Intel Reveals Solid State Value Drives

Intel enters the storage market with a solid offering

Intel Corporation announced today its entry into solid state drives with the Intel Z-U130. Aimed at delivering performance and value, the drives are based on NAND flash memory with standard USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces. Intel says that the advantages of its Z-U130 over hard disk drives and removable USB storage devices are faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives.

Solid state drives enjoy several advantages over traditional hard disk drives, such as faster start up, faster read times, lower seek times, less power consumption, silent operation and lower weight. Solid state drives should also be more reliable as there are no moving parts involved in the device’s operation. On the flip side, magnetic-based drives may endure better after a great number of read/write cycles and faster write times. For the foreseeable future, traditional hard disk drives will also enjoy the cost advantage at large capacities.

“Solid state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives including improved performance and reliability,” said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel’s NAND Products Group. “The Intel solid state drive technology provides robust performance, while offering Intel’s industry leading quality, validation and reliability for a wide variety of embedded applications.”more

AMD Hopes Quad-Core Server Chip Is Answer to Woes

Chipmaker will try to beat Intel with high performance instead of low prices.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service

Struggling to rebound from a $574 million loss in fourth-quarter earnings that it reported earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices is pinning its hopes for recovery in 2007 to its planned "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron server chip.

Since it launched in November, Intel's competing "Clovertown" quad-core Xeon chip has been adopted mainly for high-end research server platforms; Clovertown has been hobbled in part by a lack of multithreaded software capable of taking full advantage of the new chip technology. But AMD hopes to sell its Barcelona chip to users ranging from managers of high-performance computing centers to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).
Revenue Increase Hopes

AMD expects a bounce in revenue when Barcelona launches the processor by the middle of 2007, since many customers have delayed buying new systems until the chip comes out. The company hopes that Barcelona will, at long last, enable AMD to break into the low-end server segment, which includes one-chip and two-chip computers and tower PCs, and rack-mounted servers.

"We're not yet in the SMB segment; it represents for us a great volume opportunity since we have so little market share now," said Kevin Knox, vice president of AMD's commercial business, on Wednesday.view site

Intel Pitches Plan to Beat Chip Glut

Intel hopes to stay profitable by producing new chip designs faster than its competitors, according to the company's president.

Facing a market glut of microprocessors and weak corporate demand for PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows Vista OS, Intel Corp. hopes to stay profitable by producing new chip designs faster than its competitors, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said Monday.

"There's clearly more capacity to build microprocessors than there is demand in 2007, and probably in 2008," Otellini told financial analysts at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco.

To decrease the impact of a head-to-head processor pricing war with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), Intel must return to the quick development habits it used when producing its Pentium family of chips, Otellini said. Intel backed off that pace after producing the Pentium 4, and soon began to lose market share when Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) launched the Opteron chip in 2003.view site

Samsung Mass Producing 1Gb DDR DRAM at 60nm

Memory shrink to 60nm can double production efficiency.

amsung Electronics has announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 1Gigabit DDR2 DRAM using 60 nanometer process technology. In its press release, Samsung estimates efficiency gains of the 60nm process are 40 percent over the 80nm, and twice the productivity of 90nm general process technology.

Samsung’s line up of 60nm 1Gb DRAM-based modules includes 512MB, 1GB and 2GB densities supporting either 667Mbps or 800Mbps speeds. Samsung anticipates such a high degree of receptivity to the 60nm process that it should drive greater demand for 1Gb DRAM chips in the near future over today’s mainstream density of 512Mb.

Samsung’s migration below 90nm has relied heavily on the use of three-dimensional transistor technologies to build increasingly smaller chips, a fundamentally unique approach toward finer circuit designs and higher yields. The use of metal-insulator metal (MIM) for its capacitors provides enhanced data storage in sub-70nm designs. Furthermore, the use of a recently-announced selective epitaxial growth (SEG) technology provides for a broader electron channel, and optimizes the speed of each chip’s electrons to reduce power consumption and enable higher performance. These key technologies are expected to enable DRAM fabrication to 50nm and lower.more

Intel Pulls 45nm Xeon

Intel promises 45nm server processors this year

Earlier today, Intel revealed to DailyTech more details regarding 45nm server products, including launch windows and compatibility.

Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's Server Platform Group, opened his statements with "We were originally in the Q1'08 timeframe. Today I'm happy to announce to report for the first time that our server 45nm Xeon products based on the Penryn core will be available into production for the second half of 2007."more

AMD Releases Final "R600" Specs

Six weeks from now, the world will get the first retail Radeon X2900 XTX


Late yesterday DailyTech was briefed on the final details for the upcoming R600 retail specifications, just in time for everyone to go on vacation for Chinese New Year.

AMD's guidance claims R600 will feature 700 million transistors. By comparison, the Radeon X1900 series R580 GPU incorporated 384 million transistors into its design; the half-generation before that, R520, only featured 320 million.

As disclosed by DailyTech earlier this year, the GPU features a full 512-bit memory interface with support for GDDR3 and GDDR4. R580 was also similar in this regard as it supported GDDR3 and GDDR4.

On March 30, 2007, AMD will initially debut the R600 as the ATI Radeon X2900 XTX in two separate configurations: one for OEMs and another for retail. The OEM version is the full length 12" card that will appear in high-end systems.

ATI guidance claims the X2900 XTX retail card comes as a two-slot, 9.5" design with a vapor chamber cooler. Vapor chambers are already found on high-end CPU coolers, so it would be no surprise to see such cooling on a high-end GPU either. The OEM version of the card is a 12" layout and features a quiet fan cooler.

1GB of GDDR4 memory is the reference configuration for Radeon X2900 XTX. Memory on the reference X2900 XTX cards was supplied by Samsung.view site

Teraflops chip points to future

A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflops) has been unveiled by Intel.

The Teraflops chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors, said the firm.

The chip achieves performance on a piece of silicon no bigger than a fingernail that 11 years ago required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it.

The challenge is to find a way to program the many cores simultaneously.more

Hi-def DVD security is bypassed

The encryption on high-definition DVDs has been bypassed, the consortium backing the copy protection system on discs has confirmed.

At the end of last year a hacker claimed he had defeated the protection on a number of HD-DVD titles, leading to fears the entire system was broken.

But the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Authority has said the breach is limited.

"It does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself," the group said.

The AACS group has admitted that a hacker had managed to decrypt some discs and other people were now able to make copies of certain titles. more

Intel Readies New "Tolapai" System-on-Chip

Intel will release its new "Tolapai" system-on-chip by the end of 2007 for embedded markets

Intel expects to penetrate the industrial and embedded computing markets with its Tolapai integrated system-on-chip. Tolapai will be a system-on-chip design that integrates the CPU, north bridge and south bridge functionality into a processor. According to documentation leaked earlier this Intel expects to ready Tolapai by the end of 2007 to take on VIA’s C7 CoreFusion and AMD’s Geode platforms.

Tolapai will feature a cut-down Pentium M-derived processor core with 256KB of L2-cache. Intel will offer Tolapai in three clock-speeds – 600 MHz, 1066 MHz and 1200 MHz. Power consumption will vary from 13-22-watts depending on clock speed. Tolapai supports a maximum of 2GB of DDR2-400/533/667/800 memory in dual-channel configurations.

Intel will manufacturer Tolapai on a 65-nanometer fabrication process. It will feature 1,088-ball FCBGA packaging that measures in at 1.092-mm.more

TV from Apple

Apple TV(ITV) is a set-top box being developed by Apple with a planned release date of February 2007. The Apple TV was announced by Steve Jobs during the keynote speech at the 2007 Macworld Expo in San Francisco on January 9, 2007.It enables digital content to be streamed from any computer running Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows capable of running streamed media via iTunes onto an enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen TV television.more

AppleTV supports 802.11b/g and even 802.11n for wireless streaming, and the device also supports Ethernet. Users can move videos to the AppleTV's 40GB hard drive using iTunes, allowing users to improve streaming support by pre-loading content onto the device. The device can also stream content from other sites like Apple.com. Jobs' presentation made the streaming support look slick. You can auto-stream unwatched movies or recent purchases, and it's all saved on the AppleTV hard drive for later playback.

Specifications:

* Intel Pentium-M "Crofton" Processor (based on Pentium-M "Dothan")
o 1.0 GHz
o 2 MB of L2 cache
o 350 MHz underclocked system bus
* NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 (64 MB VRAM)
* 256 MB of 400 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
* 40 GB hard disk
* USB 2.0
* 10BASE-T/100BASE-T Ethernet
* 802.11 b, g, n wireless networking (AirPort)
* IrDA Receiver, works with Apple Remote
* 720p HDMI audio & video output
* Component Video
* S/PDIF digital optical audio
* RCA analog stereo audio
* Built-in universal 48W power supply
* 7.7x7.7x1.1 in (197x197x28 mm)
* 2.4 lb (1.09 kg)
* Supported video codecs:
o H.264, Protected H.264
+ Baseline profile LC (640x480x30p)
+ Baseline profile (320x240x30p)
+ Main profile (1280x720x24p)
o MPEG-4 simple profile (640x480x30p)
* Supported audio codecs:
o AAC, Protected AAC (16-320 kbps)
o MP3 (16-320 kbps, VBR)
o Apple Lossless
o AIFF
o WAV
* Supported image formats:
o JPEG
o BMP
o GIF
o TIFF
o PNG

Intel's "Montevina" Platform

Intel's focus for 2007 is to deploy its Santa Rosa platform, the Centrino successor to Napa. Intel, along with other partners, is working towards making computers smaller, lighter, and overall more efficient. But this is not to say that many of these platforms will be for home users. In fact, a large portion of Intel's initiative is to enable designs for thin-client computing -- devices geared towards the office space. Intel's roadmap indicates that all of 2007 will revolve around Santa Rosa, but hinted that a new platform will be announced sometime in the second quarter of 2008.

Codenamed Montevina, Intel's successor to Santa Rosa will not be a complete overhaul nor a new design in the way that its predecessor was. Instead, Montevina will build on Santa Rosa, using good things from that platform such as: small form factors, more efficient layout, minimum of DX9 integrated graphics support, HDCP encryption for graphics over all mainstream digital outputs such as HDMI, DVI and UDI, HD DVD and Blu-ray support and Robson solid state technology.

Montevina will utilize new chipsets dubbed Cantiga GM and PM. Both replace Crestline, which was based on Intel's 965 chipset family. Montevina will also introduce ICH9M or ICH9 Enhanced, which replaces ICH8M in Santa Rosa.

Intel will be introducing several new features to Montevina. VT Technology and Intel Trusted Execution Technology have both made its way into the new platform. Intel will also finally show off Robson 2.0, which will allow for high-speed solid state flash memory to be used for booting-up an operating system. Robson 2.0 also supports Microsoft's instant-on and off technologies in Vista. Keep in mind that the Robson technology family is for mobile platforms -- Intel has Snowgrass, which is the same technology for desktop platforms.more

Vista is 'more secure' says Gates

Windows Vista is "dramatically more secure than any other operating system released", Microsoft founder Bill Gates has told BBC News.

Mr Gates said the security features in the new operating system were reason enough to upgrade from Windows XP.

Microsoft launched Vista in London, with more than 100m computers predicted to be using it within 12 months.

Mr Gates also defended the pricing of Vista, which is twice as expensive in Europe compared to the US.

The technology leader called the launch a "big day" that would bring a new digital workstyle and lifestyle.

The new operating system (OS) boasts an improved interface and security tools.

Mr Gates said security in Vista would mean it would be "much, much harder" for malicious hackers to attack computers running the operating system. more

Digital music sees sales double

Digital stores can offer a huge number of songs.

Global digital music sales have almost doubled to around $2bn (£1bn) in 2006, according to an industry report.

But the rise, which represents 10% of all sales, has not reached the music companies' "holy grail" of offsetting the fall in CD sales.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said digital sales could account for a quarter of all sales worldwide by 2010.

It also called for more action against illegal file sharing.

The IFPI's 2007 Digital Music Report said consumers last year downloaded 795 million tracks, up 89% on 2005, from almost 500 legitimate online music services available in 40 countries.

Court action

The number of tracks available for download doubled to reach over four million on leading services.

Despite this overall music sales were down 4% in the first half of 2006.

IFPI chairman John Kennedy said: "The pace of transformation in our industry is breathtaking, but at the moment the holy grail is evading us.

"I would like to be announcing that a fall in CD sales is being compensated for by an equal or greater increase in online and mobile revenues. But that is not yet happening on a global basis."

The IFPI said the 30,000 actions against illegal file-sharers globally had achieved some success against illegal file sharing but called for more action from internet service providers to stop such sites being set up.

Skype Net TV

The Joost interface allows instant channel hopping.

The founders of the Skype internet telephony service are launching what they describe as the world's first broadcast quality internet TV service.

Following speculation about a service dubbed The Venice Project, the online television software is now being unveiled under the name Joost.

It is designed to enable broadcasters to get their programmes in front of a global internet audience.

It will allow viewers to access all kinds of television over the internet.

Trial period

The chief executive, Frederik de Wahl, showing off the service in Joost's London offices, claimed that it provided a different experience from other internet television ventures.

"We are trying to replicate the complete television experience," he explained as he flicked through channels using the Joost interface on a widescreen television.

"It's full-screen, broadcast quality, you've got instant channel flipping, and interactivity - a viewer can come to us and get all their TV needs."

The service is still undergoing trials, but thousands of people have taken up an invitation to download the software and try it out.

But the big question is what is there to watch?

So far, it is hard to see a compelling reason to switch on to Joost, which will be a free service supported by advertising.

Competitive market

There is a line-up of sports, documentaries and music programming, but nothing that is going to tempt many away from their existing television diet.

But Mr De Wahl insists this is just trial programming and when the full launch takes place in the next few months there will be much more impressive content on offer.

Joost is backed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who founded Skype, while Frederik de Wahl previously ran a business whose peer-to-peer software was used in Skype.

He says a version of that software is key to the appeal of Joost, with new peer-to-peer technology, backed up by the firm's own servers, making it possible to stream video on demand.

But rival services are already casting doubt on the claim that Joost represents a new frontier for internet television.

BT Vision, launched in December, offers video-on-demand via broadband, and Channel Four Television says its 4OD service promises DVD-quality programmes to download to your computer.

Meanwhile another company calling itself Babelgum contacted the BBC to insist that its service, launching in March, would also use peer-to-peer technology to stream video at "near-TV resolution".

A spokesman said "the Venice Project hasn't got this to itself."

The battle to broadcast over the internet is hotting up and the Venice Project - or Joost as we now must call it - will have to make plenty of noise to make itself heard.

AMD Opteron™ Processor Powers

Highlights of the Press Release:

• New servers from AMD and Sun drive Linux and Solaris applications
• The AMD Opteron™ processor will power the Sun Fire™ V20z server, the first in a family of AMD Opteron processor-based products from Sun Microsystems.
• The Sun Fire V20z is the first server to come out of a strategic alliance announced by AMD and Sun less than three months ago, and will give customers industry-leading performance in the Solaris Operating System or Linux environment.

The AMD Opteron processor and AMD64 technology:

• designed to deliver high-performance solutions for today’s most demanding enterprise applications
• provides leading-edge performance for both 32-bit and 64-bit computing
• supported by Windows, Solaris and Linux.
• gives customers a simplified platform for their application needs.
• continues to gain wide-ranging acceptance, with increased endorsements from
  • Fortune 1000 companies
  • the clustering and High Performance Computing arena
  • database computing and workstation customers

On AMD's partnership with Sun:

• “The AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire server gives enterprise customers the power of choice. AMD has delivered high performance 32-bit and high performance 64-bit computing in X86 architectures. In addition to the high-performance 32-bit computing and powerful 64-bit computing for AMD64 technology, the Sun Fire server gives enterprise customers their choice of running the Solaris Operating System or Linux on the Sun Java Enterprise System. With the introduction of Sun-based solutions, the number applications available to the enterprise increased dramatically.” -- Dirk Meyer, senior vice president, Computation Products Group, AMD
• “The Sun Fire V20z server is the first in a complete family of AMD Opteron processor-based systems from Sun which will feature Solaris, Linux and the Java Enterprise System. We plan to introduce a broad set of enterprise servers based on the AMD Opteron processor. Sun's collaboration with AMD represents a response to the increasing customer demand for x86 solutions that are 32-bit and 64-bit capable and deliver maximum performance.” -- Neil Knox, executive vice president, Volume Systems Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  

  
  The original press release can be found here.
  

  
  

Connecting the digital home

Connecting the digital home


It has long been promised that the PC will become the entertainment hub of the home. However, the problem with this vision is that our computers tend to sit in the bedroom and means getting those movies, music and pictures the last few metres to the living room is a real pain.
Many devices deliver content from your PC to your TV.

This year's CES - the world's largest consumer gadget show - boasts a wealth of new kit which aims to make it easier to access digital media around the home - and in particular on TV screens.

Ideas on what should be at the centre of it all vary, from PC-based media centres, digital video recorders or even video game consoles.

Microsoft is promoting its Xbox 360 as the place to store and access movies and songs.

"Xbox 360 is at its heart, the world's best games console and we're continuing to sell it very well. But we also know that people have it connected to their TV, and that means they want to see movies," said Robert Bach of Microsoft.

"So we've added a Download Movie service, we've added an HD DVD movie player to it. You want to play music, so you can take your MP3 player or Zune player, and plug it in and see your music.

"Here we're announcing that you can take IPTV digital TV services and run them on top of an Xbox 360."

It should be pointed out that the downloads are only available to those that have a hard drive for their Xbox 360.

Sony's PS3 console does something similar.

Apple TV streams music and movies from a computer to a TV.

Microsoft's ambitions also include its Media Centre software which has not made the impact some had hoped for. It will now get a boost by being integrated into all but the most basic versions of Microsoft's new PC operating system - Vista.

The consumer versions of Vista is scheduled for launch on 30 January.

Apple is getting in on the act too. At the MacWorld show Apple boss Steve Jobs gave more details of Apple TV - the set-top box which uses iTunes to stream media to a television.

Various launches at CES suggest that moving files around the house should be easy. We have more choices now than ever before - hardwire Ethernet cables, Bluetooth or wi-fi.

Netgear's new Digital Entertainer set-top box is one of several here that let you stream HD pictures from your PC over wi-fi to the TV.

But obstructions and interference may hamper a steady picture.

Compatibility

Presuming we can move our digital media files around without too much problem, you then have to consider the alphabet soup which is compression formatting - or codecs - which allow all your devices to understand each other, otherwise you will not see a thing.

"Many of the files that people would like to buy and download, including movies and TV shows, are actually protected with what's called DRM, that is Digital Rights Management software," said Josh Bernoff an analyst from Forrester Research.

"A lot of this software is incompatible with some of these devices.

"So for example, if you buy a movie or TV show from iTunes it'll work fine on your iPod but it's unlikely to work on, say, your Xbox 360 that happens to be connected to the same setup."

Slowly this is changing. For instance, last month if you had bought a rights-protected Windows music file it would not have played on Sonos' high-end multi-room streaming system.

After a year of negotiations Sonos' hardware can now support those files. Now the boss of Sonos wants Apple to also open up, claiming it is customers who lose out.

"I think it's unbelievably frustrating because you purchase the music expecting to be able to play it where you would like to play it and then you find out later that this is not quite the case," said John MacFarlane of Sonos.

"That's not, generally, well explained at the point of purchase."

The steady march of technology is also helping break down these barriers. For instance, a new PC to TV chip by start-up Quartics might help audio and video streaming compatibility.

It allows any files your laptop can read to be streamed over wi-fi to your TV or digital projector.

It is hoped the chip - which can be updated with any new video formats as they emerge - will be integrated into some TVs by the end of the year.

Many companies are supporting a set of standardised formats through industry groups like the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).

And the new faster 802.11n standard for wi-fi should soon be ratified, which will help boost consumers' confidence in streaming video.

But for now it might be best to take all the hype with a pinch of salt.

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