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2007: A Retrospective Who scored (other than Christina Aguilera), who looks forward to the future (like J.Lo), who almost scored.. (non names here) and who joins Paris Hilton...
(Author: Michael Schuette, January 13, 2008)

The Year 2007 in Retrospective

The year 2007 has been rather turbulent for the computer industry. Price erosion in the semiconductor market in general and the DRAM market in particular have taken their toll on the players. Some new technologies have been emerging, in particular the 3rd generation of DDR a.k.a. DDR3. Other technology-hopefuls have encountered problems, delays, bugs. The same holds for actually released products that did not catch on in the market place despite bullying their distribution through OEMs by the manufacturer. Originally, this was meant as a short blog but once I started writing, the number of Deja Vues increased quite rapidly.

The Good

UnrealTournament3 Engine

Finally a multithreaded game engine that takes advantage of multiple cores. If not enough CPU power is available to process the PhysX algorithms, an AGEIA PhysX card can be added to split the processing load over the CPU and the PhysX processor.

DDR3

DDR3, originally targeted to run at 800/1066/1333 MHz has beaten all expectations in terms of scalability and frequency. Currently, enthusiast SKUs include 1800 MHz variations, and stable operation at 2300 MHz is possible under controlled lab conditions. Mainstream enthusiast speed grades will ramp up to 2100 MHz within the next few weeks.

Rambus XDR

Rambus is no longer a key player in the desktop PC space but continues to drive innovations of memory technology. Running at 4 GHz and supporting a 16 bit-wide bus, XDR delivers up to 8 GB/s of memory bandwidth, making it an ideal solution for streaming applications as those found in HDTV. Another technological advance heralded by Rambus is the terabyte bandwidth initiative promising to lay the foundations of photorealism incorporation into gaming applications.

Intel’s 45 nm Technology

Adding metal back into the CMOS, Intel’s Hafnium-based P1266 process uses atomic layer deposition of Hafnium-based metal oxide for the insulation layer between the actual transistor gate and the substrate. The 45 nm process uses 193 nm dry lithography for exposure of the wafers.

ASUS Eee PC 4G Sub-Notebook

Weighing in at a mere 2 lbs with a battery life of 3.5 hours, ASUS Eee PC 4G sub-notebook is a giant when it comes to price/performance ratio. With a Celeron ULV processor at 630MHz, GMA 900 integrated graphics powering a 800x480 display, 512MB of RAM, and just 4GB of internal storage capacity, the PC 4G sub-notebook does not appeal to the high-end power user but to anybody who actually needs a laptop that can be opened even on coach seats of US Airways.

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