data density by utilizing heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), a next-gen recording technology. Current hard drive technology, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), is used to record the spectrum of digitized data – from music, photos, and video stored on home desktop and laptop PCs to business information housed in sprawling data centers – on the spinning platters inside every hard drive.

It was first introduced in 2006 to replace longitudinal recording, a method in place since the advent of hard drives for computer storage in 1956, and is expected to reach its capacity limit near 1 terabit per square inch in the next few years. As Re explains, hard drive manufacturers increase areal density and capacity by shrinking a platter's data bits to pack more within each square inch of disk space. They also tighten the data tracks, the concentric circles on the disk's surface that anchor the bits. 

The key to areal density gains is to do both without disruptions to the bits' magnetization, a phenomenon that can garble data. Using HAMR technology, Seagate has achieved a linear bit density of about 2 million bits per inch, resulting in a data density of just over 1 trillion bits, or 1 terabit, per square inch - 55 percent higher than today's areal density ceiling of 620 gigabits per square inch. The maximum capacity of current 3.5-inch hard drives is 3 terabytes (TB), at about 620 gigabits per square inch, while 2.5-inch drives top out at 750 gigabytes (GB), or approximately 500 gigabits per square inch. However, the first generation of HAMR drives, at just over 1 terabit per square inch, will likely more than double these capacities – to 6TB for 3.5-inch drives and 2TB for 2.5-inch models. 



The technology also offers an impressive scale of capacity growth, with theoretical areal density limits ranging from 5 to 10 terabits per square inch – 30TB to 60TB for 3.5-inch drives and 10TB to 20TB for 2.5-inch drives.

Specifications of AMD’s upcoming flagship dual chip Radeon HD 7990 GPU have been leaked, The HD 7990 would be based on dual 28nm Tahiti Cores and would launch in April 2012. Codenamed “New Zealand”, the card is based on two Tahiti XT cores featuring 2048 stream processors, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface (On each core). Since each chip has 3GB of memory buffer, we can suggest the card would hold a 6GB memory ideal for 6 Screen Eyefinity Setups.

Each chip would be clocked at 850 MHz (core), and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory. Power would be provided through two 8 pin connectors. Price of the GPU would fall around $899+ considering a single HD7970 costs $549, Also the card is said to go against the GTX 690 from Nvidia which launches a month later in May.

Haswell is supposed to be released in the first half of next year, 2013, according to recent leaks, but that isn't all that reports have been saying about it. There also seem to be some words about the graphics component of the chips and what Intel is trying to do in its quest for higher performance. It is no secret that NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices still have the advantage in this area, even though Intel's graphics market share is the largest (because of the sales of CPUs with integrated GPUs).

To eliminate the gap in performance, or at least reduce it, Haswell will boast something called 4th-level cache. This cache memory will play the part of video memory and won't actually be included in the Haswell silicon die. Instead, it will sit on top of the package, which means that the next-generation Intel CPUs will be multi-chip modules (MCM) rather than single-piece chips. The L4 cache should be capable of reducing or completely offloading the integrated GPU's dependency on the system memory. We aren't sure how the communication between the iGPU and the 4th level cache will be made. We also can't be certain just how great a performance boost the new architecture will bring about. We guess Intel would love to make discrete or add-in graphics completely unnecessary, but we doubt that will happen.

Panasonic Corporation today announced it has developed a chipset for multi-gigabit millimeter wave wireless communication that offers the industry's lowest power consumption of less than 1 Watt by employing a new baseband processing architecture. The new chipset will enable stable interactive communication between various kinds of devices supporting the specification developed by the WiGig Alliance. Panasonic had previously developed fundamental CMOS circuit technologies for 60 GHz transceiver and modem signal processing circuits, but now an additional radio packet processing block has been integrated as a key block of the chipset. This plays a significant role in accelerating the realization of simple to use high-definition video data sharing/streaming applications for mobile devices.

This chipset can be embedded into mobile devices, such as smartphones, which require less than 1-Watt power consumption. This technology enables the transfer a 30 minute-long compressed high-definition video content to mobile devices within 10 seconds. It also allows the streaming of latency-free high-definition video (for example, instant high-definition display updates in response to user controls on mobile devices) directly from a mobile device onto a big screen TV with real-time performance that surpasses any of the existing technologies today. With regard to high-speed wireless communication for mobile devices, there is presently no practical solution except for the wireless LAN technology that operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. In the case of 60 GHz high-speed wireless communication devices, the band range has been employed only by stationary devices, not mobile devices, because wider frequency bands require more power and wider chip surface. Panasonic has already developed the basic 60 GHz band radio technologies for mobile devices. With the technological evolution of mobile devices, however, there arose the need for the integration of packet processing block with low power consumption requirement as well as downsizing of the circuit.

A user on Overclock.net has posted pictures of Gigabyte’s reference GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, The card is based on the 28nm Kepler Architecture and features the GK104 Core.

The user reports that the card arrived at his shop earlier this morning and would be priced similar to HD7970 around $549. Recent online listings (ASUS/ZOTAC) also show that the card would cost around the suggested price of $549. The card is a reference model which would feature 2GB GDDR5 Memory clocked at 6GHz Effective and 1006Mhz Core Clock.

The GeForce GTX 680 from NVIDIA launches officially on 22nd March.

Earlier this week we found out that HIS was working on a new Radeon HD 7970 custom design that was going to be based on an updated version of the company’s IceQ cooler, which now utilizes two fans instead of one. HIS made this new design official, with the release of the HIS HD 7970 IceQ X² and HIS HD IceQ X² Turbo graphics card models.

The two solutions are basically identical except for their operating clock speeds, as the vanilla model sticks to AMD’s reference 950MHz core and 1,375MHz (5.5GHz data rate) clock speeds, while the Turbo model comes factory overclocked. As a result, the GPU is now working at 1,050MHz, while the VRAM has a 1,400MHz (5.6GHz effective) operating frequency. The two fans used by HIS’ new IceQ X² cooler measure a massive 112mm in diameter and are placed on top of a large fin array that draws the heat away from the GPU via three 6mm and two 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes.

According to HIS, the result is a cooler that is said to lower the operating temperatures of the card by up to 17° C, while also being 15dB quieter.

"WI-Fi Alliance stated yesterday (15-03-2012) they will change the logo of their certification (Wi-Fi Certified). The visual elements (symbols) for a/b/g/n "waves", that is, the standards in the current marking of Wi-Fi Certified logo will be boiled down to a simpler, black-and-white Wi-Fi Certified logo. Since all Wi-Fi Certified products operate on 2.4 GHz and/or 5GHz frequency, the logo will be reduced.

The visual elements will not be used as of 31-12-2012. a/b/g/b "waves" (as shown above) signs coming with devices such is "dual-stream n" matrix, that is, the frame used by some members of association during the communication of more detailed characteristics linked to n standard.

According to Wi-Fi association the reason of this change is the need to simplify visual communication, based on the results of surveys carried out in several countries which showed the consumers don't understand or don't recognize the elements of "waves" (frequencies) in the existing logo and that they also additionally reduce the recognition and conciseness of Wi-Fi certified „ying-yang“ logo".

SNK has confirmed that it's to release a portable NeoGeo system later this year, following reports earlier this year. As reported by MCV, it's called NeoGeo X, will be available sometime in the second quarter of 2012. It features an SD card slot, a 3.5-inch LCD screen, A/V output and internal stereo speakers, and launches with 20 pre-loaded games - listed in full below. There's no word on whether more titles will follow or how they'll be made available.

Accessories specialist Blaze has teamed up with original platform creator SNK Playmore to manufacture the device. "The NeoGeo console has always been a personal favourite of mine and I am delighted to be involved with the development of this new handheld console," commented Blaze's Jason Cooper. "We hope to re-ignite the excitement many of us felt 21 years ago, in a more affordable manner, to a much wider audience."

The Neo-Geo originally launched way back in 1990. It sported ground-breaking home console tech for its time, but retailed at an astronomical $650, with game cartridges going for around $200 a piece.

Art of Fighting
Baseball Stars
Cyber Lip
Fatal Fury
Fatal Fury Special
Football Frenzy
King of the Monsters
Last Resort
League Bowling
Magician Lord
Metal Slug
Mutation Slug
Mutation Nation
Nam 1975
Samurai Shodown
Sengoku
Super Sidekicks
The King of Fighters '94
The Ultimate 11
Top Players Golf
World Heroes

Marvell announced mass market availability of its new 88SS9187 SATA controller that will find its way into SSDs for ultrabooks.

The controller comes with a SATA 6Gb (Rev 3.1) interface and supports NAND flash data transfer rates of up to 200 MB/s per channel (up to eight channels are supported). Marvell boasts a sequential read performance of around 500MB/s even at dirty drive conditions. According to the manufacturer, the device also features "groundbreaking correction capability" based on an ECC engine with Adaptive Read and Write Scheme, as well as on-chip RAID support. 88SS9187 includes a DDR3 DRAM interface that can carry up to 1 GB of memory. Marvell said it is targeting both enterprise and mobile devices with the controller and claims that the 88SS9187 features the lowest active and stand-by power consumption rates of any SATA 6Gb controller available at this time.