flexRights An innovative solution that allows content owners to offer a "test drive" of their premium content to the market for a limited time. New markets will benefit greatly from this service. A music company can "give" a customer an entire CD of a chart- topping artist for a week. After that week, the digital encryption technology "locks" the music, leaving the consumer with the choice of going online to pay and "unlock" the music, or purchasing the rigid CD from the store. flexRights can also be used with Video and software content.
Are you outside the USA ? The US is about the only developed country in the world not to adopt GSM. They use a pretty creaky old system that operates at a much lower frequency. The result of this is that you need a bigger antenna.
Not so. There are the following systems in the usa:
AMPS: 800 mhz ancient analogue system GSM: 900/1900 mhz (voicestream) TDMA 800/1900 mhz (att, cingular, etc) CDMA 800/1900 mhz (sprint)
So you see, GSM and (t|c)dma run at the same (higher) frequency. Frankly however, i do wish more carriers used GSM, since the rest of the world uses it. If i travel to europe with my phone, it would be a paperweight.
Not the same thing, though. The nokia 88xx (and the 33xx, i think) have a small internal antenna in a little compartment on the back. It could still benefit from the "case antenna."
in the 2000 election cycle, the entertainment industry gave Democrats a whopping $24.2 million in contributions compared to $13.3 million to Republicans.
Surprising. I just assumed that the Republicans were sucking down more RIAA/MPAA money than the Democrats. (For the record, i'm an independant, so i'm not trying to criticize one over the other. I hate them equally. [j/k];)
Is there a lawyer in the house? Are the RIAA/MPAA actually doing anything illegal, or are they just being generally slimy-yet-law-abiding? If they're actually breaking laws, I say let's skewer them.:D
Achilles (MPAA/RIAA) is so vexed by Hector (Piracy) that he not only kills him, but drags his body behind his chariot for days (attempts to eliminate ALL fair use) to the point that his father, Priam (the american public) is bereaved by his actions and begs Achilles for permission to bury him (congress talks about passing law to ensure fair use).
Howz that for culture? And they say history can't teach us anything.
Crap, i didn't get the first page, because it wouldn't display on mozilla. here's the full article. Again, don't mod this up unless it is needed.
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WASHINGTON -- Music CDs equipped with copy protection will, if Rick Boucher gets his wish, soon be as obsolete as eight-track cassettes.
The feisty Democratic congressman from Virginia says he plans to introduce legislation banning, or at least regulating, compact discs outfitted with anti-copying technology.
Few discs sold in America currently feature the controversial scheme -- but the recording industry expects that as worries over digital piracy grow, the technique will become widespread.
"Suffice to say, there probably will be a legislative response to ensure that consumer rights will be protected," Boucher said in an interview.
Boucher's complaints are twofold: Americans may not know they're buying crippled discs, and that the new discs don't work on all players. "The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs," Boucher said. "These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players."
His remarks come as a Washington-style war of words between Boucher and the head of the Recording Industry Association of America is escalating. In January, Boucher wrote to RIAA's Hilary Rosen complaining about copy-protected discs; Rosen fired back last week by calling them "a measured response to a very serious problem facing the music industry today."
In response to Boucher's prediction of legislation, Rosen promised that the recording industry steadfastly would oppose it.
Rosen said in a statement: "The notion of copy protection is certainly not new to the entertainment industry. Even computer software already employ various technology protections as appropriate for their marketplace and their consumers. The music industry deserves to do the same. Legislation to prevent self-help technologies would be unwise and unfair."
Boucher wouldn't give details on what approach he's considering -- obvious possibilities include ordering the music industry to stick labels on protected CDs, or an outright ban of that technology. "I'm considering a proper legislative response to these concerns," he said. "I'm discussing it with a large number of individuals."
Those discussions may take a while. Boucher said in an interview last July that he would introduce a bill to rewrite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- but nine months later, he has yet to do so. This week, Boucher pledged to introduce "the bill in the not-so-distant future."
Copy protection works by encoding deliberate errors onto a compact disc. The errors make it harder to burn copies but can render the discs unplayable on many computers -- and a few stereos -- by violating the "Red Book" standard for CD-Audio that Philips and Sony created in 1980.
Only two protected CDs appear to have been distributed so far in the United States: Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves, released by Music City Records and protected by SunnComm's MediaCloQ, and More Fast and Furious, a Universal Music Group soundtrack protected by Midbar's Cactus 200. Both discs ship with warning labels and an advisory that they are copy-protected.
Prue Adler, the assistant executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, said her group endorses Boucher's approach.
Adler said that "as consumers, their expectations are certainly that they have these rights and privileges."
Jonathan Zittrain, an assistant professor at Harvard University's law school, said that it is currently legal to sell copy-protected discs. Zittrain said, however, that manufacturers could be liable under existing law if they do not clearly disclose that the CDs are crippled.
"I actually relish the government's finally turning its attention to the copyright arms race," Zittrain said. "With full public attention focused on the issue, there's an opportunity for Congress to help generate a moderate path on the issue, rather than one tilted too far to locking everything up."
Ira Rothken, an attorney who sued (PDF) over the Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves disc, thinks it's possible that protected CDs violate even existing U.S. laws.
"It could be considered a copyright misuse to not allow people access to works and to space-shift them," Rothken said. "If you told me that someone would not be allowed to listen to the music anonymously, that would cross the line. You cannot have digital-rights management technology if somebody has to give up their anonymity. People should be allowed to reasonably space-shift."
But in a decision last fall, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw things exactly the opposite way. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled: "We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original."
This dispute over music comes as Hollywood studios, fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, have asked Congress to require that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce committee convened a hearing where the studios complained that Silicon Valley firms had not moved quickly enough in setting anti-copying standards.
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. A version of the SSSCA obtained by Wired News would prohibit creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
Jonathan Zittrain , an assistant professor at Harvard University's law school, said that it is currently legal to sell copy-protected discs. Zittrain said, however, that manufacturers could be liable under existing law if they do not clearly disclose that the CDs are crippled.
"I actually relish the government's finally turning its attention to the copyright arms race," Zittrain said. "With full public attention focused on the issue, there's an opportunity for Congress to help generate a moderate path on the issue, rather than one tilted too far to locking everything up."
Ira Rothken, an attorney who sued (PDF) over the Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves disc, thinks it's possible that protected CDs violate even existing U.S. laws.
"It could be considered a copyright misuse to not allow people access to works and to space-shift them," Rothken said. "If you told me that someone would not be allowed to listen to the music anonymously, that would cross the line. You cannot have digital-rights management technology if somebody has to give up their anonymity. People should be allowed to reasonably space-shift."
But in a decision last fall, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw things exactly the opposite way. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled: "We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original."
This dispute over music comes as Hollywood studios, fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, have asked Congress to require that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce committee convened a hearing where the studios complained that Silicon Valley firms had not moved quickly enough in setting anti-copying standards.
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. A version of the SSSCA obtained by Wired News would prohibit creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
I bet the Newton is rolling in it's...uh... dumpster.
Seriously, what about a program that also encodes further information about contacts and appointments and such as mp3's using speech synthesis. That would be neat. The filename/tags or whatever would have a basic description and the mp3's would have more information as audio.
What Mr. Valenti is pointing to is not some sort of hardware or firmware change, but rather addidional IP controls in the OS. Windows, of course. Would Microsoft be willing to give its customers the old IP shaft in order to have the MPAA's support in it's time of trouble? Heck yeah.
With broadband in the sorry state is in today, there's no need for copy protection. How many VIDEOS do you see on gnutella and the like? The bandwidth just isn't there! As far as making physical copies: If i want to take a DVD that I BOUGHT, and make a backup of it, i should be able to. It's called FAIR USE. Oh, wait. Sorry, i forgot that ever since congress passed the DMCA, the concept of fair use has not just been further marginalized, but rather completely destroyed.
READ BETWEEN the lines, fellow geeks. What he's really saying is "HTTP is a cludge,.NET is much better. Use.NET"
Seriously, i'm sure Microsoft would love to replace HTTP with something "better." Sounds like further "embrace and extend" to me. It was not enough for them to make browsing the web with anything other than IE a hellacious experience, now they want to overtake the very protocols on which the www runs. If they are successfull... well, i hope you all are familiar with how to use a "gopher" client.;)
In my experience, when Microsoft say's, "We want to make it better," they usually mean, "We want to control it."
If everyone gets upset when someone "caches" a web site on/. in case it get's/.'ed, then my karma whoring days are over.:(
It's funny. Laugh.
Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
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· Score: 1
You might try the bat keyboard. I've not tried it myself, but i've heard positive reviews of it. It's an eight button chording keyboard similar to the twiddler, but i'ts a more stable surface. Not to cheap at 199USD, but it might help you out.
Some juicy screenshots
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
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· Score: 5, Informative
please ignore the following text (lameness filter):
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Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz vs. Athlon MP 1900+ www.gamepc.com
2/19/2002
While Intel and AMD have seemingly taken a breather from their constant one-upmanship in the consumer processor market, things are still churning along for the workstation and server markets. While the consumer level chips from both companies (Pentium 4 and Athlon XP) bring in large portions of cash, the workstation and server processors are where the real money is made. These processors go for a much higher price premium on the market and are commonly used in more expensive multiprocessor setups.
The customers who buy these chips tend to buy large quantities and like to use them for multiple years without any issues. Therefore, stability and reliability are the most important factors in buying a chip here with raw performance coming in second. Sure, having an incredibly fast processor is nice, but if you're constantly having to reboot the systems due to processor or motherboard stability problems, the system becomes more of a burden than help. Thus, there is a constant struggle for IT managers to either go for the fastest workstation chip on the market, or go with the chip that's known for excellent stability. Both Intel and AMD are striving to become the processor manufacturer that gives workstation users both the best performance and best stability on the market.
Intel has the Xeon family, which has had a foothold in the low-end server / high-end workstation market for multiple years now, stemming back to the original Pentium II Xeon. The Xeon now clocks up to 2.2 GHz and comes equipped with features like 512k on-die cache, a 400 MHz front side bus, and some nifty on and off-die thermal monitoring features. Their new "Prestonia" Xeon family was just recently released to market, which is what we're looking at today.
AMD, on the other hand, has the Athlon MP. Renowned for its incredible price/performance ratio, the Athlon MP has had a tough time making a name for itself as a big time server chip, although has done fantastically well in the workstation market. The combination of a fairly low cost processor along with similarly priced motherboard and memory have made the Athlon MP platform quite the hit. The Athlon MP was recently bumped in speed up to 1.6 GHz, which uses the AMD PR rating of 1900+.
Today at GamePC, we're looking at two of the fastest consumer-level multiprocessing chips on the planet, Intel's "Prestonia" Xeon 2.0 GHz right alongside AMD's top of the line Athlon MP 1900+. Let's boogie.
Intel "Prestonia" Xeon 2.0 GHz The Prestonia family of processors is to the Xeon what the Northwood family is to the Pentium 4. The Prestonia Xeon shares all the benefits of the original Pentium 4 Xeon, like a 400 MHz FSB, double-pumped ALU units, and SSE-2 instruction support, but it also has a few added bonus features which make it far and away better than its predecessor.
Just as Intel recently did with their Pentium 4 family, the Prestonia Xeon is manufactured on Intel's new 0.13 micron manufacturing processes, which allow for a smaller die area, along with lower power consumption and lower heat emissions. Not only does this make the Prestonia Xeon cheaper to produce, but the lower heat amounts come in very handy when dealing with dual and quad CPU configurations in a small form factor like a 1U or 2U rackmount. For example, the original 2.0 GHz Xeon produced a maximum of 77.5W of heat, while the new Prestonia Xeon at 2.0 GHz produces only 58W.
While reducing the manufacturing process, Intel also managed to stick in an extra 256 kB of L2 cache on to the processor die, giving it a total of 512 kB of full-speed on-die cache. As we've seen before with the Pentium 4 Northwood, adding another 256k of cache on to the Pentium 4's core can add up to 10-15% added application performance. Thus, the Prestonia Xeon gets that same speed increase compared to previous Xeon processors. Rumor has it that Intel will announce Xeon CPU's in the future with extra on-die cache, such as the case was the original Pentium II and III Xeons.
Both the original Xeon and Prestonia Xeon look roughly the same packaging, thus telling apart the CPU's can be difficult unless you have one right in front of you. Intel has the CPU markings on the bottom of the Xeon CPU's, as opposed to the Pentium 4 CPU's which have the markings right on the CPU's heat spreader. A quick flip of the CPU reveals the CPU's vital information. As you can see by the Xeon's S-SPEC codes, this is a 2.0 GHz Xeon with 512kB of L2 cache, running on a 400 MHz FSB, while running at 1.5V core voltage.
Even though there's a new core running underneath, Intel decided to keep the original Socket-603 form factor of the original Xeons, allowing you to upgrade to these newer chips without buying a new motherboard. As Xeon motherboards can be extremely expensive, this is a very, very good thing.
Besides the new manufacturing-level features of the processor, there has been one buzzword that has been gaining all the attention lately. Hyperthreading, the feature that can theoretically turn your 2 physical CPU's into 4 virtual CPU's. Let's investigate.
What Actually IS Hyperthreading? Hyperthreading is actually a technology that's been around for quite a long time in microprocessing, but has never been used in a consumer-level product like the Pentium 4 Xeon. The technology itself is based on Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) and was codenamed "Jackson Technology" by Intel while in development. At the last IDF, they gave this technology a name that fits in better with the Pentium 4 architecture, Hyperthreading.
Hyperthreading is simply a method of placing a second set of registers on the processor core, allowing the processor to execute two "threads" at once. Every time you run a piece of software, the software is sending threads to the CPU for it to execute and process. Until now, consumer level processors can only handle one thread at any given time. While a processor may go through thousands of threads per second, the CPU can only physically execute one at a time. In a dual CPU system, the computer can process two threads by sending one to each CPU. Hyperthreading takes the concept of executing multiple threads and brings it down to the single CPU level.
Hyperthreading allows the CPU to manage two threads at once, although this doesn't necessarily mean there are two CPU cores on the same die. Each register set can handle one thread, but each thread has to fight for processor resources like storing data in cache and sending it out through the front side bus. This means a single CPU with hyperthreading capabilities will not perform the same as two physical CPU's in an SMP configuration. While the ability to execute two threads at once was one of the main reasons why SMP was brought to market (symmetrical multi-processing, i.e dual CPU systems), the costs of going to SMP, such as SMP compatible motherboards and processors, in most cases far outweigh the benefits.
Unfortunately, since the threads have to fight for resources, there can be conflicts. If two threads want to use the same processor resources at the same time, they have to get in a queue to do so. Since most every piece of software on the market is written to only take advantage of a single CPU, suddenly throwing a single processor application on a dual/quad processor system will show literally no advantage in performance. Even as of today, only small percentage (mainly workstation/server applications) are multi-threaded to take advantage of multiple CPU's.
To get the full advantage of Hyperthreading technology, the software will have to be "optimized" for it. Whether this means re-compiling the software to support Hyperthreading through a new Intel compiler or just adding a few more lines of code, we're not certain. Intel states in their technical documents that software written to take advantage of SMP will get in upwards of 10% performance gain with a Hyperthreading capable CPU. If the software is optimized specifically for Hyperthreading, Intel has seen performance gains up to 30%.
Nowadays, where SMP is common in workstations and servers (and in some cases, desktops), there is a lot of multi-threaded code out there. The latest major operating systems can handle multiple processors, most professional video / audio editing software can use the CPUs, and even games are just starting to take advantage of a second CPU if available. This is the market that Intel's looking to capitalize on.
Hyperthreading in Reality The buzz around Hyperthreading is that a single Xeon system will be seen as two CPUs, while a dual Xeon system will be seen as a quad CPU system. Of course, people immediately think, "Wow, two CPUs for the price of one!" This is certainly not the case with Hyperthreading, just as dual processors do not give you double the power of a single processor.
Since Hyperthreading is implemented on the hardware level, the motherboard sees a single hyperthread-compatible CPU as two physical CPUs. Thus, software that is written for multiple CPUs will be tricked into thinking there is a second CPU in the system, and will run the appropriate multithreaded code if available. Since Windows XP and 2000 are coded to take advantage of multiple CPU's, it too sees a hypertheaded CPU as two.
In our case, since we ran with dual Xeon processors (each with hyperthreading capabilities), the OS and software see this as four physical CPUs, even though there are only two physical CPUs running. As you can see by the device and task managers in Windows XP, the OS sees our system with four physical CPU's. Eeven though Windows 2000 and Windows XP only officially support two CPU's, both operating systems were able to run properly with the Hyperthreaded CPU's. This means you don't have to upgrade to a 4-processor OS like Windows 2000 server to take advantage of this technology.
While this looks great for showing off to co-workers or friends, you will absolutely NOT get the performance of four CPUs running in your system (I can't stress this enough). As you'll see in our benchmarks later, even if software is written to take advantage of SMP, you rarely ever see performance gains with Hyperthreading enabled. In fact, in many applications, you see a performance drop with Hyperthreading enabled, as there is a great deal of overhead when splitting data up over four CPU's to process. Perhaps this is why Intel is recommending motherboard makers leave Hyperthreading disabled in the BIOS.
It's quite possible that Intel implemented Hyperthreading to take advantage of the Xeon architecture's longer pipeline, an often criticized design element of the Pentium 4 and Xeon families. With Hyperthreading, they can start a second process after the first one is farther down the pipe. From a theoretical standpoint, the code would have to either be highly optimized for the Prestonia or limit the use of branch prediction, since there are now two sets of independent data in the processor. If you look at Hyperthreading like this, it would appear to be the next generation of the P4's out-of-order speculative execution engine.
From what I now understand about Hyperthreading, it's my belief that Intel is planning to use Hyperthreading in all of its future Pentium 4 products down the road. The Xeon is simply the first guinea pig to actually have the logic enabled on the die. As Intel already has the Hyperthreading logic in the current Pentium 4 hardware, but not implementing it, you've got a sure sign that Intel will simply flip the switch to activate the logic when Hyperthreading applications are actually available. If Intel convinces developers that Hyperthreading is worth their time to optimize for, this could be an incredible feature 1-2 years down the road. As for now, it's fairly useless, but certainly interesting in the sometimes bland world of computer processing.
AMD Athlon MP 1.6 GHz (1900+) The Athlon MP 1.6 GHz is the latest and greatest from AMD's server/workstation family of CPUs, which have gained an extremely large amount of credibility lately due to their incredible price / performance ratio compared to Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 Xeon families. While slightly lagging behind AMD's own 1.67 GHz (2000+) in raw clock speed, the Athlon MP 1.6 GHz is quite more expensive than the Athlon XP 1.67 GHz, despite the fact that both can run SMP quite well.
The Athlon MP is based on the "Palomino" Athlon architecture, which is based on the 0.18 micron manufacturing process. While the Palomino chips create quite a bit less heat than the "Thunderbird" variant of the Athlon, the Palomino's still create quite a lot of heat, which can be difficult for dense rackmount situations. The chip itself is based on the Socket-A form factor, which means it should be compatible with most single processor Athlon boards, as well as all the dual Socket-A boards on the market now. As you'll no doubt notice, the new Athlon XP/MP processors are coming with green packaging, although they still use the same organic packaging as previous Athlon MP/XP CPU's.
The Palomino Athlon core comes equipped with 128 kB of L1 cache, along with 256 kB of L2 cache. While we've heard rumors that AMD may up the cache amounts on their upcoming 0.13 micron "Thoroughbred" processors, we haven't recieved any indication that this is anything more than a rumor.
Getting a closer look at the Athlon MP 1900+, you can see the Athlon's famous bridges are not "cut", like Athlon XP chips hitting the market. This means with a simple pencil and a motherboard that supports clock adjustments, you can overclock these processors to much higher clock speeds than intended. Of course, workstation and server users would most likely never do this, as overclocking is inherently risky, but we thought it was worth mentioning.
As you can see from reading the core, our Athlon MP processors are of a fairly recent "AGNGA" core stepping. The first line of text says "AMP1900", which denotes our chip as an Athlon MP 1900+. AMD runs the exact same processor core on both the Athlon XP and MP processors, albeit the MP models go through an extra round of multiprocessor "validation". Performance wise, these two cores are exactly the same.
The biggest threat for AMD and the Athlon MP is the fact that the platform has been plagued by a lack of absolute stability. While the Tyan Thunder K7 and Tiger MP boards still wrangle with edge-case stability scenarios, the AMD 760MPX motherboards have been plagued with chipset problems and many board revisions. In fact, the release of the 760MPX has undone much of AMD's work in making the Athlon MP synonymous with stability. We absolutely love the Athlon processors, but the platforms still aren't up to the level we were hoping for by now. Still, as more platforms are getting released, the situation IS getting better.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Intel Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz
AMD Athlon MP 1900+
. Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz Athlon MP 1900+ Clock Speed 2.0 GHz (2000 MHz) 1.6 GHz (1600 MHz) L1 Cache 8 kB 128 kB L2 Cache 512 kB 256 kB L2 Cache Speed Clock Speed (2.0 GHz) Clock Speed (1.6 GHz) L2 Cache Associativity 8-Way 16-Way Form Factor Socket-603 Socket-A Front Side Bus Speed 400 MHz 266 MHz Manufacturing Technology 0.13 Micron 0.18 Micron MMX Instruction Support Yes Yes SSE Instruction Support Yes Yes SSE-2 Instruction Support Yes No 3DNow! Instruction Support Partial Yes
The Platforms
Supermicro P4DC6+ i860
Asus A7M266-D AMD 760MPX
. Supermicro P4DC6+ Asus A7M266-D Chipset Intel 860 AMD 760MPX CPU Support Up to 2 x Xeon 2.2 GHz+ CPUs Up to 2 x Athlon MP 1.6 GHz+ CPUs Memory Type PC-800 RDRAM PC-2100 DDR SDRAM Memory Capacity 2 GB Max (4 RIMMS) 3.5 GB Max (4 DIMMS) Memory Type Support Standard / ECC Standard / ECC AGP Expansion AGP Pro 50 AGP Pro 50 PCI Expansion 2 x 64-bit (66 MHz) Slots 4 x 32-bit (33 MHz) Slots 2 x 64-bit (66 MHz) Slots 3 x 32-bit (33 MHz) Slots Onboard SCSI Adaptec AIC-7899W Ultra160 SCSI N/A Onboard Ethernet Intel 82559 10/100 Port N/A Onboard Audio AC97 Audio C-Media 6 Channel Audio Onboard Video N/A N/A
Pentium 4 Xeon "Prestonia" Testbed System Configuration
Processors 2 x Intel Pentium 4 Xeon 2.0 GHz "Prestonia" (8k L1, 512k L2) Cooling Intel Socket-603 Retail Coolers Memory 512MB Samsung PC-800 RDRAM (4 x 128M) Motherboard Supermicro P4DC6+ (Intel 860 Chipset) Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, Intel 3.2 Chipset Drivers
Pentium 4 "Northwood" Testbed System Configuration
Processors Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz "Northwood" (8k L1, 512k L2) Cooling Intel Socket-478 Retail Cooler Memory 512MB Crucial PC-800 RDRAM (4 x 128M) Motherboard Asus P4T-E (Intel 850 Chipset) Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, Intel 3.2 Chipset Drivers
AMD Athlon MP Testbed System Configuration
Processors 2 x AMD Athlon MP 1.6 Ghz (1900+) "Palomino" (128k L1, 256k L2) Cooling AMD Socket-A Retail Coolers Memory 512MB Crucial PC-2100 DDR SDRAM (2 x 256M) Motherboard Asus A7M266-D (AMD 760-MPX Chipset) Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, AMD 1.30 Driver Pack
AMD Athlon XP Testbed System Configuration
Processors AMD Athlon XP 1.67 Ghz (2000+) "Palomino" (128k L1, 256k L2) Cooling AMD Socket-A Retail Cooler Memory 512MB Samsung PC-2100 DDR SDRAM (2 x 256M) Motherboard Asus A7V266-E (VIA KT-266A Chipset) Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, VIA 4-In-1 4.37 Service Pack
Lab Notes
* All tests run with VSync (Vertical Sync) Disabled.
* Nvidia Detonator XP (23.11) Driver used in all testing.
* All RDRAM memory run with "Nap" mode disabled.
* All DDR memory run at CAS 2.5 latency.
Benchmarking Software
* Adobe Photoshop 6.01
* LAME MP3 Encoder 3.91
* Kinetix 3D Studio MAX
* Red Hat Linux 7.2
* SiSoft Sandra 2002
* Windows Media Encoder 8.0
SiSoft Sandra 2002 is a synthetic Windows benchmark. The benchmarks can stress CPU, Memory, or Processor Instruction abilities. Higher Sandra scores mean better overall performance.
CPU Benchmark - Hyper-Threading Support (SMT) Enabled (Higher Scores are Better)
CPU Benchmark - Hyper-Threading Support (SMT) Disabled (Higher Scores are Better)
Memory Benchmark (Higher Scores are Better)
SiSoft's Sandra, while being a synthetic Windows benchmark, is one of the few pieces of software on the market with some level of Hyperthreading support. This is through Sandra's "SMT" test, which to be honest, gave us extremely sporadic results at first. Once we figured out what exactly was happening with the test, we were able to finally lay down some solid numbers.
First off, it's quite easy to see that the dual Athlon MP setup simply rules the roost when it comes to raw CPU performance. Even with the Athlon MP chips at 1.6 GHz, it's easily able to outpace the dual Xeon 2.0 GHz processors, with or without Hyperthreading enabled. Even the highest performing Xeon setup still trails the dual Athlon MP 1900+ by roughly 30%.
When Hyperthreading was enabled, we can certainly see some performance gains being had by the Xeon setups. One CPU with Hyperthreading gained 18% in this benchmark, while two CPU's with Hyperthreading gained 23%. Of course, this is simply a synthetic test, and to achieve any real world performance gains like this, the software would have to be specifically optimized for Hyperthreading.
Upon looking at the results, we're not positive on what effect the SMT test has on our scores. As you can see by the first graph, even with Hyperthreading (hardware)disabled on the dual 2.0 GHz Xeons, it still managed to get a higher score on the Hyperthreading (software) test, compared with Hyperthreading (software) being disabled, which nearly has a margin of 2000.
In terms of memory performance, Xeon systems still maintain quite a large margin over the current Athlon MP systems. Thanks to the Xeon / i860 dual channel RDRAM memory interface, you've got quite a bit more available bandwidth compared to the Athlon MP / 760MPX single channel DDR interface.
Adobe's Photoshop 6.0 is the world's most popular image creation/editing software. We run a series of filters on an image, while measuring perform them. The times for each filters are added up. Lower times mean faster performance.
Adobe Photoshop 6.01 Filter Benchmark (Lower times are Better)
Adobe's Photoshop thrives on fast FPU units along with lots of memory bandwidth and capacity. Even though Photoshop is multi-threaded, the software only really takes advantage of multiple processors on a few select filters. Thus, running a second processor doesn't necessarily help Photoshop that much, at least in this case.
In our test, we see the simple single Athlon XP 2000+ processor beating out both the dual Athlon XP 1900+ and dual Xeon systems. While the other platforms were merely seconds away, it's clear that the Athlon-based systems take the cake for best overall Photoshop performance. We see the addition of a second Athlon MP processor took nearly 8 seconds off the benchmark time. Not bad, but we were hoping for more.
Hyperthreading shows itself here to become more of a nuisance than actually helping performance. With Hyperthreading enabled, the dual Xeon 2.0 GHz system actually slows down by 5 seconds, while a single Xeon 2.0 GHz with Hyperthreading speeds up by 2 seconds. As you'll likely guess, Photoshop is not optimized for Hyperthreading, so any performance gains seem to be purely coincidental.
Keep in mind, we ran this test with the Adobe 6.01 patch installed, along with Adobe's specially released SSE-2 filter package, and the Xeons still couldn't fully stand up to AMD's new Athlon processors.
3D Studio is one of the most popular 3D editing suites on the market today. We render a 50-frame scene with over 40,000 faces and 20,000 vertices. Lower render times mean faster processing performance.
3D Studio MAX "Tank" Render Test (Lower Times are Better)
3D Studio MAX, and any kind of 3D rendering software, relies almost 100% on the CPU for final scene rendering. Thus, multiprocessor systems are almost required for any kind of professional level 3D modeling software. 3DS Max is indeed able to fully take advantage of multiple processors.
In our test render, we again see AMD take the take, as the dual Athlon MP 1900+ system rendered our scene the quickest. While the Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz system was just about one minute behind, the Athlon systems simply rock for these kind of applications. Even our single Athlon XP 2000+ system managed to render a few seconds faster then Intel's dual Xeon 2.0 GHz box.
As for Hyperthreading, again we see mixed results. A single processor with Hyperthreading actually helps out, cutting 15 seconds off our rendering time. Two processors with Hyperthreading hurt a lot, as it added an extra 1:56 to our final render time. Ouch.
Windows Media Encoder is a free Windows video encoding suite. We take a 50MB MPEG file, and encode it to Windows Media 8 (.wmv) format. We test at 320x240 Resolution using the WM8 for Cable/DSL encoding method.
50MB MPEG Video to Windows Media Video Encode (Lower times are Better)
While the Xeon was crushed by the Athlon MP in the previous two tests, the table turns around for video encoding. Encoding our MPEG movie was incredibly fast with the Dual Xeons, the fastest score we've seen for this test to date. Windows Media Player 8 is extremely efficient with multiple processors, giving a 30-40% boost in encoding times for both the Xeon and Athlon MP platforms.
Even as the Xeon is the clear winner in these tests, Hyperthreading again disappoints. A single Xeon with Hyperthreading tacks on another 20 seconds to our encoding time, while Dual Xeons adds on another 29 seconds. Disappointing, to say the least.
MP3 Encoding is extremely CPU intensive, and tests the CPU's raw FPU performance. We use LAME 3.89, which has optimizations for MMX, 3DNow, and SSE A 200MB.wav file is encoded to a 160 kbps MP3, we record the time to encode.
200MB Wav to MP3 File Encode (Lower Times are Better)
MP3 encoding through LAME is entirely CPU based, but since the program isn't multithreaded, we don't see any performance gains when adding a second processor. Thus, winning this benchmark is simply a case of having the best FPU performance in a single processor situation, which the Athlon clearly does.
The Pentium 4 / Xeon platforms are 9-10 seconds slower, no matter what motherboard or processor combination is used. Both the Athlon MP and Xeon systems give very respectable encoding performance, but the Athlon MP/XP are clearly the winners here.
Red Hat is the most popular Linux distribution in the world currently We test by recompiling the 2.4.9 kernel using the "make bzImage -j#" command. Depending on the # of threads, compiling time can be different, especially with SMP. Lower compile times mean better processing performance.
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 1 Thread (Lower times are Better)
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 2 Threads (Lower times are Better)
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 4 Threads (Lower times are Better)
Compiling a Linux kernel is extremely stressful on the CPU, and as we tested with the SMP-compatible 2.4.9 Red Hat kernel, we were able to see some very nice performance gains with a our multiprocessor systems. As the 2.4.9 kernel also has for "Jackson Technology" (aka, SMT / Hyperthreading), we were hoping to see what Hyperthreading was capable of doing in a Linux environment.
When the kernel is compiled with a single thread, the systems don't show any real performance gains with a second processor installed. Compiling with two or more threads is where you really start to see the performance gains of SMP with Linux.
With two threads running, compile times are nearly cut in half with two CPU's installed. The Dual 2.0 GHz Xeons manage to compile the kernel quickest at 1:57, while the Athlon MP 1900+ setup is nipping at its heels with a 2:05 compile time. Compiling an entire Linux kernel in under two minutes is simply an incredible showing of CPU power, any way you look at it.
For curiosity's sake, we decided to run a compile with four simultaneous threads. As dual Hyperthreading-enabled Xeons can physically take four threads at once, we figured it would be a good test. Unfortunately, there were only 1-2 second differences in compile times between 2 and 4 threads. Compiling the kernel with 2, 3, 4, 5 and more threads gave roughly the same compile times.
The Final Word Both the Prestonia Xeon and Athlon MP are incredible processors, and both engineering teams deserve a round of kudos for producing some incredibly fast SMP-capable CPU's. Each CPU has a specific area where you'll see one dominate over the other, although the majority of the tests were fairly close between the two CPU's.
In my opinion, the Prestonia Xeon is the better CPU of the two for mission critical / server applications. The Intel 860 platform seems to be incredibly stable, considering it's relatively short time on the market. Not one instance comes to mind where we ran into compatibility issues with our Dual Xeon systems, something we can't say for the Athlon MP systems we setup. Unfortunately, you pay the price for the Intel name, as Xeon systems are extremely expensive. The CPU's and motherboards are both extremely expensive, which makes the Xeon hard to recommend for the workstation market.
The workstation market is much better suited by the Athlon MP processor, as its price / performance ratio is unbeatable. For most workstation applications, the Athlon MP even will be a better performer, despite its lower price tag. We would love to see AMD put a few more server-specific features on their MP processors to justify their heightened price tags over the Athlon XP, but even as they are now, the MP's are a great deal for the amount of processing power you get in that tiny little core.
As for the Xeon's Hyperthreading technologies, it's hard not to be disappointed with the scores which we got throughout our testing. Hyperthreading sounds like an incredibly useful processor feature in theory, but in practice, It's useless without compatible software on the market. Time will only tell if developers want to take on the Hyperthreading challenge, and the few developers we've talked to have not been that incredibly impressed with the technology thus far. If nothing else, Hyperthreading will certainly be an interesting to watch out for over the next few years.
This time next year, it's quite possible that we may be dealing with McKinley and Clawhammer has the workstation processors of choice, if Intel and AMD have their way. While it's anyone's guess if 64-bit processing is ready to come down to the consumer level, this article certainly proves that current 32-bit processors have more than enough power to handle today's applications.
I love the little sounds that Engelbart's system made, as a function and work indicator. Not very practical, but cool nonetheless. I wish photoshop would do something like that whenever i apply a gaussian blur on a 40MB file.:)
A three wheeled cheapo version of the Segway would not be nearly as stable. Why? Just look at how close the two wheels are together. Adding a castor would only be stable if you were standing perfectly upright. Otherwise you'd topple over or backwards. IANAE, but the segway is really the only stable way to make such a small mobile platform for someone to stand on. Partially, the segway is like the old seal-with-a-beach-ball routine. As your weight shifts forward, the motors move the segway forward to keep everything in balance. The gyros and sensors help a lot, but that is the basic principle. The other main stabilising feature is its low center of gravity. Take a closer look at it. You are actually standing just a few inches above the ground, and the wheels' axis is above your feet. It's a lot more stable than say, a bicycle, where your center of gravity is way up high. Just my observations.
Honestly, i don't understand this argument. I have extensively read the KJV, the NJKV, and the NIV. While there are many differences in the language, the meaning is the same. If you could give me an example comparing the KJV with others and showing how the others are corrupt, i'd appreciate it. I will say, however, that the KJV is the most poetically beautiful translation. Compare Psalm 32 and revelation 1:6-8.
By the way, i don't understand why my above post was rated as Offtopic. Flamebait, troll, whatever, but it certainly wasn't offtopic. I was showing how the bible refutes evolution. That of course you believe in the Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God. If you don't, nevermind.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It includes a 320 by 480, 16-bit color screen that has virtual Graffiti.
Virtual Graffiti? As opposed to Physical Graffiti ?
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:LWZtImLLCpoC: www.cwi.nl/~tromp/cl/cl.html+John%27s+Combinatory+ Logic+Playground&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
Be cautious:
flexRights
An innovative solution that allows content owners to offer a "test drive" of their premium content to the market for a limited time. New markets will benefit greatly from this service. A music company can "give" a customer an entire CD of a chart- topping artist for a week. After that week, the digital encryption technology "locks" the music, leaving the consumer with the choice of going online to pay and "unlock" the music, or purchasing the rigid CD from the store. flexRights can also be used with Video and software content.
But i wonder if they would force OSS/Free software programmers to pay. That would suck.
Are you outside the USA ? The US is about the only developed country in the world not to adopt GSM. They use a pretty creaky old system that operates at a much lower frequency. The result of this is that you need a bigger antenna.
Not so. There are the following systems in the usa:
AMPS: 800 mhz ancient analogue system
GSM: 900/1900 mhz (voicestream)
TDMA 800/1900 mhz (att, cingular, etc)
CDMA 800/1900 mhz (sprint)
So you see, GSM and (t|c)dma run at the same (higher) frequency. Frankly however, i do wish more carriers used GSM, since the rest of the world uses it. If i travel to europe with my phone, it would be a paperweight.
Not the same thing, though. The nokia 88xx (and the 33xx, i think) have a small internal antenna in a little compartment on the back. It could still benefit from the "case antenna."
in the 2000 election cycle, the entertainment industry gave Democrats a whopping $24.2 million in contributions compared to $13.3 million to Republicans.
;)
:D
Surprising. I just assumed that the Republicans were sucking down more RIAA/MPAA money than the Democrats. (For the record, i'm an independant, so i'm not trying to criticize one over the other. I hate them equally. [j/k]
Is there a lawyer in the house? Are the RIAA/MPAA actually doing anything illegal, or are they just being generally slimy-yet-law-abiding? If they're actually breaking laws, I say let's skewer them.
Very perceptive. Actually i am taking classical civ, but i've read Homer before. :)
;;THORN;
The only problem with my analogy is that if big business is Athens and the people of the US are Troy, then we're screwed.
Achilles (MPAA/RIAA) is so vexed by Hector (Piracy) that he not only kills him, but drags his body behind his chariot for days (attempts to eliminate ALL fair use) to the point that his father, Priam (the american public) is bereaved by his actions and begs Achilles for permission to bury him (congress talks about passing law to ensure fair use).
Howz that for culture? And they say history can't teach us anything.
Crap, i didn't get the first page, because it wouldn't display on mozilla. here's the full article. Again, don't mod this up unless it is needed.
---
WASHINGTON -- Music CDs equipped with copy protection will, if Rick Boucher gets his wish, soon be as obsolete as eight-track cassettes.
The feisty Democratic congressman from Virginia says he plans to introduce legislation banning, or at least regulating, compact discs outfitted with anti-copying technology.
Few discs sold in America currently feature the controversial scheme -- but the recording industry expects that as worries over digital piracy grow, the technique will become widespread.
"Suffice to say, there probably will be a legislative response to ensure that consumer rights will be protected," Boucher said in an interview.
Boucher's complaints are twofold: Americans may not know they're buying crippled discs, and that the new discs don't work on all players. "The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs," Boucher said. "These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players."
His remarks come as a Washington-style war of words between Boucher and the head of the Recording Industry Association of America is escalating. In January, Boucher wrote to RIAA's Hilary Rosen complaining about copy-protected discs; Rosen fired back last week by calling them "a measured response to a very serious problem facing the music industry today."
In response to Boucher's prediction of legislation, Rosen promised that the recording industry steadfastly would oppose it.
Rosen said in a statement: "The notion of copy protection is certainly not new to the entertainment industry. Even computer software already employ various technology protections as appropriate for their marketplace and their consumers. The music industry deserves to do the same. Legislation to prevent self-help technologies would be unwise and unfair."
Boucher wouldn't give details on what approach he's considering -- obvious possibilities include ordering the music industry to stick labels on protected CDs, or an outright ban of that technology. "I'm considering a proper legislative response to these concerns," he said. "I'm discussing it with a large number of individuals."
Those discussions may take a while. Boucher said in an interview last July that he would introduce a bill to rewrite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- but nine months later, he has yet to do so. This week, Boucher pledged to introduce "the bill in the not-so-distant future."
Copy protection works by encoding deliberate errors onto a compact disc. The errors make it harder to burn copies but can render the discs unplayable on many computers -- and a few stereos -- by violating the "Red Book" standard for CD-Audio that Philips and Sony created in 1980.
Only two protected CDs appear to have been distributed so far in the United States: Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves, released by Music City Records and protected by SunnComm's MediaCloQ, and More Fast and Furious, a Universal Music Group soundtrack protected by Midbar's Cactus 200. Both discs ship with warning labels and an advisory that they are copy-protected.
Prue Adler, the assistant executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, said her group endorses Boucher's approach.
Adler said that "as consumers, their expectations are certainly that they have these rights and privileges."
Jonathan Zittrain, an assistant professor at Harvard University's law school, said that it is currently legal to sell copy-protected discs. Zittrain said, however, that manufacturers could be liable under existing law if they do not clearly disclose that the CDs are crippled.
"I actually relish the government's finally turning its attention to the copyright arms race," Zittrain said. "With full public attention focused on the issue, there's an opportunity for Congress to help generate a moderate path on the issue, rather than one tilted too far to locking everything up."
Ira Rothken, an attorney who sued (PDF) over the Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves disc, thinks it's possible that protected CDs violate even existing U.S. laws.
"It could be considered a copyright misuse to not allow people access to works and to space-shift them," Rothken said. "If you told me that someone would not be allowed to listen to the music anonymously, that would cross the line. You cannot have digital-rights management technology if somebody has to give up their anonymity. People should be allowed to reasonably space-shift."
But in a decision last fall, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw things exactly the opposite way. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled: "We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original."
This dispute over music comes as Hollywood studios, fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, have asked Congress to require that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce committee convened a hearing where the studios complained that Silicon Valley firms had not moved quickly enough in setting anti-copying standards.
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. A version of the SSSCA obtained by Wired News would prohibit creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
Robert Zarate contributed to this report.
Jonathan Zittrain , an assistant professor at Harvard University's law school, said that it is currently legal to sell copy-protected discs. Zittrain said, however, that manufacturers could be liable under existing law if they do not clearly disclose that the CDs are crippled.
"I actually relish the government's finally turning its attention to the copyright arms race," Zittrain said. "With full public attention focused on the issue, there's an opportunity for Congress to help generate a moderate path on the issue, rather than one tilted too far to locking everything up."
Ira Rothken, an attorney who sued (PDF) over the Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves disc, thinks it's possible that protected CDs violate even existing U.S. laws.
"It could be considered a copyright misuse to not allow people access to works and to space-shift them," Rothken said. "If you told me that someone would not be allowed to listen to the music anonymously, that would cross the line. You cannot have digital-rights management technology if somebody has to give up their anonymity. People should be allowed to reasonably space-shift."
But in a decision last fall, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw things exactly the opposite way. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled: "We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original."
This dispute over music comes as Hollywood studios, fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, have asked Congress to require that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce committee convened a hearing where the studios complained that Silicon Valley firms had not moved quickly enough in setting anti-copying standards.
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. A version of the SSSCA obtained by Wired News would prohibit creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
Robert Zarate contributed to this report.
...another /.er's comment i once read:
The DOJ was supposed to come down on Microsoft, but they went down on them instead.
;o
Seriously, this does not suprise me at all, given the priorities of the current administration.
I bet the Newton is rolling in it's ...uh... dumpster.
Seriously, what about a program that also encodes further information about contacts and appointments and such as mp3's using speech synthesis. That would be neat. The filename/tags or whatever would have a basic description and the mp3's would have more information as audio.
What Mr. Valenti is pointing to is not some sort of hardware or firmware change, but rather addidional IP controls in the OS. Windows, of course. Would Microsoft be willing to give its customers the old IP shaft in order to have the MPAA's support in it's time of trouble? Heck yeah.
With broadband in the sorry state is in today, there's no need for copy protection. How many VIDEOS do you see on gnutella and the like? The bandwidth just isn't there! As far as making physical copies: If i want to take a DVD that I BOUGHT, and make a backup of it, i should be able to. It's called FAIR USE. Oh, wait. Sorry, i forgot that ever since congress passed the DMCA, the concept of fair use has not just been further marginalized, but rather completely destroyed.
READ BETWEEN the lines, fellow geeks. What he's really saying is "HTTP is a cludge, .NET is much better. Use .NET"
;)
Seriously, i'm sure Microsoft would love to replace HTTP with something "better." Sounds like further "embrace and extend" to me. It was not enough for them to make browsing the web with anything other than IE a hellacious experience, now they want to overtake the very protocols on which the www runs. If they are successfull... well, i hope you all are familiar with how to use a "gopher" client.
In my experience, when Microsoft say's, "We want to make it better," they usually mean, "We want to control it."
If everyone gets upset when someone "caches" a web site on /. in case it get's /.'ed, then my karma whoring days are over. :(
It's funny. Laugh.
You might try the bat keyboard. I've not tried it myself, but i've heard positive reviews of it. It's an eight button chording keyboard similar to the twiddler, but i'ts a more stable surface. Not to cheap at 199USD, but it might help you out.
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Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz vs. Athlon MP 1900+
www.gamepc.com
2/19/2002
While Intel and AMD have seemingly taken a breather from their constant one-upmanship in the consumer processor market, things are still churning along for the workstation and server markets. While the consumer level chips from both companies (Pentium 4 and Athlon XP) bring in large portions of cash, the workstation and server processors are where the real money is made. These processors go for a much higher price premium on the market and are commonly used in more expensive multiprocessor setups.
The customers who buy these chips tend to buy large quantities and like to use them for multiple years without any issues. Therefore, stability and reliability are the most important factors in buying a chip here with raw performance coming in second. Sure, having an incredibly fast processor is nice, but if you're constantly having to reboot the systems due to processor or motherboard stability problems, the system becomes more of a burden than help. Thus, there is a constant struggle for IT managers to either go for the fastest workstation chip on the market, or go with the chip that's known for excellent stability. Both Intel and AMD are striving to become the processor manufacturer that gives workstation users both the best performance and best stability on the market.
Intel has the Xeon family, which has had a foothold in the low-end server / high-end workstation market for multiple years now, stemming back to the original Pentium II Xeon. The Xeon now clocks up to 2.2 GHz and comes equipped with features like 512k on-die cache, a 400 MHz front side bus, and some nifty on and off-die thermal monitoring features. Their new "Prestonia" Xeon family was just recently released to market, which is what we're looking at today.
AMD, on the other hand, has the Athlon MP. Renowned for its incredible price/performance ratio, the Athlon MP has had a tough time making a name for itself as a big time server chip, although has done fantastically well in the workstation market. The combination of a fairly low cost processor along with similarly priced motherboard and memory have made the Athlon MP platform quite the hit. The Athlon MP was recently bumped in speed up to 1.6 GHz, which uses the AMD PR rating of 1900+.
Today at GamePC, we're looking at two of the fastest consumer-level multiprocessing chips on the planet, Intel's "Prestonia" Xeon 2.0 GHz right alongside AMD's top of the line Athlon MP 1900+. Let's boogie.
Intel "Prestonia" Xeon 2.0 GHz
The Prestonia family of processors is to the Xeon what the Northwood family is to the Pentium 4. The Prestonia Xeon shares all the benefits of the original Pentium 4 Xeon, like a 400 MHz FSB, double-pumped ALU units, and SSE-2 instruction support, but it also has a few added bonus features which make it far and away better than its predecessor.
Just as Intel recently did with their Pentium 4 family, the Prestonia Xeon is manufactured on Intel's new 0.13 micron manufacturing processes, which allow for a smaller die area, along with lower power consumption and lower heat emissions. Not only does this make the Prestonia Xeon cheaper to produce, but the lower heat amounts come in very handy when dealing with dual and quad CPU configurations in a small form factor like a 1U or 2U rackmount. For example, the original 2.0 GHz Xeon produced a maximum of 77.5W of heat, while the new Prestonia Xeon at 2.0 GHz produces only 58W.
While reducing the manufacturing process, Intel also managed to stick in an extra 256 kB of L2 cache on to the processor die, giving it a total of 512 kB of full-speed on-die cache. As we've seen before with the Pentium 4 Northwood, adding another 256k of cache on to the Pentium 4's core can add up to 10-15% added application performance. Thus, the Prestonia Xeon gets that same speed increase compared to previous Xeon processors. Rumor has it that Intel will announce Xeon CPU's in the future with extra on-die cache, such as the case was the original Pentium II and III Xeons.
Both the original Xeon and Prestonia Xeon look roughly the same packaging, thus telling apart the CPU's can be difficult unless you have one right in front of you. Intel has the CPU markings on the bottom of the Xeon CPU's, as opposed to the Pentium 4 CPU's which have the markings right on the CPU's heat spreader. A quick flip of the CPU reveals the CPU's vital information. As you can see by the Xeon's S-SPEC codes, this is a 2.0 GHz Xeon with 512kB of L2 cache, running on a 400 MHz FSB, while running at 1.5V core voltage.
Even though there's a new core running underneath, Intel decided to keep the original Socket-603 form factor of the original Xeons, allowing you to upgrade to these newer chips without buying a new motherboard. As Xeon motherboards can be extremely expensive, this is a very, very good thing.
Besides the new manufacturing-level features of the processor, there has been one buzzword that has been gaining all the attention lately. Hyperthreading, the feature that can theoretically turn your 2 physical CPU's into 4 virtual CPU's. Let's investigate.
What Actually IS Hyperthreading?
Hyperthreading is actually a technology that's been around for quite a long time in microprocessing, but has never been used in a consumer-level product like the Pentium 4 Xeon. The technology itself is based on Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) and was codenamed "Jackson Technology" by Intel while in development. At the last IDF, they gave this technology a name that fits in better with the Pentium 4 architecture, Hyperthreading.
Hyperthreading is simply a method of placing a second set of registers on the processor core, allowing the processor to execute two "threads" at once. Every time you run a piece of software, the software is sending threads to the CPU for it to execute and process. Until now, consumer level processors can only handle one thread at any given time. While a processor may go through thousands of threads per second, the CPU can only physically execute one at a time. In a dual CPU system, the computer can process two threads by sending one to each CPU. Hyperthreading takes the concept of executing multiple threads and brings it down to the single CPU level.
Hyperthreading allows the CPU to manage two threads at once, although this doesn't necessarily mean there are two CPU cores on the same die. Each register set can handle one thread, but each thread has to fight for processor resources like storing data in cache and sending it out through the front side bus. This means a single CPU with hyperthreading capabilities will not perform the same as two physical CPU's in an SMP configuration. While the ability to execute two threads at once was one of the main reasons why SMP was brought to market (symmetrical multi-processing, i.e dual CPU systems), the costs of going to SMP, such as SMP compatible motherboards and processors, in most cases far outweigh the benefits.
Unfortunately, since the threads have to fight for resources, there can be conflicts. If two threads want to use the same processor resources at the same time, they have to get in a queue to do so. Since most every piece of software on the market is written to only take advantage of a single CPU, suddenly throwing a single processor application on a dual/quad processor system will show literally no advantage in performance. Even as of today, only small percentage (mainly workstation/server applications) are multi-threaded to take advantage of multiple CPU's.
To get the full advantage of Hyperthreading technology, the software will have to be "optimized" for it. Whether this means re-compiling the software to support Hyperthreading through a new Intel compiler or just adding a few more lines of code, we're not certain. Intel states in their technical documents that software written to take advantage of SMP will get in upwards of 10% performance gain with a Hyperthreading capable CPU. If the software is optimized specifically for Hyperthreading, Intel has seen performance gains up to 30%.
Nowadays, where SMP is common in workstations and servers (and in some cases, desktops), there is a lot of multi-threaded code out there. The latest major operating systems can handle multiple processors, most professional video / audio editing software can use the CPUs, and even games are just starting to take advantage of a second CPU if available. This is the market that Intel's looking to capitalize on.
Hyperthreading in Reality
The buzz around Hyperthreading is that a single Xeon system will be seen as two CPUs, while a dual Xeon system will be seen as a quad CPU system. Of course, people immediately think, "Wow, two CPUs for the price of one!" This is certainly not the case with Hyperthreading, just as dual processors do not give you double the power of a single processor.
Since Hyperthreading is implemented on the hardware level, the motherboard sees a single hyperthread-compatible CPU as two physical CPUs. Thus, software that is written for multiple CPUs will be tricked into thinking there is a second CPU in the system, and will run the appropriate multithreaded code if available. Since Windows XP and 2000 are coded to take advantage of multiple CPU's, it too sees a hypertheaded CPU as two.
In our case, since we ran with dual Xeon processors (each with hyperthreading capabilities), the OS and software see this as four physical CPUs, even though there are only two physical CPUs running. As you can see by the device and task managers in Windows XP, the OS sees our system with four physical CPU's. Eeven though Windows 2000 and Windows XP only officially support two CPU's, both operating systems were able to run properly with the Hyperthreaded CPU's. This means you don't have to upgrade to a 4-processor OS like Windows 2000 server to take advantage of this technology.
While this looks great for showing off to co-workers or friends, you will absolutely NOT get the performance of four CPUs running in your system (I can't stress this enough). As you'll see in our benchmarks later, even if software is written to take advantage of SMP, you rarely ever see performance gains with Hyperthreading enabled. In fact, in many applications, you see a performance drop with Hyperthreading enabled, as there is a great deal of overhead when splitting data up over four CPU's to process. Perhaps this is why Intel is recommending motherboard makers leave Hyperthreading disabled in the BIOS.
It's quite possible that Intel implemented Hyperthreading to take advantage of the Xeon architecture's longer pipeline, an often criticized design element of the Pentium 4 and Xeon families. With Hyperthreading, they can start a second process after the first one is farther down the pipe. From a theoretical standpoint, the code would have to either be highly optimized for the Prestonia or limit the use of branch prediction, since there are now two sets of independent data in the processor. If you look at Hyperthreading like this, it would appear to be the next generation of the P4's out-of-order speculative execution engine.
From what I now understand about Hyperthreading, it's my belief that Intel is planning to use Hyperthreading in all of its future Pentium 4 products down the road. The Xeon is simply the first guinea pig to actually have the logic enabled on the die. As Intel already has the Hyperthreading logic in the current Pentium 4 hardware, but not implementing it, you've got a sure sign that Intel will simply flip the switch to activate the logic when Hyperthreading applications are actually available. If Intel convinces developers that Hyperthreading is worth their time to optimize for, this could be an incredible feature 1-2 years down the road. As for now, it's fairly useless, but certainly interesting in the sometimes bland world of computer processing.
AMD Athlon MP 1.6 GHz (1900+)
The Athlon MP 1.6 GHz is the latest and greatest from AMD's server/workstation family of CPUs, which have gained an extremely large amount of credibility lately due to their incredible price / performance ratio compared to Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 Xeon families. While slightly lagging behind AMD's own 1.67 GHz (2000+) in raw clock speed, the Athlon MP 1.6 GHz is quite more expensive than the Athlon XP 1.67 GHz, despite the fact that both can run SMP quite well.
The Athlon MP is based on the "Palomino" Athlon architecture, which is based on the 0.18 micron manufacturing process. While the Palomino chips create quite a bit less heat than the "Thunderbird" variant of the Athlon, the Palomino's still create quite a lot of heat, which can be difficult for dense rackmount situations. The chip itself is based on the Socket-A form factor, which means it should be compatible with most single processor Athlon boards, as well as all the dual Socket-A boards on the market now. As you'll no doubt notice, the new Athlon XP/MP processors are coming with green packaging, although they still use the same organic packaging as previous Athlon MP/XP CPU's.
The Palomino Athlon core comes equipped with 128 kB of L1 cache, along with 256 kB of L2 cache. While we've heard rumors that AMD may up the cache amounts on their upcoming 0.13 micron "Thoroughbred" processors, we haven't recieved any indication that this is anything more than a rumor.
Getting a closer look at the Athlon MP 1900+, you can see the Athlon's famous bridges are not "cut", like Athlon XP chips hitting the market. This means with a simple pencil and a motherboard that supports clock adjustments, you can overclock these processors to much higher clock speeds than intended. Of course, workstation and server users would most likely never do this, as overclocking is inherently risky, but we thought it was worth mentioning.
As you can see from reading the core, our Athlon MP processors are of a fairly recent "AGNGA" core stepping. The first line of text says "AMP1900", which denotes our chip as an Athlon MP 1900+. AMD runs the exact same processor core on both the Athlon XP and MP processors, albeit the MP models go through an extra round of multiprocessor "validation". Performance wise, these two cores are exactly the same.
The biggest threat for AMD and the Athlon MP is the fact that the platform has been plagued by a lack of absolute stability. While the Tyan Thunder K7 and Tiger MP boards still wrangle with edge-case stability scenarios, the AMD 760MPX motherboards have been plagued with chipset problems and many board revisions. In fact, the release of the 760MPX has undone much of AMD's work in making the Athlon MP synonymous with stability. We absolutely love the Athlon processors, but the platforms still aren't up to the level we were hoping for by now. Still, as more platforms are getting released, the situation IS getting better.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Intel Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz
AMD Athlon MP 1900+
. Prestonia Xeon 2.0 GHz Athlon MP 1900+
Clock Speed 2.0 GHz (2000 MHz) 1.6 GHz (1600 MHz)
L1 Cache 8 kB 128 kB
L2 Cache 512 kB 256 kB
L2 Cache Speed Clock Speed (2.0 GHz) Clock Speed (1.6 GHz)
L2 Cache Associativity 8-Way 16-Way
Form Factor Socket-603 Socket-A
Front Side Bus Speed 400 MHz 266 MHz
Manufacturing Technology 0.13 Micron 0.18 Micron
MMX Instruction Support Yes Yes
SSE Instruction Support Yes Yes
SSE-2 Instruction Support Yes No
3DNow! Instruction Support Partial Yes
The Platforms
Supermicro P4DC6+ i860
Asus A7M266-D AMD 760MPX
. Supermicro P4DC6+ Asus A7M266-D
Chipset Intel 860 AMD 760MPX
CPU Support Up to 2 x Xeon 2.2 GHz+ CPUs Up to 2 x Athlon MP 1.6 GHz+ CPUs
Memory Type PC-800 RDRAM PC-2100 DDR SDRAM
Memory Capacity 2 GB Max (4 RIMMS) 3.5 GB Max (4 DIMMS)
Memory Type Support Standard / ECC Standard / ECC
AGP Expansion AGP Pro 50 AGP Pro 50
PCI Expansion 2 x 64-bit (66 MHz) Slots
4 x 32-bit (33 MHz) Slots 2 x 64-bit (66 MHz) Slots
3 x 32-bit (33 MHz) Slots
Onboard SCSI Adaptec AIC-7899W Ultra160 SCSI N/A
Onboard Ethernet Intel 82559 10/100 Port N/A
Onboard Audio AC97 Audio C-Media 6 Channel Audio
Onboard Video N/A N/A
Pentium 4 Xeon "Prestonia" Testbed System Configuration
Processors 2 x Intel Pentium 4 Xeon 2.0 GHz "Prestonia" (8k L1, 512k L2)
Cooling Intel Socket-603 Retail Coolers
Memory 512MB Samsung PC-800 RDRAM (4 x 128M)
Motherboard Supermicro P4DC6+ (Intel 860 Chipset)
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache
Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter
Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, Intel 3.2 Chipset Drivers
Pentium 4 "Northwood" Testbed System Configuration
Processors Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz "Northwood" (8k L1, 512k L2)
Cooling Intel Socket-478 Retail Cooler
Memory 512MB Crucial PC-800 RDRAM (4 x 128M)
Motherboard Asus P4T-E (Intel 850 Chipset)
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache
Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter
Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, Intel 3.2 Chipset Drivers
AMD Athlon MP Testbed System Configuration
Processors 2 x AMD Athlon MP 1.6 Ghz (1900+) "Palomino" (128k L1, 256k L2)
Cooling AMD Socket-A Retail Coolers
Memory 512MB Crucial PC-2100 DDR SDRAM (2 x 256M)
Motherboard Asus A7M266-D (AMD 760-MPX Chipset)
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache
Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter
Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, AMD 1.30 Driver Pack
AMD Athlon XP Testbed System Configuration
Processors AMD Athlon XP 1.67 Ghz (2000+) "Palomino" (128k L1, 256k L2)
Cooling AMD Socket-A Retail Cooler
Memory 512MB Samsung PC-2100 DDR SDRAM (2 x 256M)
Motherboard Asus A7V266-E (VIA KT-266A Chipset)
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB, ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache
Miscellaneous Plextor 8/4/32A IDE CD-ReWriter
Software Windows XP w/ DirectX 8.1, VIA 4-In-1 4.37 Service Pack
Lab Notes
* All tests run with VSync (Vertical Sync) Disabled.
* Nvidia Detonator XP (23.11) Driver used in all testing.
* All RDRAM memory run with "Nap" mode disabled.
* All DDR memory run at CAS 2.5 latency.
Benchmarking Software
* Adobe Photoshop 6.01
* LAME MP3 Encoder 3.91
* Kinetix 3D Studio MAX
* Red Hat Linux 7.2
* SiSoft Sandra 2002
* Windows Media Encoder 8.0
SiSoft Sandra 2002 is a synthetic Windows benchmark.
The benchmarks can stress CPU, Memory, or Processor Instruction abilities.
Higher Sandra scores mean better overall performance.
CPU Benchmark - Hyper-Threading Support (SMT) Enabled
(Higher Scores are Better)
CPU Benchmark - Hyper-Threading Support (SMT) Disabled
(Higher Scores are Better)
Memory Benchmark
(Higher Scores are Better)
SiSoft's Sandra, while being a synthetic Windows benchmark, is one of the few pieces of software on the market with some level of Hyperthreading support. This is through Sandra's "SMT" test, which to be honest, gave us extremely sporadic results at first. Once we figured out what exactly was happening with the test, we were able to finally lay down some solid numbers.
First off, it's quite easy to see that the dual Athlon MP setup simply rules the roost when it comes to raw CPU performance. Even with the Athlon MP chips at 1.6 GHz, it's easily able to outpace the dual Xeon 2.0 GHz processors, with or without Hyperthreading enabled. Even the highest performing Xeon setup still trails the dual Athlon MP 1900+ by roughly 30%.
When Hyperthreading was enabled, we can certainly see some performance gains being had by the Xeon setups. One CPU with Hyperthreading gained 18% in this benchmark, while two CPU's with Hyperthreading gained 23%. Of course, this is simply a synthetic test, and to achieve any real world performance gains like this, the software would have to be specifically optimized for Hyperthreading.
Upon looking at the results, we're not positive on what effect the SMT test has on our scores. As you can see by the first graph, even with Hyperthreading (hardware)disabled on the dual 2.0 GHz Xeons, it still managed to get a higher score on the Hyperthreading (software) test, compared with Hyperthreading (software) being disabled, which nearly has a margin of 2000.
In terms of memory performance, Xeon systems still maintain quite a large margin over the current Athlon MP systems. Thanks to the Xeon / i860 dual channel RDRAM memory interface, you've got quite a bit more available bandwidth compared to the Athlon MP / 760MPX single channel DDR interface.
Adobe's Photoshop 6.0 is the world's most popular image creation/editing software.
We run a series of filters on an image, while measuring perform them.
The times for each filters are added up. Lower times mean faster performance.
Adobe Photoshop 6.01 Filter Benchmark
(Lower times are Better)
Adobe's Photoshop thrives on fast FPU units along with lots of memory bandwidth and capacity. Even though Photoshop is multi-threaded, the software only really takes advantage of multiple processors on a few select filters. Thus, running a second processor doesn't necessarily help Photoshop that much, at least in this case.
In our test, we see the simple single Athlon XP 2000+ processor beating out both the dual Athlon XP 1900+ and dual Xeon systems. While the other platforms were merely seconds away, it's clear that the Athlon-based systems take the cake for best overall Photoshop performance. We see the addition of a second Athlon MP processor took nearly 8 seconds off the benchmark time. Not bad, but we were hoping for more.
Hyperthreading shows itself here to become more of a nuisance than actually helping performance. With Hyperthreading enabled, the dual Xeon 2.0 GHz system actually slows down by 5 seconds, while a single Xeon 2.0 GHz with Hyperthreading speeds up by 2 seconds. As you'll likely guess, Photoshop is not optimized for Hyperthreading, so any performance gains seem to be purely coincidental.
Keep in mind, we ran this test with the Adobe 6.01 patch installed, along with Adobe's specially released SSE-2 filter package, and the Xeons still couldn't fully stand up to AMD's new Athlon processors.
3D Studio is one of the most popular 3D editing suites on the market today.
We render a 50-frame scene with over 40,000 faces and 20,000 vertices.
Lower render times mean faster processing performance.
3D Studio MAX "Tank" Render Test
(Lower Times are Better)
3D Studio MAX, and any kind of 3D rendering software, relies almost 100% on the CPU for final scene rendering. Thus, multiprocessor systems are almost required for any kind of professional level 3D modeling software. 3DS Max is indeed able to fully take advantage of multiple processors.
In our test render, we again see AMD take the take, as the dual Athlon MP 1900+ system rendered our scene the quickest. While the Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz system was just about one minute behind, the Athlon systems simply rock for these kind of applications. Even our single Athlon XP 2000+ system managed to render a few seconds faster then Intel's dual Xeon 2.0 GHz box.
As for Hyperthreading, again we see mixed results. A single processor with Hyperthreading actually helps out, cutting 15 seconds off our rendering time. Two processors with Hyperthreading hurt a lot, as it added an extra 1:56 to our final render time. Ouch.
Windows Media Encoder is a free Windows video encoding suite.
We take a 50MB MPEG file, and encode it to Windows Media 8 (.wmv) format.
We test at 320x240 Resolution using the WM8 for Cable/DSL encoding method.
50MB MPEG Video to Windows Media Video Encode
(Lower times are Better)
While the Xeon was crushed by the Athlon MP in the previous two tests, the table turns around for video encoding. Encoding our MPEG movie was incredibly fast with the Dual Xeons, the fastest score we've seen for this test to date. Windows Media Player 8 is extremely efficient with multiple processors, giving a 30-40% boost in encoding times for both the Xeon and Athlon MP platforms.
Even as the Xeon is the clear winner in these tests, Hyperthreading again disappoints. A single Xeon with Hyperthreading tacks on another 20 seconds to our encoding time, while Dual Xeons adds on another 29 seconds. Disappointing, to say the least.
MP3 Encoding is extremely CPU intensive, and tests the CPU's raw FPU performance.
We use LAME 3.89, which has optimizations for MMX, 3DNow, and SSE
A 200MB
200MB Wav to MP3 File Encode
(Lower Times are Better)
MP3 encoding through LAME is entirely CPU based, but since the program isn't multithreaded, we don't see any performance gains when adding a second processor. Thus, winning this benchmark is simply a case of having the best FPU performance in a single processor situation, which the Athlon clearly does.
The Pentium 4 / Xeon platforms are 9-10 seconds slower, no matter what motherboard or processor combination is used. Both the Athlon MP and Xeon systems give very respectable encoding performance, but the Athlon MP/XP are clearly the winners here.
Red Hat is the most popular Linux distribution in the world currently
We test by recompiling the 2.4.9 kernel using the "make bzImage -j#" command.
Depending on the # of threads, compiling time can be different, especially with SMP.
Lower compile times mean better processing performance.
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 1 Thread
(Lower times are Better)
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 2 Threads
(Lower times are Better)
Red Hat 2.4.9 Kernel Compile - 4 Threads
(Lower times are Better)
Compiling a Linux kernel is extremely stressful on the CPU, and as we tested with the SMP-compatible 2.4.9 Red Hat kernel, we were able to see some very nice performance gains with a our multiprocessor systems. As the 2.4.9 kernel also has for "Jackson Technology" (aka, SMT / Hyperthreading), we were hoping to see what Hyperthreading was capable of doing in a Linux environment.
When the kernel is compiled with a single thread, the systems don't show any real performance gains with a second processor installed. Compiling with two or more threads is where you really start to see the performance gains of SMP with Linux.
With two threads running, compile times are nearly cut in half with two CPU's installed. The Dual 2.0 GHz Xeons manage to compile the kernel quickest at 1:57, while the Athlon MP 1900+ setup is nipping at its heels with a 2:05 compile time. Compiling an entire Linux kernel in under two minutes is simply an incredible showing of CPU power, any way you look at it.
For curiosity's sake, we decided to run a compile with four simultaneous threads. As dual Hyperthreading-enabled Xeons can physically take four threads at once, we figured it would be a good test. Unfortunately, there were only 1-2 second differences in compile times between 2 and 4 threads. Compiling the kernel with 2, 3, 4, 5 and more threads gave roughly the same compile times.
The Final Word
Both the Prestonia Xeon and Athlon MP are incredible processors, and both engineering teams deserve a round of kudos for producing some incredibly fast SMP-capable CPU's. Each CPU has a specific area where you'll see one dominate over the other, although the majority of the tests were fairly close between the two CPU's.
In my opinion, the Prestonia Xeon is the better CPU of the two for mission critical / server applications. The Intel 860 platform seems to be incredibly stable, considering it's relatively short time on the market. Not one instance comes to mind where we ran into compatibility issues with our Dual Xeon systems, something we can't say for the Athlon MP systems we setup. Unfortunately, you pay the price for the Intel name, as Xeon systems are extremely expensive. The CPU's and motherboards are both extremely expensive, which makes the Xeon hard to recommend for the workstation market.
The workstation market is much better suited by the Athlon MP processor, as its price / performance ratio is unbeatable. For most workstation applications, the Athlon MP even will be a better performer, despite its lower price tag. We would love to see AMD put a few more server-specific features on their MP processors to justify their heightened price tags over the Athlon XP, but even as they are now, the MP's are a great deal for the amount of processing power you get in that tiny little core.
As for the Xeon's Hyperthreading technologies, it's hard not to be disappointed with the scores which we got throughout our testing. Hyperthreading sounds like an incredibly useful processor feature in theory, but in practice, It's useless without compatible software on the market. Time will only tell if developers want to take on the Hyperthreading challenge, and the few developers we've talked to have not been that incredibly impressed with the technology thus far. If nothing else, Hyperthreading will certainly be an interesting to watch out for over the next few years.
This time next year, it's quite possible that we may be dealing with McKinley and Clawhammer has the workstation processors of choice, if Intel and AMD have their way. While it's anyone's guess if 64-bit processing is ready to come down to the consumer level, this article certainly proves that current 32-bit processors have more than enough power to handle today's applications.
I love the little sounds that Engelbart's system made, as a function and work indicator. Not very practical, but cool nonetheless. I wish photoshop would do something like that whenever i apply a gaussian blur on a 40MB file. :)
This phone call has caused a protection fault in phone.dll. Please press CALL + END + CLEAR to restart your phone.
yeesh.
S-T-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y
A three wheeled cheapo version of the Segway would not be nearly as stable. Why? Just look at how close the two wheels are together. Adding a castor would only be stable if you were standing perfectly upright. Otherwise you'd topple over or backwards. IANAE, but the segway is really the only stable way to make such a small mobile platform for someone to stand on. Partially, the segway is like the old seal-with-a-beach-ball routine. As your weight shifts forward, the motors move the segway forward to keep everything in balance. The gyros and sensors help a lot, but that is the basic principle. The other main stabilising feature is its low center of gravity. Take a closer look at it. You are actually standing just a few inches above the ground, and the wheels' axis is above your feet. It's a lot more stable than say, a bicycle, where your center of gravity is way up high. Just my observations.
Better question yet: If your segway suddenly stops and throws you off, would that be called a seg fault? [rimshot]
Honestly, i don't understand this argument. I have extensively read the KJV, the NJKV, and the NIV. While there are many differences in the language, the meaning is the same. If you could give me an example comparing the KJV with others and showing how the others are corrupt, i'd appreciate it. I will say, however, that the KJV is the most poetically beautiful translation. Compare Psalm 32 and revelation 1:6-8.
:)
By the way, i don't understand why my above post was rated as Offtopic. Flamebait, troll, whatever, but it certainly wasn't offtopic. I was showing how the bible refutes evolution. That of course you believe in the Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God. If you don't, nevermind.
Goodbye karma.