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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)

Technology Disappointments

ISI Turnaround leaves AMD in a Hole

Innovative Silicon Inc, the inventor and manufacturer of capacitor-less DRAM or ZRAM finally admitted that the approach they were taking is not viable. Instead, ISI is moving on to the second generation of Z-RAM using biploar effects, rather than field-effect charge switching. , This comes after receiving funding from AMD who were hoping to use ZRAM as SRAM substitute in high density CPU caches and Hynix, both of which are essentially hung out to dry for the foreseeable future. At this point, Z-RAM is not dead but it has to be viewed as a concept rather than a working technology:

The following quote by ISI co-founder and chief scientist Serguei Okhonin pretty much sums it up: "In the Gen2 memory, timing is critical. The sequence of pulses of the electrons and holes is part of the technology,” Okhonin said, adding that “all of the effects in a bipolar approach are very well known, but combining them is difficult.”

ATI’s Cancellation of R600

Lackluster performance paired with insatiable hunger for power have prevented the R600-powered RADEON 2900 series from developing into anything beyond a wallflower existence. Better luck next time!

MXM Technology

MXM technology was heralded to bring modularity to laptops and allowing end consumers to upgrade their laptops with custom, MXM-compliant video modules. Unfortunately it turns out, MXM became a configurator for OEMs only to allow better flexibility and easier customization-on-demand. For the end user, even an upgrade to a better graphics solution may not only void the warranty because of the mandatory removal of the laptop shell but also may not yield any performance gain since power and thermals of the graphics are controlled by the system BIOS that will throttle back any more powerful solution to approximately the same thermal envelope and - by extension - performance as the original solution.

A silver lining on the horizon may be the DTX form factor systems, many of which may use MXM graphics components to spawn a more user-friendly acceptance of MXM for future generations of laptops as well.

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