Friday, July 31, 2009

Windows Xp Pro Sp3 Genuine Iso-image

Size: 700.00 MB
Applications : Windows : English
This is a bootable ISO image and it includes:
1. Windows XP Professional with SP3 integrated - Volume Licence Edition x86 (original)
2. Integrated the new IE8, WMP11 and all hotfixes and updates up to 19.Apr.2009
including .Net Framework 1.1, 2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1
OnePiece_Windows_XP_Post-SP3_UpdatePack_v2.3.0_ENU
(includes latest DirectX Mar.2009 and Flash Player 10.0.22.87)
(thanks to nonno fabio)
Stimpy_JD976_DotNetFx_3in1_Addon_v2.2
(thanks to jd976 and Stimpy)
3. Integrated latest Java 6.13
4. Integrated latest Intel SATA drivers and inf updates
5. Added MS signed themes addon v6.1
………………………………………………………………………………………
NOTHING IS REMOVED from the original ISO except folders DOCS, DOTNETFX, SUPPORT and VALUEADD.
VLK is integrated (included in ISO as well).
TCPIP.sys patched - 1000 connections.
Uxtheme.dll patched.
Passes MS genuine validation and do NOT need activation
MD5: f084c1ac4d3371b3fcb246ebdeaf3d17
SHA1: 6c234b0a8b5f05fb551f76355e950a667c8aa02e

Intel in losses for the first time for 23 years

Company Intel has delivered the financial report on US GAAP for 2nd sq. 2009 According to its data, as a whole the gain for this period has made $8 billion However a corporation dead loss for the accounting period is measured by $398 million (from them $38 miillion losses on investments into securities and payment of percent). Operational costs for accounting quarter have made $12 million, loss on the action - $0,07. Year before net profit Intel for similar three months has made $1,6 billion Intel for the first time since 1986 has finished quarter with a dead loss. The corporation reporting was knocked down by the considered penalty at a rate of $1,45 mlrd, on the company the European market regulators. If not it not on GAAP net profit Intel would make about $0,18 on the action.

Despite it, investors and representatives Intel look at results of corporation c optimism. Financial results Intel for the second quarter reflect improvement of market conditions in a segment of personal computers: We have shown the maximum growth of results of the second quarter in comparison with the first sinnce 1988 We expect that second half of year traditionally will appear even more strongly, - the president and CEO Intel has commented. Floor of Otellini. (Paul Otellini).

Strategic investments Intel into new technologies and innovative products, together with the further orientation on efficiency of operations, will continue to bear fruit in the form of strengthening of our financial indicators, - he has added. Despite losses, the market has positively apprehended report Intel. In 3rd quarter 2009 Intel predicts the income at a rate of $8,5 mlrd ($400 million plus/minus), a ead loss from investments into securities and as a result payments of percent at level $80 million Total profit, under own forecasts of the company, in 3rd sq. will increase by 53 % plus/minus of 2 % in comparison with 51 % for the previous period. As transfers Reuters, the publication of financial results Intel was favorably reflected in the auctions by company securities.

So, following the results of the expanded trading session in the USA actions Intel have grown almost on 8,5 %.

At the auctions in Frankfurt the action price has increased by 8,1 %.

In spite of the fact that Intel feels on itself consequences of economic recession and reduction of IT Expenses, Pol Otellini has declared in April that personal computer sales were as much as possible low in 1st quarter, and now the market comes back to the seasonal tendencies. In the accounting period of sale Intel in Asia have grown on 21 % and have made $4,41 mlrd, they also have increased by 12 % in Northern and Southern Americas and have decreased on 9,4 % in Europe. As processors Intel are used in more than 75 % of the personal computer all over the world, financial results of the company are a barometre of a condition of all world computer sector.

MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 Motherboard

The latest socket AM3 compatible Phenom II processors have been available for several weeks now and they had proven in our initial coverage to be excellent chips, a notable improvement over their predecessors in several respects, including overclocking and in their support for higher clocked DDR3 memory. Thanks to the Phenom II's ability to use both DDR2 and DDR3 memory types, they can be used in existing AM2+ boards, which is an excellent solution for many current AMD users. The AMD 790GX chipset offers an excellent low cost DDR2 solution for Phenom II owners but currently available implementations lack some of the higher-end bells and whistles that many enthusiasts and gamers want. The 790GX chipset technically supports Hybrid CrossFireX, allowing two or more discrete graphics cards to team up with the IGP, but many currently available boards generally only offer a single physical PCI-E x16 slot, there are exceptions of course but only a few.


While AMD's new Phenom II chips can also support DDR2 and are compatible with existing AM2+ boards, their full potential is only realized when equipped with a few sticks of fast DDR3. Unfortunately, so far, the pool of available DDR3-enabled AM3 boards has been rather small with only a few choices. The majority of available DDR3 equipped AM3 boards also lack the multiple PCI-E x16 slots necessary to support CrossFireX. One of the few boards with both DDR3 and full CrossFireX support is ASUS' M4A79T Deluxe, which we briefly checked out in our initial look at the AM3 Phenom IIs. Today, we'll be examining the second DDR3 full CrossFireX capable AM3 board to hit our labs, the MSI 790FX-GD70, and we'll be putting it up against the M4A79T, head-to-head to see how it stacks up.

Asus Deluxe P6TD, Support Intel Core i7 and 24GB RAM

Asus motherboard has been released "xtreme Design" series with the newest name P6TD Deluxe, which is compatible with the CPU Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme, DDR3 2000 support RAM 24GB capacity with 6 DIMM slots, 3 PCI Express 2.0, and 14 USB 2.0 ports, for create more compact motherboard. Asus also adds Cool3 + Stack cooler that is able to control the heat, as well as additional fluid cooler and a few variations of the system overclocking.

Hardware P6TD Deluxe Asus motherboard has support Intel Socket 1366 based on Intel Core i7, including Extreme Edition support the Intel Dynamic Speed technology. Asus Deluxe Motherboard P6TD xtreme has features that ensure that the use of power that is stable, and Turbo V process to support real-time dynamic.

Connection prepared for Asus Deluxe motherboard P6TD as dual gigabit Ethernet, NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX, eSATA and FireWire port, port S / PDIF optical and coaxial, and 6 port SATA 3Gb / s. Model P6TD Deluxe motherboard is equipped with Intel X58 chipset, support for a stable system performance and better control of multi-core processing power and managed effectively. For the price this motherboard in India, Asus provides a range of Rs. 21.350, or $ 440

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5900

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5900 @ 2.20GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series 256Mb
3GB Ram
not sure what else you need to help me...
like i said i am new at this so i dont know where to find the specs.
if i am missing anything than please let me know and i will try and find it

update just did this hope it helps
Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T7500
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition SP1 (Build 6001)
CPU Arch : 1 CPU - 2 Cores - 2 Threads
CPU PSN : Intel Core2 Duo CPU T5900 @ 2.20GHz
CPU EXT : MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 EM64T
CPUID : 6.F.D / Extended : 6.F
CPU Cache : L1 : 2 x 32 / 2 x 32 KB - L2 : 2048 KB
Core : Merom (65 nm) / Stepping : M0

Freq : 2194.65 MHz (199.51 * 11)
MB Brand : Dell
MB Model : 0P132H
NB : Intel PM45 rev 07
SB : Intel 82801IM (ICH9-M) rev 03

GPU Type : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series
DirectX Version : 10.0

RAM : 3072 MB DDR2 Dual Channel
RAM Speed : 399 MHz (1:2) @ 6-6-6-18
Slot 1 : 1024MB (6400)
Slot 1 Manufacturer : Hyundai Electronics
Slot 2 : 2048MB (6400)
Slot 2 Manufacturer : Hyundai Electronics

Test1Test2Test3 SSD Intel X25-M G2

Nos confrères de Hardware.fr nous proposent à la lecture un article portant sur le dernier SSD de chez Intel : le X-25M G2.

SSD Intel X-25M G2
Cliquez pour agrandir

Ce dernier a été disséqué avant d’être mis en face d’autres SSD :

• Intel X25-M V1 80 Go
• OCZ Core V2
• OCZ Apex
• OCZ Vertex 30 & 120 Go
• Samsung PM410
• Samsung PS410
• Samsung PB22-J 64 Go & 256 Go
• Mtron MOBI 3500

“Intel lance une nouvelle version du SSD X25-M. Moins cher grâce aux puces Flash 34nm, il est également censé être plus performant. Qu’en est-il en pratique, comparé à 10 autres SSD ?“

A découvrir en cliquant sur la source.

Sony VAIO VGN-FW465J/H 16.4-Inch

Sony VAIO VGN-FW465J/H 16.4-Inch Laptop – Gray. its Great for watching widescreen movies or viewing two web sites side-by-side, the 16.4-inch screen also minimizes the annoying black bars you see when playing widescreen movies. And the Blu-ray Disc optical drive (read-only) lets you play high-definition Blu-ray Disc movies in crystal-clear resolution. You’ll also enjoy the Dolby Sound Room suite of audio technologies for immersive surround sound pumped through a home theater speaker system or just a pair of headphones. Making your own movies is also easy with the included Sony Movie Story software–just choose the supplied template and professional-looking cutaways, cross-fades and soundtrack syncing are automatically done for you.The Sony VAIO FW with 16.4-inch high-definition display in gray.Enjoy high-definition Blu-ray Disc playback as well as burn CDs and DVDs.

Reminiscent of a rolling wave, the smooth, curved lines of are as functional as they are attractive–from the iconic new cylindrical hinge to the sloping bend where the keyboard meets the display. Striking, yet sophisticated, this deep black VAIO FW notebook utilizes advanced paint technology that’s applied to the magnesium chassis, making the color appear to shift in tint at different angles.

It’s powered by the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor–with Centrino 2 technology–which boosts speed, reduces power requirements, and saves on battery life. The 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 includes a quick 1066 MHz front-side bus and 3 MB of L2 cache, providing an optimized, multithreaded architecture for improved multimedia and multitasking performance. It also includes Intel’s 5100AGN wireless LAN, which will connect to draft 802.11n routers and offers compatibility with 802.11a/b/g networks as well. And you can use wireless headsets for video chats and stream music to compatible speakers using the embedded Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity (featuring the A2DP music streaming profile).

A built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam (with integrated microphone) lets you join in on video conferences as well as make long-distance VoIP calls. Other features include a 320 GB hard drive (7200 RPM), 4 GB of installed RAM (8 GB maximum), ExpressCard 34 slot, Gigabit Ethernet, both Memory Stick and SD card readers, and pre-installed 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1).

This Sony notebook is Energy Star certified, and has received a Silver EPEAT designation for meeting standards to help reduce its environmental impact. Additionally, it is RoHS-compliant, effectively reducing the environmental impact by restricting the use of lead, mercury and certain other hazardous substances.

Helpful consumer’s review
I just got this laptop on Saturday. Upgraded to Windows 7 RC the same day. This computer is phenomenal. Great, and I mean great for watching blue ray movies. I dont know how time will influence my opinion of this computer but my first impressions are it is a power house of fun. Performance is great in all areas tested so far, have yet to do any gaming though. Oh by the way yes the AW series is designed for “Photographers” but this is a perfectly capable computer, the 18″ screen on the AW series is a bit to big to lug around in any photographers gear bag, this computer is superior performance wise then athe VGN-AW310J (which is priced higher) it just has a 2 inch smaller screen, which to some may find important. I am happy with better performance than a bigger screen since I have a 22″ samsung anyway.

Intel's i7: Codename Nehalem

It is hard to describe Intel’s release of the Core and Core2 series of processor as anything but a slam-dunk which has made the “blue” company the undisputed performance leader in the desktop segment. To further top it, with the migration to the P1266 45 nm process node including the Hafnium-based transistors, Intel has also set new standards with respect to power consumption. So, the bottom line is that Intel is currently the undisputed performance leader. One of the beauties, however, in the wonderful world of processors is that there is no standing still. The Red Queen rules and you have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are.

Enter the next generation CPU - Codename Nehalem.

Between Legacy and Whodunnit-First

Any almost picture-perfect product puts the thumb screws on the designers and engineers envisioning the next generation, especially since nobody wants to repeat the Netburst scenario, which was not too bad at the time after all. At the same time, it never hurts to take a big step back and look at accomplishments past and, needless to say, also what the competition has achieved. Sometimes, the borders are not exactly clear-cut, a case in point is HyperThreading that originally was conceived as a feature of the Alpha EV8 architecture in the last millennium but refined and brought into production by Intel as part of the Pentium4 feature set. Integrated memory controllers were used by Intel in some of their processors that never saw the light of day but AMD was the first company to actually bring this feature to market. This list could go on and on but the actual point we are trying to make is that there is no point in accusing any one company of plagiarism. The entire process is called technological development and progress and without cross-fertilization, we wouldn’t even have computers to begin with. But I digress.

Nehalem Under The Hood

The Front Side Bus: Legacy Beyond Words

In all their beauty and power, Intel’s processors have had one Achilles heel, namely the (A)GTL bus, which, with the inception of the Pentium II and its back-side cache bus became known as front side bus or FSB. The backside of the cartridge along with the cache are long gone, and therefore, by definition, there can’t be a front side either but who cares, the acronym FSB has persistently been abused and become a colloquialism to describe the connection between the CPU and the system logic, particularly the memory controller hub. In detail, the FSB is a 64-bit, bidirectional point to point connection between the CPU and the NorthBridge, with additional command and status lines to indicate for example a cache hit.

With a single processor, the FSB (to stick with this atrocious misnomer) certainly suffices, at least up to a certain frequency and since the frequency race of single core CPUs is over, we may never know where the real border would have been. Add a second CPU, and all of a sudden, both have to share the same bus for memory accesses and communication with the rest of the system including DMA of any busmaster and the associated cache snooping. In the case of the P4, we measured as many as 400 CPU cycles going to waste for a simple memory access of a network card or other busmastering peripheral, during which no other traffic could be handled by the FSB. Any dirty cache occurrence also forces the data to be dumped from the first or second level cache to the main memory in order to be accessible by the second CPU.

Arguably, in the case of the Core2-based dual core processors, the sharing of the L2 caches between the two cores on each die greatly remedied the situation but even “intelligent die pairing” does not solve the issue of cache coherency between four cores on two separate dies. Even if they share the same package the two dual core processors still need to communicate among each other using the shared FSB. Along these lines, it only takes a look at the extremely poor memory usage efficiency of any quad core CPU, capped at some 65% of the theoretical maximum despite the use of prefetching and buffering and any other trick known to man, to appreciate the end of life symptoms of the architecture. At the time, a number of optimizations such as “Smart Memory Access” technology were implemented to ameliorate the issues at hand but even then and despite the fact that the Core2 in its various iterations delivered Best of Class performance, it was foreseeable that future revisions of the architecture needed to rely on entirely different strategies.

Intel Core i7 Power Plays

In our initial article about the Core i7, codename Nehalem, we were stunned by the power efficiency of Intel’s new CPU, particularly, as we stated, since the measured processor power consumption also comprised that of the memory controller – a saving on the system level of somewhere in the order of 15-20W under load. In the course of numerous discussions, it became obvious that the numbers we measured did not quite add up to the thermal load. After the embargo on the Core i7 was lifted, data sheets became available proving our assumptions wrong, in that the memory controller was NOT part of the power we measured through the VRMs. At the same time, CanardPC and several other websites like HardTecs4U posted additional information regarding the overall power configuration of the Nehalem CPU, which is somewhat different from what we have come to know in the past from CPUs offered by Intel or AMD.

Strategies for Maximizing the Revenue of Intellectual Property

Patents are only good if they are used. Use of a patent can entail securing of a market segment, litigation against infriging parties violating the patent protection of a disclosed invention or sharing of the technology with third party manufacturers in exchange for royalties and licensing fees. The latter is by far the most desirable and easiest approach, particularly if the two parties involved share mutual interests and the willingness to cooperate. Often enough the expectations of the licensor are somewhat different from those of the licensor, in that case, a third party mediator can be invaluable.

Intellectual Property as Corporate Asset and Revenue Strategies

Intellectual property, specifically patents, not only serve the purpose of protecting technology within the manufacturing repertoire of the patent holder but can also be used to generate revenues through licensing fees, royalties, and selling the technology to interested second parties. Finding products that infringe on the patented technology and asserting the claims against them may generate a similar revenue stream. Instead of taking the assertive (stick) licensing approach by finding infringement and taking legal action against infringing parties, a more rewarding approach can be pursued through a synergistic (carrot) licensing campaign. The rationale is the same as that originally used in the inception of the patent system, that is, making available cutting edge technologies to second parties who see a business opportunity in manufacturing and further developing the technologies protected by international patent rights under the umbrella of a mutually beneficial relationship.

In the approach outlined above, it is essential that both parties engaged in the licensing agreement benefit from this transaction. For the licensee, the immediate benefit is the access to the technology disclosed in the patent; for the licensor the benefits can be more or less immediate, depending on the structuring of the agreement. What should be considered is the issue of immediate or short-term revenues vs. total revenues over the life cycle of the patents and continuations thereof. In some cases, it may be better to accept a one-time licensing transaction for a lump sum for which the rights to use the patented technology is granted. In other cases, it may be better to accept a smaller up-front payment with periodic renewals of the license and a royalty stream that depends on the sales of products that use the patented technology. As discussed below, this is particularly true for leading-edge technology that is likely to become an industry standard.

Mutual Benefits of the Synergistic (Carrot) Licensing Approach

In the majority of cases a long-term strategy will yield more rewarding results. This is particularly true in situations where emerging technologies are disclosed. The reasons are as follows:

* 1) During embryonic stages of any given technology, the revenues from products within that technology field are still minimal.
* 2) R&D costs need to be amortized.
* 3) The manufacturer will need to show revenue or revenue potential in order to stay in business.

The above three points stress the need for considerate negotiations. If the licensing is perceived as a penalty rather than a mutually beneficial purchase of knowledge and intellectual property, chances are that the manufacturer of the embryonic technology will move on into other technology areas or find ways to work around the patents, often at the expense of an inferior product. Therefore, the best approach is to offer the technology at an initial price point that is reasonable and yet grants the licensee a competitive advantage in the field by allowing him to implement the technically most elegant and cost effective solution in their emerging line of product. This type of initial purchase is generally referred to as token payment.

Having an agreement in place further protects the licensee from similar patents that may have been filed later than those licensed and will allow the manufacturer of the product to accelerate the product development cycle and protects them from potential lawsuits in the future. In addition, the licensor is often pursuing technologies that are complementary to the patented invention and a licensing agreement can be used to initiate a more profound business relation between both companies. Again, both parties win.

Typically, this type of licensing is referred to as synergistic or carrot licensing since it results in a reward for both parties. In the majority of cases, agreements are structured on a tiered royalty schedule that will take into account the levels of market acceptance, amortization schedules of R&D and finally End Of Life when reduced profit margins and competition enter the market place. These different phases will need to be evaluated separately with custom-tailored royalty schedules, performance incentives and technology cross-pollination agreements interwoven with the payment schedule.

Market Acceptance as a Measure of Patent Value

A different aspect of any partnership originating from a licensing agreement is that every patent is only as valuable as the acceptance of the patented technology in the market place. The most elegant technical solution and patent may not generate revenues if no one uses the technology during the life cycle of the patent. Therefore, it is mandatory for any patent holder to actively pursue early adaptors and to grant them favorable conditions, knowing that adaptation of the technology in the market will draw more licensees for additional royalty opportunities.

The Need for a Third Party Mediator

Among the obstacles often faced when negotiating a synergistic licensing agreement is the perception that each party will relentlessly pursue their own interests to maximize the benefits to themselves. Associated with this perception is the need for keeping company trade secrets concealed. The result is often a lack of communication that can stall the negotiations or cause the entire business transaction to fail.

The most efficient way to prevent politics and personal issues from keeping the business transaction from being successfully concluded is to engage a trusted, impartial, third party coordinator with experience in setting up licensing agreements and a thorough understanding of the technology, patent management, and the market place. This coordinator needs to have access to the "full picture" of expectations of both parties in order to custom-tailor the most mutually beneficial business plan.

AMD Regor and Callisto, the New X2s

It is always refreshing to see some new hardware coming out. Needless to say that the more exciting stuff always concerns the high-end solutions but not everybody is in the market for this kind of toy. From a financial standpoint, the low end has always been the "bread and butter" for any company and who doesn’t believe it just needs to check Intel’s latest statements regarding their Atom sales.

In the last months, AMD has gained substantial market share. Some of it has been offset by the slumping Opteron sales but the net effect is still an increase in market share. With the current CPU architecture, there is very little chance to compete against Intel’s Core i7 but again, if Intel has Nehalem and Atom as their key players, that leaves the door wide open for everything else in between. After the original Phenom, which was arguably a dud, Phenom II has picked up performance and, especially in the AM3 flavor, has reached parity or has outpaced most of the Core2 processors, at least on a $ for $ basis.

Phenom II, though, is costly to manufacture; 758 million transistors, even if they are crammed into 258 mm2, still take up 258 mm2 which translates in a limited number of die per wafer. In order to remain price-competitive especially in the lower market segment, AMD needs a smaller die with high performance and the latter is something that the original Athlon X2 can no longer deliver, not even with migrating the design to a 45 nm process. On the other hand, all current IC designs, including Phenom (II) are fairly modular, with the individual building blocks comprising the cores, the NB/IMC and the system request interface (SRI). In a nutshell, the recipe in this case was to take two cores and tie them to the dual channel NB/IMC after stripping out the 6 MB L3 cache. On the HT side, the known-good SRI didn’t need any replacement, therefore, everything stayed as usual.

AMD Processors and SSE4 Instruction Set: SSE4.1 vs. SSE4a

AMD Processors and SSE4 Instruction Set: SSE4.1 vs. SSE4a

With the Deneb/Heka core, AMD has added the SSE4 instruction set and as such we would have expected to see the SSE4 mode enabled in VirtualDub, instead of forcing the processors into SSE2 emulation. However, even the latest version of DivX does NOT enable SSE4 in the CODEC configuration panel unless it is an Intel CPU that is running. In order to understand this, it we need to take a look at the SSE4 instruction set:

SSE4 consists of a total of 54 instructions, 47 of which were introduced with the Penryn design as SSE 4.1. The Nehalem design added another 7 instructions referred to as SSE4.2 to the full spectrum of SSE4. AMD currently only supports 4 instructions of the entire SSE4 instruction set, at the same time, AMD added two additional instructions including unaligned SSE load-operation instructions (which formerly required 16-byte alignment). AMD's subset of SSE4 instructions is referred to as SSE4a and currently, aside from the four "core" instructions, the different AMD and Intel subsets are mutually exclusive. In other words, SSE4 is not necessarily SSE4.

On a side note, we have never been able to actually see the quality difference between standard encoding and SSE4 full search. Please keep in mind that the difference may be academic when looking at the two different sets of benchmark results. The bottom line for this benchmark is that, while we are showing it, we need to make absolutely sure that everybody looking at the results is aware of the fact that DivX does not support SSE4a at this moment. We are still waiting for the next CODEC update that will possibly implement AMD-oriented optimizations as well.

The New Stuff Phenom II X4 945

With respect to hardware, nothing really seems to have changed, there are no changes in chache size, the '955 features the full size 6 MB L3 cache, nor has the transistor count changed. Rated frequency is up a bit, from 3.0 GHz in the X4 940 to 3.2 GHz in the 955 and, of course, the socket pinout is AM3, meaning a 938 pin-count and native DDR3 support with backward compatibility with any AM2/AM2+ board as long as the BIOS supports the new CPU. At the same time, AMD is launching the Phenom II X4 945, which essentially replaces the X4 940 in Socket AM3 flavor and runs natively at 3.0 GHz. In so far, there is really nothing new but some tweaks must have been applied because new BIOS revisions are required to operate the new CPU offerings. Moreover, we observed a few anomalies in benchmarking behavior that further support our suspicions that more fine-tuning went on under the hood than what AMD publicly discloses.

Phenom II X4 945

Before going into benchmarks - arguably what a lot of this article is all about - there are a few improvements in AMD's Overdrive (AOD) version 3, a beta version of which we had, introducing an amalgamate of EPP and XMP and Turbo Boost in a single software interface. And guess what, it is actually done in a pretty smart fashion (no surprise there since your's truly had a finger in some of the feature definitions).

AMD Phenom :- AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE

2009 been been an interesting year so far, to say the least. AMD has released its Phenom II line of CPU to breathe some fresh wind into the desktop world, Intel has released their line of Nehalem EB 2-way server CPUs while delaying the launch of the Core i5 (if that is to be the final name of the Westmere line of processor) and all of a sudden, nothing is like it was before. In turn, AMD has been forced to pull in the launch of the Istanbul server processors from October to May - resulting in a somewhat short life for Shanghai. In the graphics market, AMD's RADEON offerings continue to dominate on price and performance and at the same time, the fab business spin-off has created some cash cushion at precisely the time where cash has become the most valuable commodity in the business. So, not all is bad in Austin / Toronto. in fact, at least from the outside, things look quite a bit better than what the gloomy downhill perspective of last fall forecasted.

Intel's Nehalem has raised the stakes, combining a superior architecture with what some might call some very dirty tricks like dynamic overclocking or Turbo Boost of single cores. In all fairness, though, whatever works works and adding custom adaptational mechanisms to accomodate the heterotypic landscape of applications in transition from single- to multithreading is a perfect example of thinking outside the box with surprisingly good results. On the other hand, if it is out there and public knowledge, then the technology is fair game for anyone - with the minor issue of intellectual property that could throw a monkey wrench into the global adoption. Needless to say that there is a lot of prior art in the public domain, resulting in the fact that patent protection often can only be obtained for some very specific ways of doing things - rather than the operational principle - even if the specific way is the most elegant way of doing things. Likewise, nobody wants to be called a copycat. Consequenty, sometimes, we see some more awkward realizations of technology maturing to life, or maybe, they only look awkward at first glance, because we have been primed by an alternative method of doing things already. Those are some of the thoughts I have been pondering in the last two weeks, benchmarking and evaluating AMD's latest desktop processor a.k.a. Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition.

Hardware | Hello AMD Socket G34 | AMD's 12-core and 8-core processors get a new home in 2010

AMD's 12-core and 8-core processors get a new home in 2010


AMD's newest roadmap reveals a major shift in early 2010: the company will once again overhaul its socket architecture to make way for DDR3 support.

The new socket, dubbed G34, will also ship with two new second-generation 45nm processors. The first of these processors, 8-core Sao Paolo, is described as a "twin native-quadcore Shanghai processor" by one AMD engineer. Shanghai, expected to ship late this year, is AMD's first 45nm shrink of the ill-fated Barcelona processor.

This past April, AMD guidance hinted at a 12-core behemoth of a processor. This CPU is now named Magny-Cours after the French town made famous by its Formula One French Grand Prix circuit.

Both of these new processors will feature four HyperTransport 3 interconnects, 12MB of L3 cache and 512KB L2 cache per core.

Intel's next-generation Nehalem chip, scheduled for launch late this year but already well leaked, is the first to feature tri-channel DDR3 memory support. AMD will up the ante in 2010, with registered and unregistered quad-channel DDR3 support. Current roadmaps claim standard support will include speeds from 800 to 1600 MHz.

AMD insiders would reveal very little about the G34 socket, other than its a derivative of the highly secretive G3 socket that was to replace Socket F (1207). As far as company documentation goes, G3 ceased to exist in March 2008, and has been replaced with the G34 program instead. The first of these sockets will be available for developers in early 2009.

We counted 1974 pin connects on the leaked G34 diagram -- 767 more pins than AMD's current LGA1207 socket. Given the additional interconnect pathways for DDR3 and the HyperTransport buses, a significant increase in the number of pins was to be expected.

The addition of a fourth HyperTransport link may prove to be one of the most interesting features of the Sao Paulo and Magny-Cours processors. In a full four-socket configuration, each physical processor will dedicate a HyperTransport link to each of the other sockets. This leaves one additional HyperTransport lane per processor, which AMD documentation claims will finally be used for its long-discussed Torrenza program.

The hype behind Torrenza largely disappeared after AMD's Barcelona launch sour, though the company has hinted before that Torrenza will make a perfect interconnect to GPUs or IBM Cell processors. This is exactly the type of setup roadmapped for the fastest public supercomputer in the world, IBM's Roadrunner.

Intel® Modem Chipset Drivers

Intel® Modem Chipset Drivers
Service or Support for Your Modem
Intel designs modem chipsets – it does not manufacture or support modems. For service and technical support for your modem, please contact the modem manufacturer.
Drivers for Your Modem
Intel no longer provides generic drivers for modem chipsets. The best place to get drivers for your modem is directly from the company that manufactured it.

This information is the complete extent of support that Intel provides for end users regarding these modem chipset products. Additional technical support requests need to be addressed to the modem manufacturer. If you can't determine the modem manufacturer, please contact your place of purchase.

new classes of portable devices with ten times more battery life

new classes of portable devices with ten times more battery life

Sub-threshold integrated circuit technology requires only 300mV to operate.

Intel showed 4-way SIMD (single instruction multiple data) vector processing accelerator in 45nm in CMOS operated below its gate threshold voltage at the ISSCC technology conference.

"This will lead to new classes of portable devices designed to take advantage of greater battery life, which in turn will drive popularity and uptake."
Prediction two - low-cost silicon photonics for faster, more reliable data transmission

Silicon photonics optics channels will be used inside and outside PCs.

For example, remote optical memory can be used to create converged I/Os so a PC could have a single unified connector for a computer display, LAN, printer, wireless connection, scanner, USB and so on. Furthermore, because an optical channel does not require design engineering to ensure speed - its inherent in its nature - speed is implicit which has all sorts of positive implications such as true HD down loads, storage capability and terabit networking.
Prediction three - new heights of realism in visual computing

There will be a shift from dedicated hardware graphics engines to general hardware running dedicated software as this has greater flexibility so features such as shadow map algorithms - an aspect of rendering that creates tiny ragged outline edges - can be replaced by 'soft shadows'.

'Order independent transparency' - the ability to create overlaid images which are clearly transparent, will be vastly improved.

Overall, these benefits will deliver new heights of realism to computer generated imagery.

Immediate applications areas are gaming sphere, but it will also have implications for business applications and the film industry.
Prediction four - realistic computer generated images

Some types of complex graphic rendering requires the use of data sharing between the CPU and the graphic processing unit (GPU).

However, the hardware-based model for graphics does not easily facilitate this at present.

The sharing of virtualised memory between the CPU and the GPU will deliver the highest performance yet, for what are typically very complicated interactions.

For example, complex data structures can be shared between the two with applications easily split between the CPU and GPU.
Prediction five - malware will become a thing of the past

Malware, whatever form it takes whether viruses, trojans or worms, will be beaten by hardware-based techniques that protect at the deepest level.

Today Intel has 'trusted execution technology' which is a set of processor hardware extensions and chipsets that have security characteristics such as measured launch and protected execution.

It achieves this by creating an environment in which applications can run within their own space, protected from all other software on the system.

To a degree, the success of hardware-based security is also dependent on how much effort vendors are prepared to put into securing their products. But once it is known that there is a solution that successfully addresses the problem of malware market forces will drive vendors in this direction.
Prediction six - personal internet devices will be truly personal

Mobile internet devices (Mids) are already powerful enough to be useful and the introduction of sub-threshold devices (prediction one) mean these will run all day.

Add this to a continuous Internet connection and users will, for example, be able translate words into other languages and hear then pronounced, or with GPS get a constant geographically-based pollen prediction for that day.

Ten years from now Mids will be ubiquitous and application developers will flood the market with all sorts of ingenious ideas.
Prediction seven - interactive computing devices make 'composable computing' a reality

'Composable computing' is the impromptu assembly of a logical computer from wireless components that are nearby - enabled by wireless links, automatically assembling networks, and simple graphical user interfaces that allow available components selected and connected as the user desires.

For example, images taken on a mobile device could be directed onto a nearby TV, or the music playing on an MP3 player could be sent to a HiFi in the room.
Prediction eight - next-generation TV will not be about pixels

There is a limit to how big a TV screen can be without needing larger rooms, and a limit to the amount of resolution this size of screen needs.

Beyond this, TVs will have to differentiate themselves by delivering further information.

For example, click on a athlete in a running race to bring up biographical details in a window.

Viewing will be from any location, delivered through various means such as 'over-the-air' and multi-cast IP, and available on a wide range of devices from notebook PCs to mobile internet devices and smart phones.
Prediction nine - seamlessly connected 3-D worlds

3D worlds, perhaps the World of Warcraft and Second Life, will overlap and be used for more practical activities.

Companies already get feedback from virtual users about new products before they are brought to the real market, and virtual spaces can be created as meeting places where employees can exchange information regardless of geographical location.

With the impending advances in computer graphics and growth in devices, how long will it be before a company like Amazon.com, for example, establishes a 3D presence with shopping aisles and book shelves that can be entered via virtual worlds such as Second Life?
Prediction ten - and finally a spectrum revolution is looming

Already many devices contain two or three wireless connectivity options and as television becomes more interactive this need will become more pressing.

As things stand today, the spectrum is fragmented and fairly chaotic, parts are saturated, and parts almost empty.

It's unlikely that this will happen in a smooth manner, as many organisations will wish to maintain dominance of their spectrum segment.

However, for example, as broadcast TV eventually concedes its position to interactive TV which is tailored to each user's preferences, spectrum will eventually be freed up.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Intel, a roundup of content on the chip giant's technology. As well as presenting news coverage from Electronics Weekly, we draw on wider resources available on the Web.

HP, Yahoo, Intel Launch Cloud Computing Test Bed

HP, Yahoo, Intel Launch Cloud Computing Test Bed


The mystery announcement we mentioned yesterday was just released - Yahoo, Hewlett Packard and Intel are jointly announcing a new cloud computing research initiative called the Cloud Computing Test Bed. Users will be able to build and launch new applications on the platform.

It’s being described as “a globally distributed, Internet-scale testing environment designed to encourage research on the software, data center management and hardware issues associated with cloud computing at a larger scale than ever before.” Other partners include the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) (which is distinct from the MDA, I believe, which is unfortunate), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany:

The test bed will initially consist of six “centers of excellence” at IDA facilities, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Steinbuch Centre for Computing of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, HP Labs, Intel Research and Yahoo!. Each location will host a cloud computing infrastructure, largely based on HP hardware and Intel processors, and will have 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores capable of supporting the data-intensive research associated with cloud computing. The test bed locations are expected to be fully operational and made accessible to researchers worldwide through a selection process later this year.

The test bed will leverage Yahoo!’s technical leadership in open source projects by running Apache Hadoop — an open source, distributed computing project of the Apache Software Foundation — and other open source, distributed computing software such as Pig, the parallel programming language developed by Yahoo! Research.

“The HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed furthers our commitment to the global, collaborative research community that is advancing the new sciences of the Internet,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research. “With this test bed, not only can researchers test applications at Internet scale, they will also have access to the underlying computing systems to advance understanding of how systems software and hardware function in a cloud environment.”

Researchers at HP Labs, the central research arm of HP, will use the test bed to conduct advanced research in the areas of intelligent infrastructure and dynamic cloud services. HP Labs recently sharpened its focus to help HP and its customers capitalize on the industry’s shift toward cloud computing, a driving force behind HP’s vision of Everything as a Service. With Everything as a Service, devices and services will interact seamlessly through the cloud, and businesses and individuals will use services that anticipate their needs based on location, preferences, calendar and communities.

More on Yahoo, HP and Intel’s websites. This gets Yahoo in the game that Microsoft, Amazon and Google have been playing for some time.