News for Tuesday, 13 January 2009

On the market for IT components, computer manufacturers usually send requests among different producers, expecting to capture the best deal. However, such procedure have some drawbacks, and the PC manufacturer might after some time pay a premium price if stocks increase or to face delivery/availability issues if request sky rockets.
To protect themselves from such risks, some Pc manufacturers sign up long-term partnership with component producers. Apple did it in the past with Samsung for NAND flash memory, and just did it for LCD panels. LG announced to have signed a 5-years contract with Apple to provide LCD displays for computers, music players and mobile phones. The South-Korean company will receive 500 millions USD in advance, most probably against massive price reductions and insurance of exclusive/priority shipment of the products.
If such contract might surprise readers, it is almost a no-risk strategic decision. Indeed, LCD panels manufacturers have growing stocks and financial problems especially since the last quarter, and Apple was in excellent conditions to set a deal with low prices which will extend once the economic slow down is over.

As expected following the announcement during the MWSF 2009 keynote, iLife 09 update program has been launched by Apple.

It allows every customer who purchased a computer from January 6th, to be eligible for a free iLife 09 update. However, and as usual, some administrative costs are linked to this offer, and it will cost 8.95 Euro. If you have purchased several computer, you will have to choice between getting one iLife 09 update per computer, or get only one copy and submit a request to Apple to get he authorization for a using it for several computers.
For additional information, visit the dedicated webpage: http://www.apple.com/ilife/uptodate/
This offer will end on March, 29th 2009 (being the last day to place the request).

A scientist from Harvard tried to quantify the energy cost of a search request on internet. According to its calculation, each request releases 14g of carbon dioxide, a small amount to be multiplied by billions of searches leads to a huge environmental cost.
Internet requires millions of computer to be active, so draining energy for both their power and cooling systems equipping the rooms where they are installed. Google already took some action to reduce this environmental cost, and installed solar panels on its campus, this is nothing compare t the huge efforts require to substantially decrease the environmental cost of the Web. Once the number of computer in activity will become stable (we are reaching this point), we will gain performance while maintaining or reducing energy spending thanks to the current performance/watt scale now used by CPU manufacturers, instead of the race to ever higher clocked CPU.
So, one will be able to build infrastructure according to needs and their locations, and use greener computers. Consumers-oriented computer are already being developed with this parameters, but our power draining graphic cards are now often contributing for nearly half the power consumption of a desktop, while servers are usually either graphic cards-free or have only a low end GPU often without dedicated fan.

In order to counter the recent announced made by the HDMI Group and expected for end of H1 2009, the VESA Group in charge of DisplayPort, also announced evolutions of its format, to be available during Q1 2009, and to be very similar to the future new GDMI format:
- Doubling data transfer speed to 5.4 Gbits/s per line, totalizing 11.6 Gbits/s, more than enough to support 3D video or even higher resolution in 3840x2160.
- A single line will be able to support 2 monitors in 2560x1600 resolution or 4 monitors with 1920x1200.
- As the HDMI, the new DisplayPort will be fully bidirectional
- A new DisplayPort format dedicated to notebook will be released. It is currently unclear if Apple's format will be used and validated as the notebook port, but current unibody MacBook owners expect it for sure.
This new DisplayPort format will maintain its compatibility with DVI and HDMI, and will most likely be adopted by Apple with its future notebook revision.

In order to make room in its catalogue for the new Core 2 Quad processors, Intel announced a price cut (planned for next week) of part of its current range. This cut should make it possible to make a place for the new range of Core 2 Quad economy processors that one suspects of wanting to haunt the entrails of the iMac update that we await impatiently.
Even though Apple does not have the habit of timing its releases on those of the foundry, all the same, one hopes that these iMacs will arrive as soon as possible, which will give pleasure with the retailers who need to restart their sales at the beginning of this year.

Waited by some at Macworld, the iPhone nano could in the final analysis arrive in June. This is at least what Digitimes thinks, a Chinese newspaper. TSMC and UMC, the two foundries that produce made-to-order chips may receive a share of the Apple orders of chips dedicated to this telephone, and these chips would start to be produced in March.
It will be noted that up to now, Apple used components already manufactured by other companies. It is thus possible that these chips are the first chips produced of the repurchase of P.A. Semi, and are specifically designed and intended for the next generation of Apple telephones, a big first step that will enable the iPhone to be made to measure.