Eventually, the conventional ways of manufacturing microprocessors, graphics chips, and other silicon components will run out of steam. According to Intel researchers speaking at the ISSCC conference this week, however, we still have headroom for a few more years. Intel plans to present several papers this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, one of the key academic conferences for papers on chip design. Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr will also appear on a panel Monday night to discuss the challenges of moving from today's 14nm chips to the 10nm manufacturing node and beyond. In a conference call with reporters, Bohr said that Intel believes that the current pace of semiconductor technology can continue beyond 10nm technology (expected in 2016) or so, and that 7nm manufacturing (expected in 2018) can be done without moving to expensive, esoteric manufacturing methods like ultraviolet lasers.
A U.S. federal judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that charges Google harmed consumers by forcing Android handset makers to use its apps by default, but gave the plaintiffs three weeks to amend their complaint. The two consumers who filed the suit failed to show that Google’s allegedly illegal restrictive contracts on manufacturers of Android devices resulted in higher prices on phones, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said in a Feb. 20 ruling. The complainants, who were seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, said that Google required manufacturers including Samsung Electronics to set the search giant’s own apps as default options on Android-based phones, restricting access to competing software such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The complaint alleged that this practice limited competition in the search engine market, stifled innovation and resulted in higher prices for phones.
Lenovo’s been caught going a bit too far in its quest for bloatware money, and the results have put its users at risk. The company has been preloading Superfish, a "visual search" tool that includes adware that fakes the encryption certificates for every HTTPS-protected site you visit, on its PCs since at least the middle of 2014. Essentially, the software conducts a man-in-the-middle attack to fill the websites you visit with ads, and leaves you vulnerable to hackers in its wake. You can read all the sordid details
Gaming enthusiasts have been griping for months that Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 graphics chip doesn't operate up to snuff, and now someone has taken the company to court over it. Nvidia was hit with a Nvidia markets the chip as having 4GB of performance-boosting video RAM, but some users have complained the chip falters after using 3.5GB of that allocation. The lawsuit says the remaining half gigabyte runs 80 percent slower than it's supposed to. That can cause images to stutter on a high resolution screen and some games to perform poorly, the suit says.
Russia's top competition watchdog has apparently opened an investigation into Google over possible violations of anti-monopoly law, the latest in a string of legal challenges Google faces from regulators overseas. The investigation follows
A teenager not even old enough to drive a car was able to wirelessly connect to a vehicle's internal computer network and control various functions. The 14-year-old built an electronic remote auto communications device with $15 worth of Radio Shack parts that were assembled in less than a night. Auto executives at a conference this week sponsored by the Center for Automotive Research revealed how stunned they were by the feat, which actually happened last summer, noting it shed light on the need for greater security as vehicles gain more wireless capabilities. The boy, whose name is not being released, was among 30 other students ranging in age from high school to college undergraduates to PhD students who participated in the third annual
There's lots of video this week: Some dumb (a guy electrocuting himself with a shock collar), some not-so-dumb (resurrecting the educational game Activision/Steam are giving free access to
A look at the new and updated Android apps you need to check out this week.
What can you do with your voice on your Android phone? More than you know!
Google’s mobile search app now makes perusing through articles and videos more inviting. With the Get curated news and articles to scroll through with Google’s newest search app updates. For example, if you search for a specific publication like NPR you’ll see a list of categories along with the news carousel. Scroll through articles and videos thanks to updates in Google’s mobile search.
The Nvidia Shield Tablet is getting some stability fixes for a smoother gaming experience.