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Juggle writes about "a handy build it yourself interface for using Compact Flash cards. The website even includes instructions on booting Linux off a Compact Flash card! This might be useful for car computers", or webpad-like consumer devices.

It seems that Cyrix's Webpad sparked real interest for a new way of browsing the internet. There's now a website dedicated to Pads. Hopefully, that'll mean webpad like devices running on alternative OS's will become the standard. Any idea who the people running that site are?

ZeeC writes "Here is a cool new web toy for anyone that wants to surf anywhere anytime. I wish I had this instead of my Etch-a-Sketch when I was a kid" its not an actual product, but it might be kinda cute. And did I mention that its wireless?

Intel announced at Comdex that it will make integrated processors in 2000, following a trend initiated by Cyrix with its MediaGX processors. This is the first time Intel has discussed integrating peripheral functions onto the CPU die, although they have talked about integrating the i740 into a chipset.

Intel announced at Comdex that it will make integrated processors in 2000, following a trend initiated by Cyrix with its MediaGX processors. This is the first time Intel has discussed integrating peripheral functions onto the CPU die, although they have talked about integrating the i740 into a chipset.

Cyrix will be demonstrating a Wireless Net Device called a WebPad at Comdex. I've played with one already, and really like it. It's thought of as a web-browser that you can read anywhere in your house, but could easily be extended to capture notes, etc. It has a 10 inch really bright wide-viewing angle LCD panel, and runs on a MediaGX processor. Because it uses a standard x86 but is application specific, it can run any OS (currently QNX but could be Linux, WinCE, OpenDOS, whatever) without compatibility with legacy software being of great issue. It's got its own loudspeakers so I listened to the BBC world news over the internet on it. It's radio range is pretty good too (500 feet) and it worked outside. I really hope it takes off as I'd like to buy one. Hopefully it will be sufficiently open to enable a Linux port which means that someone out there needs to start working on a GNU handwriting recognition library: it uses a touch-screen with a pen. Any takers? Voice recognition would also be good.

Cyrix will be demonstrating a Wireless Net Device called a WebPad at Comdex. I've played with one already, and really like it. It's thought of as a web-browser that you can read anywhere in your house, but could easily be extended to capture notes, etc. It has a 10 inch really bright wide-viewing angle LCD panel, and runs on a MediaGX processor. Because it uses a standard x86 but is application specific, it can run any OS (currently QNX but could be Linux, WinCE, OpenDOS, whatever) without compatibility with legacy software being of great issue. It's got its own loudspeakers so I listened to the BBC world news over the internet on it. It's radio range is pretty good too (500 feet) and it worked outside. I really hope it takes off as I'd like to buy one. Hopefully it will be sufficiently open to enable a Linux port which means that someone out there needs to start working on a GNU handwriting recognition library: it uses a touch-screen with a pen. Any takers? Voice recognition would also be good.

In our previous roundups of the Microprocessor Forum, we missed Cyrix' announcement. (It was not exactly well publicised, no nice slides to download :-(). Well it turns out they made two of them. On the technical front they presented Jalapeno, a dual-pipeline out-of-order 600Mhz core. Jalapeno will have an 11-stage pipeline, an on-chip 8-way associative 256 Kb L2 cache (giving it similar coverage to a traditional 512 Kb L2) and support for Rambus on the die (rather than in the chipset) boosting memory bandwidth to 3.2Gb/s. However Cyrix is focussing on the integrated low cost end of the market: MediaGX will be replaced by MXi (includes 3D graphics and the new Cayenne core) and later by M3 (even better 3D). The Cayenne core (basically an improved MII with 2 FPU/MMX pipes) will also make its way into a Socket 7 design. But Cyrix also made a lot of noise on the marketing side: Brian Halla (head of National which owns Cyrix) boldly predicted that next year companies will be giving PCs away for free, much as they give cell-phones away to make money on the services they can then provide. He expects PCs-on-a-chip to provide the next major cost reduction which will make this possible. Note that such a device would not need a CDROM drive, a large harddisk, or even a monitor (high cost items)

Atari Games will be using a Cyrix MediaGX processor in its next arcade machine. With arcade games being quickly converted to home favourites, this trend may become more widespread. Does anybody know whether this is a standard MediaGX design or has extra graphics hardware?

The Register is reporting that Transmeta will use IBM fabs, taking over from Cyrix which now relies on National's fabs. Wonder if they'll be using IBM's copper and SOI technologies...

According to EETimes, Intel will integrate its new 3D graphics chip i740 into Whitney, its Mendocino chipset, following a path pioneered by Cyrix in its MediaGX processors. Unlike the Cyrix solution, OEMs have the option to use a separate memory or system memory to store the frame-buffer. It will be interesting to see by what percentage system speed differs. Since other chipset vendors (SIS, VIA) are on the same attack vector, the days of low end graphics card vendors may be numbered. Let's hope that the integrated graphics vendors will not be so NDA happy that Xfree/fbcon become limited to a few systems: these moves spell cheaper systems at the cost of lower choice.

AMD will be renaming the chip formerly known as the "K6 3D" to be the "K6-2". The chip will use the 100MHz bus and likely be announced May 28th (coinciding with the Linux Expo).
The company also announced they are naming the 21 MMX-like instructions in the K6-2 "3DNow!". The instructions will be supported by Cyrix and IDT.

Cyrix, a division of National Semiconductor, has announced the MII processor. Priced at US$180, in quantities of 1000, the chip will initially run at 300MHz, with a a 333MHz model coming next month, and 350 & 400MHz coming later this year. Looks like a very nice alternative to Celeron (the cacheless Pentium II being introduced tomorrow).

Cyrix, a division of National Semiconductor, has announced the MII processor. Priced at US$180, in quantities of 1000, the chip will initially run at 300MHz, with a a 333MHz model coming next month, and 350 & 400MHz coming later this year. Looks like a very nice alternative to Celeron (the cacheless Pentium II being introduced tomorrow).

Cyrix, a division of National Semiconductor, has announced the MII processor. Priced at US$180, in quantities of 1000, the chip will initially run at 300MHz, with a a 333MHz model coming next month, and 350 & 400MHz coming later this year. Looks like a very nice alternative to Celeron (the cacheless Pentium II being introduced tomorrow).

In a move confirming the reasons it purchased Metaflow, SGS-Thomson has announced that it will be cloning Slot 1. This will be SGS's first recent x86 chip not based on a Cyrix designed CPU. In a similar deal to IBM's, SGS has had the option of manufacturing Cyrix processors under its own brand name to give Cyrix Fab capacity. However it did not exercise this option. Metaflow is interesting in that it pioneered out of order execution and uses other novel techniques. While SGS does not intend to sell its chips on the open market, it does increase the competition in the x86 market.

Centaur's next x86 processor will have 128Kb of not L2 but L1 cache on board. This will be a first. Currently, the current largest L1 x86 is the Cyrix 686MX chip. A large L1 does help performance (zero cycle access instead of one or more), but is more timing critical to implement than an L2.

Despite initial expectations that set-top boxes and PCs would converge, the trend towards RISC chips such as MIPS continues. An oft cited reason for this is the lower power requirements of RISC solutions, which might give low power x86 manufacturers such as Centaur, Transmeta (?), and Cyrix for their MediaGX chips an advantage. Perhaps however, it is not x86 that is being fled, but domination by Microsoft that is being avoided. After all, set-top boxes are a cost, not a revenue to content-selling cable operators: do they really want to upgrade their infrastructure each time Microsoft comes up with a new version of Windows? A winner in this market will be Cygnus solutions, sellers of GnuPro tools to the embedded market, and thus Free Software Standards.

Cyrix has announced a 233MHz chip that is capable of running Windows CE. Cyrix says they are targeting the chip at the sub-$1000 PC. Is this the almost-proof Windows CE has been ported to the x86 architechture?

Check out this story to learn about Intel's new ad campaign. Basically if you make your site optimized for Intel chips and then they give you money. They have a billion bucks supposedly set aside for for this. Thanks to Sengan Baring-Gould.

This article was sent to us by the one and only Sengan Baring-Gould. It is a discussion on why the software industry is prone to monopolies and should be regulated.

This Paint Program for BeOS actually is capable of using Gimp plug-ins. This is the first I've heard of something besides the Gimp using its plug-ins, and while I know the the officially this is all good, why do I wish people would just run the Gimp? Thanks to Sengan Baring-Gould.

It just keeps getting better. The one and only Sengan Baring-Gould sent us this link at ZD-Net with yet another amazingly positive review of RedHat from the mainstream industry press. Things have never looked so good for the Linux world. Everyone seems to be jumping on the Linux is Good bandwagon. Now if we can just get them to jump off the MS Uber Alles bandwagon and we may actually have a 2 horse race in the industry.

Sengan Baring-Gould sent in this link to metahtml.com. The articles discusses the results of reliability tests. It does say that the GNU software and the Linux Operating System did better then any offerings from a commercial source, but the percentages of success rates were quite disheartening.