Slashdot Mirror

GFD writes "EETimes Has an article about a monster (462-mm2!!) graphics chip discussed in a paper at the ISSC. The numbers are astounding such as 256 mbits of on chip memory. Barely manufacturable though..." I'd still love to see what that bugger can do... bet it still can't simulate realistic hair in real time ;)

GFD writes "EETimes Has an article about a monster (462-mm2!!) graphics chip discussed in a paper at the ISSC. The numbers are astounding such as 256 mbits of on chip memory. Barely manufacturable though..." I'd still love to see what that bugger can do... bet it still can't simulate realistic hair in real time ;)

clay pigeon writes "This EE Times article covers the development of open-source processors. No doubt exciting news for hardware hackers and those with a need to know about every last detail of their systems, but how will this effect the hardware industry? Can open-source hardware duplicate the success of the open-source software movement?" I'm not holding my breath. Fabrication facilities are a lot more expensive then a CD-ROM presses (or more accurately, internet connections). But I still hope it happens. It would be an interesting market if everyone worked together on the designs, but built their own chips.

EoRaptor writes "How to enhance the properties of already low friction surfaces down to zero friction. Even water won't stick. I found this link over on Ars Technica. First, I'll build a black ship with black controls that light up black..."

An Anonymous Coward writes "Just read that some hardware manufacturers are starting to get impatient about the approal of the SDMI encyrption method since it delays their products from going to market. Thus, this causes lost market opportunity and sales due to the delay. See the EETimes story."

Buckaroo writes: "Interesting article at EETimes on what Intel's architects originally had in mind for the P4 - 1 slow ALU, 2 fast ALUs, 2 FPUs, 16K of L1 cache, 128K of L2 cache, 1 MB of external L3 cache, etc. - It was all too big and hot, so a bunch of it got the chop." This article sheds new light on the reasons behind performance problems with the chip.

Buckaroo writes: "Interesting article at EETimes on what Intel's architects originally had in mind for the P4 - 1 slow ALU, 2 fast ALUs, 2 FPUs, 16K of L1 cache, 128K of L2 cache, 1 MB of external L3 cache, etc. - It was all too big and hot, so a bunch of it got the chop." This article sheds new light on the reasons behind performance problems with the chip.

Chris writes: "From EETimes: "International Paper Co. and Motorola Inc. have developed a low-cost RF identification system that could become commonplace on disposable items like cereal boxes, replacing the ubiquitous bar code." While the article does mention that the cost of the technology must drop further (from about 10 to 30 cents per ID to a couple of pennies), it overlooks the potential impact on privacy. (Just imagine embedding these tags in your clothes.)"

Chris writes: "From EETimes: "International Paper Co. and Motorola Inc. have developed a low-cost RF identification system that could become commonplace on disposable items like cereal boxes, replacing the ubiquitous bar code." While the article does mention that the cost of the technology must drop further (from about 10 to 30 cents per ID to a couple of pennies), it overlooks the potential impact on privacy. (Just imagine embedding these tags in your clothes.)"

Max Entropy writes: "EETimes reports that a German company named Pact GmbH has developed a chip containing 128 microprocessor cores as part of the company's 'Extreme Processor Platform' (XPP). 'Each of the XPP's 128 processor cores sports its own 32-bit fixed-point multiplier, yielding a theoretical output of 12.8 billion multiply-accumulate operations per second at an expected clock frequency of 100 MHz. Pact claims the architecture will scale to produce devices capable of more than 400 giga operations/s in 2002 and into the peta-ops range within a decade.' The transistor budget for this behemoth is 30M, fabricated on a 0.21-micron process." Of course, each one of those processor nodes is completely proprietary and requires some peculiar programming.

Max Entropy writes: "EETimes reports that a German company named Pact GmbH has developed a chip containing 128 microprocessor cores as part of the company's 'Extreme Processor Platform' (XPP). 'Each of the XPP's 128 processor cores sports its own 32-bit fixed-point multiplier, yielding a theoretical output of 12.8 billion multiply-accumulate operations per second at an expected clock frequency of 100 MHz. Pact claims the architecture will scale to produce devices capable of more than 400 giga operations/s in 2002 and into the peta-ops range within a decade.' The transistor budget for this behemoth is 30M, fabricated on a 0.21-micron process." Of course, each one of those processor nodes is completely proprietary and requires some peculiar programming.

The European Union appears ready to shrug and say "OK" to the AOL / Time-Warner merger, while a reader brings us sad and totally unrelated news for game fans. A (plausible, but complete?) explanation of the upcoming PS/2 Crisis, if you view it as such. Also, didja ever wonder how big a trophy it takes to fit 15 syllables? Read on, read on -- it's Slashback.

"Heck, gentleman, what right have we got to approve anyhow?" WPL510 writes: "Just saw this article on Yahoo! about the AOL-TW merger. Apparently all the begging and pleading did something because the EU is about to approve their mega-merger. One concession they didn't mention was opening up AIM, of course. Great -- all we need is a bigger monopoly."

This too shall pass. Lord_Macblaster writes "The GameFan Network is no longer hosting sites. Many sites, including VoodooExtreme and my own site, Monolithic Illusions are nothing but dead links now. It's a real shame. Plenty of top notch sites were shut down. Not major news yet, but info is available here on PlanetCrap, and here on Lum The Mad."

This is the kind of thing that could get me into gaming. nomadic writes: " Electronic News reports that the PS2 shortage (mentioned before on Slashdot) may actually be DVD-related. Some analysts point to a shortage in DVD drive parts that has been affecting the notebook industry as well, but others suggest that it might be their lax CSS security.

Guess the MPAA leaning on them wouldn't be too implausible, but it's interesting if you consider that Sony's a member of that august body. Wonder how much flak they got from their brethren over the DVD copy protection workaround that Japanese gamers found earlier this year."

Another thing that could get me into gaming -- TheMyth writes: "It appears the Vivid Entertainment Group, is trying to release interactive adult movies for the Playstation 2. Read the article here that tells it all. -- I can't wait to see the field day that our government reps are gonna have with this one. Is this another "targeting adult content to kids case" or is it "targeting adult content to adults that play video games"? Censorship here we come ..."

Giving competition a good name again. An unnamed correspondent points to the results of the century's last ICFP programming contest. ICFP stands for a real mouthful: "International Conference on Functional Programming." "This year, functional languages take all the prizes; OCAML gets 1st and 2nd place, Haskell 3rd, Mercury 4th, and the judges' prize (for best image) goes to a SML/NJ team."

Battling giants has its rewards. GoldSkin writes: "The Digital Divas have reached an out-of-court settlement against Microsoft and their Digital Diva site. You may recall this article from way back in May." From their site: "In the simplest terms, Microsoft's Stacy Elliot will no longer be known as the 'Digital Diva' and Microsoft will no longer use digitaldiva.com in connection with content like that formerly available at that site. Also, in accordance with our settlement agreement, Microsoft has posted a notice at digitaldiva.com. Please visit and see for yourself."

A reader writes "Of the schemes being concocted to ease traffic among Internet backbone providers, InterNap Network Services Corp. may have the most ambitious: a setup that bypasses the peering process entirely by scanning the Net for optimal routes. EEtimes has the full story on their plan."

JeffMagnus writes: "EETimes is carrying this article about a new MP3 player extension for the Handspring Visor. The MP3 player fits into the Visor's Springboard expansion slot or can be used as a separate device. The MP3 player is built by Good Technology, Inc."

JeffMagnus writes: "EETimes is carrying this article about a new MP3 player extension for the Handspring Visor. The MP3 player fits into the Visor's Springboard expansion slot or can be used as a separate device. The MP3 player is built by Good Technology, Inc."

Crazy Diamond writes "Transmeta has bought back its technology licenses from IBM and Toshiba in order to market its products on its own as a fabless chip supplier. This story comes from EETimes for more information."

Matt_Bennett writes "EEtimes reports that Qualcomm has demonstrated its new faster CDMA chip set for third generation cellular (3G). They have demonstrated bit rates of up to 153 kbit/s. Sample shipments have already begun. From the article: "Commercial 3G 1x service is expected to be deployed in Korea by the end of this year, and similar service is expected in the United States and Japan sometime in 2001.""

Matt_Bennett writes "EEtimes reports that Qualcomm has demonstrated its new faster CDMA chip set for third generation cellular (3G). They have demonstrated bit rates of up to 153 kbit/s. Sample shipments have already begun. From the article: "Commercial 3G 1x service is expected to be deployed in Korea by the end of this year, and similar service is expected in the United States and Japan sometime in 2001.""

the coose writes: "EETimes is running an interesting story describing the current turmoil over DTV standards. It involves many players, including, but not limited to, Microsoft, Sun, the ITU, and SMPTE."

the coose writes: "EETimes is running an interesting story describing the current turmoil over DTV standards. It involves many players, including, but not limited to, Microsoft, Sun, the ITU, and SMPTE."

Virek writes "Researchers in the UK have developed a prototype packet router that is potentially much faster than existing digital technology. They are using a combination of a neural network and "diffractive optical components" (er..?). If they are successful in developing a commercial product they predict that this could significantly speed up the net. "

Madmac wrote with this cool item: "A trio of Japanese companies have teamed up on a multiprocessor chip design that can embed multiple processors and DSPs on a single chip, all running Tao's VP code." An interesting snippet: "Up to eight processor engines can be added to one MISC device, for performance of 200 to 900 million operations per second. They can include any general-purpose RISC processor, DSPs, SIMD engines, vector processors, graphics processors or customized logic."

LISNews writes: "EE Times has a cool story on the pending JPEG2000 standard and how it will change what we see on the Web. They are already thinking wireless: 'The killer app for JPEG2000 is a handheld device combining both Internet applications and wireless access.'" They're also thinking about migration from current formats, smooth degradeability and -- nice to hear -- Open Source acceptance. Try JPEG's own JPEG2000 page for more information and links.

Anonymous Coward writes: "EETimes describes how electronic valves will replace camshafts in diesel engines starting in 2007. Lower emissions, better performance should follow." This wouldn't be a bad idea in gas engines, either. There's potential here for low emissions, better gas mileage, and greater performance, all at the same time.

Anonymous Coward writes: "EETimes describes how electronic valves will replace camshafts in diesel engines starting in 2007. Lower emissions, better performance should follow." This wouldn't be a bad idea in gas engines, either. There's potential here for low emissions, better gas mileage, and greater performance, all at the same time.

maniack writes, "Looks like the Alpha is striking back at AMD and Intel after a quiet period. Eetimes.com has a story on new Alpha processors from 1.4-1.6 GHz being available by the end of the year despite rumors of Samsung pulling out of the processor market. Keep in mind that this is a 64 bit processor, so there will be a lot of competition in the that arena. " At this point, much of it is still conjecture, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

maniack writes, "Looks like the Alpha is striking back at AMD and Intel after a quiet period. Eetimes.com has a story on new Alpha processors from 1.4-1.6 GHz being available by the end of the year despite rumors of Samsung pulling out of the processor market. Keep in mind that this is a 64 bit processor, so there will be a lot of competition in the that arena. " At this point, much of it is still conjecture, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Lots of people submitted the news: An EETimes story from last week that tells how Japanese gamers are using a (Japanese model) Sony Playstation 2, an upscan converter like the Micomsoft model XRGB-2, and an easily-obtained adaptor cable to make VHS copies of DVD movies. As an unintentional byproduct of its other functions, an XRB2 or similar upscan converter installed between the RGB output of a PS2 and the RGB inputs on a VCR apparently disables the Macrovision encoding used to prevent DVD copying. This trick is almost certainly illegal, and the "problem" will surely be fixed before Sony starts exporting PS2s in quantity, so don't get your hopes up, okay?

fredz writes "EE Times has an interesting article on wide-aspect-ratio LCD displays. Samsung is adding a 24-inch diagonal display (20" W x 12.7" H). This is about the same height as a conventional 20" monitor, but a lot wider. There are also some smaller (and presumably cheaper) 17-inch diagonal (about 14"W x 10"H) displays. " The SGI diagonal (18") is what I've been using for nearly a year now. LCDs are much easier on my eyes, but ya gotta accept the resolution you're given or things get yucky. The aspect ratio is interesting... I like having two comfortably wide browser windows side by side without overlapping. Now when Linux can play letterboxed DVDs ...

kfarmer@tru64.org writes, "The French Atomic Energy Commission has placed an order for a supercomputer to simulate and analyze nuclear explosions. The supercomputer will use about 2,000 Alpha chips running in the 1.25-GHz range, or about 2,500 chips at the 1-GHz level."

An anonymous reader sent us a story about Seagate spinning 15,000-rpm disk drive. This stuff spins faster then my head ;) I don't shop for hard drives very often... it kinda blew me away to see 40 gig IDE drives for only a few hundred bucks. I'm getting all nostalgic for the days of two 360k floppy drives. Weird.

StormChaser wrote to us about a new form of encryption that Intel wants to put between the system and digital display. They are calling it High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection, and it would encrypt each pixel as it moved from the main box to a digital display - interesting stuff.

TBM writes "Here is an article on the use of RNA to do some computational tasks. It was given the problem of placing knights on a 3x3 board such that no knight could kill another and found 43 correct solutions and one incorrect one out of a possible 512. They say it works in parallel and so trillions of parallel computations are possible... So when can I start using my RNA for RC-5?"

senthilp sent us a nice article about Transmeta which basically wraps up all the loose ends hanging out, and sums up the leading speculation on what transmeta will announce. The officail launch date for Crusoe is Jan 19 (next wed) and Chris DiBona is gonna be there with a richochet on his laptop and hopefully broadcast to IRC what is going down. So anyway, we've only got a few days left to speculate: the leading rumor is a VLIW processor which will be demonstrated in some sort of PDA or Handheld running Linux. But speculation is running rampant: I've heard that they were working on a superior version of The Kernel's Secret Blend of Herbs and Spices, and before that it was a carbon dioxide fueled teleportation device so who knows. grimsaado sent us details on the Crusoe in another story with slightly more realistic speculation.

Tim8o wrote to us with an article from EETimes about nanotech bots. It's an interesting piece about research being done at Xerox PARC.

Polo writes "Here is an EE times article about the ISO JPEG2000 standard that has been finalized and allows a new wavelet compression scheme that gives good results at as much as 200:1 compression ratios. It looks pretty promising. It is royalty-free, but there is also discussion about a second standard that allows third-party, royalty-based extensions. I wonder if motion-jpeg with wavelets could fit a movie on a CD or something."

Ice_Hole sent us linkage to a story talking about IBM developing new 90 GHz Circuits for microprocessors. The SiGe-Copper transistor mix can apparently be built on existing assembly lines, and they've actually been doing it at .5 and .25 microns.

hoppy wrote to us in regards to the recent EE Times article about a tuberculosis detecting biochip. The United States and Russia are teaming up to make the chip, as variant drug-resistant strains are infecting thousands in Russian jails, and making a big comeback in poorer areas in the US. The chip will be used to identify the strain of TB, so that appropriate treatment can be used, rather then the shotgun approach In other news, James Clark, co-founder of SGI and Netscape has given 150 million US to his former school, Stanford. The donation is to be used just for biotech.

GFD writes "The EETimes has a story about a software program that can mimic the subtlties that humans give to a musical performance to give it a particular emotion or style. Apparently it is already so convincing that some TV producers are using it rather than live musicians. Long range plans are to clone the musical styles of famous musicians. Interesting question - there is no question that a Jimmy Hendrix could copyright his music but could he copyright his style? " Bet they can't mimic all 3 of my power chords.

GFD writes "The EETimes has a story about a software program that can mimic the subtlties that humans give to a musical performance to give it a particular emotion or style. Apparently it is already so convincing that some TV producers are using it rather than live musicians. Long range plans are to clone the musical styles of famous musicians. Interesting question - there is no question that a Jimmy Hendrix could copyright his music but could he copyright his style? " Bet they can't mimic all 3 of my power chords.

Anonymous Coward writes "Girl Geeks Launch Picosatellite Artemis, a team of Girl Geeks at the Santa Clara University have designed and built a pico-satellite. An EE Times article says the Santa Clara women spent over 5000 hours designing and building the satellite. Ham radio operators will be able to tune in and listen to the telemetry from the satellite to be launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California. The girls took the name of their team from Artemis, the Greek hunter godesss of the moon."

GFD writes " Nortel claims to be able to do 80 gbits/sec in a single wavelength. Using their current top of the line DWDM equipment which handles 80 wavelengths on a single fibre they get 6.4 terabits per second. What's scary about this is that future DWDM products are claimed to aim for 400 wavelengths per fibre. That fibre would be able to carry over 21 million T1 channels! "

xtra there's been a lot of talk about the power of the Playstation 2. Now it seems that Sony believes that the graphical power of the PSX2 is so great, that they are going to use it as the heart of "Creative Workstations", developing a line of computers for people working with graphical content, mainly. The day of covergence draws one step closer.

GFD writes "EETimes has a about disposable chip/display technology that would be so cheap that they could put displays on disposable consuer items like milk cartons. "

GFD writes "EETimes has a about disposable chip/display technology that would be so cheap that they could put displays on disposable consuer items like milk cartons. "

Humility writes "EETimes, a weekly trade magzine for electrical engineers, has a story about the integration of networked computers into domestic residences and artwork. This is a little more far reaching than just wiring up your home with a bunch of MP3 players and speakers. I think it's quite interesting." Fully networked houses on display at The Museum of Modern Art. Sweet! I wonder if this guy's place qualifies? It should.

Humility writes "EETimes, a weekly trade magzine for electrical engineers, has a story about the integration of networked computers into domestic residences and artwork. This is a little more far reaching than just wiring up your home with a bunch of MP3 players and speakers. I think it's quite interesting." Fully networked houses on display at The Museum of Modern Art. Sweet! I wonder if this guy's place qualifies? It should.

Tekmage writes "Ever wonder how the brain processes image/vision data? According to this research, it does so in a more serial manner than parallel. " This has been one of those on-going debates since the 1960s, with the advent of machine vision, with this being the latest round in the battle between the two sides.

GFD writes "EETimes has a nice overview of Sun's new MAJC architecture. Combines multiple processors on one chip with VLIW and on chip multi threading. " I've been seeing some information about thsi floating around, but EETimes has done a nice job summarizing the chip itself.

Climbing out from under my mountain of spagetti code and strange bugs (I think I'm finally on top of it actually) to post linkage to a pretty interesting looking new IBM CPU. The Power4 processor puts 2 processors and an L2 cache on the same die. Clock speed over a gigahertz and bus speed over 500mhz.