IBM Corporation

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) or IBM is a multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. As of September 2011, IBM is the second-largest publicly traded technology company in the world by market capitalization.
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Corporation^. CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.
In 2011, Fortune ranked IBM the 18th largest firm in the U.S., as well as the 7th most profitable. Globally, the company was ranked the 31st largest firm by Forbes for 2011. Other rankings for 2011 include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #1 green company worldwide (Newsweek), #12 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company). IBM employs more than 425,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.
IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company, and has nine research laboratories worldwide. Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.^[13] Famous inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.
The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002), spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991), and selling off product lines like ThinkPad to Lenovo (2005).
Sam Palmisano will step down as CEO as of January 1, 2012, but retain his position as chairman. He will be replaced by veteran IBMer Ginni Rometty.

AMD Processor

Advanced Micro Devices

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"AMD" redirects here. For other uses, see AMD (disambiguation).

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Type	Public company S&P 500 Component
Traded as	NYSE: AMD
Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	1969
Founder(s)	Jerry Sanders Edwin Turney Additional co-founders
Headquarters	One AMD Place, Sunnyvale, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Bruce Claflin (Executive Chairman) Rory Read (CEO)
Products	Microprocessors Motherboard chipsets Graphics processors
Revenue	US$ 6.494 billion (2010)
Operating income	US$ 824 million (2010)
Net income	US$ 471 million (2010)
Total assets	US$ 4.964 billion (2010)
Total equity	US$ 1.013 billion (2010)
Employees	11,100 (2010)
Website	AMD.com

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD) or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets. Its main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems applications.
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units. It also owns 8.6% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory.^[2]
AMD is the only significant rival to Intel in the central processor (CPU) market for (x86 based) personal computers. Together they held 99.1 percent (Intel 80.3%, AMD 18.8%) of the CPU's sold for quarter three of 2011. AMD and competitor Nvidia dominate the graphics processor (GPU) market, covering all of the top 70% of the performance benchmark, and making up 78 percent (Nvidia 44.8%, AMD 33.2%) of the GPUs in use in (x86 based) personal computers (Intel holding 6.6%)^.

 Corporate history

AMD headquarters in Sunnyvale, California

AMD campus in Canada, formerly ATI headquarters

AMD's LEED-certified Lone Star campus in Austin, Texas

Advanced Micro Devices was founded on May 1, 1969, by a group of former executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger. The company began as a producer of logic chips, then entered the RAM chip business in 1975. That same year, it introduced a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. During this period, AMD also designed and produced a series of bit-slice processor elements (Am2900, Am29116, Am293xx) which were used in various minicomputer designs.
During this time, AMD attempted to embrace the perceived shift towards RISC with their own AMD 29K processor, and also attempted to diversify into graphics and audio devices as well as EPROM memory. It had some success in the mid-1980s with the AMD7910 and AMD7911 "World Chip" FSK modem, one of the first multistandard devices that covered both Bell and CCITT tones at up to 1200 baud half duplex or 300/300 full duplex. The AMD 29K survived as an embedded processor and AMD spinoff Spansion continues to make industry leading flash memory. AMD decided to switch gears and concentrate solely on Intel-compatible microprocessors and flash memory, placing them in direct competition with Intel for x86 compatible processors and their flash memory secondary markets.
AMD announced the acquisition of ATI Technologies on July 24, 2006. AMD paid $4.3 billion in cash and 58 million shares of its stock for a total of US$5.4 billion. The transaction completed on October 25, 2006.
It was reported in December 2006 that AMD, along with its main rival in the graphics industry Nvidia, received subpoenas from the Justice Department regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry, including the act of fixing prices.
In October 2008, AMD announced plans to spin off manufacturing operations in the form of a multibillion-dollar joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Co., an investment company formed by the government of Abu Dhabi. The new venture is called GlobalFoundries Inc.. This partnership will allow AMD to focus solely on chip design.
In August 2011, AMD announced that former Lenovo executive Rory Read would be joining the company as CEO.
On November 3, 2011 AMD said it was going to lay off 1,400 employees or about 10 percent of current worldwide staff. The curtailment will be finalized at Q1 2012 and mainly before Christmas 2011. It will cut operational saving by $10 million in Q4 2011 and more than $200 million in 2012.

All Intel Core

Intel Core is a brand name used for various mid-range to high-end consumer and business microprocessors made by Intel.
In general, processors sold as Core are more powerful variants of the same processors marketed as entry-level Celeron and Pentium. Similarly, identical or more capable versions of Core processors are also sold as Xeon processors for the server market.
The current lineup of Core processors includes the latest Intel Core i7, Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i3, and the older Intel Core 2 Solo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, and Intel Core 2 Extreme lines.^[1]

Overview

Brand	Desktop				Laptop
	Code-named	Cores	Fab	Date released	Code-named	Cores	Fab	Date released
Core Solo	Desktop version not available				Yonah	1	65 nm	Jan 2006
Core Duo	Desktop version not available				Yonah	2	65 nm	Jan 2006
Core 2 Solo	Desktop version not available				Merom-L Penryn-L	1 1	65 nm 45 nm	Sep 2007 May 2008
Core 2 Duo	Conroe Allendale Wolfdale	2 2 2	65 nm 65 nm 45 nm	Aug 2006 Jan 2007 Jan 2008	Merom Penryn	2 2	65 nm 45 nm	Jul 2006 Jan 2008
Core 2 Quad	Kentsfield Yorkfield	4 4	65 nm 45 nm	Jan 2007 Mar 2008	Penryn	4	45 nm	Aug 2008
Core 2 Extreme	Conroe XE Kentsfield XE Yorkfield XE	2 4 4	65 nm 65 nm 45 nm	Jul 2006 Nov 2006 Nov 2007	Merom XE Penryn XE Penryn XE	2 2 4	65 nm 45 nm 45 nm	Jul 2007 Jan 2008 Aug 2008
Core i3	Clarkdale Sandy Bridge	2 2	32 nm 32 nm	Jan 2010 Feb 2011	Arrandale Sandy Bridge	2 2	32 nm 32 nm	Jan 2010 Feb 2011
Core i5	Lynnfield Clarkdale Sandy Bridge Sandy Bridge	4 2 4 2	45 nm 32 nm 32 nm 32 nm	Sep 2009 Jan 2010 Jan 2011 Feb 2011	Arrandale Sandy Bridge	2 2	32 nm 32 nm	Jan 2010 Feb 2011
Core i7	Bloomfield Lynnfield Gulftown Sandy Bridge	4 4 6 4	45 nm 45 nm 32 nm 32 nm	Nov 2008 Sep 2009 Jul 2010 Jan 2011	Clarksfield Arrandale Sandy Bridge Sandy Bridge	4 2 4 2	45 nm 32 nm 32 nm 32 nm	Sep 2009 Jan 2010 Jan 2011 Feb 2011
Core i7 Extreme Edition	Bloomfield Gulftown	4 6	45 nm 32 nm 32 nm	Nov 2008 March 2010	Clarksfield Sandy Bridge	4 4	45 nm 32 nm	Sep 2009 Jan 2011

Intel Core 2 Duo

Core 2 is a brand encompassing a range of Intel's consumer 64-bit x86-64 single-, dual-, and quad-core microprocessors based on the Core microarchitecture. The single- and dual-core models are single-die, whereas the quad-core models comprise two dies, each containing two cores, packaged in a multi-chip module. The introduction of Core 2 relegated the Pentium brand to the mid-range market, and reunified laptop and desktop CPU lines, which previously had been divided into the Pentium 4, Pentium D, and Pentium M brands.
The Core 2 brand was introduced on July 27, 2006, comprising the Solo (single-core), Duo (dual-core), Quad (quad-core), and in 2007, the Extreme (dual- or quad-core CPUs for enthusiasts) subbrands. Intel Core 2 processors with vPro technology (designed for businesses) include the dual-core and quad-core branches.

 Models

For Detailed discussion of CPU cores, see Intel Core (microarchitecture)#Processor cores.

The Core 2-branded CPUs include: "Conroe"/"Allendale" (dual-core for desktops), "Merom" (dual-core for laptops), "Merom-L" (single-core for laptops), "Kentsfield" (quad-core for desktops), and the updated variants named "Wolfdale" (dual-core for desktops), "Penryn" (dual-core for laptops), and "Yorkfield" (quad-core for desktops). (Note: For the server and workstation "Woodcrest", "Tigerton", "Harpertown" and "Dunnington" CPUs see the Xeon brand.)
The Core 2 branded processors feature Virtualization Technology (with some exceptions), Execute Disable Bit, and SSE3. Their Core microarchitecture introduced SSSE3, Trusted Execution Technology, Enhanced SpeedStep, and Active Management Technology (iAMT2). With a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 65W, the Core 2 Duo Conroe dissipates half the power of the less capable contemporary Pentium D-branded desktop chips that have a max TDP of 130W.

Intel Pentium Dual Core

The Pentium Dual-Core brand was used for mainstream x86-architecture microprocessors from Intel from 2006 to 2009 when it was renamed to Pentium. The processors are based on either the 32-bit Yonah or (with quite different microarchitectures) 64-bit Merom-2M, Allendale, and Wolfdale-3M core, targeted at mobile or desktop computers.
In terms of features, price and performance at a given clock frequency, Pentium Dual-Core processors were positioned above Celeron but below Core and Core 2 microprocessors in Intel's product range. The Pentium Dual-Core was also a very popular choice for overclocking, as it can deliver high performance (when overclocked) at a low price.


 
Processor cores
In 2006, Intel announced a plan to return the Pentium trademark from retirement to the market, as a moniker of low-cost Core microarchitecture processors based on the single-core Conroe-L but with 1 MiB of cache. The identification numbers for those planned Pentiums were similar to the numbers of the latter Pentium Dual-Core microprocessors, but with the first digit "1", instead of "2", suggesting their single-core functionality. A single-core Conroe-L with 1 MiB cache was deemed as not strong enough to distinguish the planned Pentiums from the Celerons, so it was replaced by dual-core CPUs, adding "Dual-Core" to the line's name. Throughout 2009, Intel changed the name back from Pentium Dual-Core to Pentium in its publications. Some processors were sold under both names, but the newer E5400 through E6800 desktop and SU4100/T4x00 mobile processors were not officially part of the Pentium Dual-Core line.