Back in the good old days paint chips contained healthy quantities of lead, cars ran on leaded gasoline, and a lead foot directly pulled open the throttle of your hot-pink '59 Cadillac without any pesky computers interfering.  It also meant that 'hackers' were limited to methods such as bricks and slim jims to steal your music.  Well, the times, they are changing.

DESPITE ALL THE criticism Apple gets, the company has done one thing well, in fact so well that its computers are playing an entirely different game than the humble beige box we all know as the PC. When Apple moved to x86 it dropped hardware legacy support and started with a clean slate and we're now at a stage where the PC is desperately in need for the same treatment. You may ask why, well read on and I'll try to explain.

AMD IS FINALLY starting to talk about Bulldozer, the upcoming new desktop and server core. It is the largest architectural jump in standard x86 cores in a long long time.

THERE HAVE LONG been rumors of a major player moving their data centers from x86 based PCs to the ARM architecture. It looks like the first big player to jump in to the market is going to be none other than Facebook.

HP is an interesting company.  They have been cranking out quarterly profits in the $1-3 billion range every quarter like clockwork (recession or no recession, dot-com bubble or dot-com bust) for over a decade, yet it's all seems very boring to the casual observer.  They are that grey blob that permeates the server room of many businesses.  They slap their logo on grey business notebooks, desktops, and consumer products that while functional and effective are simply unremarkable.   Well the blob has done it again.  Yesterday Hewlett-Packard held its quarterly financial analyst conference call in which it announced a solid third quarter overall operating profit of $2.3 billion.

Happy Friday everyone, aNd what a decisiVely glorious day it is turning out to be. It has been reporteD that people who feel the irresistible urge to be antagonIstic may in fact be whittling hours off their life spans faster thAn a chain-Smoker rUnning with sCissors through an airport security checKpoint.  So pop a couple quarters into the troll food machine, and let the feeding frenzy begin.

The Association of People who Stockpile Digital Recordings of the Tasteful Expression of the Human Form, or APSDRTEHF (they are rumored to be voting on a new name in the near future), received word of an amazing feat of storage engineering today.  Toshiba is presenting a paper at the 2010 Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego today outlining their research and successful implementation of a new technology that can cram a staggering 2.5 terabits of information into a single square inch of platter real estate.  For the layman, that's about 300GB of information stored on a surface the size of a postage stamp.

IT LOOKS LIKE some people are finally starting to catch on to what we have been saying for almost four years now, Nvidia is building an x86 chip. The story is long, complex, and it is SemiAccurate's opinion that the CPU will never make it to market for technical and legal reasons.

Editors Note: From time to time, SemiAccurate will be republishing some older articles by its authors, some with additional commentary, updates and information.  We are mainly reprinting some of the oft referenced articles that originally appeared on the Inquirer. Some will have added content, but all will be re-edited from the originals as per contractual obligations. You may see some slight differences between the two versions.

This article has had some of the original links removed, and was published on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 7:58 AM.

Editors Note: From time to time, SemiAccurate will be republishing some older articles by its authors, some with additional commentary, updates and information.  We are mainly reprinting some of the oft referenced articles that originally appeared on the Inquirer. Some will have added content, but all will be re-edited from the originals as per contractual obligations. You may see some slight differences between the two versions.

This article has had some of the original links removed, and was published on Friday, February 06, 2009 at 6:21 PM.

With the bowl of punch nearly gone, miscellaneous party favors littering the floor, and S|A writers stumbling about in various states of sobriety, it is time to settle down and discuss the results of Nvidia's recently concluded Q2, FY 2011 earnings conference call.  Much of the information we already knew or surmised after the lowered revenue guidance bombshell they dropped on us in late July, but half the fun of these kinds of calls are the molehills-turned-mountain that companies create to keep investor's wallets open.  Let's start hiking.

AFTER ESCAPING THE FTC lawsuit with just a small dent in its cash position, Intel is back to the acquisition market and their next target is the wireless division of the German company Infineon. This division is responsible for the design of 3G modems and RF transmitters.

HTC, the "quietly brilliant" company from Taoyuan City Taiwan has briefly cast aside its purported persona to let the world know just how awesome it is.  Between pointed bursts of Tarzan noises and chest thumping we were informed of HTC's four-month  hot streak of successive sales records, as well as  gross-profits-after-tax amounting to a cool NT$ 8.64B (approx. $273M USD) for their most recent quarter.

THE LAST PART of SemiAccurate's look at the Intel/FTC settlement examines some of the worst accusations against Intel. Compiler tricks, technical openness, and a watchdog. Intel could be seriously hamstrung by some of these remedies, and worse yet, they could be the ones hamstringing themselves.

ASUS' R.O.G. SERIES of motherboards have always been out of reach in terms of cost for your average consumer, but have been hugely popular with the enthusiast and high-end gamer market. The latest addition to the series has just made an appearance online and it's yet another X58 model, although this time a somewhat more affordable board than Asus' Rampage III Extreme which is a $380 board.

PART TWO OF SemiAccurate's look at the Intel/FTC settlement looks at sales, rebates, MCMs, bumps and cracking open an Apple. There is a lot of dirt in this one, and some business practices that will make your head hurt.

THE FTC HAS spoken, and the words came down on Intel with a force that is harder and more nuanced than almost anyone realizes. The settlement over a lot of alleged ills is brutal to Chipzilla, and both Nvidia and Via come out big big winners.

Updated

After over 3 years of running around the legal jungle gym, the United Stated Department of Justice has finally caught up with Hewlett-Packard, the world's current leading provider of technological stuff, and reached a settlement after rubbing HP's face in the sand a couple of times [ DOJ -1 | HP -0 ].  The settlement lays to rest 2007 allegations of kickbacks and fraud related to government contracts negotiated by technology contractor Accenture over the past decade.

INTEL AND GE have are doing something with healthcare today, and there is a webcast going on as this is written. Thoughtfully, Intel and GE have saved us from the excitement of that webcast through advanced technical features.

NVIDIA HAS A curious take on the causes of their latest financial meltdown, one that doesn't seem to mirror what is happening in the rest of the industry. The almost 20% drop in expected revenue announced at the last minute seems to be a largely self-inflicted wound.

INTEL IS TALKING about Silicon Photonics again, the real advances are masked behind a breathless press release about lasers replacing electronics. The advances announced today are nothing nearly as spectacular nor as breathless, it is simply a speed bump and a connector.

AS WE PREDICTED last summer, it looks like Apple has kicked Nvidia to the curb. The new line of iMacs is out, and they all have, wait for it, ATI graphics.