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IT shops buy current products, but they always have their eyes out one or two generations to assure themselves they aren't buying into a dead-end product. Which is why makers of chips and other components that go into systems as well as system makers themselves are forced to talk about the future when what they really want to do is focus on this quarter, right now. And so it is with the future "Bulldozer" cores expected in 2011 from Advanced Micro Devices. The pressure to compete now and in the future is high, and the competition between AMD and Intel...

Surprising no one, Intel announced on Thursday that it would be rounding out its Core i3/5/7 mobile and desktop processor lines on January 7 at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Not that there's anything wrong with being unsurprising - after bumps such as the recent Larrabee GPU/CPU shutdown, a little Chipzillian predictability can be comforting. The early-2010 appearance of the full Nehalem-based Core line, including the Arrandale mobile and Clarkdale desktop parts - has been expected for quite some time. The Reg, for example, noted back in July that "a big batch" of Core i5 processors...

Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang believes the US Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Intel could "completely transform the computer industry." On Wednesday, the FTC sued the world's largest chip maker over alleged anticompetitive practices. Among other things, the consumer watchdog accused Intel of illegally attempting to smother the makers of rival graphic chips."These products have lessened the need for CPUs, and therefore pose a threat to Intel’s monopoly power," the complaint reads. "Intel has responded to this competitive challenge by embarking on a similar anticompetitive strategy, which aims to preserve its CPU monopoly by smothering potential competition from GPU chips...

SANTA CLARA, Calif., December 16, 2009 – Intel Corporation issued the following statement regarding the suit filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC): "Intel has competed fairly and lawfully. Its actions have benefitted consumers. The highly competitive microprocessor industry, of which Intel is a key part, has kept innovation robust and prices declining at a faster rate than any other industry. The FTC's case is misguided. It is based largely on claims that the FTC added at the last minute and has not investigated. In addition, it is explicitly not based on existing law but is instead intended to...

FTC says Silicon Valley giant also trying to dominate graphics chip arena SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Intel Corp. has made peace with arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., but the Federal Trade Commission's suit against the chip behemoth points to the rise of its new nemesis on the legal front -- Nvidia Corp.The FTC complaint focuses on Intel's alleged anticompetive behavior against AMD in the market for central processing units, or CPUs, that run personal computers. But it also zeroed in on the market for graphics processing units, or GPUs as graphics processors are known, an arena where Nvidia and Intel...

But not until 2011 Broadcom has hinted that 20Mp cameraphones able to record 1080p video could be available by 2011, following the release of its latest multimedia processor. The BCM2763 VideoCore IV multimedia processor for mobile devices was developed using 40 nanometer CMOS process technology, Broadcom said. This means it boasts a smaller footprint and lower power consumption than existing 65 nanometer chips, Broadcom promised, but perhaps more importantly that the 40 nanometer design can support 20Mp image processing and one gigapixel 2D and 3D graphics rendering.

TOKYO—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced the launch of a 64 gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module, the highest capacity yet achieved in the industry. The chip is the flagship device in a new line-up of six embedded NAND flash memory modules that offer full compliance with the latest  e•MMCTM standard, and that are designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, mobile phones, netbooks and digital video cameras. Samples of the 64GB module are available from today, and mass production will start in the first quarter of 2010. The new 64GB embedded device...

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs Pittsburgh (ILP) have combined low-power, embedded processors typically used in netbooks with flash memory to create a server architecture that is fast, but far more energy efficient for data-intensive applications than the systems now used by major Internet services. An experimental computing cluster based on this so-called Fast Array of Wimpy Nodes (FAWN) architecture was able to handle 10 to 100 times as many queries for the same amount of energy as a conventional, disk-based cluster. The FAWN cluster had 21 nodes, each with a low-cost, low-power off-the-shelf processor and a four-gigabyte...

Linux and open source middleware JBoss has made its mark in the enterprise, and it is just a matter of time before open source becomes mainstream in other functional parts of the IT infrastructure as well. Where exactly that will happen, however, is the interesting question.With most companies spending 10 to 20 percent of their revenue on enterprise software, many IT managers would love to see more enterprise-class open source options. However, IT architects and project managers of IT tend to be cautious -- the back office has a low tolerance for risk, which makes it difficult for projects to...

The military is a major user of supercomputers (the fastest computers on the planet). These machines were first developed, as were the first computers, for military applications. These ultra-powerful computers are used for code breaking, and to help design weapons (including nukes) and equipment (especially electronics). The military is also needs lots of computing power for data mining (pulling useful information, about the enemy, from ever larger masses of information.) Because there's never enough money to buy all the super-computers (which are super expensive) needed, military researchers have come up with ways to do it cheaper. A decade ago, it...

Ever find out one of your friends hasn’t read “Neuromancer” or doesn’t know what a Babelfish is or why it’s important to keep a towel handy at all times? Did you have that brief moment where you thought, “Man, it’s like I don’t even know you?” If you’re gonna work in tech, write code, or just spend way too much time on Engadget, Lifehacker, and BoingBoing, there’s a certain amount of reading that goes with the territory. And I’m not just talking about O’Reilly books here. Discovering “Snow Crash” or geeking out on crypto history teaches us part of the...

A DOCUMENT HAS COME TO LIGHT that details the lengths to which Nvidia has gone to cover up the problems it has been having with its graphics chips. The most recent lawsuit against it by the National Union Fire Insurance Company (NUFI) claims the company has withheld information on the nature of its bad bumps. The very same information it has withheld from us or any other nosy hack or awkward analysts.The story was broken by a certain Mike Magee at TG Daily on Friday, and it has a lot of juicy bits. The short story is that the list...

With the intention of expanding its server lineup, International Business Machines (IBM), has rolled out a new mainframe system which is specifically designed for Linux, targeting high-end x86 systems. The new server system, which uses IBM’s specialty Linux processors, will either run on Novell SUSE or Red Hat based systems thereby bypassing the z/OS mainframe operating system. Instead, the server includes mainframe management software as well as IBM's z/Virtual Machine system which come together to form IBM’s low-cost integrated stacks for mainframe. Interestingly, the new system is designed to compete directly with large multicore systems used for virtualization consolidation and comes in two...

If the data devoured in the United States last year were converted to text there would be enough books to bury the country under a pile seven feet (two meters) deep, according to a study released Wednesday. US residents consumed about 1.3 trillion hours worth of information from radios, televisions, computers, newspapers, mobile telephones, and other sources, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.That translated into an average of nearly 12 hours spent daily by each US resident watching television, listening to MP3 players, scouring the Internet or tapped into other sources of data. The information tally...

Google (finally) released beta versions of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux on Tuesday, along with over 300 extensions for Windows and Linux. Sorry, Mac users - extensions "aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet", according to a Google blog posting announcing the new-release trifecta. Google offers an introductory video for the long-delayed Mac beta, which notes that the Webkit-based browser integrates Mac OS X's spell-checker and Keychain, plus OS X's built-in sandboxing system. There's also a four-video collection of marketing fluff touting Chrome's speed, stability, and features - if watching cutesy Rube Goldbergian contraptions is your cup of tea....

Preface to Pulsar: Why Seagate Needs This To say that the SSD revolution caught the HDD makers off guard would be an understatement. With the exception of Samsung, none of the players in the HDD business have an even remotely competitive SSD.Sitting this one out isn’t an option. In the enterprise market, a handful of SSDs can easily outperform dozens of 15,000 RPM hard drives. And when I say outperform, I mean by an order of magnitude. It’s not just about performance, there’s a tremendous power advantage as well. The best SSDs use less than 3W per drive under full...

USB 2.0 is so last millennium. No, seriously. We've had the specification since the year 2000, which is technically the previous millennium. Given how quickly the PC industry moves, though, it might as well have been a full millennium ago. Back in 2000, Intel was pushing Pentium III CPUs, 3dfx was still selling graphics processors, and Windows XP was a year away. Things have certainly changed since the so-called Hi-Speed USB spec was released, and its 480Mbps peak data rate has been grossly inadequate for quite some time now. In the real world, you're lucky to push more than about...

Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp. The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology. Each processing core could, in theory, run a separate operating system. Currently, top-end chips for desktop computers typically contain four separate processors. Intel and Rival AMD will both launch six-core devices in 2010, allowing computers to simultaneously tackle a number of complex tasks, such as processing graphics. 'Tiny islands' The chip has won the "cloud"...

We just got off the phone with Nick Knupffer of Intel, who confirmed something that has long been speculated upon: the fate of Larrabee. As of today, the first Larrabee chip’s retail release has been canceled. This means that Intel will not be releasing a Larrabee video card or a Larrabee HPC/GPGPU compute part. The Larrabee project itself has not been canceled however, and Intel is still hard at work developing their first entirely in-house discrete GPU. The first Larrabee chip (which for lack of an official name, we’re going to be calling Larrabee Prime) will be used for the...

Uses new flash controller, available next year Solid State Drives have been held back by the 300 MB/s limit of the SATA II interface for much of the last year. This led many SSD makers to produce SSDs using the PCIe interface.  Motherboards supporting the new 6Gbps SATA interface hit the market last month, and enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting SSDs that would support the new speeds. Micron might not be the first name you think of when you consider SSDs, but the company is announcing its new RealSSD C300. It is the first to use a native 6Gbps SATA...

A radical new day has dawned for the operating system. Today Google finally aired its long awaited Chrome Operating System. The operating system was detailed at a press conference starting at 1 p.m. EST, and the open source code was posted online just before the start of the presentation. The new operating system brings a dramatically different look and perspective to the market and just may give Microsoft and OS X some tough competition by reinventing a tired old wheel -- the operating system -- offering the first laptop/desktop OS built around the browser and web applications. A Google engineer...

The push is on to build exascale systems that can solve the planet's biggest problems There is a race to make supercomputers as powerful as possible to solve some of the world's most important problems, including climate change, the need for ultra-long-life batteries for cars, operating fusion reactors with plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius and creating bio-fuels from weeds and not corn. Supercomputers allow researchers to create three-dimensional visualizations, not unlike a video game, to run endless "what-if" scenarios with increasingly finer detail. But as big as they are today, supercomputers aren't big enough -- and a key...

The heavyweight of ultra-light mobility Light and compact, a smartbook is the perfect way to work and play without ever having to stop. As powerful as a laptop, a smartbook lets you create or enjoy whatever you want while you're on the go. Built-in 3G mobile broadband means you can connect at high speeds wherever your wireless coverage can reach. And like a mobile phone, it lasts as long as you do and is instantly ready to go when you are.

Retail experts say the sweetest deals in the coming weeks will be on smaller LCD televisions and some bigger-size plasma TVs. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you're in the market for a new flatscreen TV this holiday season, you're in luck. As nervous merchants prepare to draw reluctant shoppers with juicy sales, retail experts say some of the sweetest deals in the coming weeks will be on high-definition televisions.As they compete for customers, TV sellers are going to wage a price war, and the biggest bargains will likely be on smaller models."The difference from prior holiday discounts on TVs is...

Big news for developers out there: Google has just announced the release of a new, open sourced programming language called Go. The company says that Go is experimental, and that it combines the performance and security benefits associated with using a compiled language like C++ with the speed of a dynamic language like Python. GoÂ’s official mascot is Gordon the gopher, seen here. HereÂ’s how Google describes Go in its blog post: Go attempts to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++....

Welcome to the third edition of Eva's Useful Guide to Ubuntu! This guide contains many tips to enhance and customize a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" installation. I have been using various Linux distributions since 1998, and Ubuntu since its first release in 2004. During the last five years, I have accumulated some experience installing and maintaining Ubuntu systems. This guide was first meant to be my own reference, but I think it can be useful to anyone wanting to get the best of his Ubuntu box.   SummaryA. Media codecs, DVD support and more B. Use the Gnome Control...

Easy to use PC is aimed at elderly first time PC usersUsing the Internet has many benefits for people. They can find information about health conditions and keep in contact with friends and family. The problem is that for some users modern computers are very difficult to use and understand. This is a particularly big issue for the elderly. A new computer has debuted in the UK called SimplicITy that is aimed directly at the elderly. The computer forgoes the complexities of the full windows operating system and uses Linux. Rather than offering users direct access to the normal Linux...

It’s amazing how much the world changes before breakfast.At 6am Pacific this morning, a joint Intel & AMD press release hit our inboxes like a nuclear bomb: AMD and Intel are settling their differences. And just like that, the CPU landscape as we know it has significantly changed.We’re previously talked about the spat between AMD and Intel, one that Intel was looking increasingly likely to lose. AMD had had leveraged some very serious accusations against Intel over actions Intel supposedly undertook earlier this decade: paying OEMs and retailers not to use or carry products utilizing AMD processors through the use...

Lawsuits wrapped up with cash, promises of good behavior If you were looking forward to a long and protracted antitrust battle between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, you're out of luck. The two companies have buried the hatchet and settled all outstanding intellectual property and antitrust lawsuits. Under the settlement between the rival chip companies, Intel and AMD have signed a five-year cross licensing agreement and are letting go of any claims they made against each other with regard to breaches of previous cross-licensing arrangements. Oh, and AMD gets $1.25bn and Intel agrees to "abide by a set of business...

I spoke too soon. Earlier today I outlined AMD’s roadmap for 2010 - 2011. In 2011 AMD will introduce two next-generation microarchitectures: Bulldozer for the high end desktop and server space and Bobcat for the price/power efficient ultra mobile market. I originally said that AMD wasn’t revealing any more about its next-gen architectures, but AMD just proved me wrong as they unveiled the first block diagrams of both cores.****************************snip****************************** First up, Bulldozer. I hinted at the architecture in this afternoon’s article: “A major focus is going to be improving on one of AMD’s biggest weaknesses today: heavily threaded performance. Intel...

HardOCP Linked*****************************Nov. 10, 1983: Computer ‘Virus’ Is Born. Tech Gone Bad 1983: Fred Cohen, a University of Southern California graduate student, gives a prescient peek at the digital future when he demonstrates a computer virus during a security seminar at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. A quarter-century later, computer viruses have become a pandemic for which there’s no inoculation.

Current perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) for hard drives is going to reach its areal density limit, and it looks like the industry has not yet decided on which candidate technology is going to replace it. PMR reaches its limit when the magnetised area is so small its north or south pole state can be flipped by random heat fluctuations and changing the recording layer's chemistry to prevent that makes it much harder to write and read bits. There are two ways around this. Heat-assisted magnetic recoding (HAMR) says go with the changed chemistry and heat the bit before writing data...

The second half of 2010 could finally bring a much-anticipated Verizon Wireless iPhone. A new hybrid chip developed by Qualcomm makes it possible to communicate with several different network technologies using only one component. This means Apple can manufacture one device, the "world mode" iPhone that will work on all of the networks it's currently compatible with as well as Verizon's CDMA network. Previous reports speculated that Apple would wait until at least 2011 for Verizon's launch of LTE technology.

If the iPhone didn't finish off Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, the Motorola Droid may. Windows Mobile is losing the last vestiges of its mojo--if it really had any to begin with--as the Droid and other phones based on the Android 2.0 operating system push the buzz meter needle into the red zone. Many in the media--which can play a big role in steering users to one technology platform or another--sense that Windows Mobile has now been relegated resolutely to has-been status. The Motorola Droid's high-resolution screen.(Credit: Verizon) Let's do a quick canvas of what some in the press...

Technology giants such as Microsoft, IBM see high stakes in famed 'Bilski' case SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Technology firms will turn their attention Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is scheduled to consider a decision that could undercut legal protections afforded to a significant amount of the industry's software innovation.Oral arguments in the case, "Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw v. David J. Kappos," have been highly anticipated. Often referred to as the "Bilski" case, it was originally brought by an inventor who'd tried to win a business-method patent for a means to hedge against changes in commodity...

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The recent publicity for Hewlett-Packard and its new MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) accelerometer sent a message to Silicon Valley.The message was that MEMS technologies have indeed taken root and may be the target of the next generation of high tech venture investments after we're done with "green." H-P has long since been in the MEMS business since inkjet printheads are a MEMS device. Another famous MEMS device is the DLP (digital light processor) developed by Texas Instruments around 1987 by Larry Hornbeck. It was originally called a DMD, meaning digital micromirrors, the DLP now powers everything from...

Hearing the heartbeat of the Earth Getting the vision thing right is important for technology announcements and HP has it nailed, twinning a great vision with advances in its sensing technology. Here's Peter Hartwell, a senior researcher at HP Labs: "With a trillion sensors embedded in the environment, all connected by computing systems, software and services, it will be possible to hear the heartbeat of the Earth, impacting human interaction with the globe as profoundly as the Internet has revolutionised communication." Okay Peter, we're paying attention now. The meat of this concerns digital MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical system) - accelerometers that signal...

Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch EditionReview When we reviewed Sony's original PRS-505 Reader a little over 12 months ago, our only real criticism was that the plethora of buttons and switches that festooned the device would be better replaced by a touchscreen. Revised edition: Sony's PRS-600 Reader Touch Now Sony has released its next-generation Reader, the PRS-600, which does indeed have a touch screen, hence its 'Touch Edition' moniker. Having asked, we have received. But should we grateful? Look at the Touch from any direction other than face on and the differences between it and the old Reader are a hard...

Everybody is looking to shake up the server business this days, it seems. But everyone had better get in line behind 3Leaf Systems, which is launching its much awaited "Aqua" system pooling and virtualization chipset and an intriguing x64 system to match. A little more than two years ago, 3Leaf Systems came out of stealth mode with a funky I/O virtualization product for X64 servers and the promise that it would create a special chip for system boards that would allow for the virtualization of multiple CPUs dozens or hundreds of servers and - here's the neat part - the...

It's hard to look at the DROID without looking at the company which brought the device to life. Motorola: for years the name has been synonymous with... well, disappointment. While the industry-stalwart made cellphones sexy with the RAZR, the days which followed have not been especially fruitful or compelling. Over the past year or so, we've seen Motorola beating its way back into the mainstream through a series of smart plays: first embracing Android as a platform, then shucking off the weight of Windows Mobile and finally bringing some desirable (and high profile) devices to market. With the DROID, the...

The Swiss company ReVolt, from Staefa, plans to release the new batteries next year, initially as small batteries for use in hearing aids, and later for cell phones. Eventually much larger batteries are planned for electric vehicles. The new battery was developed in Trondheim in Norway by the SINTEF Group, the largest independent research institution in Scandinavia, and ReVolt was formed to market the device. Zinc-air batteries need oxygen from the air to generate the current. They are safer than lithium-ion batteries because they do not contain volatile materials, and therefore do not catch fire. Non-rechargeable zinc-air batteries have been...

Mountain View wants your exabyte Google’s massively global infrastructure now employs a proprietary system that automatically moves and replicates loads between its mega data centers when traffic and hardware issues arise. The distributed technology was first hinted at — in classically coy Google fashion — during a conference this summer, and Google fellow Jeff Dean has now confirmed its existence in a presentation (PDF) delivered at a symposium earlier this month. The platform is known as Spanner. Dean’s presentation calls it a “storage and computation system that spans all our data centers [and that] automatically moves and adds replicas of...

Upstart multicore, Linux-compatible chip maker Tilera don't need no stinking tier one server makers. That means no IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or Sun Microsystems. At least not yet. The company has just lined up $25m in its C round of funding, which includes $10m from Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese PC maker that is the volume leader in notebook manufacturing in the world. And as Tilera has confirmed to El Reg, Quanta is going to use Tilera chips to build servers. As it turns out, one of the reasons why Tilera announced its future Tile-Gx family of 100-core mesh processors last week,...

Apple iPhone and Google Android phone owners can now watch live NBA games The National Basketball Association is now offering mobile phone owners the ability to watch entire live games for $40 per year. Just a few games into the 2009-2010 NBA season, this is the first time entire games are available for streaming -- only game highlights were previously available through an official service. There are now three methods to watch complete games in the NBA:  via TV, PC, or now using a mobile phone.  Initial estimates report 59M mobile phone owners have the ability to watch streaming NBA...

We had a feeling this was coming. Mozilla has finally confirmed they are bringing the popular web browser to the Android mobile platform. Om Malik had an interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly and VP Jay Sullivan who shared their thoughts on Android. “Until recently, Android was Java, but they released Android NDK which uses C/C++ and that is what we program in, so we are now looking at developing Firefox for Android,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mobile for Mozilla. Mr. Lilly explained the reason why we have had to wait so long. “Sure, we are behind, but...

Ex-Microsoftie says that Windows 7 is doomed and Linux, free software, will ultimately dominate.A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system. These topics came up yesterday during my interview...

Verizon Wireless opened up to us. Verizon Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc. proudly and excitedly showed off their new Droid smart phone in a meeting Wednesday afternoon.First impression: The device is fast, powerful, fully featured and well-designed -- a combination of adjectives we've never used for a Verizon cellphone.When was the last time a Verizon phone got this much hype? The BlackBerry Storm? Ouch.Yet, one is coming on Nov. 6, and it has a good chance of living up to the hype. A phone with Google's fast-improving Android operating system, a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and digital zoom, a...

For all you alternative OS folks out there, Ubuntu 9.10 is now out. Grab it if you want it, try it if you haven’t. If you are unfamiliar with Ubuntu, I highly recommend you give our 30 days with Linux article a look.

Motorola and Verizon Wireless on Wednesday unveiled the Droid, a smartphone that will test whether the companies can use software from Google to chip away at the dominance of Apple's iPhone. The Droid, a svelte slider with a full keyboard and an expansive touchscreen, will be available at Verizon Wireless Nov. 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Customers have to sign up for a two-year contract and data plan. Success of the new phone, which is being launched in a competitive holiday season, is crucial for Motorola, where co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha has placed a heavy bet on...

Google takes the fight to Microsoft and AppleFor those of you who have been eager to see what's going on with Google's upcoming Chrome OS, today is your big change. Google just announced that Chrome OS 4.0.223 beta is now available for download. The open source operating system is based on Linux and is aimed at the growing netbook sector which are taking over the PC market.