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Intel has provided chipset makers with a draft specification for a USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Interface (XHCI), making good a promise it made a couple of months ago.

According to the chip giant, the XCHI will allow chipset makers to develop hardware that can communicate with USB 3.0 system software in a standardised, consistent way.

You might have thought that was the job of the chipset makers, but Intel's taken on the task itself to ensure, it hopes, the rapid roll-out of USB 3.0 - aka SuperSpeed USB. To that end, it's making the draft spec available under a licence that requires no royalties to be paid.

NEW YORK - Intel Corp. is unveiling new technology that will let computers wake up from their power-saving sleep state when they receive a phone call over the Internet.

Current computers have to be fully on to receive a call, making them impractical and energy-wasters as replacements for the telephone.

The new component Intel is announcing Thursday will let computers automatically return to a normal, full-powered state when a call comes in. The computer can activate its microphone and loudspeaker to alert the user, then connect the call.

"This certainly helps the PC become a much better center of communications in the home," said Trevor Healy, chief executive of Jajah, which will be the first Internet telephone company to utilize the feature.

A lot has happened over the past month in the world of 3D gaming graphics: NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260, ATI introduced us to the Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850, and NVIDIA tried to rain on the Radeon HD 4800 Series parade by dropping the 55nm GeForce 9800 GTX+. If that weren't enough, we've already seen price drops on the GTX 280 and GTX 260 as well. The latest fight for your pixel pushing dollars is shaping up to be quite a battle, and it's just getting started.

Earlier this month, sites like Ars Technica and ZDNet blogged about NVIDIA’s statement regarding a potential issue with some of NVIDIA's Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) used in notebooks. According to NVIDIA, these affected GPUs are experiencing higher than expected failure rates causing video problems. Though this issue is not unique to Dell, some of these affected GPUs are used in certain Dell laptops. That's why I wanted to take a few minutes here to explain the issue and to let customers know what to do next.

Yesterday nVidia has launched their true successor to the 8800 graphics cards series (forget about the 9800) the GeForce GTX 200.
Not surprisingly at the same time AMD has announced their next graphics cards series ATI Radeon 4800.
What's more interesting all of the announced cards don't really compete directly with each others, Where nVidia's GTX 280 and GTX 260 are supposed to retail at around $650 and $400 respectively, AMD's offers Radeon 4870 and 4850 at around $300 and $200 respectively.

Beijing, China, 29th May 2008 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the new VIA Nano processor family based on the VIA Isaiah Architecture.

Building on the market-leading energy efficiency of the VIA C7 processor family, the VIA Nano processor family offers as much as four times the performance within the same power range to extend VIA's performance per watt leadership, while pin compatibility with VIA C7 processors will ensure a smooth transition for OEMs and motherboard vendors, and provides them with an easy upgrade path for current system or board designs.