[IP] SiliconValley.com Microsoft chip lab: absolutely fabless
Begin forwarded message:
Microsoft chip lab: absolutely fabless: There's a new upstart in the
semiconductor business: Microsoft. The company, which has long relied
on Intel for its chips, has quietly established its own research
labs, with an eye toward designing the chip that will power the next
Xbox gaming console. Headed up by Xerox PARC veteran Charles "Alto"
Thacker and longtime Microsoft researcher Rich Draves, the Computer
Architecture Group, as it's tentatively named, will essentially
transform Microsoft into a fabless semiconductor design firm,
allowing it to explore new ideas in system design and more closely
control the integration of hardware and software (I can't even begin
to imagine what this heralds for DRM). "This is a historic time in
the computer industry," said David Patterson, a computer scientist at
the University of California, Berkeley. "We're in the middle of a
revolutionary change toward parallel computing that will absolutely
involve both hardware and software."
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