July 23 - 11:20pm EDT   Korean OEM manufacturer Ripple has introduced an updated version of its Mac Mini clone using a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor in the Mini-ITX form factor. The Ripple Mini Chocolate uses the 45nm i945GC-Northbridge and ICH7Ssouthbridge chipsets, and supports up to 2GB of RAM. Intel specs show the low-cost motherboard with 2 USB ports, a pair of 3.0GBs SATA conntectors and single IDE socket. [full story]

July 18 - 4:00pm EDT   Intel will go back to the old days of pricing its flagship chips at $999 apiece when ordered in bulk, thousand-piece quantities, says a Friday report that cites mainboard manufacturers as its sources. The move is believed to have been made in order to speed up the adoption of quad-core CPUs, and pertains specifically to the chipmaker's upcoming 3.2GHz Extreme-series desktop Nehalem processors nicknamed Bloomfield. [full story]

July 1 - 4:30pm EDT   Yesterday's entry on Intel's Research@Intel blog by the company's Microprocessor Technology Lab Principal Engineer, Anwar Ghuloum, suggests the chipmaker will eventually offer chips with cores that count in the thousands, and tens and hundreds before that. In the blog, Ghuloum writes about working with external developers to take advantage of multi-core and terascale chips his company is developing. [full story]

June 13 - 1:20pm EDT   RedleX has released Mellel 2.5, a significant update to the leading word processor for Mac OS X. The new release adds robust cross referencing capabilities, allowing users to refer from one point in the text to another (e.g., "see page 15"). Mellel's reference entry dialogue allows, accordingly, to create reference formats, composed of different elements such as reference to the page number, position in the text (above, next page, below, etc.), page range, and so on. Users can also save and re-use such formats again and again, making the necessary modifications as they go along. [full story]

May 15 - 11:00pm EDT   Mobile processor manufacturer VIA on Thursday announced it would commence shipments of 45nm processor fabrications in 2009, as well as the company's first dual-core chips. DigiTimes writes that insiders have brought to light some of the specs, with the Isaiah-based dual-core processor allegedly featuring a 2GHz core frequency. The chip will sit on an 800 to 1333MHz bus, and will feature two pairs of 64KB L1 cache, and 1MB L2 cache. [full story]

May 7 - 6:40pm EDT   AMD on Wednesday unveiled definitive plans for 6- and 12-core Opteron processors, made with a 45nm fabrication process, which will be available most likely during 2009. TG Daily writes that the company will continue to support the Socket F (1207) platform through to its 6-core, single-die Istanbul, but will make a departure from the standard in 2010, when AMD unveils its Maranello platform. Production samples of the 45nm chips have already been made available to vendors. [full story]

April 23 - 10:55pm EDT   Apple's recent acquisition of PA Semiconductor appears to revolve around the latter company's intellectual properties and expertise, not its current products as was initially believed. AppleInsider reveals that Apple is more concerned with PA's technologies and engineers, since the semiconductor manufacturer has in the past created a dual-core 64-bit chip which only uses 15 watts of power to operate. This could allow for integration of low-consumption processors like the Intel Atom. [full story]

April 8 - 11:15pm EDT   The next iteration of the iPhone is likely to use the Infineon S-Gold3H processor in its 3G incarnation, an examination of the latest SDK beta suggests. According to ZiPhone.org, code in the SDK beta implies that the next generation iPhone will see "3.5G" HSDPA functionality, with a connection speed of 7.2 Megabits per second, as well as several other advanced features. No official word has been given on the status of a "3.5G" iPhone. [full story]