New iMac Mini

According to Steve Jobs, "It's home stereo reinvented for the iPod age".

Today Apple Computer Inc. introduced a home stereo and new Mac Mini PC designed to give the company a bigger foothold in living rooms. The iPod home stereo system will sell for $349 and goes on sale today. The Mac Mini with chips from Intel Corp. will be two to five times faster, Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said today at the company's Cupertino, California, headquarters.

The two products signal Jobs wants a bigger role in home entertainment. The new Mac Mini also includes Apple's Front Row software, already found on the newest iMacs, so users can connect it to their televisions and control their music, videos, or photos with a remote control from across the room. An added feature of the Front Row software will let users locate and share media content from other computers within a local wireless network. This means a user can play songs or stored TV shows that are pulled off a computer in another room in the house.

With the iPod Hi-Fi system, users can dock their portable players into the speakers and use a remote control to operate it from afar. That means there's no longer a need for a cabinet full of CDs, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said.

The $599 Mac Mini has Intel's 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo - a micro chip with a single core - 512 MB of memory and 60 GB hard disk drive. The $799 Mac Mini comes with Intel's 1.67 GHz Core Duo - a chip with two cores - 512 MB of memory and a 80 GB hard disk drive. Both versions have Gigabit Ethernet ports for transferring data much faster; four USB 2.0 ports for accessories like keyboard, mouse and iPods; and built-in Airport Express for wireless networking.

IBM 29.9nm Chip

Pictured on the left is the record-small array of 29.9-nanometer-wide lines and equally sized spaces created by IBM scientists (at its Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California) using a variation of optical lithography. These lines are less than one-third the size of the 90-nanometer features (example at right, same magnification)




At "SPIE Microlithography 2006" conference today in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, IBM researchers have announced a major breakthrough: They have designed the first micro-chip with a width of only 29.9 nanometres using new materials developed by its collaborator, JSR Micro (Sunnyvale, California). The new chip has one-third of the size of the 90nm circuits currently mass produced today by the commonly-used process of optical lithography.

This provides a reprieve from the predicted need to switch to more costly, unproven chip-making methods. Until now the chip industry faced tough questions about which lithography technology would allow them to be successful below 32 nanometers. IBM’s Almaden Research Center and its Silicon Valley partner, JSR Micro, say they can now extend optical lithography with new “immersion” techniques, where the lasers pass through liquid with a high refractive index. This creates a sharper focus and allows the imaging of smaller features. "We believe that high-index liquid imaging will enable the extension of today's optical lithography through the 45- and 32-nanometer technology nodes," said Mark Slezak, technical manager of JSR Micro, Inc.

We want to remind our readers that Intel started shipping 65nm chips last year and it is expected that the 65nm technology will become industry standard in the 3rd quarter of 2006.

For more details, see IBM's Press Release.

IBM's Broadband Engine Computer

IBM has announced the Cell Broadband Engine, or Cell BE, the first of its own hardware to use the newly developed Cell chip, which was co-created by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, and will first debut in Sony's PlayStation 3 console, due out later this year. It may also be included in some select Toshiba HDTVs this year. Before today's announcement, Cell's only assignment outside of Sony and Toshiba had been specialized medical and defense computers made by Mercury Computing Systems Inc.

The Cell Broadband Engine is a "blade" computing system made up of different thin processors used to do different tasks. The inclusion of the Cell will allow for the system to handle extremely processor-intensive graphics applications, which is a speciality of its architecture. The Cell BE was one of several BladeCenter products unveiled at a New York press conference today, and is designed to "accelerate key algorithms like 3D rendering, compression, and encryption, to help companies create and run highly visual, immersive, real-time applications."

The Cell BE-based servers will first be available for purchase in the third quarter of 2006. No pricing structure was announced. To know more, visit IBM Press Room.

[Photo: IBM researcher Ronald Ridgeway examines a new IBM computer containing the powerful Cell microprocessor]