Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA), said they had received nearly 44.3 million in research funding to study the use of the laser beam to move data between the microprocessor, which significantly increases the speed of data that moves between hundreds or thousands of chips in the current context of supercomputers.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Sun gave the first payment of $ 8.1 million to start the project, which is based on research conducted under DARPA’s High Productivity Computing Systems. Sun partners Stanford and the University of California at San Diego, and two firms in silicon photonics, Luxtera and Kotura, The New York Times reported. Sun offers conquered teams led by IBM (NYSE: IBM), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ).

Sun hopes to find a way to replace them with laser beams cables used to connect chips in a supercomputer. Data-carrying light is many times faster than the son, who also additional problems of generating electricity and heat. In the development of laser chips connected, Sun will also prove the viability of the manufacturing process. Today, chips are made on large silicon wafers, where each processor circuits are etched. The wafer is then cut into different fingernail size chips. Processors made in this direction require wired interconnects.

To replace the sons of light, Sun plans to build on the lookout for what he calls “macrochips”, which are long tables chips that use laser beams for communication. These macrochips replace the hundreds or thousands of chips in the current context of supercomputers, which would become faster and more energy-efficient, and more compact as a result.

“Optical communications could be a real game of the evolution of technology - an elegant way to continue impressive performance gains while completely changing the economy at large-scale production of silicon,” Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer and vice Executive Vice President of Research and Development for the Sun, said in a statement.

The use of light in chip interconnects is part of a science called silicon photonics. The technology promises to extend Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years. Restrictions global economic, financial investment in semiconductors began to decelerate the prediction of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, Sun said. Boosting computer performance by collecting hundreds or thousands of hearts on a macrochip could make unlimited extension of Moore’s Law. Advances in supercomputing are expected to be useful to a broad class of companies and organizations, including those involved in the exploration of energy, biotechnology, and weather modeling.

Other chipmakers are also heavily invested in silicon photonics. Intel is working on integrating a laser chips that can provide communications speed of 40 Gbit / s and above. The company last July, has proved a major breakthrough in the form of work the first 40G silicon laser modulator.

DailyTech reported in late January that ASUS was already hard at work on a desktop variant of its popular Eee sub-notebook PC. The original PC Eee proved to be the surprise hit of the year 2007 and the company has already announced his successor Eee 900 PC.

ASUS is seeking to collect on that success with its new desktop PC which is called the “Digital Home System EP20. However, just below the name of the device on the sign ASUS is the familiar “Easy to play, easy to learn; Easy to Work” which places the slogan EP20 Eee PC squarely in the territory.

Hard specifications on the devices are difficult to obtain, but ASUS note that the device is much smaller than that typical workstations and he has “fairly good performance.” Other niceties include Hi-Fi Stereo and Dolby Digital Live support. It is also worth mentioning that the only soldier on EP20 Eee PC with the Linux operating system (which is based on Linux Xandros).

Those who seek to use the machine as a HTPC will be pleased to know that the only EP20 emits 24 db noise when running.

Things are less clear when it comes to the EP20 equipment specifications. ASUS said in January that the first versions of the desktop PC chip would Eee with Celeron processors, while later versions employ Diamondville. As we all know now, Diamondville Intel is known as Atom, EP20 probably get both single-core and dual-core Intel version of the new low-power processor.

ASUS said that the office-based PC Eee start at $ 199 which is fairly optimistic for a desktop fully operational, but are waiting to see the pricing closer to the mark of $ 299 when it hits the futures market during the Second Quarter

Major manufacturers of mainboards have begun their shipments of products based on Intel Corp. The real motherboards may emerge in the retail sector as early as this month. New mother boards are primarily intended for amateur players and performance.

Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology times started to sell platforms based on Intel X48 high-end core logic of this week, reports DigiTimes website. Potentially, it may mean that the products already reach retail stores in March, while the Japanese and Taiwanese stores may start selling Asus Gigabyte and Intel X48-based devices even earlier, either this week or next week.

X48 chipset will support Intel processors with 1600MHz processor system bus (PSB), dual-channel PC3-10600 (DDR3 1333MHz) to the memory Intel Fast Memory capacity to access and overclocking, 2.0 PCI Express bus technology with multi - GPU capability and some other performance improvements, Such as the flexibility and extreme overclocking memory profiles (XMP) technology.

It is interesting to note that the desktop processor with quad pumped 1600MHz processor system bus - quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 running at 3.20GHz - has been delayed, meaning that early adopters of Intel X48 platform is likely to be overclockers, but Little systems integrators, including 1333 to support Intel X38 should be sufficient.

According to confidential documents seen by X-bit labs, Intel has removed support for the PC3-12800 (DDR3 1600MHz) X48 memory of the platform and let mother makers to decide whether to support or not. Intel itself is planning to begin shipments of its Intel Desktop Board DX48BT2 (Bonetrail) sometime in Q1 2008 with DDR3-12800 support from the beginning.

Okay i just heard a story about some guys that actually used their desktops as a laptop. They brought their desktops to Starbucks just like people do with their laptops. I guess some people don’t know when to give up on Windows 95 and CRT monitors. No to be honest it was staged by these guys to see how people reacted when 2 guys and 1 girl brings 3 desktops to Starbucks. They pretended not to know each other under the experiment and they arrives and leaves at different times so that no one will know it was staged. They got 2 friends to film he whole thing with hidden cameras and the reactions are really funny. I however only have the pictures but they are really funny.

Here they are getting out their good old desktops with Windows 95.

Here you can see one of the guys filming the whole thing with a hidden cam. No on there actually saw that he was filming it. Even when the manager of Starbucks came out and talked with him, the manager told him “hey you cannot film these guys, they are paying customers”.

The other guy with hidden cam uses this device. It is a hidden micro cam in the glasses so he films wherever he looks.

Here is the first guy on his way too Starbucks. Looks pretty heavy as he carries the screen and has the CPU in the bag.

Here is the second guy and it looks like he also have some problems with his portable desktop because these things not very heavy.

 Here is the guy with the glasses that features a hidden micro cam. He is pretending to read the news paper while he is filming his friends.

Now the second camera guy is in place as well. He remains outside of Starbucks while he films through the window from the outside.

Here is the first guy in place with his good old portable desktop at Starbucks.

Here he is again and he is the only guy with a Wi-Fi card so he can actually surf online, but as stingy as he is he decides not to pay for the T-Mobile access, and instead visited the only site he could browse for free, starbucks.com.

This black guy thinks that the desktop belongs to Starbucks and when the owner goes to get something to drink this black guy sits down on his desktop and start surfing and it took several minutes for the owner to explain to the black guy that this was his desktop.

People start to notice something strange when a girl enters with a desktop and boot up Windows 95 while she put the screen on her lap like it was a super modern laptop.

Here you see the girl setting up her old Dell desktop with Windows 95.

God i miss the old days when i was using Windows 95!

Now this just tops the cake, she actually takes the huge 60 pounds screen on her lap while she lay back relaxed and writes in Word 95.

 

Here you see her in full action while she writes in Word 95. Looks however pretty damn uncomfortable to me.

Here she is, at one point there was a crowd outside the window laughing at her, i am not sure if it was the Windows 95 boot up screen or the huge CRT monitor they laughed of the most.

This is the third and last guy and he got the biggest and heavyest desktop of them all. He used twice as long time as the other guys to get his desktop to Starbucks.

The poor guy is having major problems just lifting his MRT monitor up to the table.

So after a lot of hard work the 2 guys and the girl is together at Starbucks with their portable desktops.

These guys where actually waiting on the owners to move away from the desktops because they thought they were Starbucks desktops. The girl cracks up and laughs when one of the guys suddenly start to pack together the desktop she then ask why he is taking the Starbucks desktop away.  The manager said it was not their laptops and he had never seen anything like it in 4 years but since they were all paying customers he could not do anything.  The other guy on the pictire was another customer and he kept asking what’s the benefit of this. The manager said that they are probably students from across the street. After a while they all packed together and left at different times just like nothing happened.

Santa Clara (CA) - While AMD is currently planning its production ramp at 45 nm in the first half of this year, and the volume of launch of 45 nm processors for the second half, Intel is already in decline 65 nm is accelerating rapidly, popping out 45 nm processors at a rate of 100000 per day.

It may be much harder for AMD to catch up with Intel than expected. Intel is plugging away at an astonishing rate, its engines seem to work perfectly right now, at least from what we can see. At the analyst meeting yesterday, the CEO said Paul Otellini, Intel has delivered more than four million 45 nm processors so far since their launch late last year.

According to management, 72 different models of 45 nm are currently shipping and the firm four fabs in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Israel are churning 100000 processors each day. By the end of the first quarter, roughly 75% of the output of Intel processors will be based on 65 nm and 25% over 45 nm. Arriving in the third quarter, Intel expects to reach the crossover, and produce more chips at 45 nm nm units under 65.

It is no secret that Intel has invested heavily in its production technology in order to maintain and extend its leadership in this area. Otellini has provided an overview of the finances and just how much does it cost to get Intel’s 45 nm when he did. The executive stated that development investments of approximately $ 1 billion, product development (Penryn, Nehalem, Silverthorne) to about $ 2 billion and manufacturing facilities at about $ 9 billion. Add it all and you have $ 12 billion to the bottom line.