Nintendo has licensed handwriting technology from Zi Corporation, a provider of intelligent interface solutions.
Under the agreement, Nintendo DS developers can employ Zi’s Decuma handwriting recognition technology while creating software for the Nintendo DS handheld video game system.
Nintendo DS is the first handheld gaming platform to offer dual screens and touch-screen technology, similar to touch technologies found in some PDA’s or smartphones. Users can interact with the Nintendo DS by using standard control buttons, a microphone or the gaming system’s innovative touch screen.
“As the leading provider of handheld video game systems in the world, Nintendo has a reputation for adopting innovative technologies that improve the user’s experience with its products,” said Milos Djokovic, chief technical officer and chief operating officer, Zi Corporation. “With Decuma, Nintendo DS users will experience natural handwriting recognition previously only available to PDA and smartphone users. Zi continues to bring its multi-modal input products to leading mobile phones, gaming platforms and smartphones across the globe.”
October 26th, 2005
IBM has announced the custom designed microprocessor built for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is in production at the company’s New York plant and at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore.
The specialized chip, featuring customized and enhanced IBM intellectual property, was designed and developed by IBM and Microsoft to meet the unique requirements of the next generation Xbox 360 console.
The chip was delivered to Microsoft in less than 24 months from original contract signing in the fall of 2003 in time to meet Microsoft’s massive worldwide product launch for the 2005 holiday season.
“The Xbox 360 chip set was designed from the ground up specifically for high-definition gaming and entertainment,” said Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president, hardware for Xbox. “Working with IBM gave us the flexibility to design a processor to give game developers the kind of targeted power they need to make great games.”
“Microsoft’s aggressive timetable required that IBM take the Xbox 360 chip design from concept to full execution in just 24 months,” said Ilan Spillinger, IBM Distinguished Engineer and director of the IBM Design Center for Xbox 360. “IBM’s success in delivering the chip to meet Microsoft’s worldwide launch illustrates our commitment to innovative processor design that builds on IBM’s wealth of intellectual property.”
“The Xbox 360 project called upon the full range of IBM’s On Demand technology capabilities, including our Engineering & Technology Services unit for custom design work and our world wide manufacturing resources to meet the aggressive time-to-market demands for this advanced microprocessor,” said Jim Comfort, vice president and Strategic Client Executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group.
“Leveraging a common platform strategy, Microsoft benefits from a unique collaboration between IBM and Chartered for meeting its design and manufacturing needs, no matter how challenging they might be. With IBM and Chartered sharing a common focus on customer success, customers can have a single design sourced at multiple fabs, and benefit from tighter coordination and shared learning to speed prototyping, ramp and improve yield and meet time-to-market demands,” said Kay Chai “KC” Ang, senior vice president of fab operations at Chartered.
IBM engineers have been working with Microsoft to develop the chip since 2003 at IBM locations including Rochester, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Microsoft plans to formally launch Xbox 360 simultaneously in the United States, Japan and Europe later this year.
The chip features a customized version of IBM’s industry leading 64-bit PowerPC core. The chip includes three of these cores, each with two simultaneous threads and clock speeds greater than 3 GHz. It features 165 million transistors and is fabricated using IBM’s 90 nanometer Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology to reduce heat and improve performance. The chip’s innovative 21.6 GB/s Front Side Bus (FSB) Architecture was customized to meet the demanding throughput and latency requirements of the Xbox 360 gaming platform software.
Other Xbox 360 chip features include:
* 3 identical multi-threaded PowerPC-based CPU cores operating at 3.2 GHz enhanced with specialized function VMX acceleration for gaming applications and a high speed 128-bit vector unit
* 1 MByte Shared L2 Cache with custom logic for high-speed data streaming for graphics and system applications
* 5.4 Gb/s per-pin Front Side Bus (with an aggregated bandwidth of 21.6 GBs)
* Highly configurable and programmable utilizing eFUSE technology
October 26th, 2005
Google has moved quickly to scotch rumours that it is about to launch an eBay-like classified or auction service.
Internet rumours multiplied yesterday after screenshots were posted online showing a Google interface that could potentially, with the eye of faith, be the genesis of an online classified sytem.
If you actually take a step back and look at what the page actually says (and what the service is apparently called - Google Base) then it appears that Google is actually soliciting you to add just about anything to a massive online database. Admittedly one of the suggestions is to upload details of a car for sale, but that sits alongside the idea that you could upload a database of protein structures (not commonly found on eBay).
The page also implies that results from Google Base might one day appear in the main search engine listings. Google is trying to index the world!
The official Google blog flatly denies the, frankly rather boring, eBay rumours, but does confirm the much grander plan of storing user-submitted content. “We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it’s an exciting product, and we’ll let you know when there’s more news,” says the blog.
October 26th, 2005