Slashdot Mirror

gobbles writes: "Intel has just announced free (as in beer) C/C++ and FORTRAN compilers for Linux. With support for OpenMP and Pentium 3, 4 and Itanium optimizations, this is a winner - suddenly Intel hardware becomes a whole lot more attractive for Linux developers. For those with Pentium 4 or Itanium systems, performance gains of 50% or more are just waiting to be had! Grab the compilers here and take 'em for a spin! Athlon owners need not apply."

SilentTone writes: "PCWorld is reporting that USB 2.0 or high speed USB will be hitting Linux first half 2002. Intel is already providing space on its Pentium 4 motherboard for the USB 2.0 controller. With a transfer rate of 480Mbps (more than firewire's 400Mbps) it seems promising." Update: 09/04 23:02 PM GMT by H : So, somewhere between my preview and going live, I seem to have "lost" the link - if you find it, please post below. I'm looking - in the meantime, this is a good Linux and USB tutorial, and Blue Cat Linux is supporting USB 2.0. HA! Found it - story updated.

A number of people wrote in with the news that Intel released the 2 Ghz chip. The Tech-Report article points out a couple interesting meta-ideas - this is Intel's chance to retake the performance crown from AMD, as well as being one of those round numbers that makes people feel warm and fuzzy. I'm sure there's going to be gobs of benchmarks today - post 'em in the comments as you find 'em.

pjbass writes "This story on ZDnet discusses the next I/O subsystem planned for PC's. It will be PCI 3.0 once making it to the consumers, but it is now known as Arapahoe, or 3GIO. Intel Corp. is responsible for making the technology, and boast its performance will be about 6 times that of PCI2.x, getting up to speeds of 6.6 gigabytes per second of bandwidth initially, with promises to scale more once the technology is mainstream."

yaba was one of many who noted that Intel is apparently buying alpha from compaq. They also plan to move to their servers to Itanium. There will be at least one more generation of the Alpha chips, but you can imagine how much that'll matter. I still like alpha chips. Behold! Consolidation!Update: 06/25 02:19 PM by H :Check out my recent story about this as well.

A number of people have been writing about Compaq selling off the Alpha processor, with some coverage from different media sources. The Inquirer cites Intel as the likely buyer, which seems odd to me considering their aversion to antitrust lawsuits. Maybe AMD? Who knows - it's too bad that the Alpha technology has never realized the same commercial success as it has technologically.

javilon noted that a new DVD Player for Linux has appeared, and this one supports CSS and is the first player to implement menus. It's called Ogle and is developed by a few students at Chalmers University of Technology ins Sweden. It's really exciting to see several different groups independently and together developing players. The only question is when will the MPAA give up?

Michael Gilbert asks: "I have a 30Gb Intel InBusiness Storage Station, which is based on a limited version of FreeBSD 2.02 (see here) It is, as is usual, totally undocumented by Intel as to it's inner workings. Since both the 30Gb and the 60 Gb models use the same chassis, I was looking into adding my own 2nd 30Gb HD. Intel of course does not support such an upgrade. Does anyone out there have any relevant information as to the specifics of the unmarked jumpers and connectors on the unit's main board? Console port perhaps? Has someone already done this upgrade? While there may indeed be easier ways to add more networked storage to one's home network, the fact that Intel does not want me to do this only increases my curiosity and desire. Having discovered the (undocumented) telnet port, I can get a FreeBSD shell, and so far have surmised that due to the age/version of the FreeBSD system, the upgrade would require a new kernel, as this one seems to be static as far as not probing resources."

chrisd writes: "Just noticed this article over on Yahoo news. It described a research project that Intel and Stanford university developed that concentrated on next-gen displays. The result? A 22 inch display that displays 9.2 million pixels (they use the odious 'megapixel' descriptor in the article), needs 16 processors and 2 GB of ram to run it and costs $200,000US. So it's a little spendy. This is a big step up from my first 12" amber screen though, that's for sure." Ah, the march of progress ... I'm happy with anything that will help drive down the cost of 17" and 18.1" LCD displays, no matter how indirectly.

DoomDoom writes: "OK, been checking out some of the h/w encryption stuff. Liked Intel's dual purpose card. But just wondering if this PA SEC 100 card has any purpose. I mean , this baby costs around $2k+ and will probably sit in a server with 2 or more CPUs (Pentium III or above). So why even bother with hardware encryption? I mean in the era of Pentium IV etc. powered servers, does it even make sense to have hardware based encryption cards?" Maybe another way to think of this question is "Are encryption-breaking schemes advancing faster than the processing power you're able to spare from your server's primary job?" If so, even a few thousand dollars may be a worthwhile investment. Any thoughts from those who've chosen (or avoided) in-hardware encryption?

km790816 writes: "I was just reading an article in the EETimes about the possible war over the technology to replace the PCI bus. Intel has their 3GIO. (Can't find any info on Intel's site.) AMD has their HyperTransport. There has been some talk about HyperTransport going into the XBox. I hope they can agree on a bus. I don't want another bus standard war. So when can I get a fully optical bus on my PC?" Now that's what I'd like: cheap transceivers on every card and device, and short lengths of fiber connecting them up. Bye bye to SCSI, IDE, USB, Firewire ...

ArneD writes: "While browsing xbitlabs.com discussion-board I found this message about the P4. The message suggests that the P4, when stressed and getting hot, starts to halt 50% of the time. When checking mail your precious P4 works at 1.5Ghz but when used for something meaningful (recompiling your kernel?!? ;-) the processor may in fact be a mere 750Mhz since it starts to issue PROCHOT signals that tells the processor to switch itself on/off 50% of the time until it's temperature is within Intels spec-range again." (Read more.)

"More information can be found in Intels Pentium 4 Thermal Design Guidelines (check out page 23)."

Several readers have submitted news of this clock-throttling, one aspect of the P4's built-in temperature sensor system Intel calls "Thermal Monitor." One thing to point out is that the same design guidelines document goes on to say that "the clock modulation feature of Thermal Monitor is disabled by default ... OEMs are expected to enable the thermal control circuit while using various controls and outputs to monitor the processor thermal status." Other things being equal (even if they never are) is there some reason to prefer a chip for not having this capability? If someone forced me to accept a free and loaded P4 system, I'd rather it be cool down at 750MHz temporarily than toast at 1.5GHz.

nutbar writes: "Intel, seeing a slow uptake of its latest processor, the Pentium 4, are going to slash prices by as much as 50% this month. Full full story at ZDNet." The article mentions the goal of P4 systems, including monitors, for under a thousand dollars by the end of the year. Will these price cuts invert the price / performance ratio which has led people to scoff at the P4 in favor of AMD chips? Maybe it's best to wait for odd-numbered chip generations ... Pentium Pentium?

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer. What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC (you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program - if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad. And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell:

"Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price, the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

drix asks: "As part of a pet project I'm working on I need to encode MPEG2 video in realtime on Linux. I realize that there are many dedicated hardware boards being built explicitly for this purpose, but they are too expensive and I can't justify spending thousands of dollars for a hobby project. Currently several companies such as CinemaCraft and Ligos are advertising the ability to do realtime, DVD-quality MPEG2 encoding with heavily optimized software on a modestly powerful, PIII-700ish system, however all their products or SDKs are Windows based. I'm curious if anyone knows of similiar products designed to work on Linux. As an alternative, how much CPU would be needed to just 'brute-force' realtime, DVD-quality encoding using the standard (albeit sloooo) mpeg2encode program distributed by MPEG? Intel claims that a P3 1GHz can encode at 30fps, but apparently they turned down the quality, as this does not seem to be the experience of people on various newsgroups when trying to get DVD-like video."

Captain Novell asks: "Have you ever wondered what happened to the likes of the Intel Intelligent Server Adaptor? I have, one day it was on their site and then, later...*poof*...it was gone, only to be replaced by this Windows 2000 IP/Sec card! With tears in my eyes I went looking for any other manufacturer that had Intelligent NICs, but all I could found was this IP/Sec rubbish! (for those of us who run OSI complient software, a TRUE intelligent adaptor will off-load part of the OSI stack to the card and usually has some form of large cache on-board a.k.a. the old Intel Intelligent Adaptor card. I recommend server adaptors to many sys admins! Does the Slashdot community have any advice on where I can still find these elusive devices?"

Captain Novell asks: "Have you ever wondered what happened to the likes of the Intel Intelligent Server Adaptor? I have, one day it was on their site and then, later...*poof*...it was gone, only to be replaced by this Windows 2000 IP/Sec card! With tears in my eyes I went looking for any other manufacturer that had Intelligent NICs, but all I could found was this IP/Sec rubbish! (for those of us who run OSI complient software, a TRUE intelligent adaptor will off-load part of the OSI stack to the card and usually has some form of large cache on-board a.k.a. the old Intel Intelligent Adaptor card. I recommend server adaptors to many sys admins! Does the Slashdot community have any advice on where I can still find these elusive devices?"

Falrick writes "Microsoft, the company that has its fingers in inumerable pies, decided to follow suit by also placing their toes in them with this anouncement yesterday that they will also be moving into the embedded chip market. While the article doesn't say that Microsoft will actually be producing chips, they are apparantly licensing special versions of WindowsCE for use on a variety of chips including those made by Intel, ARM and MIPS. On the upside, though, for those of you who would like to get back those licensing fees, or Microsoft Tax, that you paid on that shiny new system a few years ago, MS may also be partenering with Bally Gaming & Systems to put WindowsNT into their casino slot machines. Now, what's the payoff on three blue-screens in a row again?"

Erik Mouw writes: "Just want to let you know that Nicolas Pitre (nico@cam.org) and I got Linux running on the Intel 80200 XScale CPU. Nico did the largest part of the work during the past couple of weeks, and we did the final bug fixes in a hotel room in New York. The official announce of the patch is available at the linux-arm-announce mailing list archive." The board was on display at the MontaVista booth at Linux World Expo, one of the several tiny Linux set-ups on tantalizing display around the show floor for everything from vending machines to cheap PDAs. (No Yopy in sight, though, despite the fact that development models are available for sale.) Congratulations to Erik and Nicolas.

TJ6581 writes "C|Net news has an article up about Intel's new competitor(s) to the Crusoe Processor. Apparently the new chip uses half a watt of power and did not require a major re-design. Also mentions in the article that IBM will be using this processor in the notebook originally designed for Transmeta's processor." Update: 01/30 06:48 PM by H : This is the update to the story I posted last October - Intel has come through.

lizrd writes "The New York Times is reporting (yeah, yeah, you gotta sign to read it) that several Linux distros will be shipping stable versions of Linux for Intel's new 64-bit Itanium chip on the day that it is released to the public. Microsoft however will not be supplying a version of Windows for Itanium until sometime in the fall of next year, several months after the expected May release of the new processor."

lizrd writes "The New York Times is reporting (yeah, yeah, you gotta sign to read it) that several Linux distros will be shipping stable versions of Linux for Intel's new 64-bit Itanium chip on the day that it is released to the public. Microsoft however will not be supplying a version of Windows for Itanium until sometime in the fall of next year, several months after the expected May release of the new processor."

SirFlakey writes: "It appears Moore's law has been proven right yet again. According to a report in Fairfax's IT section, Intel has managed to create the world's smallest transistor(s). This, according to the article would allow them to create CPU's with 10 times (420 million) the P4's transistor count. The transistors are only 3 Atoms thick(!). They say they have come close to the limit of modern technology but also still have plenty of innovation left for the future. This annoucement comes only a few days after it released an earnings warning for this quarter."

monty writes: "Creating realistic clothing in games may not seem that difficult, but according to one of Intel's research programmers it turns out it is very difficult indeed. Intel senior technical marketing manager Dean Macri gave a presentation at the recent AGDC outlining the problems with simulating cloth, and some possible solutions. There is an online presentation (including downloadable source code and a fully configurable executable of the demonstration simulation) at The math is a bit intense, but the implications are that realistic cloth simulation remains out of reach for today's processors." Monty found it on BigKid, but I couldn't ;)

A reader wrote to us about a press release from Intel regarding wireless mouse/keyboards/gamepad stuff that they are doing -- I've been trying out wireless keyboard/mice/gamepads for a number of years now, and haven't been all that impressed by them. These new releases look better, but has anyone used anything out there they've been /really/ impressed by?

axis-techno-geek writes: "It seems that Intel now is trying to fight back against Transmeta with their new chips. Intel plans to have their new speed-step Pentium III's out in about a year (which in computer time means about 18 months :)."

michael asks: "I am having a problem getting AT&T to find a cheque that I sent in. According to my bank statement it was cashed on April 12 of this year but it did not get applied to my account. I have been dealing with AT&T about this since then and they have finally cancelled my @Home service. I have faxed in copies of my bank statement and my cheque. I have phoned, e-mailed, mailed, faxed many times over the past four months trying to get this resolved. Only once have I been contacted by a person since this issue began. They requested the copy of the cheque - I had my bank fax a copy of the cheque to them and to me. Almost all other communication has been one way. I contact them, they leave me hanging. I get the occasional computer generated bill saying that I own them money, but that is all. What are my options here? Do I have any?" Sounds to me like all of the right steps were taken here. What else could Mike have done in this situation? Why is it, that in today's info-culture that things like this can still get lost between the cracks (and this problem is not solely limited to AT&T, either)?

More below on what is surely one of the slowest patents ever granted (to our inquisitive friends with the radar domes, no less), and smidgeons of news on such various and sundry as Napster (perhaps you've heard of it?) and Iridium (perhaps you wish you'd never heard of it?), not to mention more on the destruction of the submarine Kursk.

The (cryptographic) wheels of government grind slowly. JOEL-V writes: "In August 2000, the United States Patent Office issued patent #6097812 to the National Security Agency, for 'Cryptographic System.' The patent application was filed in the year 1933, and this invention and patent are actually one version of the famous Enigma machine."

On a similar note, Paul Maud'Dib writes: "The Slashdot crew might be interested in checking out Enigmatic. They have java emulators for the Purple, Sigaba, Enigma, Russian Espionage Cipher and a public domain Bombe. They also have rather lucid descriptions of the various systems used. Interesting reads all."

That which does not kill him makes him stronger. You may recall that some maladjusted script kiddies threw a spanner in the works of the excellent kuro5hin a little while ago. Emmett told you more about the attack and its aftermath shortly thereafter. Looks like it's time for the (all volunteer, cool-content, graphically appealing) kuro5hin to emerge from a quick breather.

pope nihil writes: "kuro5hin.org has an update on their page. things should be back up (according to the update) by Sept 15 or so. check it out." Yes, Go there! Congratulations, guys.

88 bottles of bits on the wall, 88 bottles of bits ... NoWhere Man writes "The bankrupt Iridium venture has received another bid to save the wireless phone company's $5 billion satellite system from being pulled from space and destroyed. A California-based organization named CMC International is offering to pay $30 million to acquire Iridium's 88 satellites and other assets, according to a court filing submitted Friday."

It certainly would be nice if someone could eke out (even a meager) connection from Iridium rather than incinerating the satellites in the atmosphere, but honestly, the Will Burn / Will Fly status of these birds flip-flops enough to put a politician to shame. I'd like them to stay up, if only not to spook other folks from putting data-bouncing satellites up for our browsing pleasure.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with carrying around cavitation weapons. aleclee writes "It now appears that the Kursk was indeed carrying cavitation weapons and that she was sunk by a misfiring rocket. Supposedly, the rocket/torpedo can travel at 200 knots! Details can be found here."

Update: any port in a storm, and this one sounds nice. Patrick Ryan wrote: " Hello, I wanted you to know that CDSA [as mentioned in this slashdot story] has been updated at Intel and now includes a Linux port." Visit http://developer.intel.com/ial/security/ for more information about CDSA, and then the download site for your free-downloading pleasure.

More below on what is surely one of the slowest patents ever granted (to our inquisitive friends with the radar domes, no less), and smidgeons of news on such various and sundry as Napster (perhaps you've heard of it?) and Iridium (perhaps you wish you'd never heard of it?), not to mention more on the destruction of the submarine Kursk.

The (cryptographic) wheels of government grind slowly. JOEL-V writes: "In August 2000, the United States Patent Office issued patent #6097812 to the National Security Agency, for 'Cryptographic System.' The patent application was filed in the year 1933, and this invention and patent are actually one version of the famous Enigma machine."

On a similar note, Paul Maud'Dib writes: "The Slashdot crew might be interested in checking out Enigmatic. They have java emulators for the Purple, Sigaba, Enigma, Russian Espionage Cipher and a public domain Bombe. They also have rather lucid descriptions of the various systems used. Interesting reads all."

That which does not kill him makes him stronger. You may recall that some maladjusted script kiddies threw a spanner in the works of the excellent kuro5hin a little while ago. Emmett told you more about the attack and its aftermath shortly thereafter. Looks like it's time for the (all volunteer, cool-content, graphically appealing) kuro5hin to emerge from a quick breather.

pope nihil writes: "kuro5hin.org has an update on their page. things should be back up (according to the update) by Sept 15 or so. check it out." Yes, Go there! Congratulations, guys.

88 bottles of bits on the wall, 88 bottles of bits ... NoWhere Man writes "The bankrupt Iridium venture has received another bid to save the wireless phone company's $5 billion satellite system from being pulled from space and destroyed. A California-based organization named CMC International is offering to pay $30 million to acquire Iridium's 88 satellites and other assets, according to a court filing submitted Friday."

It certainly would be nice if someone could eke out (even a meager) connection from Iridium rather than incinerating the satellites in the atmosphere, but honestly, the Will Burn / Will Fly status of these birds flip-flops enough to put a politician to shame. I'd like them to stay up, if only not to spook other folks from putting data-bouncing satellites up for our browsing pleasure.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with carrying around cavitation weapons. aleclee writes "It now appears that the Kursk was indeed carrying cavitation weapons and that she was sunk by a misfiring rocket. Supposedly, the rocket/torpedo can travel at 200 knots! Details can be found here."

Update: any port in a storm, and this one sounds nice. Patrick Ryan wrote: " Hello, I wanted you to know that CDSA [as mentioned in this slashdot story] has been updated at Intel and now includes a Linux port." Visit http://developer.intel.com/ial/security/ for more information about CDSA, and then the download site for your free-downloading pleasure.

KuRL writes "C|Net is reporting that Intel has begun to recall their 1.13-GHz chips, which had the best clock speed on the market, due to a glitch that caused the chip "to malfunction in laboratory tests under certain conditions." Yes, it was only that specific. It is quite clear that Intel rushed this chip out upon hearing that AMD would be releasing a 1.1-GHz chip of their own."

brennan73 writes "Last week, Tom's Hardware wrote a very critical review of the Pentium3 1.13GHz, specifically mentioning serious stability issues. Today, HardOCP wrote an article of their own backing Tom up and describing their own experiences; they even got Anand in on it. Probably the most interesting thing to me is that none of the tested sample CPUs was able to run Tom's Linux kernel compilation test. After Rambus, this is the last thing Intel needs. Are they shooting themselves in the foot AGAIN?". Update by: HeUnique : Tom has updated the story, so I recommend to read the update.Update: 08/28 06:44 PM by H :Check out the latest burst from ZDNet - it appears that Intel will be recalling the Pentium3 1.13 Ghz. Thanks Evan.

mirko writes "Supported by the Epoc, Windows CE, RiscOS and VxWorks, the StrongARM RISC processor, which features power, low-consumption and high-frequency, could bring lots to the wireless market. This article and this other article describe Intel's new XScale micro-architecture that will be used in the forthcoming 1GHz StrongARMs."

mduell writes "Intel showed off their newest, fastest chip ever. The Pentium 4, running at 2 Ghz uses 400MHz Rambus Direct RAM(ugh). They also demo'd an Itanium server cluster running Linux with failover protection (what does this have to do with the chip?). Additionally, a 1Ghz P3-Xeon and a new 500Mhz mobile P3 that uses just 850 milliwatts when running most applications (5.5W max) were shown."

AtariDatacenter asks: "Randomly surfing the Web, I stumbled across Intel's Open Arcade Architecture overview. It was billed as an open architecture PC reference platform for the arcades and the home. Was Microsoft's X-box a response to this, or was this a failed attempt by Intel to fight back?"

A friend of mine pointed me at this press release telling us about Intel's brand-new, shockingly original name (and logo) for the series of processors formerly code-named 'Willamette.' Meanwhile, I'll sit back and wait to see the logo parodies. Thanks to David Hageman.

waldoj writes: "Intel has announced their "Dot.Station," a Red Hat-powered Internet appliance. With a price around $500, I think I'll just buy an eMachine..." I wonder how much the marketroids were paid to come up with the name... the article is fairly skeptical, and I don't see enough non-vapor to know for sure.

windex asks: "I've been looking recently for information on writing a OS (OS == kernel) from scratch, mainly as a personal science project. I've been looking for information on how to do this, however the only real information I've found is on developer.intel.com and its mostly in Intel-ese, not English. Does anyone know of a good place to start getting the basics of the x86 architecture?" There are probably plenty of x86 ASM books out there that can serve as a good reference for this project, but what about references that discuss writing the portions of the basic OS (memory management in particular)? If you find this question interesting, you might want to check out a previous topic we've done on multiplatform device drivers.

GrokSoup writes: "Great collection of semiconductor where-to-from-here articles in this month's MIT Technology Review. There are articles about molecular computing, quantum computing, DNA computers, and on and on. Fascinating stuff, all pointing to why the current semiconductor hegemony is by no means a "forever thing", as the kids like to say. "

BMIComp writes "Yahoo! news is reporting that Intel is going to introduce their Pentium III Xeon Chip, today. " .18 microns, 700 Mhz, and integrated cache. The article talks quite a bit about how the new Xeons are going straight for Sun's throat.

Devil Ducky writes: "AMD announced that they will release the Duron sometime in mid June, instead of last April. The Duron is intended to compete on price with the fabled Intel Celeron. Duron will include 128KB of primary and 64KB of integrated cache, meanwhile Athlons contain 128KB primary and no integrated cache. When released it will be available in 600, 650, and 700MHz with plans for 750MHz soon. The story even makes some quick comments on the names Celeron and Duron."

In another installment of the "BSD code popping up in odd places story", Intel are promulgating the Extensible Firmware Interface, a new abstraction layer for the "operating system and platform firmware". As this PDF slideshow shows, libc in the EFI layer is from FreeBSD (page 9), as is the TCP/IP stack (page 11). Finally Intel appear to be releasing the whole thing under something very close to a BSD license (page 15). Which is nice.

In another installment of the "BSD code popping up in odd places story", Intel are promulgating the Extensible Firmware Interface, a new abstraction layer for the "operating system and platform firmware". As this PDF slideshow shows, libc in the EFI layer is from FreeBSD (page 9), as is the TCP/IP stack (page 11). Finally Intel appear to be releasing the whole thing under something very close to a BSD license (page 15). Which is nice.

In another installment of the "BSD code popping up in odd places story", Intel are promulgating the Extensible Firmware Interface, a new abstraction layer for the "operating system and platform firmware". As this PDF slideshow shows, libc in the EFI layer is from FreeBSD (page 9), as is the TCP/IP stack (page 11). Finally Intel appear to be releasing the whole thing under something very close to a BSD license (page 15). Which is nice.

Quite a number of people have recognized the power of open source development - Intel definitely has by opening the specs for Itanium. They've got major blueprints up on the Web. Good sign of the success of open development - but I wonder if AMD's resurgence has anything to do with this.

jbork writes: "According to this article on Wired News, Intel has decided to remove the unique processor ID from its chips, starting with the 1.5 GHz Willamette chip. According to Jason Catlett of Junkbusters, 'We can finally call off the boycott.' " Gee, it only took them 1.25 years.

Quite a number of people have written over the last couple of days about Intel's decision to open-source CDSA, their security software, when it's released on May 15. That's their Common Data Security Architecture -- it's an enterprise-level security application.

styxlord asks: "Has anyone set up a Phone Line Network at home (or the office for that matter)? Do they work? How do they compare to 10Mbps ethernet networks? Are there Linux drivers for any of the major ones? Does it interfere with DSL or voice on phone lines? I've seen offerings from Netgear, 3Com,LinkSys, Intel and Diamond to name a few. One of these in the Linux box which is then connected to a cable/DSL modem would make a very nice gateway. "

to'c wrote: "17-year-old Viviana Risca wins US$100,000 from Intel for her work in 'DNA-based Steganography.' Talk about combining hot technologies! With a bit of gene-splicing, that next pigeon you clone wouldn't need to carry a message. It would be the message! Full story here." Interesting test message she chose, too.

Merlyn42 writes, "According to this article at Intel's Web site, Intel is giving Pentium III systems and lots of goodies, including free Internet access, to all its employees. Who else is going to follow this new trend started by Ford?" Don't know, but I wonder how many 'geek houses' we'll see comprised of five Intel employees living in a house with free systems. The cool thing is that the site says that they can use the systems for whatever they want.

Merlyn42 writes, "According to this article at Intel's Web site, Intel is giving Pentium III systems and lots of goodies, including free Internet access, to all its employees. Who else is going to follow this new trend started by Ford?" Don't know, but I wonder how many 'geek houses' we'll see comprised of five Intel employees living in a house with free systems. The cool thing is that the site says that they can use the systems for whatever they want.