12th July 2006 Archive

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German anti-trust officials received complaint against Intel

But organisation won't say who made it

Intel may end up under investigation by German anti-cartel officials after all. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) last week received a formal complaint regarding the chip giant's alleged business practices. However, no probe has yet begun, it seems. What a difference a week makes. Just over seven days ago, the FCO denied a …

Bits 'n' Chips 12 Jul 2006, 08:40
Havok ships physics-on-GPU coding tool

Adds character-environment interaction too

Havok, one of the two companies currently driving in-game physics acceleration, has launched the latest version of its game development middleware. Havok 4.0 rolls in the company's code that links physics-based visual effects to a host computer's graphics engine. The Havok FX API, part of Havok 4.0, allows game developers to …

Bits 'n' Chips 12 Jul 2006, 09:12
Symbian updates smart-phone OS

Native Wi-Fi support at last

Symbian has made the latest release of its mobile phone operating system available to licensees, the company said today. In fact, they've had it already, Symbian admitted. It said Symbian OS 9.3-based handsets are already in development, many with 2007 ship dates scheduled. Symbian said the new release reduces phone and "key …

Phones 12 Jul 2006, 09:38
FSP to ship CrossFire, SLI-friendly PSU next week

Booster X3 on its way

FSP will ship its Booster X3 multi-GPU power supply next week, the company promised today. The unit can provide 300W of power, peaking at 360W - sufficient, the company claimed, for today's CrossFire and SLI rigs and tomorrow's. Featuring a blue LED-lit front-panel and twin intake cooling fans, the Booster X3 is compatible …

Bits 'n' Chips 12 Jul 2006, 09:58
T-Mobile UK brings push email to MDA smart phones

Updates posted for older devices

T-Mobile UK has posted updates for its HTC-made MDA smart phone line-up that activate push email on the devices. In fact, the updates have been available since mid-June, but only yesterday did the carrier announce its support for the Windows Mobile 5.0 extensions. The downloads, available here from the MDA III, MDA Pro, MDA …

Phones 12 Jul 2006, 10:39
HD DVD backers plan $150m marketing blitz

Roadshow response to counter PS3 countdown

Microsoft, Intel, Toshiba, HP and others are to spend $150m promoting the HD DVD next-generation optical disc format to North American consumers in the run up to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and through into 2007. The money will spent on advertising through the usual media channels, and on an HD DVD demo rig which …

HD 12 Jul 2006, 11:21
Indian boffin touts protein-based '50TB DVD'

From Blu-ray to bacteria...

DVDs may eventually become organic, replacing dyes with light-sensitive proteins in order to boost their storage capacity to 50TB - the equivalent of 1,000 dual-layer Blu-ray Discs. It also gives them potentially the same high-speed read and write access as hard drives. The concept was described at a nanotechnology conference …

Storage 12 Jul 2006, 14:38
MS turns to ATI for Xbox 360 HD DVD decoder

Battle lines drawn

ATI's H.264 HD video decoder will be used by Microsoft to allow its Xbox 360 to play HD DVDs, the two companies announced today. No great surprise there, perhaps - it's well known the Microsoft console has an ATI GPU on board - the R500 - and it's capable of running the same video processing algorithms through its pixel …

Consoles 12 Jul 2006, 14:56