News Release from Apple

New iPad Arrives in the US & Nine Additional Countries on Friday

CUPERTINO, California―March 14, 2012―Apple® today announced the new iPad®, the third generation of its category defining mobile device, will arrive at Apple’s retail stores and the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com) on Friday, March 16 at 8:00 a.m. local time in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK; along with Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The new iPad features a stunning new Retina™ display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight® camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video and still delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life* while remaining amazingly thin and light. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G supports ultrafast 4G LTE networks in the US and Canada, and fast 3G networks around the world including those based on HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA.** Additionally, iPad 2 is available at a more affordable price starting at just $399.

Every customer who buys a new iPad at an Apple retail store will be offered free Personal Setup service, helping them customize their iPad by setting up email, loading new apps from the App Store™ and more, so they’ll be up and running with their new iPad before they leave the store. Personal Pickup, available at Apple retail stores in the US and a feature of the free Apple Store® app, lets iPad customers shop and buy from anywhere they are, then pick up their purchase at any Apple retail store. In the US the new iPad will also be available at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Target and Walmart.

Pricing & Availability
The new iPad Wi-Fi models will be available in black or white starting on Friday, March 16 for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model, and $699 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G for ultrafast 4G LTE networks in the US and Canada and fast 3G networks around the world including those based on HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA, will be available for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores, and select Apple Authorized Resellers. Additionally, the incredible iPad 2 is now offered at a more affordable price of $399 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and just $529 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G model. iOS 5.1 and iTunes® 10.6 are currently available as free software updates. iPhoto®, iMovie® 1.3 and GarageBand® 1.2 are now available for $4.99 (US) each from the App Store (www.itunes.com/appstore). Keynote® 1.6, Pages® 1.6 and Numbers® 1.6 are available for $9.99 (US) each from the App Store. Updates are available for free to existing customers.

Starting March 23 the new iPad will be available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. 

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

**4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the US and on Bell, Rogers and Telus networks in Canada. Data plans sold separately.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

News Release from AT&T - New iPad

AT&T to Offer New iPad on March 16

Dallas, Texas, March 13, 2012

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AT&T* today announced it will offer the new iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G in the United States on Friday, March 16. AT&T will offer all models of iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G with a range of attractive data plans that will allow customers to connect to the AT&T 4G LTE network with speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G.

The third generation iPad is a category defining mobile device that features a stunning new Retina display, Apple's new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video. It also still delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life** while remaining amazingly thin and light. iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G is world-ready, allowing users to connect to fast networks worldwide when they travel. 

“The new iPad is coming to the nation’s largest 4G network and we could not be more excited,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility. “Our customers will get a widespread, ultra-fast and consistent 4G experience from AT&T on day one, plus unlimited access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network at no extra charge. We’re offering very competitive data plans for iPad and are confident customers will agree that AT&T delivers the best experience.”

Customers can buy the new iPad through all AT&T sales channels beginning Friday, March 16. For complete details on pricing and availability please visit www.att.com/ipad. 

For more information on iPad please visit www.apple.com/ipad.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

**Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

News Release from IBM - Holey Optochip

Made in IBM Labs: Holey Optochip First to Transfer One Trillion Bits of Information per Second Using the Power of Light

• Researchers invent novel technique by fabricating tiny holes in a single quarter-inch chip to boost data transfer rates
• Until now, it was not possible to transport terabits of data for existing parallel optical communications technology
• New prototype compactly and efficiently delivers ultra-high interconnect bandwidth to power future supercomputer and data center applications

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LOS ANGELES - 08 Mar 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists today will report on a prototype optical chipset, dubbed “Holey Optochip”, that is the first parallel optical transceiver to transfer one trillion bits – one terabit – of information per second, the equivalent of downloading 500 high definition movies. The report will be presented at the Optical Fiber Communication Conferencetaking place in Los Angeles.

With the ability to move information at blazing speeds – eight times faster than parallel optical components available today – the breakthrough could transform how data is accessed, shared and used for a new era of communications, computing and entertainment. The raw speed of one transceiver is equivalent to the bandwidth consumed by 100,000 users at today’s typical 10 Mb/s high-speed internet access. Or, it would take just around an hour to transfer the entire U.S. Library of Congress web archive through the transceiver.  

Progress in optical communications is being driven by an explosion of new applications and services as the amount of data being created and transmitted over corporate and consumer networks continues to grow. At one terabit per second, IBM’s latest advance in optical chip technology provides unprecedented amounts of bandwidth that could one day ship loads of data such as posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, sensors used to gather climate information, and transaction records of online purchases.  

“Reaching the one trillion bit per second mark with the Holey Optochip marks IBM’s latest milestone to develop chip-scale transceivers that can handle the volume of traffic in the era of big data,” said IBM Researcher Clint Schow, part of the team that built the prototype. “We have been actively pursuing higher levels of integration, power efficiency and performance for all the optical components through packaging and circuit innovations. We aim to improve on the technology for commercialization in the next decade with the collaboration of manufacturing partners.”  

Optical networking offers the potential to significantly improve data transfer rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses, instead of sending electrons over wires. Because of this, researchers have been looking for ways to make use of optical signals within standard low-cost, high-volume chip manufacturing techniques for widespread use. 

Photomicrograph of IBM Holey Optochip. Original chip dimensions are 5.2 mm x 5 .8 mm.

Using a novel approach, scientists in IBM labs developed the Holey Optochip by fabricating 48 holes through a standard silicon CMOS chip. The holes allow optical access through the back of the chip to 24 receiver and 24 transmitter channels to produce an ultra-compact, high-performing and power-efficient optical module capable of record setting data transfer rates. 

The compactness and capacity of optical communication has become indispensable in the design of large data-handling systems. With that in mind, the Holey Optochip module is constructed with components that are commercially available today, providing the possibility to manufacture at economies of scale. 

Consistent with green computing initiatives, the Holey Optochip achieves record speed at a power efficiency (the amount of power required to transmit a bit of information) that is among the best ever reported. The transceiver consumes less than five watts; the power consumed by a 100W light bulb could power 20 transceivers. This progress in power efficient interconnects is necessary to allow companies who adopt high-performance computing to manage their energy load while performing powerful applications such as analytics, data modeling and forecasting. 

By demonstrating unparalleled levels of performance, the Holey Optochip illustrates that high-speed, low-power interconnects are feasible in the near term and optical is the only transmission medium that can stay ahead of the accelerating global demand for broadband. The future of computing will rely heavily on optical chip technology to facilitate the growth of big data and cloud computing and the drive for next-generation data center applications.

Technical Aspects of the Holey Optochip

Photomicrograph of the back of the IBM Holey Optochip with lasers and photodectors visible through substrate holes.  

Parallel optics is a fiber optic technology primarily targeted for high-data, short-reach multimode fiber systems that are typically less than 150 meters. Parallel optics differs from traditional duplex fiber optic serial communication in that data is simultaneously transmitted and received over multiple optical fibers. 

A single 90-nanometer IBM CMOS transceiver IC with 24 receiver and 24 transmitter circuits becomes a Holey Optochip with the fabrication of forty-eight through-silicon holes, or “optical vias” – one for each transmitter and receiver channel. Simple post-processing on completed CMOS wafers with all devices and standard wiring levels results in an entire wafer populated with Holey Optochips. The transceiver chip measures only 5.2 mm x 5.8 mm. Twenty-four channel, industry-standard 850-nm VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) and photodiode arrays are directly flip-chip soldered to the Optochip. This direct packaging produces high-performance, chip-scale optical engines. The Holey Optochips are designed for direct coupling to a standard 48-channel multimode fiber array through an efficient microlens optical system that can be assembled with conventional high-volume packaging tools. 

Other Highlights at the OFC Conference 

Also at the OFC Conference, IBM researchers are presenting the following advances: 

• Two optical links that are the most power efficient ever reported. Underpinned by a novel receiver design, a complete single-channel VCSEL based link achieved 15Gb/s operation while consuming only 20 miliwatts of power. This represents the first practical demonstration of an optical interconnect that attains the efficiency levels that will be required for exascale computers circa 2020.
• A complete single-channel 40 Gb/s VCSEL-based optical link that not only sets a new benchmark for speed, but also operates at this high data rate with significant margin. Transmitter pre-distortion for end-to-end link performance improvement, an equalization technique that IBM has pioneered, enabled this breakthrough. 

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