Microsoft has welcomed the noise surrounding the announcement of its Palladium initiative -- a planned security-oriented overhaul of how hardware and software interact with each other. While some analysts seem skeptical about Microsoft's ability to wed the Windows operating system to its security and privacy plans -- some of which are based on a new security chip capable of cryptography and other defense measures -- they said the company is one of the only technology players capable of pulling it off. Full Story -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Cell' Supercomputing Chip Closer to Completion The initial design phase for IBM's mysterious new chip architecture, known as Cell, has ended and is now in the hands of engineers, company officials said. A supercomputer on a chip, Cell is a joint project of IBM, Toshiba and Sony. It is expected to be more than 100 times faster than a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 chip. Full Story FROM http://www.newsfactor.com/