graphics chips

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted its first quarterly profit in three years because it got $1.25 billion in a legal settlement with its archrival.

The world's No. 2 maker of computer microprocessors said Thursday it would have lost money were it not for the payment it received from Intel Corp. to squash a long-running antitrust battle.

AMD also appeared to benefit from a lift in the overall computer market. Revenue was up 42 percent over last year, and unit sales of microprocessors and graphics chips grew, even though prices fell.

Nvidia is poised to roll out an advanced graphics processor unit that aims to usher in a new era of 3-D gaming. Called the GF100, the new graphics chip is expected to deliver the horsepower for running games across three panels featuring high-definition resolutions of up to 1920x1080 pixels -- an immersive gaming environment that the company has dubbed "3D Vision Surround."

Intel has delayed plans for an advanced graphics chip based on its Larrabee silicon and software development, and it may be because of a Federal Trade Commission investigation into alleged anticompetitive behavior. Larrabee is a complex, multi-year project focused on a new approach to graphics and high-performance computing, according to Intel.

This holiday season is a great time to buy a PC. There's a nice new version of Windows out, and computer manufacturers are adding interesting new technologies. Here's a guide to what's fresh in PCs, ranging from "netbooks" to super-sized "all-in-one" desktop computers.

Nvidia used the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., to show the world it has reached a new milestone in graphics processing. Nvidia demonstrated its next-generation GPU architecture, code-named Fermi. The new architecture will not replace the CPU, but will secure a significant place in PC system architecture.

Fermi's graphics capabilities will mean substantial improvements to game play, multimedia encoding and enhancement, and other PC applications, according to the company.

Nvidia used the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., to show the world it has reached a new milestone in graphics processing. Nvidia demonstrated its next-generation GPU architecture, code-named Fermi. The new architecture will not replace the CPU, but will secure a significant place in PC system architecture.

Fermi's graphics capabilities will mean substantial improvements to game play, multimedia encoding and enhancement, and other PC applications, according to the company.

Bill Watkins, the outspoken former chief executive of Seagate, wants to make a thinner iPod.

Watkins, a Silicon Valley veteran, has joined the board of Vertical Circuits, a start-up that has come up with a technique for cramming large amounts of flash memory into a tight space. By using technology from Vertical Circuits, device makers can fit lots of high-speed memory into their products and leave more room for bigger displays and larger batteries.

On the same day competitor Nvidia released its GPU 200 series of high-end graphics chips, Advanced Micro Devices announced what it called "the Cinema 2.0 experience" that will be possible because of its forthcoming teraFLOPS graphics chip.

At a press conference in San Francisco on Monday, AMD said that, until this release, content creators had to make a choice -- between cinema-like experiences that were rendered offline and didn't have interactivity, or interactive experiences that didn't have ultra-realism.

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AMD's Puma is coming onto the stage. The new laptop platform from Advanced Micro Devices, with AMD's dual-core Turion X2 Ultra mobile processor, a seven-series chip set, and ATI Radeon HD 3000 series graphics, was to be unveiled Wednesday at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan.