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It is truly awful. For example, I have an E6300 in my machine. But which one? On the box or the BIOS it says "Pentium E6300", but it's actually a Core 2 processor internally, and a completely different process (45nm) from the original Core 2 Duo E6300. Apparently mine has VT (as it turns out, both E6300s do).

You're right. Intel has made a MESS of their naming scheme that will confuse anyone that doesn't look carefully. Average Joe with his 1 or 2 year old home machine or buying his computer from a big-box store won't have a clue. The salesperson probably won't either. Pentium? Core 2? They mean nothing.

The least Intel could do is put a little "VT" sticker somewhere, now that the feature will actually matter.

The thing that is going to cause havoc with the VT requirement is that it intel went through a period, I'm not sure if they are still in it, where they disabled it on a seemingly arbitrary subset of their CPUs, with only minor differences in model name. Then, of course, vendors worked their BIOS magic. Just look at this list. You have an E7400, do you have VT? Well, do you have an E7400-SLGQ8 or an E7400-SLGW3? It's nothing that your IT department couldn't slog through for you(and if you are really lucky, they've been speccing for it for some time now); but I pity the plight of the adventurous but dubiously detail oriented guy who learns that XP mode isn't going to happen because he has the Q8300-SLB5W rather than the Q8300-SLGUR.

If it were something like "You need a Xeon for it to work", that'd be annoying; but it wouldn't really confuse anybody. As it is, though, there are going to be a whole lot of confused people out there.

A netbook with a single Atom chip "just could not support the multitasking needs of students

Skype, youtube, and porn videos aren't really essential for studies,

and professionals," it said. So it set out to build its own. It modified Intel's 945 chipset to run the two processors, which took it about six months. The processors divide the workload, much like a dual-core processor does, the company said.

Okay, all kidding aside, I would like to know what's new here? These people were clever in modifying Intel's chipset to make SMP work, but they're acting like having two discrete processors is a new thing compared to multi-core processing. Again: multiple processors is not a new thing. It's downright ancient history in the world of microcomputing.

Contract Intel to produce a multi-core Atom processor - oops, it exists already. Check out the Atom 330. could have saved yourselves a ton of effort, reduced development costs, and remained within the scope of the design specs that Intel will actually support.

Kudos for the neat hack though!

Dunno. I had an Intel motherboard with EFI in 2006. Doesn't sound like a conspiracy to me. http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX/index.htm

New BIOSs are UEFI.

As much as they don't like to say it, UEFI is basically an operating system. UEFI supports byte code applications (that's right). It has a driver framework and drivers for many of your devices, a TCP/IP stack, etc...

I think that's a good question about how you enter setup. If you can through keypresses, that time is too short to include keyboard initialization I would think. Since this is a laptop, they would be using their own keyboard firmware and they cheat. So it probably wouldn't work on a desktop or with an external keyboard.

I haven't looked into details into their optimizations either, but I would assume, yes, they are skipping a lot of things. This is on a laptop, so they probably just assume fixed hardware. Many things which are detected are probably just saved.

I doubt you would be able to boot from USB or CD with that set up, since those devices are not initialized.

Intel have a document about the breakdown on UEFI BIOS boot time: http://edc.intel.com/Link.aspx?id=1039

Out of interest, just having to change video modes to show the BIOS screen can be a couple seconds.

The library of Congress contains over 10 terabytes of information (a 1 with 13 zeroes after it). If you used Light Peak technology operating at 10 billion bits per second it would take you only 17 minutes to transfer the complete library of Congress.

Source: http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm - interesting facts

There are no Atoms in phones because they're way too hungry for a phone cpu. ARM have stuff that runs at around 85mW per GHz. Compare that to the lowest Atom at 0.65W for 800MHz.

Yes, but most Itanium systems don't sell for large-scale clusters or supercomputers, they sell for smaller 2-8 socket servers processing mission-critical data, where RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) is paramount. In this role, almost anything built with Reliability in-mind will do, but nobody want to step-up and compete.

See here for proof. The average number of processors sold in an Itanium server is around 4 (In 2007, ~200,000 processors went into 55,000 servers).

Itanium has almost no showing in the single-image supercomputer and large cluster market. IBM has the RISC large performance cluster market cornered, and the rest goes to x86-64. There's barely a few crumbs left for Itanium, and the market share is quickly shrinking. The scientific community has decided that Itanium does not offer enough performance per dollar, despite the impressive FP capabilities.

Thankfully, Intel is not afraid to compete with itself - they released the 8-core Nehalem EX this year, which destroyed Itanium on per-socket performance, and also added some of the RAS features previously only seen on IPF and Big Iron. Even Intel knows that IA-64 is a dog, and is slowly abandoning it!

How come everyone seems to have forgotten that Intel is still making new Pentium processors? For example:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=42805

Interestingly, they have dropped all that III IV Dual-Core, etc. nonsense, and they are now just "Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processors" again.

Apparently they are budget processors of some kind, which are positioned between the Celerons and the Core 2's. At least I think so - I'm finding Intel's product line rather confusing at the moment too.

No, they aren't both right. Nehalem is an arcitecture and nothing more. There is no Nehalem chip.

http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silicon/next-gen/

Intel® Microarchitecture, Codenamed Nehalem

Intel's latest-generation microarchitecture, first exemplified as the Intel® Coreâ i7 processor, represents the next step in faster, multi-core technology that intelligently maximized performance to match your workload

It was first exemplified as the Core i7, and as we know the Core i7 debuted with 3 models...the 920, 940, and 965 (extreme), all 3 of which were Bloomfield designs. While I have no doubt some websites probably incorrectly reported it as the "Nehalem chip" before its release, that's all it was....incorrect reporting.

He said "Aside from enthusiasts who just like following the stuff".

I might have a passing interest in the progress of processor technology but I'm actually specifically interested at the moment because I'm on the look out for a new laptop. For me that means looking at a Toshiba, a Lenovo (and Dell, Fujitsu etc) and trying to make a judgment about what advantages and disadvantages each has and comparing them to see what makes the most sense for me.

I've found Intel's processor designations mind boggling. They do have a pretty good comparison tool though, which can help clear things up once you've narrowed it down to a few options.

P is newer with a 1066mhz FSB and roughly comparable clock and cahce to the T series. The T series has a 800MHz FSB. use this to find the true differences: http://ark.intel.com/

By definition, if it isn't a Nehalem die, it's not Nehalem, even if it's just a "tock" variant (die shrunk - see Intel's "tick/tock" roadmap) of Nehalem it's still a different chip design.

In this case, the CPU has significant design differences from a Nehalem CPU. There's a lot more than just removing some pins from the package. The CPU had to be changed significantly (one DDR channel removed, QPI replaced with DMI) in order to allow those pins to be removed.

The removal of QPI in favor of DMI (much slower but simpler/cheaper) is a *significant* difference.

For someone who attempts to talk with such authority on the subject, you sure talk a lot of crap. Intel themselves, refer to the Core i5 as being members of the Nehalem microarchitecture family:

"The new Intel Coreâ i5 processor family, two new Intel Coreâ i7 processors and the Intel® Xeon processor 3400 series bring Intel's latest Nehalem microarchitecture to mainstream desktop and entry server markets."

Source

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

http://www.soekris.com/

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-241475-1121516.html

You have been able to get serial over TCP/IP for a while too, and Intel even build it in to some boards:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-intel-amt-serial-over-lan-to-the-fullest/

Now stop being a retard and google your own fucking links.

The Intel DP965LT has a serial port header right on the motherboard, check the manual, page 11 labeled P described on page 12.
pdf of the manual at
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/dp965lt/sb/CS-022910.htm

The Asus M4A78 Plus ALSO has a com1 port on the motherboard, you can look at the pretty pictures on newegg, it's in the lower right corner labeled com1, it's a light blue header.

So we still don't have any motherboards without serial ports...

I will concede however that they seem to have done away with them on many laptops (although I can't buy one that dosen't have one, configuring real routers & etc requires serial)

Oh, and I just want to say that the EEE is more a netbook type device than a laptop type device.

Question, are the USB serial adapters properly supported in linux (and windows) yet? The last time I tried one the drivers were crap and it wouldn't work above 1200 baud.

Space requirements.

Biggest DDR3 SO-DIMM modules I could find were 4 GB. They are 30 mm x 66.7 mm and the standard allows for

The DDR3 SO-DIMM is designed for a variety of maximum component widths and maximum lengths, refer to the applicable raw card for exact componet size allowed. Components used
in DDR3 SO-DIMMs are also limited to a maximum height (as shown in dimension "A" of MO-207) of 1.35 mm. [page 19]

You now have an absolute minimum size of 2,701.35 mm^3 (1.35 mm x 30 mm x 66.7 mm), or 675.3375 mm^3/GB. This is a very very idealized minimum by the way.

An Intel 2½" drive is 49,266.28 mm^3 (100.4 mm x 7 mm x 70.1 mm) and currently maxes out at 160 GB leaving you with 307.91425 mm^3/GB. That's 46% of the space that would be needed for DDR3 RAM. Add to that that Intel's 2nd generation SSDs are only using one side of the PCB, and you can expect the storage space requirements to be halved.

Then there's the fact that the SSDs are directly replaceable. In other words, they don't need to rebuild the computer, buy super special boards or anything like that - you can replace a harddrive with an SSD without having to spec out a new supercomputer.

In the end, if you wanted to replace the system with something that could provide 1 TB of RAM per node, they would need a VERY expensive system. Even with 8 GB modules, you would need to somehow fit 128 of them onto a board. I'd really love to see the mother- and daughter-boards involved with that.

In the end it doesn't just come down to raw price or speed of the storage device (RAM vs SSD vs HDD vs tape), but also all the other factors involved, such as space, power, heat and the stuff you need to use it (i.e. a brand new super computer that can support 1 TB RAM/node vs 48 GB at the moment.

Or to use a really bad car analogy, some company has found out that using a BMW M5 Touring Estate gives them faster deliveries than using a Ford Transit. Now you're suggesting that they should be delivering stuff via aeroplanes. Yes, it's much faster, but you need a brand new transportation structure built up around this, which you also need to factor into your cost assessments.

They say they are using Intel SSD via SATA, their higher end drives typically have a 2M hrs MTBF, almost double what most HDD are these days.

http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/extreme/index.htm

• Intel receives massive subsidies from local and national governments to build its fabrication plants. For example, After a year and a half of negotiations, Israel's finance minister announced the government has agreed to grant Intel Corp. a 12.5% subsidy for a new wafer fab.
• Intel has been the beneficiary of massive amounts of knowledge from research fed into the public sphere by government funded projects. In fact, Intel is presently lobbying for increased government investment in various types of research from which Intel will directly benefit. Intel supports increased government funding of research and development in security innovation, including peer reviewed cryptography.
• Intel present receives a tremendous number of tax credits for the R&D they do. Further, they are lobbying to increase these credits. Intel supports making the U.S. R&D Tax Credit a permanent part of the tax code.

If you took out all of the profits from direct and indirect government subsidies, it would be an open question whether or not Intel would a profitable concern. The largest difference between the firms being bailed out now and Intel is that Intel got on the gravy train earlier and spread its subsidies out over its entire lifetime.

• Intel receives massive subsidies from local and national governments to build its fabrication plants. For example, After a year and a half of negotiations, Israel's finance minister announced the government has agreed to grant Intel Corp. a 12.5% subsidy for a new wafer fab.
• Intel has been the beneficiary of massive amounts of knowledge from research fed into the public sphere by government funded projects. In fact, Intel is presently lobbying for increased government investment in various types of research from which Intel will directly benefit. Intel supports increased government funding of research and development in security innovation, including peer reviewed cryptography.
• Intel present receives a tremendous number of tax credits for the R&D they do. Further, they are lobbying to increase these credits. Intel supports making the U.S. R&D Tax Credit a permanent part of the tax code.

If you took out all of the profits from direct and indirect government subsidies, it would be an open question whether or not Intel would a profitable concern. The largest difference between the firms being bailed out now and Intel is that Intel got on the gravy train earlier and spread its subsidies out over its entire lifetime.

Interesting idea... but as much as I might not mind a netbook cpu in a netbook... having one in a dedicated server - not so much.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18034050

I'll take the spike on usage when its in use quite happily :) and 13w on idle is fine thanks for something that will be idle for a lot of the time.

I have a blu-ray writer in this rig (currently typing this, same box in windows 7 :P ) and I've never used it to read a blu-ray disk nevermind write one since I bought it (and replaced it under warranty) within the 6 months or so I've had it. Wouldnt mind one in the mini.. maybe that's what I should wait for?

I have to admit... I cant say any part of that system actually grabs me :-| Come on! you should know just as well as me how much megahertz doesn't matter :P :)

I do however agree on the upgrades... upgrading my cube was always part of the fun. Fun that apple has taken away by soldering everything to the board :-|

I dont need a new monitor since most of my use would be via vnc. Internal wifi N, internal bluetooth and the OS is thrown in for 'free' (yes you forgot the windows tax) I'm guessing you pirate yours. Although on that halo'd note, I'm likely to install os x server on it anyway \o/ (and yes I'll get that through alternative means too)

Slightly faster processor ?!?!?! ... I suggest you read up on your architecture, both cpu and gpu. I think if I was going to go down your route for a non apple machine I'd just screw the wattage and space constraints and go for a shuttle pc or something like that... although if I did that I wouldnt be able to harness the gpu for other uses so easily as I would with a mac mini. I bought my cube on ebay as a curious apple poker ( I used to despise apple btw) for less than qtr the price it retailed for 4 years before.

450mhz 1mb cache PPC cpu able to out perform a 800mhz PIII w/ 128/256kb of cpu cache. As much as I love how well my cube has handled over the years... I get the impression the cost/ architecture of the mini wont match up in comparison for another 10 years. But the cube was sold as a premium space saving server. If they brought the cube back with todays expandability performance etc.. I doubt I'd drop the $2.5-3k they would want for it.

http://sys.eu.shuttle.com/home.jsf

On the cache note I see it appears to be a sore topic for the Atom line..
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=29035 If I want a minimum of 1mb I'm restricted to 1.5ghz with just less than half the bus speed of the core 2 duo. I'd be curious to see what that actually means in direct comparison though, I wouldn't like to be comparing apples to oranges.

3mb cache, faster memory and 1066mhz bus speed on the mini no mention it would appear of sata speeds on that asrock review either...

*shrugs* the mini so far still seems to fit with what I'm looking for as a comprimise of power over space / resource economy. Thanks for showing me the asrock system tho :) Last I heard of the Asus budget line they only did motherboards.

Sooooo - with that thought in mind, I'll wait until the next refresh where it would appear I'd get the return of 4mb cache, 1066mhz+ bus speed, blu-ray? and whatever else apple decides to throw in. I wouldnt be surprised if apple merged the appleTV with the mini and beefed the full thing up a bit as a media centric server.... we'll see I guess. I'm disappointed in the rpm speed of the hdisk in the mac mini but both the slot loading drive and hdisk can be replaced for something faster further down the line.

I think you picked on the wrong 'fanboy' here. I have as many reasons to hate Apple as I do Microsoft or I

It's first an architecture limit because in order to handle more than 32 bits' worth of memory the OS has to do 36 bit memory addressing in a 32 bit processor. This means paging the memory addresses used in any given running program. So that's where the licensing part comes in: Vista, being a desktop OS, doesn't include the license for all the extra code that deals with the memory paging.
 
For more info on how the memopry paging works with 32 bits to 36 bits, see page 15 of this Intel architecture doc. If it doesn't make sense, look up CPU registers and how they are used by an operating system.

Maybe it's like USB 3.0 XHCI spec. Our spec is like beautiful man. But you can't just download the PDF from a webpage. You need to get your boss to sign something and fax it and then post the originals. Bureaucratic Fucks.

http://www.intel.com/technology/usb/xhcispec.htm

Maybe someone should build an
architecture around this.

If you actually knew what you're talking about, you would know that Intel's numbers are not the worst-case scenarios. It says so right on the processor data sheets. Instead, they "reflect Intel's recommended design point", whatever that is. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself:

http://download.intel.com/design/Pentium4/datashts/29864312.pdf (Random P4 datasheet, look at the footnote at the top of page 70)

Basically Intel relies on their CPU throttling to keep the CPU from overheating under the worst case conditions, or from people installing CPU coolers that exceed their recommendations.

Ditto votes for the CHM. I would rate it a must-see. If you go north on 101 a ways, there's also the Hiller Aviation Museum, with a nice collection of airplanes and helicopters. The Intel museum may also be worth a visit. Consider timing your visit to the Bay Area to match up with events like the Maker Faire or the various tech conferences / trade shows that come through San Jose or Santa Clara.

Not just wikipedia, but also Intel itself: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/atom/specifications.htm
Very strange.. are you sure it's not an Atom 230?

Read a bit further down. They indicated that these processors were specifically crippled by Intel to offer a cheaper price which is why they couldn't be enabled in Bios. The Sony on the other hand doesn't even show an option to enable VT when the processor does support VT.

"Actually, not every dual core mobile processor supports VT. Here are the specs for the p7450 in the y450. http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB54

You'll notice there is no mention of VT support. But if you look at the p8600 here:
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB3S

It actually does have VT support as already mentioned here. Intel purposely removed VT support on some OEM spec processors to make them available at cheaper prices to go into laptops that probably won't need VT.
Apple actually paid intel to include VT support in a p7350 processor that doesn't normally have it. "

Read a bit further down. They indicated that these processors were specifically crippled by Intel to offer a cheaper price which is why they couldn't be enabled in Bios. The Sony on the other hand doesn't even show an option to enable VT when the processor does support VT.

"Actually, not every dual core mobile processor supports VT. Here are the specs for the p7450 in the y450. http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB54

You'll notice there is no mention of VT support. But if you look at the p8600 here:
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB3S

It actually does have VT support as already mentioned here. Intel purposely removed VT support on some OEM spec processors to make them available at cheaper prices to go into laptops that probably won't need VT.
Apple actually paid intel to include VT support in a p7350 processor that doesn't normally have it. "

Where'd you get the figure for the power draw of the chipset? Intel claims a TDP of 8-11W for Atom + 945GSE combined.

No you're wrong sorry, most Core Duos do support VT. (I have a T2300, not T2300E)

"Contrary to early reports, the Intel Core Duo supports Intel VT x86 virtualization, except in the T2300E model and proprietary T2050/T2150/T2250 mounted by OEMs"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_duo

http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=22731

That's incorrect. I have a Dell Inspiron E1705 with Core Duo T2500 2GHz (first generation Core Duo) and it fully supports virtualization. Dell has the option to change it in the BIOS. There are budget versions of the Core Duo Txx50 that don't have support for it, though. It's true there's no 64-bit support however.. :/

http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyId=22731

I can believe it.

I dont know if it's because the Asus is rescaling a 720p source to 600px, and thus causing some problems, but my U820 (1280x800, Atom Z530) handles the 720/24p Serenity trailer with the latest Intel GMA 500 reference driver, using WMP (but not MPC for some reason) under Windows 7 with no dropped frames. The GMA 500 drivers have been a real debacle, esp. under Linux, but even under Windows. I'm hoping as the platform shows up in more machines the driver situation improves even more.

Some caveats: It will *not* scale 1080 sources at any watachable rate. With my Pinnacle 801e ATSC source Windows Media Center dies, often making the graphics driver restart (survivable in Win 7) but sometimes it will blank the display until the power is cycled. I have also not tried 720p AVCHD files from my HMC150.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/grove/paranoid.htm Take what Andy Grove said... Replace company/firm etc.. with Nation. Now consider carefully that "they all are out to get us" as even viewpoint in stjobe's comment so clearly expresses... Then to remain and not die of entropy a sucessful country must consider Andy Grove's maxim as well as Sun Tzu's.

This really seems like a very unlikely event to happen to trigger the problem on these drives for most users since from my experience personally and professionally I have yet to see anyone actually know about BIOS passwords, much less about setting a password on the drive using the ATA secure drive password feature. I am surprised that this was even caught by anyone unless it was a complete fluke or there actually are people or companies using this type of a feature for security. (I don't doubt it but haven't seen it.)

I personally own the first generation Intel X25-M 80GB MLC SSD and I have written about it extensively here on this forum. I heard rumors that the new TRIM feature support will only made available to this second generation release of these drives but I'm unsure if that is really true. I'm on the fence right now whether I should sell my G1 drive and upgrade to the G2 because of this feature and also for a little more performance because I am so happy with the performance of this drive and also the current 8820 firmware that solved the fragmentation and slowdown issues.

If you are one of those folks who is still sitting around not knowing what to do when all of this Solid State Disk news is coming out all over then you are missing the biggest paradigm shift to computing performance since the transfer from floppy disks to hard drives.

With the upcoming re-release of this newly affordable drive around 2009-08-28 from Intel X25-M G2 80GB MLC SSD at ~$230 USD from Newegg or ZipZoomFly you should definitely dig down deep and save a little money to buy one of these drives and experience the biggest performance and responsiveness improvement to your computer that you could imagine.

If you need a primer on the SSD revolution check out my previous post regarding the articles to read.

Required Reading for Solid State Drives (Score 1)

As the AC troll noted, Macs use EFI, not BIOS. That means that the mac software that the grandparent linked to does not survive a disk wipe or swap. That in turn means that the software running above is running only on the hard disk and not the bios, and is not persistent so you can get rid of it easily once installed by just reformatting (or presumably just deleting the files will do it as well).

I find it ironic that the slashdot moderators have gotten the moderation precisely wrong here. The great-grandparent AC was absolutely right, one solution to this rootkit is to own a mac since they don't use BIOS, they use EFI. But this is modded flamebait, and the misinformed grantparent who linked to the software is modded informative.

Because they essentially have no competition.

MS isn't improving the performance or security of their operating system.
Instead, they are simply cramming more products in and calling the monstrosity an "operating system" - in an effort to expand into more markets.

Huh? MS just fixed and tweaked what was wrong with Vista without promising or adding a bajillion new features. Security is a lot better, with many exploits for XP that are coming out not working on Vista or 7.

Intel and AMD have been making dual-core CPUs for more than FOUR YEARS.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20050418comp.htm

Intel has announced 8-core CPUs.
And yet the "new" (its basically a rebranded Vista) Windows 7 will barely take advantage of any of them other than the first..
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1612

Why link to outdated speculation? Check these real tests and benchmarks out instead. http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273

Even Slashdot linked to it. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F22%2F1554224&from=rss

This is what happens when you don't have any competition. Its not an operating system, its a bloated behemoth born of a monopoly that wants to kill competition in every software market it can.

Microsoft should have been split up in 2000.
You can't create competition through regulation.

Err, you want MS to be split up because of regulation and then say you can't create competition through regulation. Cognitive dissonance?

Are you sure you didn't mean to post this comment when Vista launched? If not, all I can say is this --> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/Linus-Calls-MicrosoftHatred-a-Disease

If your sole objective was to irrationally hate on Microsoft and gather Slashdot karma, Congratulations, you've been modded up already.

First a quick clarification: Intel X25 series SSDs do not use their RAM as a data writeback cache. Intel ships racks full of both M and E series drives, with those drives living in a RAID configuration. They couldn't pull that off if the array was corrupted on power loss.

While it would be nice if this were true, since Intel's FAQ references a write cache and database-oriented tests like the one I referenced show data corruption, the paranoid (which includes everyone who works on database and similar enterprise apps) have to presume there's still a problem until some trustworthy studies to the contrary appear. Please let me know if you're aware of any. Your argument of "they couldn't pull that off" is not a data point, because millions of hard drives with a lying write cache are shipped every year to people who think they're just fine, and who don't experience corruption on power loss. Those same drives show corruption just fine if you do a database-oriented corruption test on them.

Until I see SSD vendors giving very clear statements about their write caching and they start passing tests specifically aimed at discovering this type of corruption, you have to assume that the situation with them is just as bad as it's always been with regular IDE or SATA disks--drives lie. The only such test I've seen so far using the Intel drives is from Vadim, the X25-E failed. It would be great if the coverage you were doing at PC Perspective, expanded to cover this issue fully; write-cache enabled?, diskchecker.pl, and faking the sync have good introductions to this issue and how to run such tests yourself.

I can't find the website where I originally read the numbers I quoted, but that website showed the calculations similar to yours, and they came up with the 5 year, 20GB figure. However I did find the numbers I quoted straight from Intel:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/nand/feature/index.htm

Expand the "Comparison chart" link a few paragraphs from the top. You will see an additional table. Last row in the table:

"5 years - 35TB written, up to 20GB/day for 5 years"

consistent with many other industry executives. I did some reading after my initial reply to this thread, and although the open source world has been a huge inflection point, competition is as fierce as ever.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/grove/paranoid.htm

i was reading thru other folks comments, and its interesting when we think about the successful superstars like Jobs, Gates, Andy Grove (only the paranoid survive). it does give me pause... at the end of the day, it is competition. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/grove/paranoid.htm

and there is no discernible lag on first load like you will get with SATA drives since they are still trying to load system tray applications.

Protip: Intel's SSDs are also "SATA drives".

From here

Intel Mainstream Solid-State Drives are available in either 2.5in (Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive) or 1.8in (Intel X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive) standard hard drive form factors.

The term you meant was hard disk drive (or HDD) not the name of the connector interface (SATA).

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

My CPUs don't support 64-bit.
Atom N270 and Xeon LV

My CPUs don't support 64-bit.
Atom N270 and Xeon LV

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

1 second boot will never be possible on this shitty hardware until you rewrite the bios.

So rewrite the bios. Fastboot BIOS:An Investigation of BIOS Speed Enhancement Featuring the Intel Atom Processor

On the other hand, perhaps the authors cheated.

During the boot process, the BIOS provides an opportunity for the user to hit a hot key that
terminates the boot process and instead displays a menu used to modify various platform settings.
This includes settings such as boot order, disabling various processor or chipset features, modifying
media parameters, etc. On an embedded device, BIOS setup (and any similar settings provided by
an operating system loader) is more of a liability since it gives the end-user access to BIOS
features that are potentially untested on the device. It is better to have a set of setup options that
may be chosen at BIOS build time. Removal of BIOS setup also saves significant BIOS post time.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome. So what's with Google's Chrome?

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can mine our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And they're going to come out with their own operating system?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit trying to syphon off my personal data in between crashes!

It would be nice to do a comparison of both compiled with ICC instead (assuming the Firefox source code is compatible).

It's also free for on Linux non-commercial use: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/non-commercial-software-download. The Fortran and C as well as vtune and a bunch of other software (e.g. the Math Kernel Library) are all available for free, non-commercial use on Linux. Of course, AMD's software doesn't even have that restriction. :)