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Junko Yoshida from EE Times wrote that Panasonic will transition its 45-nanometer UniPhier® (Universal Platform for High-quality Image Enhancing Revolution—wow…) system-on-chip platform to a 30-nanometer process, 16 months after they became the first company to mass produce chipsets using the 45-nanometer process. Going from 65-nanometer to 45-nanometer resulted in a decrease in chip size by 39 percent and a decrease in power consumption of 30 percent. Junko wrote that the move by Panasonic to continue making semiconductors at its own fabrication facility seems “counter-intuitive,” especially when considering recent moves made by Sony, which sold its “Cell processor” semiconductor fabrication facilities to Toshiba. Toshiba recently announced that they would begin mass-producing 45-nanometer Cell chips, which may make their way into the PlayStation®3. Meanwhile, Panasonic recently introduced two new Blu-ray players that will take advantage of a new 45-nanometer UniPhier chipset that has been designed to be the world’s first single-chip signal processing LSI for Blu-ray Disc players, beating out a similar announcement from NEC by a few months. The new single-chip LSIs should result in lower prices for Blu-ray Disc players with improved reliability, decreased power consumption, and speedier performance. But that may not have been the biggest news out of Panasonic Corporation, which was officially renamed from Matsushita Electric Industrial, a derivative of the name the company had used since it was established in 1918 (90 years if you don’t have a calculator nearby). Matsushita announced the name change in January 2008. Panasonic has promised “to run its business based on its founder Konosuke Matsushita’s business philosophy known as; ‘A company is a public entity’; ‘Customer-comes-first principle’ ; and ‘Start fresh everyday.’” Toshiba expanded its free electronics-recycling program to all consumers, without requiring them to purchase a Toshiba product. The company will now accept all “e-waste” to be recycled, so long as it has no market value. Previously, Toshiba only accepted valueless Toshiba laptop computers, for recycling, or they would trade valuable laptops from any manufacturer for cash (laptops with market value can still be traded in for cash through Toshiba’s Web site). Qualifying items under the new recycling program include laptops, Tablet PCs, monitors, projectors, cameras, camcorders, servers, home audio receivers, cell phones, car audio, home electronics, auto electronics, mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players, game systems, and GPS navigation systems. Netflix announced that it will begin offering Starz Entertainment programming by way of its Starz Play broadband subscription movie service to be streamed from Netflix as a free service to their existing subscribers. Netflix claims to have over 12,000 movie and TV episode choices available for streaming over the Internet, with approximately 2,500 additional movies “and other choices” coming from the Starz deal. About 1,000 new Starz titles are available now through Netflix, including Spider-Man 3, Ratatouille, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, Superbad, and No Country For Old Men.
Tags:
- equipment -
- UniPhier -
- Panasonic -
- Blu-ray -
- Toshiba -
- recycling -
- Netflix -
- news -
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