Slashdot Mirror

Slashback brings you updates and amplifications on the SSSCA, the future of RAMBUS and Intel, fragmentation of filesystems, a book reviewer who's been publishing online longer than some slashdot readers have walked erect, and more. Read on for the details.

A screenplay written by Jack Valenti? cc_pirate writes: "Apparently Sen. Fritz Hollings (D - Disney, er - SC) completed his hearings today on how the media needs to have content protection included in computers. Intel and other high tech companies resist and are chastized by Hollings."

Penguins are the new Turtles. Gerein writes "After many months of extreme lobbying, personal attacks, public petitions and surveys, the war over the future OS of the Bundestag (German parliament) is finally over (previous /. stories). As heise reports (in german, use the fish) Linux won't make it to the desktops (they're going with XP) but will take over the 150 servers. The last critical question over the directory service has finally been decided in favor to OpenLDAP instead of Active Directory. It's not the complete victory for Linux, many had hoped for, but it's a start for more Open Source in the German government."

Full disclosure seems like a nice idea. Merlynnus writes: "Yahoo! is running a story, Copy-protected CD makers lose battle, in which Music City Records, Fahrenheit Entertainment and digital rights management company Sunncomm have 'agreed' to stop collecting personal info, and to label copy-protected CDs as defective, er, play-challenged in certain devices. The agreement came as the result of court action by a Cali resident, Karen DeLise, over the Charlie Pride CD, 'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?"

This should have been transparent. Metrollica writes: "It turns out the transparent aluminium article at Spiegel was misunderstood. Sci-fighter published a correction. The transparent substance was not aluminium but alumina, shorthand for aluminium oxide. Slashdot reported on transparent aluminium here."

Odds are, somebody's written a thesis on it ... and here one is. Whether in response to this Ask Slashdot question or just a lucky guesser, Cine writes: "The standard filesystem benchmarking tools such as Bonnie++, Postmark , Mongo and others all test the optimum case for the block layouting algorithm. But in practice one also is interested to know how a filesystem performs when it is or was heavily used over a longer period (e.g. months and years).So Constantin Loizides has written a Master Thesis about the performance of filesystems under the influence of fragmentation."

Intel-Rambus break not as simple as portrayed. Controlio writes: "Tom's Hardware Guide has posted a clarification regarding the EBN story with the sensational headline, 'Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products'. The article was also posted on Slashdot. Tom reports:

EBN had the sensational headline Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products, but the story goes on to say, "Intel will continue using Direct Rambus memory with its network processors. Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year." A little misleading, wouldn't you say? Hard to tell, but you read it for yourself, and make your own call.

Great. More sensational journalism. Maybe someone should submit Jack Robertson's resume to Fox News."

Finally, some congratulations are in order. danny writes (does he ever): "February 28th marks the 10th anniversary of my first book review; there are now over six hundred. I have written an account of ten years writing book reviews, which illustrates something of how online publication has changed over the years."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer have threatened to pursue their own sanctions against Microsoft if they conclude that the Justice department isn't being tough enough. Amongst other things, they demand that Windows XP "receive close scrutiny in arriving at a judicially ordered remedy. Go NY!"" NaughtyusMaximus points us to this message at Anandtech about Via reacting to Intel's patent-infringement suit by turning around and suing Intel -- for patent infringement -- in Taiwan and the U.S.. Via is also countersuing Intel in England.

Weasel Boy writes: "Fortune delivers a whithering attack on Rambus, which as previously reported here, was found guilty of fraud when it tried to sue Infineon for patent infringement. The article gives a capsule history of Rambus and how it was brought down by the 'duplicity and greed' that made it a darling on Wall Street and despised in Silicon Valley, but prudently stops short of writing its epitaph."

Joby Walker writes: "The jury in the Rambus v. Infineon case has found Rambus guilty of fraud in regard to their actions within JEDEC. Infineon was awarded $3.5M in punitive damages, but that has been reduced by the judge due to Virginia Law." Rambus says they'll appeal.

LordArathres writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia has refused to do away with Infinion Technologies' fraud charges against Rambus Inc. based on alleged failure to disclose its SDRAM patent applications to the JEDEC standards group. This action allows Infineon attorneys to depose Rambus officials and attorneys concerning legal discussions about disclosure of the SDRAM patent applications to JEDEC during the time when the company participated in panel discussions of SDRAM open standards. Client-attorney privileges do not apply in cases of possible fraud. The trial will officially begin April 17. Story Here"

Jimmie writes: "Looks like Rambus, Inc intends to use licensing fees arising from its recent patent settlements to force the price of DDR SDRAM to be high enough that Direct RDRAM (which we know is ridiculously expensive right now) can compete. When asked that very question, the VP of worldwide marketing at Rambus replied 'I wouldn't argue with that conclusion.' Story at ebnews.com." Sometimes the computer industry's oldest saying seems to be "If at first you don't succeed ... squeeze out some competition."

homerj79 writes: "Just got word from Ace's Hardware that Number Nine Visual Technology has shut its doors forever. This is sad news to hear about an old schooler in the graphics business. #9 was a pioneer in the graphics industry, introducing the first 128-bit chip, and the first 256-color and 16.7 millon-color cards. #9 was on a downward spiral as of late, with the company selling all of its technology and assets to S3 last year. This is the saddest news I've heard since Hercules announced it was going under. EBNews has a nice article on the company here."

homerj79 writes: "Just got word from Ace's Hardware that Number Nine Visual Technology has shut its doors forever. This is sad news to hear about an old schooler in the graphics business. #9 was a pioneer in the graphics industry, introducing the first 128-bit chip, and the first 256-color and 16.7 millon-color cards. #9 was on a downward spiral as of late, with the company selling all of its technology and assets to S3 last year. This is the saddest news I've heard since Hercules announced it was going under. EBNews has a nice article on the company here."

EB News is reporting that the K7 should be out by the end of June, featuring a 512Kb or 1Mb L2 cache. In 2000 it should exist in a socket variety, hinting that a lower cost version may become sooner than later.

Further details have emerged about ST's new System on a chip. It will run at 133Mhz with an 8Kb unified cache, a 5 stage single pipeline which can work in parallel with the floating point unit. It also includes a graphics controller able to display on TFT flat-panel displays, a PCMCIA card interface, local system bus, a PS/2 mouse controller, two serial ports, and a universal parallel port: basic Super I/O functionality. This makes it similar to the original Cyrix MediaGX chips, but without the legacy compatibility or sound. Interestingly it is targeted at the embedded market -- not the PC market. updated: included URL, Oops.

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)

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)

homebrewer writes "Here is an article talking about AMD helping to drop notebook prices. Maybe I can even afford to buy one.... They even mention Transmeta a bit, saying they are working on a new chip...is this what Linus is working on?" In related news, Trident revealed that it has designed with VIA Technologies Inc an integrated chipset combining a graphics chip and core logic on a single die. Socket 7 still seems to have a long life in front of it.