PC and Components: Interviews

Lenovo Group Chairman Yang Yuanqing wants to challenge perceptions of Chinese companies as mainly producers of cheap, low-end products.

Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates has been giving keynote speeches at Las Vegas conventions, including the Consumer Electronics Show and the now-defunct Comdex, for decades. Before his last CES keynote speech as a full-time company employee, he talked with the IDG News Service about his legacy as an innovator, the background behind some of the deals announced at CES this week and directions for Microsoft.

For much of his 34 years at Intel, Justin R. Rattner has been a pioneer in parallel and distributed processing. His early ideas didn't catch on in the market, but the time has come for them now, he recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes.

Why would a business that focussed on technology recovery, refurbishing and resale, want to re-brand itself? Ask TechTurn, once called Newmarket IT, who felt that its service - diverting potential IT scrap from e-waste to usable technology, or IT salvage - was an idea whose time had come.

In his famous paper published in April 1965, in the journal Electronics, Gordon Moore wrote: "Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers -- or at least terminals connected to a central computer -- automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment." Analyzing the future of the industry, he predicted that, "reduced costs is one of the big attractions of integrated electronics, and the cost advantage continues to increase as the technology evolves toward the production of larger and larger circuit functions on a single semiconductor substrate. For simple circuits, the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components." This became known as Moore's Law. Forth-two years later, it is still valid. But will it be the same in, say, 10 years from now? Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, answers that question in this interview.

In the final part of an in-depth interview with ARN's Brian Corrigan, local Lenovo managing director, talks about environmental and social responsibility.

In the second part of an in-depth interview with ARN's BRIAN CORRIGAN, local Lenovo managing director, Alan Munro, talks about vendor consolidation and SMB strategies.

In the first part of an in-depth interview with ARN's BRIAN CORRIGAN, local Lenovo managing director, Alan Munro, talks about life after Big Blue and changing behaviour in the education market.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is getting ready to launch Barcelona, its first quad-core server chip.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) last week unveiled a performance upgrade for its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core high performance processor, the 6000+, with a clock speed of 3 GHz and 2 MB L2 cache. AMD has also disclosed plans to release desktop chips later this year based on the quad core design code-named Barcelona. Division marketing manager for desktop at AMD, David Schwarzbach, discussed the moves in an interview with Patrick Thibodeau.

As the IT industry changes to keep pace with convergence and the rise of emerging markets, vendors like Hewlett-Packard have to stay one step ahead of the curve to remain competitive. At HP, the job of directing that effort falls to Shane Robison, the company's executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, who is responsible for overseeing the company's annual US$3.5 billion (AUD$4.5 billion) research and development (R&D) budget.