Nvidia to acquire Ageia

Nvidia snapped up Ageia on Monday, with plans to add Ageia's PhysX technology to its GeForce graphics chips, says News.com.

Ageia's PhysX chip makes killing and blowing stuff up with a PlayStation controller all that more lifelike.

The processing power that is required to simulate events like explosions and smoke or fog is immense, so much so that a standalone chip for just that purpose was required to really drive the experience home.

Microsoft has begun lobbying Congress even before its $42 billion bid for Yahoo has been accepted, while Google, the real object of Microsoft's concern, has started to raise objections on Capitol Hill, says Washington Post.

Top Microsoft executives, including general counsel Brad Smith and Jack Krumholz, head of the company's Washington office, contacted the offices of key lawmakers on Friday, one day after the unsolicited bid for Yahoo was announced.

The company's approaches, made by e-mail and phone, were largely informational, according to congressional aides.

Dell yesterday began global delivery of the first products resulting from its acquisition of EqualLogic, with the release of Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series storage-area network arrays, reports PC World.

Dell announced plans to buy IP SAN vendor EqualLogic for $1.4 billion in November, and completed the acquisition on 28 January.

EqualLogic was founded in 2001 and makes iCSIS storage appliances.

Intel has designed a chip that can receive and transmit WiMax and multiple WiFi signals and has developed other on-die technology to lower power consumption and reduce the size of the processor, says Information Week.

Intel researchers outlined the achievements in four research papers presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

The papers reflect some of the technology that may one day find its way in Intel chips for use in future mobile Internet devices.