Head over to FiringSquad if you're interested in reading a Q&A with Alienware president Alex Aguila. Aguila talks about the Dell acquisition of his company, plans to merge Alienware with the Dell XPS line, monitor size importance, future Alienware plans and a few other things.

In an experiment presumably designed to cause feelings of inadequacy in PC gamers, IBM and Georgia Tech have successfully run a silicon chip at the staggering speed of 500GHz. To approach the maximum speed of silicon-germanium chips, researchers ran the test at a temperature of -451 degrees Fahrenheit. At normal temperatures, the SiGe chip runs at speeds of 350GHz, still far superior to current consumer level technology.

To that end, IBM and Georgia Tech scientists turned down the temperature and cryogenically froze the chip at minus 451 F. It's about as cold as things get. An extremely cold temperature like that is found naturally only in outer space, but can be artificially achieved on Earth using ultracold materials such as liquid helium. Absolute zero comes at minus 459 F.

Theoretically, it is speculated that a SiGe chip could reach a mind-boggling maximum speed of approximately 1 terahertz. Such chips could be used in military or space exploration purposes. It is unclear whether they will be brought to market in time for the release of Crytek's Crysis.

Commodore is probably best known to gamers for its legendary Commodore 64 personal computer, which remains one of the bestselling computer models of all time. Last year, Netherlands-based Yeahronimo Media Ventures, Inc. completed its acquisition of the Commodore name, and changed its name to Commodore International. In September, the company announced its intention to return to the gaming market through an 18M Euro agreement with software and hardware manufacturer The Content Factory. The company stated that it would begin by leveraging "C64 retro game licenses" by way of plug-and-play devices, mobile games, and portable console games, then move on to the creation of new games for consoles and PC.

This week, that agreement was finalized. Newly formed Commodore Gaming will work with The Content Factory for a period of five years, with the option to renew. Commodore expects the results of the deal to have a strong impact on the company's financials in its current fiscal year.

CIC and Commodore Gaming will actively identify and pursue relevant M&A targets which can contribute to Commodore Gaming's ambition to become a major worldwide player in the mobile games and entertainment market.

"Gaming is one of Commodore's key historic competences, and the conclusion of this agreement emphasizes Commodore's strategy to build on the strengths of the rich Commodore heritage", says Ben van Wijhe, President and CEO of CIC. He continues: "We announced this agreement in September of 2005. Since then various alliances were already closed, for instance with Telco Gaming and Gaming Federation. Now that the license agreement is concluded, Commodore Gaming will continue to create new types of game experiences and interactions."

Since the initial announcement of the deal, most of Commodore's gaming endeavors have been focused on the mobile sector. The company has not yet announced any specific plans for its eventual larger scale development.

More tech news from the Taiwan Computex show. AnandTech coverage is here. techPowerUp looks at the ECS lineup. Motherboards.org has day two coverage. Hexus has several items. A look at cases, coolers & PSUs on PC Perspective.

While some companies are marketing monitors that display 3D video images with the help of polarized glasses, a few manufacturers are getting 3D monitors with no glasses required ready for consumer use. Philips current sells a 42" screen featuring its WOWvx technology for $11,995, but it hopes to bring the technology to consumers within two years.

TV programs and games do not have to be rewritten to take advantage of the WOW technology, said [Philips 3D president Joe] Swillens. The monitor itself will 3D-ize some content itself. Still, it helps. Viewers seem to like a combination of out-of-screen and behind-screen effects. By working with content producers, 3D effects can be orchestrated.

"Some people get a headache. Some people like it for a long time," said Martin Hiddink, a scientist at Philips Research Labs.

Naturally, Philips is developing tools to port content to 3D. One of the early users could become sports broadcasters, the company said. A base of 3D TVs at home could also encourage more 3D movies.

The technology works by using a lens array to project left and right channel images to each eye individually, negating the need for glasses but also meaning that only specially developed sets can display this autostereoscopic video content. John Korah of ColorLink, another company working in this area, believes that autostereoscopy isn't likely to catch on with home consumers in the near future. Rather, his company is targeting commercial entertainment providers such as arcade game makers to develop highly realistic arcade titles. Korah notes that he has also heard from the porn industry about possible collaborations.

According to this Bloomberg story, Intel has told several motherboard manufacters that it will be cutting prices on its Pentium CPUs in an effort to regain market share lost to AMD. Prices will be cut by as much as 60%.

Coverage of the Taiwan Computex show can be found at NGOHQ, Mad Shrimps, Hexus and Future Looks. Tech Report also has a few articles in looking at the Tyan Typhoon PC, a 1200W PSU, a HTPC case from MSI and ECS' GeForce lineup.

Tech Report has a story up about AMD's plans to release a dual-socket desktop platform later this year. With this platform, enthusiasts will be able to run two dual-core Socket AM2 Athlon 64 FX CPUs on one motherboard. Boards will also accept two dual-GPU videocards.

The guys at Techgage have a Q&A with Corsair's John Beekley, asking the company co-founder about the new Enhanced Performance Profiles technology that NVIDIA will be using in the nForce 5 chipset.

The guys at Tech Report have posted an article on S3's MultiChrome dual-GPU technology, checking out the performance of two Chrome S27 GPUs. Yes, S3 is still at it, I'm just as surprised as you are.

PC Perspective has posted a new article, taking a video look at the AGEIA PhysX PPU as used by Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and the CellFactor PPU. I hear the videos can be downloaded from a totally awesome site.

New at FiringSquad today is this AGEIA Pre-E3 Q&A. The company behind the PhysX PPU is asked about the initial response to their newly released product, the upcoming relaese of PPU supporting games in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Rise of Legends, E3 plans, and the possibility of a cheaper card.

Tech Report is reporting that Seagate plans to release a Cheetah 15K.5 SCSI drive using perpendicular recording technology later this year. By going perpendicular, Seagate can up the storage space to 300gb (up from 147gb now). Seagate also claims 125MB/s sustained transfer rates for the drive. Must ..resist..posting..perpendicular link. Ah screw it.

Tech Report has a story up reporting on the availability of computers with next-gen DVD drives. Fujitsu will be shipping a desktop and notebook PC with Blu-ray drives in Japan in June, while Toshiba is soon shipping a laptop equipped with a HD-DVD drive. The drive can also burn dual-layer DVD-+R discs.

Over at Sharky Extreme you can find a Q&A with Joni Clark, PC/Mobile Product Marketing Manager at Seagate. Topics include the merger with Maxtor, plans for 10K/15K RPM enterprise SATA drives, the future of notebook drives, solid state drives and perpendicular technology.

PC Perspective has an article on all the physics demonstrations going on at the Game Developers Conference this week. Includes video footage from NVidia and ATI tech demos.

Also at FiringSquad today is a Q&A with Antonia Chappell, Vice President of Marketing at Novint Falcon. This company is working on a touch based controller for PCs.

It's now official: Dell has bought Alienware, making the company an independent subsidiary of Dell. According to a story on FiringSquad, Alienware CEO and co-founder Alex Agulia says him and co-founder Nelson Gonzales have taken the company as far as they can on their own, and now look for Dell to help the company grow and improve further.

One of several new features at FiringSquad this morning is this Bigfoot Network Q&A. CEO Harlan Beverly is asked about the company's magical technology that will reduce lag in games.

PC Perspective has a new AGEIA PhysX physics processor technology preview, offering an overview of what the PPU can do. On FileShack you can find three demonstration videos (if you check out just one check Cell Factor). FiringSquad also has a writeup on the press conference.