Slashdot Mirror

Larrabee is expected to at least be competitive with nVidia/AMD's stuff, although it might not be until the second generation product before they're on equal footing.

Competitiveness is not a quality of generation number. Still: What statistics have you seen that compare Larrabee and something people use right now (ATI/nVidia)? There is this presentation (PDF) they made at SIGGRAPH, which shows that performance increases as you add more Larrabee cores. Here's a graph which may mean something. The y-axis is "scaled performance" What might that mean?

Graphs show how many 1 GHz Larrabee cores are required to maintain 60 FPS at 1600x1200 resolution in several popular games. Roughly 25 cores are required for Gears of War with no antialiasing, 25 cores for F.E.A.R with 4x antialiasing, and 10 cores for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 with 4x antialiasing.

Sounds neat. I guess that's why they're going to promote the 32-core Larrabee. How much will something to run these cost and how much power will it consume? They're still developing this thing, so why do I keep hearing that it will BLOW MY MIND? I have no doubt that Intel has an army of capable engineers that could build something to render graphics great, but if it costs more than the consumer can possibly pay, there's no real point. Intel is gunning for 2 TFLOPs. I'm pretty sure the Radeon HD 4870 passes that mark already (and you can purchase it for less than $500). Sure, it's a cool technology, but I'd like to see some more facts and figures.

What have I heard? Power usage/heat: 300W TDP. That's pretty horrific. Cost: 12-layer PCB. That's twice the typical graphics card and four more than the high-end Radeon and nForce cards. That doesn't directly translate into cost, but generally more complicated equals more expensive.

But back to the PS4 -- Sony's real mistake with the PS3 was expecting the Cell processor to be the most incredible computing device ever. Original plans for the PS3 included 2 Cell processors, but they changed to the RSX when they realized the Cell wasn't capable of rendering graphics like they wanted to (whereas the XBox 360's architecture was designed with the GPU and CPU co-existing from the start). You can't build a bunch of fast parts and stick them together, you have to build a fast system. Perhaps Sony has learned their lesson.

I could, indeed, write a piece of code that would wear out parts of your SSD within days.

Could you? Would you fill the disk almost completely full, and then write and delete the last block over and over with random data 100,000 times per second?

Gee, if they had though of that they might have done something really clever like include a RAM cache and a thousand extra blocks you can't see, and happily report the block written and deleted when it really wasn't, or actually write it to a different physical block each time. They might have had a stroke of genius and included logic to move least-written data to the heavily used blocks and let you bang on fresh ones now and then. It would take a real men of genius engineer to predict this pathological case and include a special purpose computer onboard to deal with it. At least it would if the engineers didn't read slashdot where we've discussed these problems to death for years and years.

They would have done it transparently in the device logic without even telling you because the device is solid state and every bit is as close as every other bit so latency is not a problem. But no, if they were that clever they would have also included some spare bytes in every block and a map so that if a bit in the middle went bad it wouldn't knock out the whole block and some sort of error detection and correction mechanism. It a fit of brilliance they might even have planned for a heavily worn block with too many burned out bits to borrow unused spare bits from another block. Gee, if they were practically omniscient they might have included programmable firmware in case they needed to push out a cure for pathological case they hadn't considered yet.

That is, if they were clever (pdf) that way (pdf).

And if you're trying that hard to break it, a spinning disk won't hold up long at all either.

X3100 is old technology; I have a 4500MHD on my 12" notebook. I haven't tested out the performance much but it's supposed to support Blu-ray and 1080P. I haven't seen it in a netbook yet though.

For the last time, the chipset your are referencing is the DESKTOP variant, not the MOBILE variant.

Mobile 945: 7w TDP.

945 Desktop: 22w TDP.

Nobody in their right mind is going to put a desktop chipset in a netbook. So yes, the 25w consumed by this test platform (4w for CPU + 20w for chipset) IS significantly more than most netbooks (4w for CPU + 7w for chipset), and raises the question of whether this is a viable solution for HD playback.

For the last time, the chipset your are referencing is the DESKTOP variant, not the MOBILE variant.

Mobile 945: 7w TDP.

945 Desktop: 22w TDP.

Nobody in their right mind is going to put a desktop chipset in a netbook. So yes, the 25w consumed by this test platform (4w for CPU + 20w for chipset) IS significantly more than most netbooks (4w for CPU + 7w for chipset), and raises the question of whether this is a viable solution for HD playback.

Bios do decompress themselves, at least for the menus. Maybe the SATA locking code would be uncompressed, I'm not sure.

I still think you're underestimating the complexity of finding the code in the Bios and patching it. A human could do it, automating the process is not so trivial. There are after all a lot of ways to send a command to a drive, even a drive one one interface (there are two at the moment, AHCI for native SATA and ATA for IDE and SATA in emulation mode). If you asked two people to do it, they would each produce slightly different code and hacking it out would require a different set of bytes being patched.

If you just scan for the command byte, you'd probably get a lot of hits. Change 'em all and you'll brick the machine.

Awdflash is updated regularly, according to this guy

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/jefn/bootblock.html
Always ensure that you use the correct version of Awdflash.exe! Phoenix/Award regularly updates Awdflash.exe program to support ever-changing hardware.

See, all boards with an Award Bios can't be flashed in the exact same way.

You couldn't use this in malware since you need to boot into Dos.

Asus have a Bios update tool which runs unders Windows which they make sure works on all their boards

http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?no=714

It's not like all of their boards use the same instructions to do the update though. An update tool needs to have a driver, essentially for each board it supports. That's the reason awdflash and the Windows Bios flash tools often have to be updated when they launch a new board.

And you have to support AMI Bioses too.

Actually someone tried this before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH#Virus_specifics

CIH spreads under the Portable Executable file format under Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME. CIH does not spread under Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista. Non Microsoft operating systems are not affected. CIH infects Portable Executable files by splitting the bulk of its code into small slivers inserted into the inter-section gaps commonly seen in PE files, and writing a small re-assembly routine and table of its own code segments' locations into unused space in the tail of the PE header. This earned CIH another name, "Spacefiller". The size of the virus is around 1 kilobyte, but due to its novel multiple-cavity infection method, infected files do not grow at all. It uses methods of jumping from processor ring 3 to 0 to hook system calls.

The payload, which is considered extremely dangerous, first involves the virus overwriting the first megabyte (1024KB) of the hard drive with zeroes, beginning at sector 0. This deletes the contents of the partition table, and may cause the machine to hang.

The second payload tries to write to the Flash BIOS. Due to what may be an unintended feature of this code, BIOSes that can be successfully written to by the virus have critical boot-time code replaced with junk. This routine only works on some machines. Much emphasis has been put on machines with motherboards based on the Intel 430TX chipset, but by far the most important variable in CIH's success in writing to a machine's BIOS is the type of Flash ROM chip in the machine. Different Flash ROM chips (or chip families) have different write-enable routines specific to those chips. CIH makes no attempt to test for the Flash ROM type in its victim machines, and has only one write-enable sequence.

Note it only worked in 16 bit Windows. Now the 430TX chipset looks like it has the Bios connected to the ISA bus.

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/290562.pdf

It mentions a hardware write

Currently, only the Intel® G35, G41, G43, G45, G965, GL40, GL960, GM45, GM965, and GS45 Express Chipsets support hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L).

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-011910.htm

Those aren't exactly particularly old chipsets these days.

Make that 228 years.

Life expectancy 2 Million Hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)

Hint: learn about "wear leveling"

For $8 billion MS can probably make Aero run on 513 MB RAM and Pixel Shader 1.0 hardware.

It's not that simple. Aero won't run on Intel 915 chipsets because there is no WDDM driver. Aero needs a WDDM driver. Intel will not release a WDDM driver for 915 because one of the requirements of the driver is the chip must have a Hardware Scheduler which the 915 does not have. I'm not a chip engineer but it seems to me that a Hardware Scheduler was something that is built into the chip and not something that can be simulated by software. Incidentally the 915 does support Pixel Shader 2.0.

Intel could redesign the 915 with a Hardware Scheduler and re-release it. However most of integrated video chipsets are soldered onto the MB and not easily replaced. It would be far easier for the consumer to replace the MB than to retrofit the 915.

That was the impression I got from the various sources I have read. I also think I remember reading that they are planning to fix this with USB 3.

I read through Intel's EHCI specifications and from what I understood, while DMA is supported it still requires double buffering because of alignment issues. The interrupt rate and required CPU supervision were probably not a problem until the 480 Mbits/sec transfer rate was implemented.

Amen to that, I'm getting ready to buy a Q9000-based laptop. Of all companies Acer is first to market (Assuming you can actually get them) and I am NEVER. BUYING. ANOTHER. FUCKING. HP/COMPAQ. I have never had service this bad. Anyway, it's a more budget/mobile version, which is fine with me, lower power FTW. 45W for a Core 2 Quad at 2 GHz? Sign me up. Anyway, the machine is like $1700 with the Q9000, 4GB, BD-ROM/DVD-RW, and an 18 inch LCD. ANYTHING to get away from this stupid Quadro (and my T2600 is showing its age a bit.)

On that first option. Has anyone compared the available development tools for linux?

http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/clin/277618.htm

http://developer.amd.com/cpu/Pages/default.aspx

and nvidia vs ati

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html#

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/Pages/default.aspx

Actually, there's a certain major manufacturer of x86 processors that's manufacturing a series of x86 processors that, in a 32-bit-only form, has experienced quite a success in the marketplace as of late. ;)

Actually, there's a certain major manufacturer of x86 processors that's manufacturing a series of x86 processors that, in a 32-bit-only form, has experienced quite a success in the marketplace as of late. ;)

Have you tried Netbook Remix? I have and I just did not get on with it, mainly because its been stripped down too far. Especially annoying was a lack of reiserfs support, which I'd taken to using due to the ability of ext2/3 to lose everything on an sd card under certain circumstances.

But Some people must like it. Surprisingly OSX runs quite well on a netbook, I took a triple booting hdd from a laptop and found the osx and ubuntu installs both booted up fine (Xp didn't but thats MS for you) I soon got wireless working on OSX using an Edimax usb card with a ralink 2500 chipset. It's certainly responsive enough but then again the Macbook Air has a 1.6 dual core CPU so a 1.6 atom isn't that much poorer (the image had been used on a 1.4 Celeron without issues).

Now we find that Android is also a possibility for a netbook, isnt that cool. So much choice, ok there are issues to be resolved for OSX (apart from legal ones) and also for Android and less so for Ubuntu and other Linux versions. XP works quite well, 2000 is good but no webcam driver.

quick google finds
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/12/22/atom-support-now-in-opensolaris/
and http://masafumi-ohta.blogspot.com/ This second link has a picture of a EEE running opensolaris.

How can you not love having lots of options available, I am so tempted to build a collection of images to use with my netbooks.

choice is good very good :)

http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.HTML

http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-028594.htm
(^Ewww)

Actually you do.

Yeah, because of the fifty busiest ports in the world, Canada has one on the list (Vancouver) and the United States has six and five of them move more cargo than Vancouver.

The only ports that freeze are in the great lakes, you know the ones that ship out the majority of the grain to the rest of the world.

This confuses me. Not the freezing ports part, but the grain shipping, because the US exports twelve times as much grain as Canada. With 22% going via California, and the next 16% going via Washington and New York.

It means that if you throw a hissy fit, we simply say 'our market is now europe' and they buy our goods, or japan, or anyone else.

Yeah, because Asia is going to totally want to import goods from a half way around the world where it's twice as expensive to produce the goods, than they will from multiple countries right next door where labor is cheaper. I mean why import goods from Malaysia into Japan when you can ship stuff from Canada.

And yeah, I agree, it's going to be totally trivial for Canada to find new markets for 80% of their total exports. Not.

While you're very good at consuming our goods, and tell me something do you even have the manufacturing base left to make anything?

I don't know. Maybe air planes, heavy equipment, trucks, microprocessors, DRAM & flash. Then of course we have things like tanks, airplanes & submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter planes & submarines. And there are vaccines and medicines.

But, hey, we import our socks, so yeah, I can totally see why you'd think the US isn't capable of producing anything.

The only reason the US imports manufactured goods is because it's cheaper. Barring protectionist policies, every industrialized country does the same.

Ok, this will be off-topic for this thread but whatever, maybe it can interest someone :D

His motherboard is an ASUS P5Q-E (1) running stock BIOS I guess, there is a newer one out (2) version 1703 which mentions "Enhance the compatibility with certain memory." so I guess that may help to, can be upgraded with ASUS update utility (3) from within Windows so he should be able to do it. The motherboard runs Intel P45 (4) chipset which spec page mentions 1333 MHz FSB although Asus webpage (1) says 1600 MHz, guess they have tested it.

I think he was supposed to get Corsair CL5 PC8500 TWIN2X4096-8500C5D (5) but since he has a fan I guess he got the TWIN2X4096-8500C5DHX or something such. Modules spec sheet mentions:
JEDEC standard 5-5-5-18 values at 800MHz.
EPP standard 5-5-5-15-2T, 2.1V values.

Processor is Intel E8500 (6) 1333 MHz bus speed, 9.5 ratio, 6 MB cache, 3.16 GHz clock.

Anyway, I checked the manual (available at (2)) and told him to do the following:
* Turn Ai Overclock Tuner from Auto to Manual.
* Change FSB Frequency to 400.
* Change CPU ratio setting to 08.0
* Change DRAM Frequency to DDR2-800 MHz.
* Let DRAM Timing Control remain at auto (assuming it reads correct values) and same on DRAM Voltage unless Corsair EPP doesn't change that to 2.1 as default.

Which would run his CPU at 3.2 GHz but with 1:1 CPU to RAM clock divider at atleast run the RAMs faster than 333 MHz.

If the RAM remains on 2.1 volt I guess one can go in and drop it down to 1.8, and eventually fill in the timings manually from the JEDEC part of the spec sheet.

If he runs into problem I'll tell him to:
* Change Ai Clock Twister from Auto to Light or Lighter which is supposed to raise compatibility.
* Update to latest motherboard BIOS since it's supposed to raise memory compatibility.
* And finally if nothing else helps change RAM speed to DDR2-667 MHz, FSB down to 333 MHz and CPU ratio to 9.5.

And if everything works as it should and he really want to overclock I assume he can start with:
* Either change his CPU multiplier back to 9.5, eventually increasing CPU voltage if needed.
* Or shoot for increasing his FSB beyond 400 MHz by increasing RAM voltage again and eventually NB voltage to.
* Or a combination of both.
Since I'd prefer as high FSB as possible without no errors I'd start there but then chipset and RAM is more likely to fail. The CPU probably got higher margins since they usually overclock so good so maybe that's a more fail-safe option =P, he do run stock cooling however.

Looks ok?

1) ASUS P5Q-E http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=2267&l1=3&l2=11&l3=709&l4=0
2) P5Q-E BIOS 1703 http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5Q-E
3) ASUS Update Utility http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?no=714
4) Intel® P45 Express Chipset http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/chipsets/p45/p45-overview.htm
5) Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5D http://www.corsair.com/_datasheets/TWIN2X4096-8500C5D.pdf
6) Intel® Coreâ2 Duo Desktop Processor E8500 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLAPK#

Ok, this will be off-topic for this thread but whatever, maybe it can interest someone :D

His motherboard is an ASUS P5Q-E (1) running stock BIOS I guess, there is a newer one out (2) version 1703 which mentions "Enhance the compatibility with certain memory." so I guess that may help to, can be upgraded with ASUS update utility (3) from within Windows so he should be able to do it. The motherboard runs Intel P45 (4) chipset which spec page mentions 1333 MHz FSB although Asus webpage (1) says 1600 MHz, guess they have tested it.

I think he was supposed to get Corsair CL5 PC8500 TWIN2X4096-8500C5D (5) but since he has a fan I guess he got the TWIN2X4096-8500C5DHX or something such. Modules spec sheet mentions:
JEDEC standard 5-5-5-18 values at 800MHz.
EPP standard 5-5-5-15-2T, 2.1V values.

Processor is Intel E8500 (6) 1333 MHz bus speed, 9.5 ratio, 6 MB cache, 3.16 GHz clock.

Anyway, I checked the manual (available at (2)) and told him to do the following:
* Turn Ai Overclock Tuner from Auto to Manual.
* Change FSB Frequency to 400.
* Change CPU ratio setting to 08.0
* Change DRAM Frequency to DDR2-800 MHz.
* Let DRAM Timing Control remain at auto (assuming it reads correct values) and same on DRAM Voltage unless Corsair EPP doesn't change that to 2.1 as default.

Which would run his CPU at 3.2 GHz but with 1:1 CPU to RAM clock divider at atleast run the RAMs faster than 333 MHz.

If the RAM remains on 2.1 volt I guess one can go in and drop it down to 1.8, and eventually fill in the timings manually from the JEDEC part of the spec sheet.

If he runs into problem I'll tell him to:
* Change Ai Clock Twister from Auto to Light or Lighter which is supposed to raise compatibility.
* Update to latest motherboard BIOS since it's supposed to raise memory compatibility.
* And finally if nothing else helps change RAM speed to DDR2-667 MHz, FSB down to 333 MHz and CPU ratio to 9.5.

And if everything works as it should and he really want to overclock I assume he can start with:
* Either change his CPU multiplier back to 9.5, eventually increasing CPU voltage if needed.
* Or shoot for increasing his FSB beyond 400 MHz by increasing RAM voltage again and eventually NB voltage to.
* Or a combination of both.
Since I'd prefer as high FSB as possible without no errors I'd start there but then chipset and RAM is more likely to fail. The CPU probably got higher margins since they usually overclock so good so maybe that's a more fail-safe option =P, he do run stock cooling however.

Looks ok?

1) ASUS P5Q-E http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=2267&l1=3&l2=11&l3=709&l4=0
2) P5Q-E BIOS 1703 http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5Q-E
3) ASUS Update Utility http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?no=714
4) Intel® P45 Express Chipset http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/chipsets/p45/p45-overview.htm
5) Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5D http://www.corsair.com/_datasheets/TWIN2X4096-8500C5D.pdf
6) Intel® Coreâ2 Duo Desktop Processor E8500 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLAPK#

4 drives and eSATA for expansion. Details here
This uses a 1.6GHz Celeron, which, while low end for a general cpu, is pretty fast compared to most cheap NAS units and will come closer to utilizing the gig port than most.

Electromigration-aware design.

Intel has already been experimenting with fabrication & design techniques to improve electromigration performance.

"Hard drives, while they may fail, are still probably your best chance."

I tend to agree, however I'm a bit confused over what exactly is being requested.

"I've thought about buying a bunch of 4GB thumb drives....I have less than 500GBs and only save things important to me."

At first glance I thought you had 500gb you were trying to store, but then you mentioned "buying a bunch of 4GB thumbdrives" and I can't imagine someone buying 125 4gb thumbdrives to use for backup. So exactly how much data are you trying to store?

If less than 50gb, I'd suggest a few SD cards. 8gb SD is ~$11, or 16gb for $30. While more expensive than hard drives per gb, SD cards are remarkably resilient, surviving a week in the ocean, and a few in a ziplock bag stored in a safe deposit box would probably last close to forever.

SD will probably still be around at least for the next decade or longer. SD has already been around since 1999 and all modern card readers read SD cards by default. SD slots are in nearly every form of consumer electronic device, and every manufacture of digital cameras uses SD except Sony and Olympus, almost guaranteeing the card readers will be around for many years to come.

I would suggest against USB anything since they're already discussing cutting the cord on USB and going wireless USB. While I don't predict that will happen overnight you wanted a solution that would be available decades from now, and wired USB might go the way of the parallel port, which was the standard external port in the 80s and 90s but was replaced by USB late 90s. Parallel port only had a lifespan of about 20 yrs and is no longer on modern PCs, and USB has been out just over 10 years so it's feasible in 10 years PCs will no longer have USB ports, everything will be wireless USB.

plus the legitimate user just enters a passphrase and "poof" notebook is unlocked again.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22theft+deterrent%22+site%3Aintel.com&btnG=Search
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2384;jsessionid=D59F43EDDFB0FCDAA907153C80E0539E
http://communities.intel.com/openport/community/openportit/vproexpert/blog/tags/at-p

some light reading for the paranoid. Besides this is targeted mostly at business (V-Pro?).

plus the legitimate user just enters a passphrase and "poof" notebook is unlocked again.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22theft+deterrent%22+site%3Aintel.com&btnG=Search
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2384;jsessionid=D59F43EDDFB0FCDAA907153C80E0539E
http://communities.intel.com/openport/community/openportit/vproexpert/blog/tags/at-p

some light reading for the paranoid. Besides this is targeted mostly at business (V-Pro?).

Used to be that the benefit was essentially automatic. You bought a new computer, loaded your software on it, and it was all twice as fast.

The original article by Moore formulated it in terms of cost:

In 1965, Moore examined the density of transistors at which cost is minimized, and observed that, as transistors were made smaller through advances in photolithography, this number would increase at "a rate of roughly a factor of two per year".

Wikipedia, citing ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf. Emphasis added.

As you have said, this means that computers have been getting faster. But look at the other side of the equation.

You can get a decent computer for next to nothing, and put it in your toaster, or your hat, or wherever you like -- computing is now ubiquitous. I mean how much is an ARM processor these days? 10 cents apiece? You could rig it up to a board and have a full hat controller to, say, control the hat's pigment for a few dollars (of course that pigment system might cost you a bit).

What is interesting is that, while people have been trying to call anything following an exponential curve in technology as being "Moore's Law," things that Moore actually discussed, and form part of the law, and which are always talked about (here anyway), are almost never associated with Moore's Law.

And I find it hilarious: Intel consistently makes better mobile CPUs definitely but everything else they do in mobile space reeks to high heaven. To this day its nearly impossible to buy a Atom netbook without a Intel GMA based chipset: thats a 2 watt cpu and a 12-25 watt chipset. If you buy a normal laptop, its probably a 45w or 35w chip, even though the Pxx00 series is 25w and almost the same price, and again it comes with an absolutely worthless video card that sucks down >10 watts.

Not true at all, where have you been reading this bullshit? The Intel 945G Mobile is the standard chipset used by netbooks, and has a TDP of between 5-7w. The Mobile 945GSE used by the Asus netbooks has a TDP of only 6w. You don't really think they'd have the power in one of those tiny nettops to power a desktop chipset for 2+ hours, do you?

The chipset you are thinking of is the craptastic 945GC, which is the leftovers remaining after Intel cherry-picks the mobile versions. The only reason Intel uses these on their Atom motherboards is because the boards are designed for MINIMUM COST for developing markets, not minimum power. Since the 945GC is practically free to use (leftovers), Intel can sell the whole board + Atom for $70.

There's nothing preventing other manufacturers from releasing an Atom motherboard with a mobile chipset, aside from cost...but cost is a strong factor in designs. Typically, if they go to that kind of trouble to design for low power, they design to tighter specs and sell the board to the embedded market for $300+. In the consumer DESKTOP market, most people don't care about the difference between 20w and 40w, so the ideal board for you will never be sold.

And I find it hilarious: Intel consistently makes better mobile CPUs definitely but everything else they do in mobile space reeks to high heaven. To this day its nearly impossible to buy a Atom netbook without a Intel GMA based chipset: thats a 2 watt cpu and a 12-25 watt chipset. If you buy a normal laptop, its probably a 45w or 35w chip, even though the Pxx00 series is 25w and almost the same price, and again it comes with an absolutely worthless video card that sucks down >10 watts.

Not true at all, where have you been reading this bullshit? The Intel 945G Mobile is the standard chipset used by netbooks, and has a TDP of between 5-7w. The Mobile 945GSE used by the Asus netbooks has a TDP of only 6w. You don't really think they'd have the power in one of those tiny nettops to power a desktop chipset for 2+ hours, do you?

The chipset you are thinking of is the craptastic 945GC, which is the leftovers remaining after Intel cherry-picks the mobile versions. The only reason Intel uses these on their Atom motherboards is because the boards are designed for MINIMUM COST for developing markets, not minimum power. Since the 945GC is practically free to use (leftovers), Intel can sell the whole board + Atom for $70.

There's nothing preventing other manufacturers from releasing an Atom motherboard with a mobile chipset, aside from cost...but cost is a strong factor in designs. Typically, if they go to that kind of trouble to design for low power, they design to tighter specs and sell the board to the embedded market for $300+. In the consumer DESKTOP market, most people don't care about the difference between 20w and 40w, so the ideal board for you will never be sold.

Mana,

I agree.

Then eleventypie will need to get another...better laptop, Damn the delay... the Dell is now old shit... paid for new... get new.

Start, What is new/available:
AMD: http://wheretobuy.amd.com/notebooks.html
Intel: http://www.intel.com/Consumer/Shop/core2x_62.htm

Then use PriceGrabber, Yahoo/Google shopping, TigerDirect, NewEgg, Amazon, to find the best deal that will deliver to APO.

For the latest MB&Processors scale to affordable cost with Brand OEM-URLinks.

Oh and the 915G is the chipset which includes the GMA 900, and I think 945G includes GMA 950. Both are not very good. http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/915g/index.htm But it's a confusing distinction to make. I don't know which chipsets include the X3100 or X4500 but those at least provide decent DX9 performance.

Intel does real time ray tracing on an eight core machine.

http://blogs.intel.com/research/2007/10/real_time_raytracing_the_end_o.php

i totally agree it would be nice to see the max undervolt w/ stock speed this chip can do. but this is the improved chip!

just compare the atom n270 (in almost every netbook) to a comparable core duo or solo

now look at the stated Thermal Design Power - its 2.5watts vs. 34w vs. 31w respectively. that is more than a couple of magnitudes less. and the voltage is lower for the Atom than the Core Duo/Solo too. the fact that this chip is reaching these speeds while consuming relatively no power is the part that makes my jaw drop.

but i disagree that this shows the chip is clock limited by design. i think that the design pushing very near what the chip can do (much closer than Intel's other offerings in any case). this is why - i overclock my xeon quad from 2.13 to 3ghz with nothing more than the stock heat sink - this speed was limited by the heat being generated (it was over 85*C [also fyi 8hours orthos stable]). imagine how high i can get my chip up if it were are -20*C. ask any overclocker out there they will tell you that you can expect a 25%-33% overclock on a pure stock setup. (i.e. this atom stock setup is much closer to it's limits than typical chips being sold)

i totally agree it would be nice to see the max undervolt w/ stock speed this chip can do. but this is the improved chip!

just compare the atom n270 (in almost every netbook) to a comparable core duo or solo

now look at the stated Thermal Design Power - its 2.5watts vs. 34w vs. 31w respectively. that is more than a couple of magnitudes less. and the voltage is lower for the Atom than the Core Duo/Solo too. the fact that this chip is reaching these speeds while consuming relatively no power is the part that makes my jaw drop.

but i disagree that this shows the chip is clock limited by design. i think that the design pushing very near what the chip can do (much closer than Intel's other offerings in any case). this is why - i overclock my xeon quad from 2.13 to 3ghz with nothing more than the stock heat sink - this speed was limited by the heat being generated (it was over 85*C [also fyi 8hours orthos stable]). imagine how high i can get my chip up if it were are -20*C. ask any overclocker out there they will tell you that you can expect a 25%-33% overclock on a pure stock setup. (i.e. this atom stock setup is much closer to it's limits than typical chips being sold)

i totally agree it would be nice to see the max undervolt w/ stock speed this chip can do. but this is the improved chip!

just compare the atom n270 (in almost every netbook) to a comparable core duo or solo

now look at the stated Thermal Design Power - its 2.5watts vs. 34w vs. 31w respectively. that is more than a couple of magnitudes less. and the voltage is lower for the Atom than the Core Duo/Solo too. the fact that this chip is reaching these speeds while consuming relatively no power is the part that makes my jaw drop.

but i disagree that this shows the chip is clock limited by design. i think that the design pushing very near what the chip can do (much closer than Intel's other offerings in any case). this is why - i overclock my xeon quad from 2.13 to 3ghz with nothing more than the stock heat sink - this speed was limited by the heat being generated (it was over 85*C [also fyi 8hours orthos stable]). imagine how high i can get my chip up if it were are -20*C. ask any overclocker out there they will tell you that you can expect a 25%-33% overclock on a pure stock setup. (i.e. this atom stock setup is much closer to it's limits than typical chips being sold)

i totally agree it would be nice to see the max undervolt w/ stock speed this chip can do. but this is the improved chip!

just compare the atom n270 (in almost every netbook) to a comparable core duo or solo

now look at the stated Thermal Design Power - its 2.5watts vs. 34w vs. 31w respectively. that is more than a couple of magnitudes less. and the voltage is lower for the Atom than the Core Duo/Solo too. the fact that this chip is reaching these speeds while consuming relatively no power is the part that makes my jaw drop.

but i disagree that this shows the chip is clock limited by design. i think that the design pushing very near what the chip can do (much closer than Intel's other offerings in any case). this is why - i overclock my xeon quad from 2.13 to 3ghz with nothing more than the stock heat sink - this speed was limited by the heat being generated (it was over 85*C [also fyi 8hours orthos stable]). imagine how high i can get my chip up if it were are -20*C. ask any overclocker out there they will tell you that you can expect a 25%-33% overclock on a pure stock setup. (i.e. this atom stock setup is much closer to it's limits than typical chips being sold)

Intel cannot release a WDDM driver for the 915; otherwise it would have. Basically the Intel 915 lacks a Hardware Scheduler on the chip level and cannot meet the WDDM requirements. The WDDM requirements came out after Intel had already built 915 chips.

btw. WDDM is a driver model.. Any hardware could be made to use it if someone had enough time to write it. The important bit is the graphics memory and pixel shader support.

Not exactly true. Intel's 915 chipset cannot run Aero no matter which driver is used even though it has the memory and the pixel shader support. If Intel could write a driver, they would have done it by now. This blog tells exactly why. The Intel 915 does not have a Hardware Scheduler built in the chip. Newer Intel video chipsets (945, 965) do have a Hardware Scheduler.

But according to one Mr. Josh Bancroft, I remember that the Intel 915 was indeed capable of doing the Aero as well... and that Vista Beta actually ran Aero on the 915. This changed when Vista was actually released though.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2007/04/02/video-why-intel-915-graphics-dont-have-a-wddm-driver-for-vista/

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=451104&cid=22395296

there were a lot of early efforts trying to implement realtime rayracing engines for games (e.g. at Intel recently), let's port that stuff and have some fun.

Intel is a great company to look at; I went to a US News and World Report conference about three weeks ago where an Intel VP came to talk about the special deals and discounts they've worked out with select school systems. Apparently, Intel contributes not only by donating technology for classrooms and computer labs, but also by training teachers in how to use them effectively in the classroom and developing a "digital literacy" curriculum for them to use. Intel takes great pride in their school involvement, and you can find details about that at http://www.intel.com/education/. Now, there was a panel at this conference talking about the role of private interests in fulfilling the technology needs of 21st century schools beyond just straight philanthropy, and the perspective that came out was that more private companies should be selling deeply discounted equipment to schools to get bulk orders steady customers, not to mention the image boost. There was also a very touching vignette about New York middle school students reading Romeo and Juliet videoconferencing with an Israeli class that was reading the same work. Finally, the Brookings Institution had a little bit about how the Federal government can facilitate involvement in "educational entrepreneurship" which is developing cheap, classroom-relevant tech specifically targeted for school use. This was part of the Blueprint for Prosperity report which can be found at http://www.blueprintprosperity.org./

According to Intel, the i915 chipset does not have a native hardware scheduler and hence cannot fully support the WDDM design. I believe there were alpha versions of WDDM drivers for i915 but they only supported a subset of WDDM features and were scrapped early in the project.

I reckon it is actually possible to have full WDDM on i915, but the performance would be absolutely horrible because the scheduling would have to be done in the driver - and we all know how zippy Intel drivers are :)

You're falling into a common trap with Vista sales. "Not selling" in terms of Microsoft sales figures doesn't actually mean that it's literally not selling, it means it's not selling as it could have been with Microsoft's installbase.

Microsoft actually shifted 100million copies of Vista in it's first year of release (not sure how many more in the 10months since then). To put that into context, Apple has shifted only around 10million macs in the last year and only slightly less in the year previous, the story is similar for the previous few years before that.

Vista isn't doing so bad that it's causing a massive migration to the Mac in the slightest, in fact, judging by the fact there's been only a minor increase in Mac sales over the last few years despite platforms like the iPhone going from none to over 10million units in the last year providing a whole new market for mobile developers suggests that there isn't even really much of a switch to Mac development at all.

Regarding your comments on developers, that's a complete redefinition of the term as it's commonly used. Developers and programmers are nearly always cited as one and the same in computing. Artists and web designers aren't developers, they're, well, artists and web designers. If you go for a developer job as an artist people are going to look at you rather funny. It's like an IT manager saying they're a developer because they develop reports, an HR person calling themselves a developer because they help develop the underlying staff base by performing recruitment and payroll tasks. Architects are about the only profession you list that falls in the realm of developer.

http://developers.sun.com/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx

http://developer.intel.com/design/index.htm

oh, and even:

http://developer.apple.com/

All are focussed towards programming and software architecture.

Meanwhile, it is interesting that after many years, Nvidia finally starts to support video decode/playback acceleration just days after ATI ships a driver with similar hardware acceleration support. Of course neither vendor uses any sort of common standard - although ATI claims their stuff is almost identical to the Direct X Video Acceleration (DXVA) API that MS has enforced on Windows.

What standard would that be? VA-API that has a few headers and zero implementations? Intel doesn't even follow the DXVA specification, and won't publish the interface or support video acceleration on XP. ATI is as you say a DXVA -> XvBA search&replace job, which might be good or just bring plenty DirectX luggage. If nVidia put some job into making a good public video acceleration interface for Linux, it might be the best of the bunch. Their implementation may be closed source but if it works well... let's just say I can live very well with a 98% open source system.

The higher Numerical Aperature lithography tools are definitely helping for making narrow lines (hence faster transisters) for both Intel and AMD alike. However, the biggest advantage Intel has in the chip-making business is the use of hafnium for forming the gate of the transister. As Gordon Moore put it, "It's the biggest change in transister technology in the past 40 years."

The rest of the industry is feverishly trying to match/duplicate the hafnium process improvements which Intel discovered. Unless there's some equivalent breakthrough at AMD (which is highly unlikely), Intel will retain the crown for performance.

Disclaimer: I work for Intel, the above is my opinion and I am not a spokesman for Intel. Heck, I'm just a lowly peon. I'm not even authorized to tell you the time of day!

I mean, x86 just can't do 'idle power' like ARM

Are you sure about that? Intel have been working on Atom and say it's better than ARM now,

Even back in April, atom had an idle power range of 80-100mW.

The best speech recognition application I've come across for creating my own speech commands to open programs, files, and even websites without touching my PC is Tazti Speech Recognition by Voice Tech Group. It's a free download and works 100% of the time with custom commands I create. It does require a some training for the XP version, but less for the Vista. I've used them both.

I found out about tazti through a Popular Science Online article. It's also mentioned in a Geek.com blog and also a blog post on the Intel Software website that talks about creating custom commands.

It works on XP and Vista and a friend of mine installed it on a Mac but had to use Parallels and Windows on top of Parallels and then installed tazti.

Other Features: I can control the iTunes player, log into and Navigate Facebook and Myspace, and perform Voice Searches of Google, yahoo, MSN, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia... all by talking to my PC. There are about 15 search engines or websites with search built in. It has other features too, but you can check it out yourself. There's a demo video on YouTube.

Best of all... this is a free download. I don't know how they can afford to do it????

Intel is also on the forefront of photonic interconnects for Processors. HP just jumped on board a year or two ago. Often they fund university research and then try to implement it viably in CMOS or current fab processes.

Hybrid Si Laser by UCSB

Since there are already numerous posts invoking the applicability (or not) of Moore's Law, I thought I would start over. Although Gordon Moore certainly formulated his law based on silicon (original is here: http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/.) it can be applied clear back to 1890 with the Hollerith 'computer' that tabulated the 1890 census. When you graph it out, Moore's Law applies to electro-mechanical switches, then to relays, then to vacuum tubes, then transistors themselves (like in a six transistor radio of the 50's), then on to silicon. It's still the same exponential curve, in five separate states, only the last one of which is silicon. Kurzweil discusses this in depth here: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1. People who claim Moore's Law doesn't apply because this isn't traditional silicon acreage are missing the point, which is that not only is Moore's Law more encompassing than the originally envisioned, it is not going away any time soon. The imminent death of Moore's Law, as always, has been greatly exaggerated.

Yes, but way I see this is:

Intel isn't arbitrarily going, "man, we could make chips that run ok 5 degrees hotter, but we're gonna piss everyone off by demanding more cooling. Just because we can."

this actually just the way the manufacturing process works. if the chips get binned at the top end - it gets the Extreme moniker. my personal processor is a xeon quad core - same exact chip as the q6600 - only my chip as a spec of 85*C while the consumer chips have a spec of 71*C in other words - my friend who bought the Q6600 - is the person intel is 'pissing' off because he has great cooling needs than i do.

It's a zero-sum game. The total load on the planet is the same. The same total bunch of chips exits Intel's fabs. On the total, no energy was conserved.

So Google's "going green" is at the cost of making everyone else less "green". They can willy-wave about how energy efficient they are, by simply dumping the difference on someone else.

the total load on the planet is not the same. it is much cheaper to not cool an object than it is to cool it. other people's chips are not going to cost more 'green' points (or whatever is used to measure green friendliness [dont think carbon credits works here]). this is the functional equivalent of google saying 'i want only extreme processors' i simply do not understand your point of google dumping the eco burden on other people.

lets not confuse hot CPUs with an affect on global warming or anything like that, because its is much cheaper (for the environment) to deal with the heat, then the heat + energy cost of the alternative. and when i say much cheaper, i mean order of magnitudes cheaper.

It's akin to me willy-waving that I'm so green and produce less garbage than you... by dumping some of my garbage in random other people's garbage bins across the town. Yay, I'm so green now, you all can start worshipping me. Well, no, on the total the same amount of garbage being produced

to be clear on what i mean, and to use your metaphor - it is not the same amount of garbage being produced since the air conditioners are being turn down. heat != pollution

Yes, but way I see this is:

Intel isn't arbitrarily going, "man, we could make chips that run ok 5 degrees hotter, but we're gonna piss everyone off by demanding more cooling. Just because we can."

this actually just the way the manufacturing process works. if the chips get binned at the top end - it gets the Extreme moniker. my personal processor is a xeon quad core - same exact chip as the q6600 - only my chip as a spec of 85*C while the consumer chips have a spec of 71*C in other words - my friend who bought the Q6600 - is the person intel is 'pissing' off because he has great cooling needs than i do.

It's a zero-sum game. The total load on the planet is the same. The same total bunch of chips exits Intel's fabs. On the total, no energy was conserved.

So Google's "going green" is at the cost of making everyone else less "green". They can willy-wave about how energy efficient they are, by simply dumping the difference on someone else.

the total load on the planet is not the same. it is much cheaper to not cool an object than it is to cool it. other people's chips are not going to cost more 'green' points (or whatever is used to measure green friendliness [dont think carbon credits works here]). this is the functional equivalent of google saying 'i want only extreme processors' i simply do not understand your point of google dumping the eco burden on other people.

lets not confuse hot CPUs with an affect on global warming or anything like that, because its is much cheaper (for the environment) to deal with the heat, then the heat + energy cost of the alternative. and when i say much cheaper, i mean order of magnitudes cheaper.

It's akin to me willy-waving that I'm so green and produce less garbage than you... by dumping some of my garbage in random other people's garbage bins across the town. Yay, I'm so green now, you all can start worshipping me. Well, no, on the total the same amount of garbage being produced

to be clear on what i mean, and to use your metaphor - it is not the same amount of garbage being produced since the air conditioners are being turn down. heat != pollution

DDR3 modules can transfer data at the effective clock rate of 800â"1600 MHz (see here)

That means DDR3-1600 is the max speed as a standard.
Anything faster than DDR3-1600 is already an overclocked memory by the memory manafacture.


However, Nehalem supports up to DDR3-1333 only.

Other features discussed include support for DDR3-800, 1066, and 1333 memory. (see here)

As a hardware enthusiast (but not an overclocker), I would rather be using a DDR3-1600 memory.
Understandably, the overclocking community would want to use DDR3-2000 or faster (if any).

Personally, I would not be buying Nehalem until a newer one comes out
with at least DDR3-1600 or faster support.