Jon Peddie Market News

ATI issues earnings warning; pledges allegiance to PCI Express

Posted by Webmaster on September 9th 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

ATI slid an earnings warning in under the radar on Monday while much of the high tech world was paying attention to Intel and reading the tea leaves left by Paul Otellini. The market responded with equanimity as ATI had already laid the groundwork for this one. The company announced that its revenues for the fourth quarter will be in the range of $235-240 million. The company said its revenues are going to fall short of guidance offered in June 2002 as a result in weakness in the PC and notebook market. The company was surprised by less enthusiastic sales in…

ATI says we got yer digital TV tuners right here

Posted by Webmaster on September 2nd 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

There’s a lot of gnashing of teeth and general wailing in response to the FCC’s announcement that TV manufacturers will be required to add digital TV tuners to their large screen TVs by July 2004 and all TVs by July 2007. But ATI says hey, we’ll be happy to do business with you we just happen to have a very nice Xillion 220 system-on-chip processor, a NXT2004 VSB/QAM demodulator, and the Theater 2000 NTSC/BTSC decoder. Manufacturers will still need a tuner and they’re complaining mightily that the added costs will add $250 to the price of a TV. We figure they’re…

Jobs to world: Okay, if the Power PC processors aren’t as fast as x86s, we’ll just use two of them

Posted by Webmaster on September 2nd 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

With their customary audaciousness, Apple has introduced a new line of PowerMacs which feature dual Power PC processors at speeds from 867 MHz, 1 GHz or 1.4 GHz. The new G4 machines feature XServe, Apple’s server architecture supporting up to 42 1U stacks with up to 630 Gflops processing power and support for storage up to half a terabyte machine and 20 terabytes per 42U rack. That’s a lotta Mac isn’t it? Well even Macs on the desktop are now a lot more Mac with the latest G4s supporting DDR-SDRAM via a 133 MHz system bus, 2 MByte L3 cache, etc.…

Palm 130 doesn’t quite make it to 65K colors but whose counting?

Posted by Webmaster on August 20th 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

Palm has had to admit that its m130 handheld, the one with the slogan “as colorful as your life” is actually a little less colorful than advertised. The machine is capable of only 58,621 color rather than 65,536. The problem apparently lies with the screen of the new handheld which sells for $249. Instead of using 16-bit technology which produces 65,536, it uses 12-bit technology which produces 4,096 colors and then dithers it up to 58,621. The news is being reported by Reuters and Wired News and so far Palm has admitted the that there are indeed 11% less colors in…

Where’s Rick?

Posted by Webmaster on August 1st 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

Rick Belluzzo is the new CEO of Quantum Corp. of Milpitas, California. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, this seems a step down for Belluzzo who has flown pretty high as CEO of SGI (when SGI was still flying reasonably high itself), and as COO and Ballmer heir-apparent at Microsoft. But, we see this as a more positive move for Belluzzo who was able to ride HP’s printer division to the top of the market. Storage has become sexy again and Quantum can give Belluzzo the chance to build. When he left Microsoft, Belluzzo said he wanted to head his…

Gateway goes into home projectors

Posted by Webmaster on May 6th 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

The cow company is willing to try anything, but their current plans have consistently addressed the emerging digital TV market. Last year it was plasma screens and this year the company has announced plans to sell digital projectors. This time out, however, the projectors are aimed at the education and small business markets. Gateway is reselling two projects from an unnamed supplier, the 205 SVGA and the 210 XGA. the projectors are lightweight, portable models. We are willing to be that the company will follow up with projectors for the home. Gateway has also announced another restructuring and the company has…

And the beat goes on; AMD introduces Athlon 4 1500+ for notebooks

Posted by Webmaster on January 28th 2002 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

AMD’s latest processor is for notebooks. The new mobile processor is the Athlon 4 1500+ featuring QuantiSpeed and AMD PowerNow! Technology. The new part is built at the Dresden Fab 30 using AMD’s .18-micron process. As you know, this new processor may be named the Athlon 4 1500+, but in reality it is an Athlon 4 1.33 Ghz chip. We realize that AMD is going to make it harder and harder for us to find (or remember) what the actual clock speeds are on these chips as they publish the name and not the megahertz, but we’ll keep trying to keep…

MPEG-2 LA strikes again, this time at Dell

Posted by Webmaster on December 10th 2001 | Permalink
Categories General News
Tags:

December 2001: Just because it’s a standard doesn’t mean there aren’t patent holders lurking in the bushes, and nowhere is this more true than in the confusing jungle of MPEG-2. The MPEG-LA group, formed in 1996 as a limited liability company, has emerged as a major coalition of patent holders and includes Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Scientific-Atlanta, Sony Corp., U.S. Philips Corp. and Victor Co. of Japan. This group owns 44 patents in MPEG technology. Also part of the group are Columbia University and the City of New York, which also own rights to several MPEG-2 Patents. The group has already taken…