Posted 10/12/09 at 12:30:00 PM by Loyd Case

Designing and manufacturing a modern CPU is a huge project. It requires both backward compatibility and an understanding of where PC workloads are going in the future—a delicate balancing act made more difficult by the huge engineering staffs and massive dollar outlays involved. Let’s take a look at the steps needed to build a Core i7 or AMD Phenom II processor.

Before the manufacturing plant starts churning out chips, there are a few critical preliminary steps. Prior to the first circuit being laid out or the first simulation run, the designers need to know exactly what it is they’re designing. This phase takes input from many sources. Marketing gets involved, with predictions of what users will need when the CPU actually ships, usually two to four years in the future. Engineering and performance teams feed in billions of traces of actual applications being run on current-gen CPUs, so the designers can see how existing CPUs perform under real-world conditions.

Continue reading about the CPU production process after the jump.

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Posted 10/08/09 at 11:00:00 AM by Norman Chan

Your PC’s hard drive is probably packed to the platter’s edge with hundreds of ripped DVD videos, gigabytes of digital photos from your camera, and tens of thousands of songs. And that’s not even counting the high-definition digital video from your last family vacation that you’re still planning to unload. But with terabytes of media just gathering dust on your desktop PC, you risk losing years of aggregated files when your hard drive inevitably gives out (don’t even think about backing it all up to the cloud). Our solution: Keep all your data backed up on a Windows Home Sever. More than just a generic NAS box, Windows Home Server maintains backups, streams media files, and works as a file share across your home network. And the best part is that you can build one yourself—we’ll show you how!

Continue reading after the jump!

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Posted 07/22/08 at 02:51:37 PM by Chris Moody

The guys at CruchGear want to design a web tablet that would cost $200 and they want your help to do it. I’ve always liked the idea of a tablet for doing little things like surfing from the sofa. With netbooks catching on, can a net-tablet be far behind?

They pitch this basic idea; make it as thin as possible, run low end hardware, headphone jack, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, microphone, wifi, USB port, a built in battery, 512 RAM, and a 4Gb solid state hard drive. No keyboard, input is via a touch screen. It will run on some flavor of Linux or BSD.

The extra twist is they want to build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create and improve on them. I like the idea! You can read about the mock up here, and the article that started it here. 

I see it as handy item for browsing the web and reading email, but with it's only interface is a touch screen, don't expect to write a book the size of War and Peace on it.

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Posted 08/11/07 at 03:13:17 AM by One4yu2c

Part 1 of Paul Lilly's PC Building Guide FAQ focused on common pre-build questions, and today's followup attacks post build issues.

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Posted 07/21/07 at 03:59:21 PM by Paul Lilly

You did your research, spec'd our your parts, placed the order and assembled your rig, and now what? Benchmark it, of course!

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Posted 07/14/07 at 10:46:41 AM by Paul Lilly

Having first time builder's angst and considering a Dell instead? Dude, don't do it! Paul Lilly answers some common questions to get you started on the path towards DIY Utopia!

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