Intel earnings surge 875 percent

Intel posted a fourth-quarter net income of $2.3 billion, up 875 percent over the same period last year. Revenue came in at $10.6 billion, up 28 percent year over year.

Earnings per share was 40 cents. The analyst consensus for the fourth quarter called for 30 cents a share on earnings of $10.17 billion. Adjusted income came to 55 cents per share.

Income was about 10 times greater than the $234 million (4 cents per share) that the chipmaker reported in the fourth quarter of 2008.

One of the key financial indicators, gross margin, hit a record 65 percent, Intel said, up 12 points over the same period last year when it was 53 percent.

Revenue for Atom processors and chipsets—which are used widely in Netbooks—shot up 167 percent.

“Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO in a statement.

“Our notebook business was exceptional this quarter,” Otellini said during the company’s earnings conference call. The chip business for server computers was up too. “Servers had a very strong quarter with a shift toward the high end of the server stack,” he said.

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, Intel expects revenue to hit $9।7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. The gross margin percentage is forecast to be 61 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points.

.CNET NEWS

Microsoft brings kids developer tool to the PC

Microsoft researcher Matt MacLaurin came up for the idea for Kodu in his kitchen in the fall of 2006, noticing the way his three-year-old daughter watched her mom browse away on Facebook।
MacLaurin saw how different computing is now than when he was a kid. While his Commodore Pet was like a lump of clay that he could mold by writing software in Basic, his daughter’s generation is using computers whose functions are already set in stone.

So he set about creating a new developer language that would appeal to the current generation of kids. He settled on one that would work with just a game controller, using basic rules to do things like move an apple across the screen.

A few months later, the idea was working code. MacLaurin had created Boku, an all new programming language that could be run on an Xbox using only the console’s controller to craft basic logic. MacLaurin showed it at the 2007 TechFest internal science fair and later that year at an emerging technology conference.

“That’s just in our DNA,” MacLaurin said. “We don’t really trust something until it is on our screen.”

Kodu, the final name for Boku, got its big-time debut in 2009, when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed the program, as part of his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Now, Microsoft is bringing Kodu to the PC

Hybrids the early winners in electric-car race

Toyota FT-CH hybrid concept

Electric vehicles are one of the top stories coming from the auto show in Detroit this week. But despite the introduction of even more electric concept cars, familiar old hybrids are projected to be the dominant form of electric vehicles.

Boston Consulting Group sought to inject some reality into the electric-car buzz even before the doors opened at the North American International Auto Show with the release of a study that concluded battery cost will keep pure EVs from taking over any time soon।

BMW Concept ActiveE

Beyond early adopters and fleet owners, the demand for mass-produced electric vehicles is still anyone’s guess. “The pragmatic majority are the folks who have to be convinced that the technology is real, that charging stations are available and it’s easy to do,” Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan Americas told Automotive News.

Government policies to protect the environment or drive investment in new technologies play a significant role in making plug-in vehicles more attractive. A person who buys a car with the battery size of the Chevy Volt, for example, can get a $7,500 tax credit.

Intel cites AMD exec who 'would never buy' AMD

In a recent response to longstanding antitrust accusations from chipmaking rival Advanced Micro Devices, Intel included in a Federal Trade Commission filing a quote from one of AMD’s own executives critical of AMD chips.

Near the top of the document is the most condemning statement against AMD—an excerpt of a 2004 internal AMD communication from former AMD Executive Vice President Henri Richard, the company’s then-highest-ranking sales executive: “If you look at it with an objective set of eyes, you would never buy AMD. I certainly would never buy AMD for a personal system, if I wasn’t working here.”

The Intel response (PDF), according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy, was posted on the FTC Web site on Friday. Although Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion to settle an antitrust case in November, the FTC continues to pursue the case against Intel.

Intel got the internal AMD communication through the discovery process, Mulloy said. “Over time, more and more [of] this kind of information will be available in the case,” he said Wednesday.

AMD technology has gone through periods when its chips have been decidedly less competitive than Intel’s, according to Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at research firm In-Stat. “You’re looking at a period of time when AMD wasn’t necessarily the most competitive product out there. AMD has gone through cycles,” he said, adding that Intel has gone through a similar competitiveness ebb and flow.

Nevertheless, it is a stinging indictment of AMD processors. AMD has accused Intel of essentially blocking PC makers from buying its chips by using alleged anticompetitive business practices. (AMD has claimed that PC makers would rather buy its chips but were pressured not to.) “From a positioning standpoint, [Richard’s] is a harsh statement against your own product,” McGregor added.

DNA computing

DNA computing is fundamentally similar to parallel computing in that it takes advantage of the many different molecules of DNA to try many different possibilities at once. ^[6]

DNA computing also offers much lower power consumption than traditional silicon computers. DNA uses adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as fuel to allow ligation or as a means to heat the strand to cause disassociation. ^[7] Both strand hybridization and the hydrolysis of the DNA backbone can occur spontaneously, powered by the potential energy stored in DNA. Consumption of two ATP molecules releases 1.5 x 10⁻¹⁹⁻¹⁰ W,^[8] and similarly Shapiro reports a system producing 7.5 x 10¹¹ outputs in 4000 sec resulting in an energy consumption rate of ~ 10⁻¹⁰ W.^[9] J. Even with a large number of transitions per second using two ATP molecules, power output is still low. For instance, Kahan reports 109 transitions per second with an energy consumption of 10

For certain specialized problems, DNA computers are faster and smaller than any other computer built so far. But DNA computing does not provide any new capabilities from the standpoint of computability theory, the study of which problems are computationally solvable using different models of computation. For example, if the space required for the solution of a problem grows exponentially with the size of the problem (EXPSPACEvon Neumann machines, it still grows exponentially with the size of the problem on DNA machines. For very large EXPSPACE problems, the amount of DNA required is too large to be practical. (Quantum computing, on the other hand, does provide some interesting new capabilities). problems) on

DNA computing overlaps with, but is distinct from, DNA nanotechnology. The latter uses the specificity of Watson-Crick basepairing and other DNA properties to make novel structures out of DNA. These structures can be used for DNA computing, but they do not have to be. Additionally, DNA computing can be done without using the types of molecules made possible by DNA nanotechnology.

Behind the China attacks on Google

The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners.^[1][2] The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.

2,973 victims and the 19 hijackers died as a result of the attacks.^[3] The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 90 countries. In addition, the death of at least one person from lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse.^[4]

The United States responded to the attacks by launching a War on Terrorism, invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists, and enacting the USA PATRIOT Act. Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Some American stock exchanges stayed closed for the rest of the week following the attack, and posted enormous losses upon reopening, especially in the airline and insurance industries. The destruction of billions of dollars worth of office space caused serious damage to the economy of Lower Manhattan.

The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and the Pentagon Memorial was built on the site. The rebuilding process has started on the World Trade Center site. In 2006 a new office tower was completed on the site of 7 World Trade Center. 1 World Trade Center is currently under construction at the site and, at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2013, it will become one of the tallest buildings in North America. Three more towers were originally expected to be built between 2007 and 2012 on the site. Ground was broken for the Flight 93 National Memorial on November 8, 2009, and the first phase of construction is expected to be ready for the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2011.^[5]