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Look what the fastest GPUs do and what makes them so fast: 48 Pixels per clock

Next, look what turn Sun, Intel and maybe AMD are taking, towards CPUs that can run more than32 concurrently running threads.

Now, guess how many concurrently running threads our CPUs can run today? It doesn't matter how good or bad MMX or 3DNow are without abilities to run massively parallel tasks.

Would you pay $5.4 billion for a southbridge? AMD already has the northbridge slapped on thier CPU.

Oh and Intel won't renew ATI's chipset license. So no chipsets for Intel anymore. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33 225

AMD always had the capability to make thier own chipsets, they have choosen not to, that's all.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33 219
*head asploded*

I'm getting the 'gist' of why this transaction needs to happen. AMD needs GPU functionality on the CPU. I think everyone kinda expected that to happen at some point. The Inq. then takes a left turn in the plot and mentions 'mini-cores' which are multi-cores with massive amount of threads. Sort of but not really like Intels' hyperthreading times 32x. Shitloads of threads.


Bottom line?

ATI will work on AMD's new cores. I don't know if they'll work on something that'll plug into a PCIe slot still like nVidia.

nVidia will still be around making graphic cards for AMD. Just won't necessarily be anything remotely similar to what's out on the stores today. AMD doesn't like closed technology like Intel does. So it'll be an open platform still which is a 'good thing' (tm).

Forget about GPU's and chipsets. The main innovation has to come from these new GCPU's.

ATI was going to lose its Intel chipset business anyway with or without this takeover. So no big loss here.

Intel has about a year lead on this tech and probably be first out to market with it.

CPU cores change radically every 5 years or so. With GCPU's, think more in terms of GPU's and radical changes every year to 18 months. Crazy shit.

Plenty of space at FAB 36 to build the new cores and the recently announced plant they are building in New York. So no more costly production runs in Taiwan.

If AMD didn't do this, they'd be out of business in 5 years. Period.

But I did.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32 197

        -Charlie

AMD's 4x4 approach isn't a mere reaction to Core 2 Duo. AMD has been planning this for a long time.

AMD systems don't suffer from bandwidth problems with additional cores, unlike Intel's Kentsfield (quad core).

AMD is opening up hypertransport for 3rd party co-processors. This will totally change the industry with the ability to drop in specialized processors onto boards. These kind of possibilities are going to give EEs a new meaning in life.

I apologize for not citing sources for the HD-DVD over Blu-Ray debate. I figured it was common knowledge at this point, what with the AV forums buzzing about it.

The whole thing about Cell yields isn't that they're low (of course we expect them to be low when starting production) it's that its look like they'reFAR LOWER THEN EXPECTED.

And since you asked, I don't have a link but IIRC the last cost estimated the Cell and RSX chips cost Sony ~$110 a piece. No idea about how the RSX yeilds are. I'd almost be more conserned about RAM yeilds though.

The short story is 'maybe'. Read this, it will answer most of the questions.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=14 417

        -Charlie

Could the batteries possibly be manafacturered by the same reliable company as this notebook? If so, the question is, is it a quantity over quality issue, and could it be happening with more of their product lines?

Although the reviews of Core2 seem pretty compelling so far remember that AMD isn't out of the game just yet.

Their K8L looks interesting, and that's quad-core. According to TheInquirer benchmarks are starting to trickle out, so there must be a few engineering samples floating around - I'm guessing that means production might happen sooner than you'd think.

Of course Apple might introduce a loss-leader high-end box as a stop-gap, in low volumes ;)

Although the reviews of Core2 seem pretty compelling so far remember that AMD isn't out of the game just yet.

Their K8L looks interesting, and that's quad-core. According to TheInquirer benchmarks are starting to trickle out, so there must be a few engineering samples floating around - I'm guessing that means production might happen sooner than you'd think.

Of course Apple might introduce a loss-leader high-end box as a stop-gap, in low volumes ;)

ATI/Intel chipsets might come to end soon according to this piece of information.

According to this article, the K8L is on schedule (reported after the digitimes article) http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32 948 I am just saying its quite possible if AMD gets the K8L out fast enough, it has the potention to take the performance lead again.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33 020 The article and the email that went out to employees.

Based on this picture http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/dell%20 banger2.jpg It doesn't appear to be plugged in, although I can't tell for sure.

...on the average, one of the slave processors is non-functional.
Read more about the yield problems of the Cell chip here:
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32978/

Fabrication yield is estimated at only 10% to 20%, which is very low for the industry.

When it works, it works amazingly well. But making it work is the trick.

Apparently my submission was rejected, but AMD cut 1,000 folks too, include GEODE!

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32 991

280 million in not that much compared to the fines from other lawsuits.

1) Intel is dumping its aging Netburst cores onto the market at such low prices that they're displacing lower-end AMD sales.

2) Intel is setting up for a Big Bath in their Q2 earnings report. Their selling off of their ARM processor unit to Marvell is part of this (they'll have to recognize a huge loss on the sale).

3) All of this is obvious to AMD, so they're putting even more emphasis on Opteron sales where Intel is weakest. This results in lower total sales, as they sell in far fewer numbers than low-end CPUs, but should keep net income at a nice level since they're extremely high margin chips.

4) Since each Opteron sale displaces an Intel Xeon sale, Intel's net income is hurting.

5) Any advantage Intel will gain from C/M/W will be gone when AMD does their transition to 65nm in Q4. Sooner if Intel screws up, as is reported.

I'm slightly confused.

The articles are both very light on technical details, and somewhat vague as to what's really going on. (Admittedly, maybe they don't know it.) In the first article, they allude to the problems being the result of the "softmodem"-like RAID systems that modern integrated motherboards use, which would remove some of the blame from the processor. But then they also suggest that the same problem occurs with dedicated RAID controllers (IBM ServeRAIDs -- I think these are dedicated controllers), which don't cause too much CPU load at all ... further implicating the mobo. However, similar mobos with AMD processors didn't experience the problem, so there's obviously something going on that's Intel's fault.

It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to pin the blame down to the particular component: is it the integrated RAID subsystem utilizing the processor inefficiently? Or is it the processor itself, being slow? And if it was the processor, why wouldn't this slowness be exhibited in other situations?

Seems to me that what needs to happen, is for somebody to do a test with a Conroe processor in a motherboard that doesn't include any of the integrated, offload-work-to-the-processor type of integrated subsystems (RAID, sound, Ethernet), use a 'real' hardware RAID controller, and see what the results are. If there are still problems in that scenario, then there would seem to be something wrong with the processor, and this could be confirmed with simulative benchmarks.

As a criticism of Intel's complete "systems" (processor plus chipset) I suppose this is a valid criticism, but I'd like to see more of a breakdown as to where the performance hit is coming from.

I'm slightly confused.

The articles are both very light on technical details, and somewhat vague as to what's really going on. (Admittedly, maybe they don't know it.) In the first article, they allude to the problems being the result of the "softmodem"-like RAID systems that modern integrated motherboards use, which would remove some of the blame from the processor. But then they also suggest that the same problem occurs with dedicated RAID controllers (IBM ServeRAIDs -- I think these are dedicated controllers), which don't cause too much CPU load at all ... further implicating the mobo. However, similar mobos with AMD processors didn't experience the problem, so there's obviously something going on that's Intel's fault.

It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to pin the blame down to the particular component: is it the integrated RAID subsystem utilizing the processor inefficiently? Or is it the processor itself, being slow? And if it was the processor, why wouldn't this slowness be exhibited in other situations?

Seems to me that what needs to happen, is for somebody to do a test with a Conroe processor in a motherboard that doesn't include any of the integrated, offload-work-to-the-processor type of integrated subsystems (RAID, sound, Ethernet), use a 'real' hardware RAID controller, and see what the results are. If there are still problems in that scenario, then there would seem to be something wrong with the processor, and this could be confirmed with simulative benchmarks.

As a criticism of Intel's complete "systems" (processor plus chipset) I suppose this is a valid criticism, but I'd like to see more of a breakdown as to where the performance hit is coming from.

There's a pretty much totally unsubstantiated story that the release date for the Nintendo Revolution has been leaked and it's coming out at the same time. If true that will be a bad week for many gamers' pocketbooks :)

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32 630

Greenpeace hails Dell for supporting flame retardant ban ..."Dell was hailed for making a decision to remove "hazardous chemicals" including brominated flame retardants and PVC from its products by 2009. But, according to Greenpeace, HP, Lucky Goldstar, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and Ericsson have already said they will deck hazardous chemicals sooner."...

Rumor has it that the company is also working on a simulated volcano that will destroy a full size building. It looks to be powered by a Dell laptop.

Good languages are hard to design. Scriptable applications that dream up their own special-purpose scripting languages tend to have a lot of deep flaws and fundamental limitations. Most of the developer's resources go into the main application, not designing and supporting the scripting language. And special purposes non-standard languages usually don't have good development and debugging tools, either.

Python is a very well designed language, with a huge active community and robust collection of tools and extension modules, which was designed to be used as a general purpose application scripting language, from day one. Its syntax is quite simple, and there aren't a lot of exceptions to the rules (like Perl) or subtle nuances and inexplicable quirks (like PHP), so it's quite easy to learn.

One of the big upsides to using Python as an application scripting language is that all of the standard and add-on Python modules are at your disposal, and if you need to do anything specialized, you can write your own Python modules (using SWIG makes that quite easy).

Why would you want to plug your own custom Python modules into a scripable application like Maya? You might want to call libraries that import and export content, and integrate existing i/o and previewing code from the applications that consume the content you're building in Maya. And if your other applications are also scripted in Python, then you can use the same code and modules in your application and your tools, which really rocks! Python on Windows also has full support for OLE Automation, so you can easily integrate applications like Excel, and ActiveX controls, too.

But to stay on topic: Despite its crystal-meth-like popularity, PHP is an ameteurishly designed language, and has a long track record of each new version breaking compatibility by attempting to paper-machete over stupid mistakes of the past, that shouldn't have been made in the first place. But the difference between PHP and Perl, is that PHP is just naive, and didn't know it was making those mistakes. But Perl is totally malevolent, it chose to make all those mistakes on purpose, and it revels in its own fractal complexity.

Sure, go ahead with your experiment to arrange a shotgun marriage of PHP and Perl. But beware: this could happen to you!

-Don

I have, however, seen a few systems that could benefit from such an API...

You should have used NetBSD for that!

Dell Laptop Explodes

Mod parent troll.

Good thing some company like Dell doesn't have any problems with swelling in their laptops.

Hey, check this out! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

Of course, since Dell makes so many models of laptops, you can just avoid that model, or even if it affected all Dell laptops you could buy an HP, or a Lenovo, or a Sony.

Meanwhile Apple only makes two models of laptops, each specially designed for a market segment, and there are no other makers of Mac laptops, so prospective buyers now have to consider putting purchases on hold while Apple gets its ducks in a row.

Yeah, it's only Apple that's having problems like this.

Good thing some company like Dell doesn't have any problems with swelling in their laptops.

Hey, check this out! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

If you want detailes see this:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

As opposed to "because the inquirer says it then it must be true"?

Frankly, I linked to the Wikipedia article out of laziness, never even considering that some tinfoil-hat might suggest Wikipedians wanting to undermine an honest web magazine's wonderful image. Excuse any typos, I was rolling my eyes.

The Inquirer admits to its editorial (opinionated and subjective) stance.

In case you didn't notice, The Inquirer really does use useless jargon, just like many British tabloids. Here's the paper's own guide to it.

As opposed to "because the inquirer says it then it must be true"?

Frankly, I linked to the Wikipedia article out of laziness, never even considering that some tinfoil-hat might suggest Wikipedians wanting to undermine an honest web magazine's wonderful image. Excuse any typos, I was rolling my eyes.

The Inquirer admits to its editorial (opinionated and subjective) stance.

In case you didn't notice, The Inquirer really does use useless jargon, just like many British tabloids. Here's the paper's own guide to it.

If you had read TFA ...

The irony, if true, according to what Inquirer article claims http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32528 is that Microsoft paid THE WRONG PERSON.

Linux is an open-source version of Unix designed for Intel chips.

No, it's a clone of Unix, and it is no longer designed only for Intel chips. It was originally designed just for the 386, but now runs on anything, including your toaster.

From the article: "Remember too that IE7 is built from the same code base as Windows Vista which has received a huge amount of scrutiny, so this is going to be the most solid code base of IE we've ever produced."

So that's a good thing, right?

Some folks may think otherwise

Why do I get the feeling that Creative doesn't give a damn about the patents, but is doing this only for the chance that Apple will be prohibited from selling iPods for some time?

*wink wink nudge nudge*

And at some point C/C++ will run out of steam. We will all know the technological purity of Lisp and interpreted languages. Ha!

Give me a break. x86 is here to stay. It is superior to RISC because it has all the benefits of RISC under the hood plus the wonderful compression of x86 instructions that stretch increasingly more vital cache just a little bit further.

Intel is selling off its Xscale unit, the RISC-like ARM CPU architecture. I'm guessing it is positioning the new Shelton chips as its new embedded offering. Sure, an L2-cacheless, underclocked "Celeron" M chip sounds lame. Until you put one of these in a G7 iPod or Sidekick 4 smart phone and you realize you've got a low power embedded platform that could run 98% of the software out there on all three major operating systems (plus a ton of the minor ones).

For the first time ever the x86 is going to dominate from super computers to cell phones.

• http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28855
  http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=7 0486

A while back, I wrote an article for IBM developerWorks. The article was on AltiVec, and I used examples that I worked out months in advance with an editor so we could run the article on April 1st. The article covered AltiVec optimization techniques, and used as an example RGB to HSV color conversions to "accelerate" the beach ball cursor on OS X... But only after a quick summary of how to optimize the idle loop.

The Inquirer bought it.

The PS3 giving the main CPU low-performance access to the graphics hardware's private memory is a non-issue. You normally don't even LOOK at the memory on the graphics hardware, and indeed, not all hardware makes it possible to do so from the main CPU. This is just stupid. It's not even a processor issue, it's a board-design question, but it's not a problem, because this is the case you never care about.

This is analagous to claiming that it's a serious flaw that the OCR on the console printer output is much slower than the main disks. You don't even USE it, and that it exists at all is probably never going to matter to anyone.

"There's no doubting that NVIDIA's new 7800GTX is the ultimate in PC graphics technology. The card's G70 GPU, which is more than twice as powerful as two of NVIDIA's previous top-of-the-line 6800 boards, shares a lot of similar workings with the PS3's RSX chip - only it isn't as fast. Oh, and it retails for $599. "

That Charlie Whatshisname is a semi-literate one-eyed imbecile who has a cheek to call himself a journalist. Have a read through some of his past efforts and you'll get the picture. This one is so sloppy and amateurish that it actually annoyed me into writing to him and calling him an idiot, and I'm normally no Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

He's an utter clown.

WE'RE GRATEFUL to reader Ralph G, who snapped the shot below at Calgary (Alberta) International Airport, and shows that using Internet Explorer on big arrival and departure screens sometimes has its perils.

There's another video site called Blit.tv. The difference? They promise to offer their video encoded with a Free and open codec.

Rambus won their case. The "Memory Cartel" was smashed by the government in one of the biggest antitrust cases in history. Yet easily-manipulated pinheads such as yourself are still repeating the same tired Cartel propaganda that you read on Tom's Hardware.

Here's a link for the benefit of your fellow ignormaouses who might want to educate themselves.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27993

And yes this is a flame. It's ridiclous how easy it is for companies to manipulate and use computer nerds. Just feed them some FUD and they'll believe it until the day they die.

CHIP COMPANY INTEL has vowed to restructure the company, with CEO Paul Otellini saying he will do so after a comprehensive 90 day analysis. The new products Intel is introducing will prompt its customers to "burn off" the stock. He said Intel will clear out the excess inventory of several million units during Q2. Intel lost market share in the channel, in the retail market, and in the servers. The chipset supply impacted it in retail. During 2005 Intel allocated its chipsets, supplying the server market from the top, prioritised its corporate desktop supplies and prioritised its mobile chipset supply Its roadmap in servers was inadequate because AMD had a better product, said Chandrasekher. He said that Intel will win back market share on chipset supply in the future. It had recruited third party vendors (read ATI) to fulfil the shortfall. The move to 65 nanometres will ease its shortages, he said

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32082
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060531-6949 .html
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/business/14707951.h tm
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/8923
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20 060531084202128

Want some more? I dare say they are easy to find.

Crap, I linked to the wrong article.
I had seen this article and got mixed up with the site I searched (I thought it was from the reg and didn't triple check)

My apologies for searching for towels on the wrong site but I knew I had seen it somewhere, and its obviously still as valid today as it was then.