Researchers at Big Blue have created a silicon switch that can direct trillions of bits of data each second within an optical network. This switch would make it possible to put a network with the speed and bandwidth of a fiber-optic telecommunications network inside of a computer.

Within the next decade, engineers expect to build computers with tens, if not hundreds, of processing cores. They have not, however, found a way to get the cores to efficiently communicate with each other, as traditional metal wires are simply not capable of transmitting information at the speeds required. The new silicon switch could be the solution to allowing the cores to communicate with each other in a multicore system.

However, the researchers don’t expect the switch to find its way into commercial computers until five or ten years from now. Hopefully they can find a way to integrate it before we get stuck with slow (well, slow for the time) computers. [via Technology Review]

DigiTimes is reporting that, according to several sources, Intel is planning on launching the world’s first quad-core CPU for laptops - the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 - in Q3 of 2008.

Starting at an initial price of $1,038 (yes, that’s probably more than the price of the average laptop today), Intel doesn’t expect quad-core CPUs to become standard in laptops until late 2009. Even that, we think, is a conservative estimate. Dual-core CPUs are more than enough for most applications today, and it will be hard to find applications that can utilize all four cores in the near future.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will be manufactured in a 45nm process and will run at 2.53GHz. It will feature a 12MB L2 cache.

Tech jargon aside, this thing will be very fast for a laptop processor, assuming that operating systems and programs can utilize all of its power. At those prices though, don’t expect to see the processor from mainstream manufacturers such as HP and Dell any time soon.

Now that Sony’s Blu-ray has won the format war, rumors are flying that Dell and Apple want to incorporate these drives into their high-end laptops.

According to several reports, the two companies plan on releasing Blu-ray notebooks later this year. They say that since there is only one high-def format now, Dell and Apple will want to start moving into the next generation of media technology.

Unfortunately, drives like this would come at a price. Today’s laptop Blu-ray drives are power hungry, with some users reporting a completely drained battery after half of a movie. Of course, that would all change in the future as technology evolves, so hopefully we can see more efficient drives later this year.

Apple today announced a much-anticipated update to their MacBook and MacBook Pro computer lines. The MacBook Pro has acquired some new features while MacBook remains mostly the same with the exception of a speed boost.

The biggest news is the addition of multi-touch to the MacBook Pro, the same one that’s found on the new MacBook Air. Users can now use two fingers to zoom, rotate, and scroll through their photos. Unfortunately, the new MacBooks still have the same old, boring trackpad.

Both lines have been upgraded to Intel’s new Penryn CPUs, meaning less heat and lower power consumption. That should certainly make new owners happier.

The rest of the upgrades are fairly minor. Processor power has been bumped up slightly to a base 2.4GHz for the MacBook Pro and 2.1GHz for the MacBook. Optional video memory has been doubled to 512MB. The MacBook Pro has also been upgraded to an LED backlight for the 15-inch models with the LED remaining an option for the 17-inchers. Hard drive capacities have also been increased to a minimum 200GB for the Pro and 120GB for the MacBook.

Other than that, the size, shape, and weight appear to be the same. We were looking forward to some new visual touches, but it looks like that’ll have to wait until the next round of updates.

San Jose-based company MetaRAM has achieved something that none of us expected. They have accelerated memory technology development by 2-4 years with their new DIMMs while being able to offer them at a much cheaper price.

How did they do it? MetaRAM has created a chipset which allows up to four times more mainstream DRAMs to be integrated into an existing stick of memory while fooling the computer into thinking it’s just one big piece.

For example, a 1GB DRAM is much cheaper than a 2GB one, and the new chipset allows manufacturers to just use two of the 1GB DRAMs instead of the 2GB one for a huge cost reduction. Now think of that on a massive scale: MetaRAM is advertising that you can put a quarter-terabyte (256GB) of memory into a server at as little as 10% of the cost. “That’s insane,” you say. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, we’re with you on that one.

The technology seems absolutely brilliant, and it’s a wonder why no one has thought of it before. Hopefully MetaRAM can lower the prices on consumer memory as well so we can start seeing mainstream computers with 16GB or 32GB of memory.

Read the press release here [pdf].

A recent Apple patent application depicts mockups of an OS X “Gesture Control Panel” with options for a Standard Trackpad, Basic Multitouch, and Advanced Multitouch. Although the trackpad and basic multitouch options have already made their way to Apple’s laptops, the advanced multitouch features are very intriguing. Read more »

Apple has finally dropped 10.5.2 on us, and with it come a huge number of fixes and changes. Stacks, for example, have been rethought a bit and now allow browsing of files hierarchically in addition to toggling a few features. Menu bar transparency has gained a preference, allowing it to be toggled, a highly welcomed feature.

Among the new features, there are bugfixes for Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat, iSync, Preview, Time Machine, RAW support, and more.

Thanks Apple for a well needed update, now let’s just hope it doesn’t break anything new.

In a major step toward adopting IPv6, ICANN has updated six of 13 root DNS servers with the ability to use IPv6 addresses. Meaning, systems trying to connect with IPv6 can get IPv6 DNS information without having to ask an IPv4 server and converting. This is major news for the adopters of IPv6 as the addressing method of the future (which by all means, it is).

In terms of everyday use of the internet, nothing has changed - you still have to go out of your way to use IPv6 at all. In addition to the frustration involved with trying to find a domain registrar who can handle the v6 DNS records, you still cannot access a certain percentage of websites due to the other 7 DNS servers.

Despite the limitations, this is a major leap forward for IPv6. In fact, it has in all likelyhood garunteed the future adoption of IPv6 by everyone. The next step towards making this happen is allowing IPv6 to match IPv4 in coverage, keeping all web sites accessible by both at all times. Once that is complete, IPv6 will just slip into regular use. And we await the day.