Around 100 laptop designs based on Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming Puma laptop chip platform are being readied ahead of the chips' scheduled launch in June, according to a company spokesman.

"That's twice as many designs as we had at the launch of our last mobile platform," said John Taylor, director of product and strategic marketing at AMD's Graphics Products Group, speaking at a news conference in Singapore.

AMD plans to launch its Puma laptop platform during the Computex trade show in June, where many of the upcoming laptops based on the chips are expected to be on display. Pairing greater power efficiency with improved graphics, Puma is based on AMD's upcoming Turion X2 Ultra processor, previously known by the code name Griffin.

The late sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We certainly live in a magical world. We're surrounded by technology, yet we seldom stop to consider the amazing advances that we've come to rely on every day. Whether we're surfing the Web, making a call on our mobile phones, or watching a DVD movie on our big-screen TV, we take our modern conveniences for granted.

Here, then, is a peek inside the magician's hat at ten technologies that are keys to our digital age. Without realizing it, you've probably used at least one of them already today--if not all. But whether you're aware of them or not, without these technologies our world would be a very different place.