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Microsoft has been very public about supporting Alpha, AMD64, PocketPC and pretty much anything non-Intel they can find.

VI Architecture

The ServerWorks Grand Champion series and the Intel 75xx series of chipsets both support >4GB. The no-name Taiwanese brands from Fry's usually don't. Each serves a different market.

Most high end server boards require that the memory be ECC registered that needs to be installed in pairs...

an example of such a board is the Intel SCB2.

[that board can go up to 6GB ram and has 6 sockets]

Firewire 800 is NOT twice as fast as USB 2.0.
USB 2.0's rated speed is 480 Mbps.
The rated speed of Firewire 800 is 800 Mbps.
For Firewire to be twice as fast as USB 2.0, you will just have to wait until Firewire 960 comes out.

Frankly I'm suprised a CPU made of wood would work at all.

Nope, he's right, the P2 topped out at 450MHz.

http://www.intel.com/design/PentiumII/datashts/243 657.htm

I think the Intel E7505 supports both :-)

Look here

Intel (and most CPU makers') processors support the CPUID instruction. There is a method available on Pentium 4 processors and later that report the "factory" speed. What CPUID returns is determined by the values in EAX before the CPUID is executed. More information here.

Also, Intel does provide a utility to measure the current speed of the processor and report various other things like cache size and package type. Available here.

/*These comments express my opinions, not my employer's*/

I'm running Gentoo Linux 1.4rc1. Everything is built from scratch with optimizations so it's as fast as can be on both machines. I'm running kernel 2.4.20 on both machines.

I should note that the SCSI performance boost is still huge in Windows, but less profound than in Linux due to the way Windows aligns frequently used files on the disk.

As for your performance issues, try updating the drivers for your chipset (Intel INF and Intel Application Accelerator / VIA Hyperion 4-in-1) to make sure you're getting the most from your motherboard.

Intel Chipset Driver Matrix

VIA Hyperion Downloads

I know ....Replying to myself

Here is Intel's history not very thorough, but complete.

And here is a much more complete rendition from DDJ

This is kinda off topic but related to Intel compatibility, all the centrino branded laptops are being sold with the Intel 2100 Pro mini-pci wireless adaptor. This adaptor does not currently work on Linux. Intel has announced tentative plans to support this adaptor on Linux. The are still deciding whether or not to release it as open source or binary only. Considering the large amount of laptops being sold with the 2100 Pro adaptor, I urge anyone, to contact Intel and let them know that you would like to see an open source wireless driver for linux, as soon as possible. You can also send them an e-mail too. We don't want this to turn in to another winmodem situation.

This is kinda off topic but related to Intel compatibility, all the centrino branded laptops are being sold with the Intel 2100 Pro mini-pci wireless adaptor. This adaptor does not currently work on Linux. Intel has announced tentative plans to support this adaptor on Linux. The are still deciding whether or not to release it as open source or binary only. Considering the large amount of laptops being sold with the 2100 Pro adaptor, I urge anyone, to contact Intel and let them know that you would like to see an open source wireless driver for linux, as soon as possible. You can also send them an e-mail too. We don't want this to turn in to another winmodem situation.

Oh, you did know that, right? You can download ELILO straight off Intel's EFI section. (An observant reader will notice that it's actually hosted by HP's research lab, although I can't actually find the info there.)

Of course, you can also read about EFI and Linux from RedHat.

I wouldn't worry, somehow. Plus EFI is mostly used with the new Itanium architecture. I'm sure Linux will be able to survive the impending DRM apocolypse.

I'm confused.. if you don't use CPU cycles, they are somehow saved up?

Don't be confused, you're on a geek site remember? Just read up on the 'hlt' instruction on intel's website. There you'll learn that the unused cycles are in fact saved up; by lowering the energy consumption and hence temperature of the CPU. This lower temperature in turn adding up to a longer life of your processor.

The cheaper electricity bill is just an added bonus.

USB... Apple

While Apple is responsible for many innovations, USB isn't one of them. USB was initially (co-)developed, and pushed heavily by Intel.

From this site:

Q2: Who created USB?
A2: USB was developed by a group of seven companies that saw a need for an interconnect to enable the growth of the blossoming Computer Telephony Integration Industry. The seven promoters of the USB definition are; Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp, IBM PC Co., Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Northern Telecom.


I'm pretty sure Apple adopted it only later; Firewire is considered faster, but a more expensive standard to implement.

Had the original poster READ the article he was posting about rather than skimmed, he would have seen that the test pitted top of the line consumer grade X-86 hardware against top of the line Dual G4 Mac hardware... to quote the article:

"The showdown pitted a single-processor Dell 3.06GHz Pentium 4 and a 1.25GHz dual-processor Power Mac G4 (the fastest Mac then available). The contest compared renderings of files created in Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop software." Source:

Incidentally, a single processor P4 machine is not by any means top of the line PC hardware. Perhaps they are too embarrassed to show what would happen with top of the line X-86 hardware (non-server class, lets stick to workstation vs. workstation hardware)... A Dual Intel Xeon processor (Xeons are currently running at a peak of 3.06 Ghz) box with a workstation class graphics accelerator instead of the gaming graphics cards you can get for the mac (GeForce 4 IS a gaming graphics card!... THIS is a workstation graphics card)... I betcha price is comparable at that level of X-86 hardware.

Not to mention, to add insult to injury for Apple, the single processor Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz PC (which I'm sure retailed for $1000 - $2000 USD less than the Apple box) whipped the Power Mac in EVERY category of the comparison. I'm sure Apple's own proprietary "equivalent" software runs faster on MacOS than the Adobe software. Perhaps they should open some of the tricks they are hiding to accomplish that to Adobe, one of the companies that made Apple what it is today!

Oh yeah, and one day, if Apple has the balls, they should compare top PC-Workstation hardware to top Mac-Workstation hardware. To make it fair (and cut the whining), limit the PC-Workstation to the retail price of a top of the line Mac-Workstation (that is currently $3,799 without a monitor!)... then compare those machines and see the embarrasing truth (well, embarrasing to Apple, who claims that the "turbocharged Power Mac rips through digital video and 3D projects faster than Pentiums can say 'uncle.' " Source:)

I wish Apple would move to X86... if they can convince people of that much BS and stir up what can only be called religious Mac worship, they would probably do great (and make much more profit) if they switch OSX to X86 and built the same PowerMacs on X86 hardware... maybe the Opteron, who knows :) They've got enough of a name where they could just pull it off and, aesthetically speaking, they are ahead of the X86 world, for now. Plus, being *nix based now, it should be a simpler move than it would have been before!

free() itself is the last thing. It scans the free list, starting at freep, looking for the place to insert the free block. This is either between two existing blocks or at the end of the list. In any case, if the block being freed is adjacent to either neighbor, the adjacent blocks are combined. The only troubles are keeping the pointers pointing to the right things and the sizes correct.

NOTE for MSVC users: As in any C application, the standard C calls malloc() and free() may be used to manage memory. If you are using the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, it is VERY IMPORTANT to note a scarcely documented fact of the Win32 API, in that free() does not actually free the memory that is being accessed (as it does in most standard C compilers). MSVC will free the pointer to the memory but will not actually release the physical memory. To release the physical memory a call to the Windows extension function _heapmin() must be made. This function should be documented in Win32 API documentation but it may be noted that it is difficult to find a reference to it otherwise. If the application uses free() and malloc() but not _heapmin() then virtual memory issues will arise during extended use of the application.

Note [New feature hides ugly bug]In Visual C++ Version 4.0, the underlying heap structure was moved to the C run-time libraries to support the new debugging features. As a result, the only Win32 platform that is supported by _heapmin is Windows NT. The function returns -1 and sets errno to ENOSYS, when it is called by any other Win32 platform. [But what happens if you run an old VC < 4.0 compiled binary? Probably the old function gets called]

If you want to know more about the Serial ATA technology:

Cnet

SATA and ISCSI

Intel Dev Paper

Maxtor White Paper

Serial ATA Working Group

I highly doubt Itanium. I think a more likely is that:

A) Intel has an oh-so-secret RISC processor that is mac compatible. Keep in mind that RISC is not foreign to them. They do make ARM processors. Granted, the linked CPU would be too slow, but they still understand RISC.

B) Intel will use IBM's new chip design and fab them, rebranded as some equally stupid marketing name as the Itanium.

Neither case is likely, but 100x more likely then Itanium being used.

There might be differences between ARM and Xscale. I wish I knew.

In anycase, the white paper looks like it's simply describing the difference between the software out of the box. There's a wealth of "upgrades" out there to use, even whole distros for the ambitious:

• OpenZaurus
  
• Debian Zaurus
  

Ordinary software packages availiable include useful things like a terminal.

I've seen the Open Zaurus working and it's very neat with working GUI, productivity suit and CF wifi. It is essentially a full replacement for the sotware that comes with the 5500, but you can keep and reinstall that software too.

The Debian project looks less developed but is working on cool stuff like an X interface. They have a kernel and root system set up, and a working X. It would be fun to work on.

Ironically, my Zaurus has a better processor than my much bigger laptop. It would be borg the two together, X to export aps to the laptop and disk storage in return. I expect to be able to do this latter than sooner.

> Argh... do i wait for athlon64 or opteron, or do I get one of these bad boys?! Decisions, decisions...

Intel has had high speed, quality solutions available for quite some time now. But if you like to play catchup, check out AMD.

What the hell are you talking about? Clockspeed and bus speed aren't really related. Intels 3GHz chip runs on a 533MHz FSB. They also have chips that run on a 400MHz bus. Check out:

this page

Besides, AMD is trying to break the "megahertz myth," remember? :)

I call bullshit and marketing.

Well, nice try. But you're wrong. Do a bit more research.

There are custom motherboards involved, custom low-level software involved, and I believe custom chipsets. Stratus figured that maybe they could cut their+customer's costs by using commodity CPUs (and memory and peripherals, etc) back 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure it ever sold that well because people buying million-dollar servers don't benefit that much from shaving a few thousand off the CPU. But the binary compatibility is nice.

Also, with Itanium and Itanium 2, there is support for a lot of this fancy hardware error recovery stuff in Intel-based chipsets for the first time (see the E8870 chipset docs and look for "Advanced Platform RASUM".)

--LP

Why do posters keep saying posts are wrong without even checking if they are correct.

Read the companies own spec sheets: PowerPC 7455 (G4) 1gHz: 35.5 watts. Pentium III 1gHz: 45.2 watts.

Same clock speed, 10 watts less, STFU.

And no, there is no direct corelation between between "clock speed" and power consumption (if that were true, then why does the MC68000 at 16mHz use 28 watts and the Dragonball EZ (same architecture) use 950 mW?)

And let's not forget something as equally important as clock speed: data piplelines. The Pentium 4 has a 24 stage pipeline whereas the G4e has 7: in broad terms this means that while the p4 can work on 3 times the instructions concurrently, the G4 executes it's stack in a third of the time.

What about the Centrino processors released last night? 1.6GHz performing equal to that of a 2.6GHz P4?

Actually, the Centrino 1.6 was faster than the p4 1.6. This links to the comparisons, choose Compare Performance.

It uses Mobile Mark 2002, with the p3/1.2 getting a 134, the p4/2.4 getting a 164, and the centrino 1.6 getting 189. Now just using Redneck Math(r) that would have a theorical p3/1.6 getting about 179. (compared to 189 for Cent1.6) It shows only a 18% increase in speed of the p4/2.4 over the p3/1.2. This is one reason I have been so disappointed that my dual p3/1.0 beats my p4/2.5 hands down.

My theory is that there really is no Centrino, and its really just a P3 with a bigger cache. I mean, whose gonna look inside the chips and compare them anyway? Its not like you can SEE them circuits ;)

Ok, conspiracy freaks, you take it from here, please...

Uh, I don't think they brought up Linux on the Itanium by throwing a tarball or two out to 'the community' to test.

Linux got ported to Itanium because Intel paid SuSE to port it. I very much doubt they did that without providing any documentation, which makes your comment about hardware debugging equipment completely irrelevant.

Even if they weren't working directly with Intel there is no reason they would have needed any expensive hardware debugging equipment. An IA-64 compatible C compiler would be sufficient. If they really wanted to do it "right", meaning by using gcc, then they likely would have needed an Assembly Language Reference, and a User's Guide for porting developement platforms to IA-64 might have been helpful as well. Too bad Intel is so tight-fisted with that info!

Let's not pretend Linux, or any Modern Operating System, is so 'grass roots' that Joe Random and twelve of his buddies can throw it together using castoff hardware and lots of sweat.

Except that's pretty much exactly what Gary Thomas did when he ported Linux to PPC and had a working port before any of the PPC vendors got involved with the project.

Perhaps you should do a little research into the history of Linux ports before you make statements like these.

Uh, I don't think they brought up Linux on the Itanium by throwing a tarball or two out to 'the community' to test.

Linux got ported to Itanium because Intel paid SuSE to port it. I very much doubt they did that without providing any documentation, which makes your comment about hardware debugging equipment completely irrelevant.

Even if they weren't working directly with Intel there is no reason they would have needed any expensive hardware debugging equipment. An IA-64 compatible C compiler would be sufficient. If they really wanted to do it "right", meaning by using gcc, then they likely would have needed an Assembly Language Reference, and a User's Guide for porting developement platforms to IA-64 might have been helpful as well. Too bad Intel is so tight-fisted with that info!

Let's not pretend Linux, or any Modern Operating System, is so 'grass roots' that Joe Random and twelve of his buddies can throw it together using castoff hardware and lots of sweat.

Except that's pretty much exactly what Gary Thomas did when he ported Linux to PPC and had a working port before any of the PPC vendors got involved with the project.

Perhaps you should do a little research into the history of Linux ports before you make statements like these.

Uh, I don't think they brought up Linux on the Itanium by throwing a tarball or two out to 'the community' to test.

Linux got ported to Itanium because Intel paid SuSE to port it. I very much doubt they did that without providing any documentation, which makes your comment about hardware debugging equipment completely irrelevant.

Even if they weren't working directly with Intel there is no reason they would have needed any expensive hardware debugging equipment. An IA-64 compatible C compiler would be sufficient. If they really wanted to do it "right", meaning by using gcc, then they likely would have needed an Assembly Language Reference, and a User's Guide for porting developement platforms to IA-64 might have been helpful as well. Too bad Intel is so tight-fisted with that info!

Let's not pretend Linux, or any Modern Operating System, is so 'grass roots' that Joe Random and twelve of his buddies can throw it together using castoff hardware and lots of sweat.

Except that's pretty much exactly what Gary Thomas did when he ported Linux to PPC and had a working port before any of the PPC vendors got involved with the project.

Perhaps you should do a little research into the history of Linux ports before you make statements like these.

From News.com:

- "creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but IBM lacked"
- "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code"

Apparently they didn't notice that IBM owns Sequent, which has been shipping 32-processor Intel boxes since the mid-90s... (e.g. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/sp 82597b.HTM)

That's all an Xbox mod chip is. There is an LPC bus debug header on the Xbox that you can plug an external ROM into. You pull down one signal, and the Xbox sends memory reads over the LPC bus instead of the internal ROM bus.

Any Xbox "mod" that exists is basically wires to an external LPC ROM chip with other fancy features such as a way to disable the ROM and use the on-board BIOS. Plus, the pinout is an Intel-defined debug header.

There is no way that this hardware can be considered illegal.

-prator

. . .on an intel machine, nothing beats intel's Math Kernel Libraries. You can get a free trial version off the intel website (link here). The syntax can be somewhat cryptic, but the 1000+ page manual is very nice and they are BLAZING fast for matrix and vector operations.

However, for quick alogorithm prototyping, matlab is the tool of choice around these parts. :) I've also done some of that in python.

Oh yeah, and I think that simple life forms will be made with this technology and some idiot scientist will think he's all bad-ass, until the damn thing morphs into some wicked, evil thing right out of hell like something in Doom II and it will turn into a three-headed huge dinosaur-like creature, about the size of Godzilla or something, and it'll go stomping around and smashing up all of human civilization until there is literally nothing left in the world except for these things fighting amongst themselves. And that day will be called Armageddon, the end of all things. Oh well. For now, all I need is another Negra Modelo.

If you didn't get what the hell I was talking about in the first paragraph, please allow me to summarize it right here:

The processors in our computers will someday consist of the following technologies, combined as outlined in the aforementioned articles:

• Gate-based logic.
• Quantum computing.
• Biological computing.
• Nanotechnology.

Some interesting information, found at the National Nanotechnology Initiative's site, at http://www.nano.gov/nsetmem.htm, which lists the member participants:

PARTICIPANTS: NSET Members

Chair: M.C. Roco, NSF
Executive Secretary: J.S. Murday, NRL

Members: OSTP: S.N. Pace
OMB: D. Radzanowski
CIA: F.D. Gac
DOA: P. Schwab
DOC: C. Campbell, S. Yun,
DOD: W. Berry, J.S. Murday, G.S. Pomrenke
DOE: I.L. Thomas, R. Price, B.G. Volintine
DOJ: D. Boyd, T. DePersia
DOS: R. Braibanti, R. McCreight
DOT: R.R. John, A. Lacombe
DoTREAS: E. Murphy
EPA: L.A. Friedl, S. Lingle
NASA: S. Venneri, M. Hirschbein, M. Dastoor
NIH: J.A. Schloss, E. Kousvelari
NRC: U.S. Bhachu
NIST: P. Casassa, C.R. Snyder, P. Looney
NSF: M.C. Roco, T.A. Weber, M.P. Henkart.

According to the Nanoindustries site at http://www.nanoindustries.com/, Nanotechnology can provide vast benefits above and beyond what is being experimented with today. For example:

Nanotechnology could save the ozone layer. Whilst experimenting with nanospheres and perfluorodecalin, a liquid used in the production of synthetic blood, researchers at Germany's University of Ulm have stumbled across a phenomenon that could ultimately help remove ozone-harming chemicals from the atmosphere. The perfluorodecalin, against all expectations, was taken up by a water-based suspension of 60 nm diameter polystyrene articles. nanotechweb 1/30/03

For those of you interested in Quantum computing, there is an interesting book by Braunstein... you can find more information about it at http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~schmuel/book/ book1.html.

With the Bush Administration streamlining services to help U.S. businesses grow, I think I can go ahead and have my Negra Modelo now.

This post has been composed of serious material, funny material, crap, and useful information. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please call us toll free by paying us the sum of One Hundred Million Dollars ($100,000,000.00 USD) to receive our toll free voice telephone number, or simply email us by using the best email application on the market, Microsoft Outlook.

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It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. And I'm going to have a Negra Modelo. Or two. Or three. Or four. Or five..... I have too much time on my hands.

For those who don't need a 64-bit processor but could still use 36-bit addressing and PAE, you have the Xeon MP processors that run around $3700 for a 2GHz processor with 2MB L3 cache.

If Intel keeps on braking a lot of people will get really disappointed when they realize they need more memory than their platform supports.

My God! Have you told Intel this? By listening to their industry experts instead of you they could be loosing billions.
You better mail Craig.Barrett@intel.com as soon as possible.

Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) Home

I used to write EFI apps (in C) for HP. Think in a BIOS with a shell instead of menus, and where you can write apps to do whatever you want (there are access levels, of course). Your app can flash the firmware, change boot order, blink panel's LEDs and so on. Very nice.

Dear Slashdot,

I've been asked by a major semiconductor manufacturer to rebuild their supply chain.

Basically, I need to replace a network of 4,000 heterogenous machines with a single unified bid system, based on the client's platform. Some systems are overseas, so the system will need to transparently support Asian and European standards as well.

All legal requirements for all countries must be met, and all low-level transactions most be logged and retained, both paper and digital, according to ISO standards. Currency conversions, bills of lading, etc., all need to be handled transparently.

All the inventory needs to be tagged with RF IDs, and tracked as it moves from supplier to supplier to the final client. This has to be integrated into the platform directly, and accessible through RF-aware handhelds.

And I need to have this ready in three weeks.

I've been playing with some Perl scripts and I think something called "XLM" (or maybe it's "XML") may be the answer. I've also got some bookmarks for currency conversion sites and stuff. Anyway, if anybody has done something similar, I'd appreciate any tips. I'm really new at this and I don't want to mess up.

Thanks!

Intel has links to elilo and stuff on one of their pages. Good to see Intel is taking care of the Free software people as well as MS, with this as well as ACPI.

There were a link on pages linked off of that story. Found it at http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickrefyr.htm and also links to History of the Microprocessor.

These show the history, compare die sizes, etc. and add some context to this article. Had to dig a bit, but I love this kinda stuff. Bet Im not the only one.

There were a link on pages linked off of that story. Found it at http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickrefyr.htm and also links to History of the Microprocessor.

These show the history, compare die sizes, etc. and add some context to this article. Had to dig a bit, but I love this kinda stuff. Bet Im not the only one.

A BIOS vendor is copying the EFI Specification ...too bad it is several years overdue...

While I won't suggest Intel has it right per se...it makes sense as a method by which a BIOS can extend functionality...

Sigh

Now protected mode x86 isn't all that different, but there are significant differences. You never use BIOS or DOS (heh) calls but instead link to C libraries and (maybe) use system calls directly. You never have a chance to use "port" IO unless you're writing a device driver (and even there it's limited with modern devices). If you have a modern OS (anything except win9x), you don't have to deal with segments but have a flat memory model (by default, you can't even define your own segments (LDTs) in some OSes). The only time you really deal with "segmentation" is when you're setting up your GDTs and call gates in the OS boot sequence, and there it's not really the same thing as 16-bit segmented memory model at all.

I read through AoA a couple of years ago. It was a real pain in the ass to actually set up a DOS environment where I could do any work (ended up using VMWare to run DOS, while actually writing all my real code on the Linux side using nasm and vi (hint: make a hard link to a VMWare virtual disk to bypass file locking semantics and you can mount it r/w while it's being used by your DOS session - very dangerous, but very convenient). Even then, I picked up a copy of 386intel.txt to figure out how to set up a protected mode environment and started writing a kernel right away - stayed away from that 16-bit crap as much as possible.

The book would really be more useful if it didn't deal with all that 1989 DOS crap and dealt with some more interesting issues. People who still write x86 assembly write compilers, device drivers, low-level OS bits, and inner loops (especially for games/media players/encoders/etc). None of this happens in 16-bit mode, and things are very different in 16-bit mode compared to protected mode. Most optimizations I can think of that improved code on 386/486 running DOS actually ends up SLOWER on P4s and Athlons running protected mode. Optimizing modern x86 CPUs is a completely different beast.

Some other improvements I'd like to see in this kind of book: cut out all the tables listing IO addresses and DOS/BIOS INT calls. Instead add a bit describing how different environments have different calling semantics for C functions and system calls. Maybe avoid the masm-specific stuff (I don't even think masm is available anymore unless you download the Windows DDKs, and even there, I don't know if it will produce 16-bit code - at one point, some old 16-bit version of masm was available for free on Microsoft ftp, but I doubt it's still there). It's pretty hard to use this book as-is because you have to set up some kind of DOS environment.

But anyway, this book still rocks. It's where I learned x86 assembly which then launched me into the low-level kernel stuff. If you know SPARC, PPC or MIPS, do not assume that x86 is more of the same. You think SPARC register windows are nasty? You ain't seen nothing yet. x86 assembly (especially the low-level stuff in Intel's volume 3 CPU reference, the systems programming stuff) is so immensely nasty that you get an unnatural sadistic joy out of writing some tight code - it's kind of like writing a sendmail.cf from scratch.

Glad to see this in dead-tree form - I might pick up a copy for my library. If it has a nice lay-flat binding, it'll be much more convenient than the PDFs.

If you want to learn this stuff, you'll also need these. The modern ones are kind of verbose since there's so much that's been tacked on to modern x86 CPUs...you may prefer an older version. Try one of these.

Yes, and by that logic, a corvette is just a modified GEO Metro. Perhaps it might clarify that there are people looking to further develop the SCSI interface (like Dell, HP, & Intel) and they're not looking to convert to Firewire but move SCSI in their own vision of the next generation.

Well, ignoring the power requirements of RAM, bus controllers, network adapters, hard disks which are probably used for boot only...

Intel rates these things for 74.0W thermal dissipation, which is a pretty good measure of the electrical power consumed... since, unless something is badly wrong, your Xeon chip will not dissipate energy as light or sound.

74W x 1,024 = 75,776W continuous.

Assume they're on 24/7. Assume a cost of $0.06 per kWh, including distribution, debt retirement, Ontario's capped electric rates, etc.

There are 30 days in the average month. There are 24 hours in the average day [grin]. Therefore, there are 720 hours per month.

720 hours @ 75,776W = 54,558,720kWh.

Just a little over $3.2 million per month.

I'd imagine it's less than that; their electric rate is probably somewhat less based on their consumption. But consider that the depreciation on that hardware is probably a greater monthly expense than the electricity to power it...

I'm glad Linux is ready for Pixar, because Linux sure ain't ready for the desktop.

So I'm just trying to figure this out - is this actually broadcasting a signal in a single area, or is the device using cell-network/GPS/whatever to figure out location? The idea of location-area tech has been around for a while. A lot of research has been done on this, like Cornell's Graffiti, ABTA, Intel, and somewherenear , but I haven't seen lot of practical application actually come out.

I ran across something new that does something like this that I have some hope for, called annotated earth. They appear to be in the initial stages still, but the way it works appears to be open (as in encouraging third party software - they seem to be the infrastructure and data for location-aware info). I especially like the Iraqi Weapons of mass destruction thing, good info to have if you're wandering around Iraqi, Hehe. Don't know if it's really going to work, still waiting on mobile devices that can use the technology they've done.

Anyway, I'll be interested in seeing how this goes.

=-H

NetSprockets is indeed deprecated/abandoned, but OpenPlay is not (it's the successor). CDSA is Intel's (yes, that Intel) security specification of which Apple made an implementation (which is much better than the reference implementation that Intel provides, from what I've heard) and then open sourced it.

BZZZZZT! Incorrect answer. (Though one I see expressed as gospel quite frequently.)

From an Itanium 2 FAQ:

Q10. Will Itanium 2-based systems be compatible with IA-32 systems? Will IT be able to effortlessly migrate their systems to Itanium 2-based systems?

A10. Optimal performance for Itanium 2-based systems will be achieved with 64-bit software. The Intel Itanium 2 processor does, however, support the execution of 32-bit code for ease of migration. Because compatibility is always also dependent on OS and system features, IT should work with their solutions vendors to validate their complete solution environment, including current IA-32 code.

In other words, your existing applications will probably run just fine on an Itanium system. The performance may be better than you expect, as well.

While both the P4 and XEON are based upon a similar cores, the XEON offers multiprocessor support and larger L2 caches.

Perhaps the author felt that it goes without saying, but I'll say it. Regardless of theory, the choice of CPU would ideally be left until after some domain-specific benchmarks.