CNET reports that upcoming Ivy Bridge chips could use substantially less power than the processors currently found in ultrabooks and other portable notebooks.

Intel plans to make Ivy Bridge chips more power miserly

Currently, the ultra-low voltage Ivy Bridge processors you’ll find in thin laptops like Apple’s MacBook Air have a 17-watt TDP, and though Intel already provides software that can tune them down to 13 watts as well, we’d thought that we’d have to wait for Intel’s next-gen Haswell design to see a 10-watt design. Not so: at the Intel Developer Forum in September, the company announced that it will be able to bring Ivy Bridge down to ultrabooks with sub-10-watt parts.

Intel plans to make Ivy Bridge chips more power miserly

We double-checked with Intel today, and the idea is still on track: “We’ll be introducing a new line of low power chips targeted to operate at about 10 watts initially. Thanks to the benefits of Intel’s leading 22nm process technology, Intel is planning to offer very limited quantities of the new low-power processor line with the 3rd Gen Intel Core processor family in 1H’13,” wrote a spokesman.

“But it won’t be introduced significantly in volume until the 4th-gen Core processor family later in 2013,” cautioned the Intel representative. Intel’s positioning the chips as a stopgap until Haswell arrives.

Intel plans to make Ivy Bridge chips more power miserly

As always, it’s hard to say how the actual designs of laptops and tablets might change to match the lower-power chips. Since TDP refers to the amount of heat that needs to be cooled from a piece of chip, rather than its actual power consumption, it doesn’t necessarily correspond to an increase in battery life. If a chip needs less cooling, that cooling requires less space, which allows a manufacturer to put in a larger battery instead… or shrink the entire dimensions of the laptop or tablet to appear thinner and more attractive, an increasingly popular alternative.

Intel plans to make Ivy Bridge chips more power miserly

Microsoft’s upcoming Surface Pro tablet, for instance, is a full 4mm thicker and half a pound heavier than the Surface RT, probably due to its larger battery and cooling for its more powerful Core i5 chip. Despite the larger battery, though, Microsoft anticipates it will only get half the battery life of the Tegra 3 alternative. If Microsoft had the 10-watt parts, it could theoretically make the Surface Pro thinner, or last longer, or a bit of both.

It’s also unclear whether Intel has managed to maintain the same performance at the lower TDP. It’s possible the new chips bring down performance as well.

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Intel and Micron step up the NAND game with 20nm technology

Seen below, IMFT’s first 20nm NAND has a die measuring 118mm2, and thus enables a 30 to 40% reduction in board space compared to currently-produced 25nm 8GB chips. According to the two NAND partners, ‘new 20nm process maintains similar performance and endurance as the previous generation 25nm NAND technology’, while of course enabling higher density in the same package.

Intel and Micron step up the NAND game with 20nm technology

The 8GB 2nm NAND is currently sampling and is set to enter mass production in the second half of this year. Don’t expect much availability of products with 20nm NAND until 2012 but at least we’re moving forward. Not in terms of write cycles obviously.

TCM

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Firefox’s market share in Africa is at 29.7%, while in Oceania, Asia and North America, the browser has captured 28.7%, 26.6% and 26%, respectively.

According to Mozilla’s report, the adoption of Personas (the new themes introduced with Firefox 3.6) is highest in South America – over 20%, but in every other continent at least 15% of Firefox 3.6+ users are customizing their browser.

For a more detailed look into the Firefox ‘environment’ you can download the full State of the Internet report from here (PDF).

TCM

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Two-way servers equipped with the new memory will be able to boast up to 384GB of RAM, while four-way servers will have a maximum of 2TB of memory.

“Samsung continues to set the pace in advanced memory for high-end server applications by offering 40nm-class 32GB memory modules to reach previously unattainable levels of system capacity,” said Soo-In Cho, president and general manager of Samsung Electronics’ Memory Division. “In just 10 months, Samsung has now secured the best competitive advantage with the broadest portfolio of 40nm-class DDR3 based memory solutions in the industry since the 40nm-class DRAM was first produced last July.”

Samsung’s 32GB RDIMMs will enter mass production in April.

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So, how’s it break down? From what we can tell, just after the first day, Apple reached somewhere in the ball park of 120,000 tablets sold. As it goes, it looks like the WiFi-only version of the iPad was the largest seller, and we’re likely to think that has something to do with the simple fact that it’s due out on April 3rd. Another shocker though, is that it’s also looking like the orders for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models were just about equally split. So, while cost may have something to do with it, for the most part it’s looking like customers just don’t mind dropping the extra coin for the extra space.

Revenue wise, Apple is looking at $75 million in the first day. That’s a pretty big chunk of change, if you ask us, and we’re pretty sure that executives at Apple are sitting contentedly in their chairs. Of course, for 99% of customers out there, they haven’t even touched the tablet yet, so they’re banking a lot on the Apple name. We’re pretty shocked that in the first two hours, it looks like Apple was on a roll, clocking in an estimated 25,000 units sold every hour. That’s pretty amazing. So now all we have to do is look forward to April 3rd. Are you counting down, yet? Now, about that battery…

slashgear

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Private Browsing in IE 8

“IE8’s Private Browsing feature keeps your browsing private and your secrets safe.”

Domain Highlighting in IE 8

“Protect yourself from the risks of dodgy sites with Internet Explorer 8’s Domain Highlighting feature.”

Smart Screen in IE 8

“Browse with confidence using Internet Explorer 8’s Smart Screen feature to keep your computer safe.”

Labnol

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The upcoming Nehalem-EX CPUs pack 2.3 billion transistors and are set to be used within four- to eight-socket servers used for data-intensive applications.

AMD’s 8-core and 12-core Opterons (codename Magny-Cours) started shipping last month.

TCM

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The SmartScreen Filter uses a special URL Reputation Service (URS) with data centers hosted around the world and has evaluated over 250 billion URLs to help keep Internet Explorer 8 users safe! Every day, the SmartScreen Filter URS processes about 4.1 billion URLs looking for malicious websites and files; and since it was first introduced in Internet Explorer 7, the URS has processed over 5.7 trillion requests!

Malware is the biggest and most common security threat facing people browsing the Internet today, and Microsoft is investing heavily in keeping people protected while using Internet Explorer with features like the SmartScreen Filter, Protected Mode, DEP, and more. Check out this post on the IEBlog for more info about the NSS Labs study and how to make sure the SmartScreen Filter is turned on. If you’re not already running Internet Explorer 8, or haven’t upgraded, this is a great reason!

windowsteamblog.com

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Microsoft has spoken to us about finally being on the Google Android platform, although it wouldn’t reveal any details over whether it will be adding other apps to the Market: “With so many mobile options available to consumers it is critical that Microsoft Tag is available across all of the major mobile platforms,” a spokesperson told us.

‘Incredible’

“The feedback on this product since we launched last year has been incredible and we want to make sure that everyone can access it. “We continue to make progress with Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian S60 phones and now Google Android. Users can download the Tag Reader from the Market on their Android phone.  “We’re very happy to welcome the new users to the Microsoft Tag community.” It’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the Android platform, but it’s good to see Microsoft sees the value in not cutting off its nose to spite its face despite having a competitor platform in the shape of Windows Mobile.

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The board offers both USB 3.0 support and supports new SATA 3.0 HDDs. MSI is aiming the mainboard at HTPC user and the board supports the latest Phenom II processors. Both DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 multimedia standards are supported.

The 890GXM-G65 also packs combined ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics with 128MB DDR3, SATA 6Gb/s, two USB3.0 interfaces, two PCI-Express x16 slots, Gigabit Ethernet7.1 channel surround sound and have D-Sub, DVI and HDMI connectivity.

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