Windows 8: 128-bit Operating System?

We haven’t yet seen the official release for Windows 7, however there is already talk about a new Microsoft Windows 8 Operating System, one rumor is that Windows 8 will support the 128-bit architecture.
It was originally thought that Windows 8 would be 64-bit only, however according to a developer it seems a natural progression to support a degree of 128-bit thus making Windows 9 a natural progression to fully support the 128-bit architecture.
Obviously at the moment all of this information is based on statements made by a developer, however if we hear any more details confirming/refuting these statements we will keep you posted.
Personally I still don’t think Microsoft have fully unlocked the potential of 64-bit software, until they do I do not think they should move on to a 128-bit architecture, for more info check out SlashGear.

Nvidia puts NForce chipset development on hold

As Semiaccurate.com's Charlie Demerjian himself informs us, it was actually he who first wrote about Nvidia halting chipset development, albeit in more dire terms, back in August for his old haunt the Inquirer. Link here. Fair enough. We'll still credit Ryan Shrout at PC Perspective for obtaining what we understand to be the first on the record acknowledgment from Nvidia.

Credit PC Perspective for digging out the news that Nvidia has put its NForce chipset development on hiatus. Nvidia will continue to supply the market with current-generation NForce chipsets as necessary, but due to Nvidia's licensing battle with Intel, Nvidia has halted development of new NForce chipsets for both Intel and AMD CPUs.

The dispute over the terms of Nvidia's license to make chipsets for Intel processors began last year prior to the launch of Intel's first batch of Core i7 processors. Each company has filed suit against the other, although the most recent reports on the conflict had Nvidia moving forward with a Core i7-compatible chipset

AMD Appoints Thomas Seifert CFO - Update

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD: NEWS) on Thursday announced the appointment of Thomas Seifert as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Seifert succeeds Robert Rivet, who was previously promoted to chief operations and administrative officer. Seifert will report to Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and chief executive officer, and would be responsible for leading the company's financial operations.

In a statement, Meyer said, "Thomas is a talented industry veteran with a wealth of knowledge and experience managing the operations and finances of companies in the most difficult and competitive sectors of the semiconductor industry. This knowledge and experience will enable him to further strengthen AMD's financial foundation and help accelerate our transformation into a product design and marketing leader."

IBM Preparing Self-Service Software Infrastructure

IBM has been investing in cloud computing for several years, although Willy Chiu, VP of IBM Cloud Labs, acknowledges it may be difficult for those outside IBM to develop a picture of what its cloud initiative will finally look like.
That's because so far IBM has chosen to make point announcements of limited cloud products. Its CloudBurst appliance was announced in June, a blade server that can be loaded with IBM software and used as cloud building block.
At Structure 09, the June 25 cloud computing conference sponsored by GigaOm in San Francisco, Chiu said: "Cloud computing is a new way of consuming IT." That's a radical view, a step ahead of the evolutionary view that the cloud will start out as an IT supplement. That is, it will absorb specific workloads, such as business intelligence or a new consumer facing application. In the long run, Chiu said, it will host many IT activities and services.

In a recent interview, Chiu elaborated. IBM systems management software, Tivoli, has been given a set of services to administer the cloud. They include: Services Automation Manager, Provisioning Manager and Monitoriong Manager. So far these services are designed to provision and manage workloads running in VMware virtual machines, but there is no restriction that limits Tivoli to VMware file formats

AMD’s channel programme now called Fusion too

It's now clear how serious AMD was when it changed its slogan from "Smarter choice" to "The future is fusion". With Fusion already the company mantra, as well as the name given to AMD's plan to combine the CPU and GPU on one chip and several types of software, AMD has decided it pretty much sums up its channel programme too.

The new partner programme was presented by worldwide channel marketing VP David Kenyon in a teleconference chaired by AMD's effusive EMEA corporate PR manager Chris Brown. Kenyon started by explaining the background for the new programme: "We did a very detailed analysis of the performance of our current component channel," he said.
The long and short of it is that AMD realised the vast majority of its channel sales go through the little guy, and yet it was devoting relatively little of its time and resources to smaller channel partners. "We weren't spending enough time with our smaller channel partners," confessed Kenyon.

UPDATE 1-Abu Dhabi state fund offers $1.8 bln for Chartered

*ATIC offers S$2.68 a share to buy Chartered Semiconductor
* Chartered's major shareholder Temasek supports the deal
* Second major investment by Abu Dhabi firm in chip sector
* Chartered shares suspended, have more than doubled in 2009
(adds detail on bid, ATIC)
SINGAPORE, Sep 7 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi's state fund ATIC has offered S$2.68 a share in cash to buy Singapore chip-maker Chartered Semiconductor (CSMF.SI: Quote, Profile, Research) (CHRT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), valuing the firm at $1.8 billion.

This would be the second major investment by Advanced Technology Investment Co (ATIC )in the global microchip industry after it agreed in March to pay $2.1 billion for 55.6 percent of a joint venture with Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (AMD), creating Globalfoundries.

Chartered ranks alongside China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) (0981.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), and trails larger rivals TSMC (2330.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) and UMC (2303.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), which own about a two-thirds share of the $20 billion chip foundry market

Toshiba eyes outsourcing chips to Chartered -Nikkei

TOKYO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp (6502.T) is in talks with Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor (CSMF.SI) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.N) spinoff Globalfoundries about outsourcing production of its cutting-edge 28-nanometre system chips, the Nikkei business daily said on Monday.

Toshiba is shifting its focus to stable revenues in its power and infrastructure business.
It will begin contracting out production of the chips, used in flat TVs, game consoles and other gadgets, in the business year starting April, the paper said without citing sources.

Toshiba officials said they were checking on the report.
Company president Norio Sasaki said last month that Toshiba would consider outsourcing production of the chips, developed in conjunction with an IBM-led (IBM.N) consortium. (Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

IBM Real Time Computer Complex

The Real-Time Computer Complex (RTCC) was an IBM computing and data processing system at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. It collected, processed and sent to Mission Control the information needed to direct every phase of an Apollo/Saturn mission. It computed what the space vehicle was doing and compared that with what it should be doing. RTCC worked in real-time -- so fast, there was virtually no time between receiving and solving a computing problem.

IBM 7094-11 computers were used in the RTCC during NASA's Gemini program and on the first three Apollo/Saturn missions. Later, IBM System/360 Model 75J mainframes, plus peripheral storage and processing equipment, were employed. Two computers were used during a mission: one was primary; the other operated identically but as standby. (Photo courtesy IBM)

IBM Signs 10-year IT Outsourcing Agreement

IBM has signed a 10-year IT outsourcing agreement with Innovation Auto Risk, a provider of claims management services and other related solutions to insurers & fleet management companies. This agreement aims at reducing Innovation Auto Risk's capital expenditure on IT by 25 percent.

As part of the agreement, IBM will deploy server, storage, networking and security IT infrastructure to be hosted at a data center in Delhi. IBM will provide 24x7 onsite infrastructure monitoring services from an onsite command centre. In addition, IBM will provide managed services and ongoing project management for infrastructure procurement, commissioning and configuration, as well as hardware refreshes after five years.

Mosaid sues IBM for patent infringement

Patent licensing firm Mosaid Technologies Inc said on Monday it was taking IBM to court for allegedly infringing on six of Mosaid's U.S. patents.
Mosaid said the long-running dispute was over IBM's making and selling of microprocessor and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) products.
The Ottawa-based company said it was granted the patents on its fundamental dynamic random access memory (DRAM) circuit inventions.
"We are taking this action to protect our intellectual property because we have been unable to reach a reasonable settlement with IBM, despite many years of negotiation," John Lindgren, Mosaid's president and chief executive, said in a statement.

"We believe that IBM requires a license to our patents for its microprocessor and ASIC products that contain embedded DRAM. Mosaid has licensed virtually 100 percent of the global commodity DRAM industry, including signing patent license agreements covering embedded DRAM products. The value of our patents is internationally recognized."
Mosaid filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

Build Your Own AMD Phenom II Machine - A HardwareZone DIY Special

While Intel is proudly boasting about the sheer performance that their new Core i7 processors delivers, AMD has gone down a different route, choosing instead to expound about the value of their offerings. For example, their current Dragon platform, consisting of a Phenom II processor, AMD 790GX motherboard and an ATI Radeon HD 4870, is touted as a competitive yet value for money alternative to Intel's pricey Core i7 offerings. Of course they both serve different needs of end-users.Additionally, AMD also carved out a niche for themselves amongst HTPC builders. Ask any HTPC enthusiast what is their motherboard chipset of choice and chances are he would be using an AMD 780G.

The main reason behind this is the board's integrated Radeon HD 3200 GPU. This integrated graphics processor (IGP) is actually based on the older Radeon HD 2400 GPU, which barely even qualifies as an entry-level GPU by today's standards. But as an IGP, however, it is one of the best, thanks to its ability to crunch high definition (HD) videos. It's kind of like being the smallest fish in the ocean, but the biggest fish in the pond.

Facebook knuckle-raps Intel, AMD

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices' latest server processors have come in for criticism from Facebook, the social networking company, for failing to deliver on promised performance.According to Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations, the latest generations of server processors from companies like Intel and AMD have failed to deliver anticipated performance gains. "The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications," he said at the GigaOm's Structure conference in San Francisco recently.

A massive consumer of servers, Facebook is constantly looking to upgrade its infrastructure as well as minimize power consumption to cut costs.The hardware industry, too, has failed to deliver servers that are highly power-efficient for companies such as Facebook and Amazon, Heiliger said. "To build servers for companies like Facebook, and Amazon, and other people who are operating fairly homogeneous applications, the servers have to be cheap, and they have to be super power-efficient."According to Heilinger, Google, which has designed and built its own servers, has done a good job.In order to meet the needs of companies deploying large computing clusters, Heiliger said they should come together to develop common standards that vendors can design for.

AMD ATI Stream Technology Accelerates Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Workflows

What:

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announces the availability of a beta plug-in for the Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS4 software that continues to enhance the performance of a range of complex video editing tasks.1 The plug-in is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Adobe and AMD engineers to take advantage of ATI Stream technology to allocate processing between available system CPU and GPU resources to enable maximum application performance.

Why: The Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 plug-in draws on the computational power of both the CPU and GPU to add hardware-driven performance improvements to the already rapid processing power of Adobe Premiere Pro. ATI Stream technology allows the powerful GPU to be used for more than just graphics processing, resulting in enhanced general computing power.

Who: Consumers and professionals using AMD platform technology, such as the desktop PC platform technology codenamed "Dragon,” ATI Radeon™ or ATI FirePro™ graphics cards looking to improve the performance of compute-intensive applications like video encoding. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 provides a comprehensive solution for creative professionals who need to craft world-class video, audio and interactive media. ATI Stream Technology taps additional computing resources available to Adobe Premiere Pro users by taking advantage of both CPU and GPU processing power.

Benefits: The ATI Catalyst™ Driver enables millions of ATI Radeon™ and ATI FirePro™ users to unlock ATI Stream compute acceleration capabilities on their graphics cards. Upon downloading http://links.amd.com/adobepremiere and installing the latest plug-in, Adobe users with the plug-in and the latest Catalyst driver may experience an encoding performance improvement of up to 8X.1

AMD Quietly Launches X4 905e Processor

AMD has quietly slid a new processor into the mix, this time around it's the Phenom II X4 905e CPU.

The 905e is a 2.5GHz processor with 6MB of L2 cache and 65W TDP. Several places already have the chip available online for about $190.
This isn't the only new chip that AMD has planned either. Several more low-power Phenom II X4 processors are coming including the the Phenom II X4 900e. Surprisingly AMD didn't announce these when Intel was beating them to death at Computex this year

AMD Demos Microsoft DirectX 11 Graphics Chip

As well as looking like being the operating system that Vista should always have been in terms of ease of use and desktop performance, Windows 7 will also bring with it a new version of, Microsoft's gaming API, DirectX and today we got our first brief glimpse of just what we can expect from this upgrade.
During its Computex press conference AMD showed a brief demo of a figure being rendered in realtime on DirectX11 (DX11) hardware. It was very short but revealing (no, not like that).

Essentially, the big things to look out for when DX11arrives are tesselation (the main aspect that was being demonstrated by the above demo), compute shaders, multithreading, and HDR compression.

IBM Expands Information on Demand Portfolio

IBM on Wednesday announced a slew of products and services in support of its sprawling Information on Demand portfolio, including a new "Information Applications" software unit.
The division will focus on developing industry-specific analytic applications in areas like human capital management and financial performance, according to IBM, which kicked off its Information on Demand conference in Berlin this week.
One new application announced Wednesday is InfoSphere Clinical Analytics for Healthcare Providers, which pulls together and analyzes information from various sources, such as lab and billing systems. The software could be used to spot trends, such as which drugs are working best for patients with similar conditions, according to IBM.
Big Blue is also planning to embed statistical analysis technology from SPSS into future editions of its Cognos BI (business intelligence) and performance management tools. The added capability will provide new analytics for government agencies, financial services and life sciences customers, IBM said.
In addition, IBM announced a new services division dedicated to analyzing unstructured text, such as that found in e-mail and call center documents.
IBM is also rolling out a number of new services meant to help customers reduce their use of paper. They include a free workshop by IBM content management specialists, which will result in an estimate of the business' paper costs, as well as more in-depth assessment and analysis service for a fee.
The new offerings join a considerable array of others falling under the Information on Demand initiative, which IBM launched several years ago and has since powered through a continuous stream of acquisitions, including Cognos and data archiving vendor Princeton Softech.
Rather than competing head-on with packaged business application giants like SAP and Oracle, through the IOD strategy IBM is focusing on data management, delivery and analysis products and services that make applications work more effectively.

AMD's 6-core chip designed to keep pace with Intel

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will throw out lots of numbers when it unveils its latest server chip, code-named Istanbul, today.
But the most important number of all is four months. That's how far ahead of schedule this product launch is.
AMD, with the help of several hundred engineers in Austin, created the chip at a rapid pace and did the design based on the direct request of its biggest customers.
That's crucially important to the company's continuing effort to rebuild the trust of customers including Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., after the problem- and delay-plagued introduction of an earlier chip called Barcelona.
Barcelona was introduced months late in 2007, and it took several more months to fix a few nagging bugs. The delays left a sour taste in the mouth of major computer makers, just as AMD rival Intel Corp. was hitting its stride with some top-performing server chips.
The resulting damage is illustrated in AMD's declining market share in the highly profitable server chip segment, despite the fact that AMD followed up with a well-regarded chip, called Shanghai, which was launched last November, ahead of schedule.
Sales of server chips make up only about one-sixth of the more than $30 billion in Windows-compatible processor sales, but it is the most profitable part of the market. Prices on high-end server chips can reach well over $1,000 each.
AMD had a market share of just under 12 percent of the unit volume of the server chip business at the end of 2008, according to the IDC market research firm.
Istanbul is an extension of Shanghai. It's the first mass-production server chip to have six internal processing cores, compared with Shanghai's four, and AMD estimates that Istanbul will deliver about 30 percent more performance.
For server chips, more cores can mean the ability to do more jobs at once. Because servers are frequently barraged with rapid-fire requests for information from different users, more cores help handle the workload more quickly.
"This chip does a lot of good for AMD," said analyst Nathan Brookwood with Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif. "It keeps them competitive with Intel," which launched its own high-end server chip in late March.

AMD Triples the Performance of ATI Embedded Graphics Chips

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced the ATI Radeon™ E4690 graphics processor unit (GPU) designed to enable a whole level of new reality for embedded graphics applications with more than triple1 the 3D graphics performance of prior AMD embedded products. Arcade system manufacturers will appreciate the long term support and lower cost of placing the GPU chip directly on the motherboard instead of a separate add-in graphics card. This product will enable digital signage manufacturers to decode and play multiple high-definition videos in hardware, offloading all the decoding from the CPU2. Casino system manufacturers will be amazed by triple the graphics performance to help attract players while increasing overall entertainment value with incredibly realistic 3D graphics, plus two-monitor support3.

The ATI Radeon E4690 GPU is packed with the latest graphics features, including support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0. The second-generation AMD Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0) includes hardware acceleration of H.264 and VC-1 high-definition (HD) video as well as MPEG-2, enabling multiple HD video streams and freeing the CPU for other tasks. The ATI Radeon E4690 is designed to simplify board design and speed time-to-market by incorporating 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 graphics memory on chip. The ATI Radeon E4690 comes with AMD’s commitment of 5 years of planned supply availability4. Technical support is provided a dedicated team of application engineering experts. "The ATI Radeon E4690 sets a new bar for embedded graphics performance,” said Richard Jaenicke, director of embedded graphics at AMD. "Blazingly fast graphics and HD video capabilities enhance the appeal of applications - such as arcade, casino, digital signage and more. With the industry’s only embedded graphics chip that offers DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 support, the ATI Radeon E4690 enables competitive advantages for AMD’s embedded customers.”
"The ATI Radeon E4690 is the perfect solution for the digital signage market,” said Dwight Looi, product manager at iBASE Technology, Inc. "The ATI Radeon E4690 combines phenomenal graphics performance, full hardware HD video decode acceleration and 512MB of very fast GDDR3 memory into a compact 35 mm package, which enables us to offer a high-end digital signage solution in a previously impossible, booked-sized system.”
"With the on-chip memory and responsive technical support from AMD, we were able to bring our Condor 200 product, featuring ATI Radeon E4690, to market in just six weeks from the time we received the design documents,” said Selwyn Henriques, president of Tech Source, Inc. "Based on the product specifications, TechSource expects the resulting product to significantly outperform existing products in the industry.”

Dell offers lesson in Intel-AMD rivalry

The chip choices that Dell has made for its business PC line provide some insight into the challenges facing Advanced Micro Devices in the wake of the European Union ruling Wednesday against Intel.

Dell has no AMD-based laptops in its corporate line
(Credit: Dell)"At this point in time we have one AMD desktop but no AMD notebooks," Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell's business client product group, said in a phone interview Wednesday on a topic unrelated to the EU case. "If you talk to us a year from now, it's probably going to be different. What we try to do is optimize our portfolio based off where we see demand and where we can get the best ROI (Return On Investment) for our engineering dollars."
So, is Dell involved in some venal backroom dealings with Intel in order to box out AMD? We don't know the answer to that question, but most likely not. Dell is simply trying to provide what it considers to be the best systems for its customers.
AMD's 2001 complaint to the EU and subsequent 2005 antitrust lawsuit against Intel have propelled many of the allegations against Intel. And AMD's argument has been made abundantly clear via the EU decision: that is, Intel is leveraging its dominant market position in an illegal manner to exclude competitors from the PC processor market.
But what about AMD competitiveness? And, as a corollary, why do vendors like Dell choose Intel over AMD?
"In part it's because Intel's manufacturing is so superb," said Dan Hutcheson, CEO and Chairman of VLSI Research, a marketing research firm. "And the fact that Intel has such huge economies of scale. That's been one of their big advantages."

Gigabyte and AMD OC Results

We visited with Gigabyte last month at their North American Overclocking Championship 2009 event where the winner will proceed to the world championship event during Computex 2009. This event featured hardware from Intel, NVIDIA, Kingston, and Enermax along with some spectacular results.
Gigabyte has been busy on another front as they have been working closely with AMD and OCZ in providing motherboards, processors, memory, and power supplies to some of the top overclockers on the AMD side of the fence. While not a formal event like the Intel sponsored event, the results with AMD hardware have been just as exciting if not more so at times. Gigabyte teamed up with Brian McLachlan (Chew*) to see how far the AMD Phenom II 955 BE processor along with Gigabyte's GA-MA790FXT-UD5P and GA-MA790FX-UD5P Ultra Durable 3 equipped motherboards could be overclocked with a variety of cooling means ranging from air to LN2.

AMD has not ruled out moving its battle against Intel's antitrust behavior onto Australian soil

The European Commission Wednesday fined Intel more than €1 billion ($1.45 billion) for violating antitrust legislation after receiving complaints from rival AMD.

The EU found that Intel had been illegally keeping AMD out of the market by giving rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all their CPUs from Intel and making payments to manufacturers to delay the launch of specific products containing competitors' CPUs.
AMD said it had never filed an antitrust complaint against Intel in Australia, but would not confirm or deny whether the company would consider filing a complaint in the country given the European win.
In place of a direct answer, ZDNet.com.au received a statement from Ben Williams, AMD corporate VP Asia Pacific. "Today, I would like to focus our attention on this important ruling by the EU. I wish to highlight the EU ruling is about consumers, who were hurt by Intel's illegal conduct, but now will benefit from greater choice, innovation and value. Fair and open competition spurs competitors to innovate faster and to price more competitively. That means that consumers will be the direct beneficiaries of the EC ruling," he said.

The Intel case has not been the only antitrust case in Europe, with Microsoft stepping often into the firing line. Qualcomm also gained the Commission's attention.
Across the Atlantic, the US has also seen antitrust legislation exercized liberally to keep technology giants fair. Microsoft, Intel and Oracle have all come under scrutiny.
Australia, however, has not seen antitrust action against any of these players, despite the fact that it has strong trading relationships with both jurisdictions and has formed an agreement to share antitrust information with the US.

Microsoft and Intel News Update: Taking it on the chin in Europe

Europe is not a nice place for either Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) at the moment, both companies are having a hard time there and seem to be taking whatever is thrown at them on the chin. Wednesday is going to be yet another tough time for these companies, as the EU is expected to hit them with a heavy fine.

The fine for Intel is because of its myriad anticompetitive activities at the expense of AMD. According to the Wall Street Journal, this will be one of the largest fines in the history of the EU. If the anticompetetition commissioner wishes, he could fine Intel as much as 10 percent of its annual revenue, meaning they could receive a fine of $3.8 billion fine based on its 2008 revenue.

PC World says that the hearing into Microsoft will take place on June 3-5; this involves the antitrust violation where Microsoft bundles Internet Explorer in to Windows. The European Commission could fine Microsoft, or offer a kill switch or even force them to offer other browsers in Windows.

AMD Gains Processor Market Share on Intel

After five quarters of declining market share, Advanced Micro Devices gained ground in chip shipments over chief rival Intel during the first quarter of 2009, IDC said on Tuesday.

AMD saw its market share in processor shipments reach 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, gaining 4.6 percent of the market compared with the fourth quarter of 2008. Intel lost 4.7 percent of the total market to reach a 77.3 percent share, IDC said in a survey.

AMD saw its market share increase because of a pricing advantage over Intel and a strong increase in desktop shipments, said Shane Rau, research director at IDC. Sequentially, AMD chip shipments increased 13 percent while Intel's shipments declined 16 percent.

Intel's sequential decline was partly due to suppliers holding back on purchases as they tried to clear up excess inventory of mobile processors, especially Atom processors for netbooks. Shipments of Atom processors recorded a sequential decline of 33 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
AMD has been restructuring its operations in an effort to reach profitability after more than two fiscal years of losses. The company last week merged its graphics and chip operations. Before that, it spun off its manufacturing assets to GlobalFoundries in order to cut manufacturing costs and focus on chip design.

AMD saw its mobile-processor market share reach 15 percent, grabbing 4.7 percent more of the market, while Intel's share fell to 84.3 percent from 89.1 percent. AMD also gained 3.8 percent of the market for desktop chips to reach 29.8 percent. Intel gave up 3.9 percent of the desktop chip market.

However, AMD lost 1.2 percent of the server and workstation chip markets, while Intel picked up the same amount to reach 89.3 percent.

AMD's gains couldn't stop the overall decline in worldwide processor shipments. Shipments reached around 65 million during the first quarter, a 13 percent year-over-year decline and a 10.9 percent sequential drop.
Even though excess inventory of desktop and mobile chips has been cleared out, unit shipments may continue to decline as customers hold back on PC purchases during the recession, Rau said

AMD's share jumps to 20.9% in declining CPU market

The world’s x86 chip market saw a 9.1 percent year-over-year decline in the first quarter of 2009, according to a recent report from Mercury Research.

Laptop processor shipments in particular took a big hit as consumers and businesses cut back on their purchases. Yet, going against this trend, AMD managed to regain some significant share as it celebrated its 40th birthday, with their slice of the market growing almost four points in the first quarter of the year.

The struggling chip vendor moved from a 17 percent share of shipments in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 20.9 percent the past quarter; which is also up slightly from its 1Q 2008 share of 20.6 percent. It’s not clear which processors were selling better than others, though AMD’s gain is likely tied to the debut of the Phenom II line. Intel for its part continues to hold a dominant 78.2 percent market share, down from 82.1 percent, while Via came a distant third with less than one percent of worldwide x86 shipments.

While this is certainly a bit of good news for AMD, Mercury Research’s Dean McCarron claims the quarter has been defined by inventory adjustments, meaning that manufacturers have cleared the excess inventory caused by the recession and that these statistics may not reflect the actual state of the market or market share.

IBM IMPACT 2009 officially kicks off at the Venetian in Las Vegas

With a packed house of over 5,400 attendees, IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s IMPACT 2009 conference officially kicked off this morning.

Comedian Billy Crystal was the emcee for the 2 hour keynote session and he quickly managed to get the entire audience's attention by doing what he does best - cracking jokes at anything and everything. Making people laugh at 8:30 in the morning is no easy task, but the audience was loving every minute of him on the stage. I doubt anyone dozed off, no matter how late they arrived the night before (or how much alcohol they consumed while gambling into the early hours of the morning).

As expected, new products and services were announced during the keynote session and you can find complete details about them in IBM's official press release. Two things I need to mention since the questions I asked the IBM executives during our one-on-one interviews are relevant:
The iLog acquisition a year ago has definitely made IBM a significant player in the Complex Event Processing (CEP) space. And keep in mind that IBM also has Cognos in its portfolio of products, allowing them to offer BI and real-time BI to their customers.

The IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance couldn't have been released at a better time. Cloud computing and its benefits are getting a lot of coverage lately, and being able to easily create a private cloud is gold for financial and healthcare institutions.

What's Next for Netbooks? Acer and Asus Reveal Plans

It's always refreshing when a lateral-thinking-inspired product revolutionizes a market. And that's partly what makes the netbook computer so interesting. Netbooks are growing up fast, and both market-leader Acer and its original maker Asus have big plans for the tiny PCs this year.
Asus, of course, gave the world its first real netbook, the Eee PC 701. It embodied all the now iconic netbook features in one package: Linux OS, small screen, Intel Atom processor, small form-factor and cheap-as-chips pricing. Now it's a year later, and the technology has moved on, so Asus has announced that it will release another genre-stretching Eee PC that has an 11.6-inch display. Asus CEO Jerry Shen even thinks that Eees with displays of that size will end up being around 30% of the netbooks his company sells this year.

It's a response to the news that Acer, which currently sells more netbooks than anyone else, will also be releasing an 11.6-incher soon. That machine, the Acer One 751, is due to have a full-size laptop keyboard, a 1366 x 768-pixel screen and cost around $500.

AMD Phenom II X4 955

When AMD released the Socket AM3 processors earlier this year, the 900-series was left out of the mix. We found the Phenom II X4 820 and Phenom II X3 710 to be pretty potent little chips, but the range topping 900-series chips, the Phenom II X4 920 and X4 940 Black Edition were stuck in the land of DDR2.
That time is over.
Today, AMD is releasing its new flagship processor, the Socket AM3 Phenom II X4 955. This new Phenom II is fully backwards compatible with AM2+ motherboards, but brings a DDR3 memory controller and a boost in clock speed over the previous top Phenom II, the X4 940 Black Edition. Also joining the Phenom II X4 955 BE is the Phenom II X4 945, a lower clocked and multiplier-locked version.

The new chip should hit shelves today priced at $245. This puts it at an awkward, but strategic position in the marketplace. Intel’s similarly priced Core 2 Q9450 was recently discontinued, so the chip has no direct competition at its price-point. Instead, it looks up Intel’s line to the Q9550, a $280 chip whose price nears that of the Core i7 920. AMD has set its sights high while keeping the price low enough that the chip doesn’t compete directly price-wise with the Nehalem.

AMD graciously sent the Phenom II X4 955 to us, along with a DDR3 motherboard and memory so we can test this update to the Dragon platform for ourselves. Unfortunately for today, MSI has not released a BIOS to support the new processor for our test bench, so we are unable to test its DDR2 performance. We did, however, secure a Q9550 for DDR2 and DDR3 comparison, giving us a look at how the processor performs compared to past models we’ve tested.

Detail and Specifications
The new AM3 Phenom II processors share many similarities with the early Phenom II models released back in January. As such, this preview primarily covers the architectural differences between the two models. Readers interested in learning more about their common architecture should read ouR PHEMEM

Let’s take a closer look at the AM3 Phenom II and see what makes it unique.
Common AM3 Processor Specifications:
L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor for X4s / 1.5MB total L2 per processor for X3s)
L3 Cache Size: 4MB or 6MB (shared)
Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller *
Memory Controller Speed: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management (all current AM3 processors)
Types of Memory Supported: Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3 (DDR3-1333MHz)**
HyperTransport 3.0 Link: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)
Total Processor Bandwidth: Up to 33.1 GB/s total bandwidth
Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 in Dresden, Germany (formerly AMD Fab 36)
Process Technology: 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
Approximate Transistor count: ~758 million (45nm)
Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2 (45nm)
Max Ambient Case Temp / X4 CPUs: 71o Celsius
Max Ambient Case Temp / X3 CPUs: 73o Celsius
Max Temp Phenom II X4 955:62o Celsius
Nominal Voltage: 0.875-1.5V
Max TDP: 125 Watts

*Note: MC configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes**Note: for DDR3-1333, AM3 boards will support 1-DIMM-per-channel @ 1333MHz
The biggest difference between the early Phenom II AM3 processors and the new Phenom II X4 900-series models is the L3 cache. Quad core 800-series chips are outfitted with only 4MB of L3 cache. The new Phenom II X4 955 and 945 feature 6MB of L3 cache.

Since the transistor count is constant between both the 4MB and 6MB models, we can deduce that part of a 6MB processor was simply disabled to create the 4MB model. We’d encourage anyone interested in learning more about AMD’s stance on disabling CPU components to read our x3 REVIEW from last year.
The biggest change side from cache is the increase in frequency. The Phenom II X4 955 is the fastest Phenom II offered to date with a clock speed of 3.2GHz. That’s only a 200mhz step up from the X4 940, so we hope to see just how much of a difference a little speed and DDR3 make for the chip.
Here are the requisite CPU-Z screenshots for the Phenom II X4

AMD Celebrates 40 Years Anniversary

On the 1st of May, 1969, seven ex-Fairchild employees, including Jerry Sanders, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford, Frank Botte, Jim Giles and Larry Stenger founded Advanced Micro Devices. Initially a manufacturer of random access memory, simplistic logic chips and clones of Intel Corp.’s microprocessors, AMD is now the company that ships innovative central processing units, core-logic sets and graphics processors.

AMD started with basic logic chips as well as RAM, but in 1982 International Business Machines demanded ensure second source for x86 processors developed by Intel and the chip designer signed an agreement that allowed AMD to produce clones of Intel’s processors. As time went by, more manufacturers entered the market of x86 microprocessors and all of them, including AMD and Intel, competed fiercely against each other.

Since AMD did not only produce clones of Intel’s chips, but improved them, at some point it became a strong competitor for Intel and the latter refused to provide its smaller rival designs of its processors, opening the door to a new era for AMD.

In March, 1996, AMD introduced its first in-house designed x86 microprocessor named K5. But although the chip named after Kryptonite (the only substance that could kill Superman from the series of motion pictures), it was not commercially successful. Its descendants, the K6 family of microprocessors, offered much higher performance and competed much more successfully against Intel.

However, the real success of AMD was the introduction of AMD Athlon central processing units in 1999, which development was led by Derrick Meyer – chief executive officer of AMD today. The Athlon, which turns 10 in August ’09, did not only outperform chips from Intel, but, most importantly, demonstrated AMD’s actual ability to compete against the world’s largest chipmaker.

With the introduction of x86 64-bit extensions as well as AMD Opteron/Athlon 64 processors for servers in 2003, Advanced Micro Devices entered the market of enterprise computers as well as – for the first time – became de facto technology leader: Intel only followed AMD with x86-64 extensions in 2005.

The multi-core era that started in 2005 also allowed AMD to demonstrate its expertise in chip design: AMD’s dual-core chips quickly became very popular and quad-core processors, although hit by massive delays, became the world’s first monolithic quad-core chips. Thanks to improved execution, AMD is showing off its twelve-core chips now and is likely to be the first company to introduce twelve-core processors in 2010, something that further shows transformations of AMD.

Further converting itself into a supplier of various computing solutions, in 2006 AMD acquired ATI Technologies with an aim to converge central processing units with graphics processing units. Eventually, however, the acquisition forced AMD to spin-off its manufacturing facilities into Globalfoundries joint-venture.

Quite a lot has happened with AMD in its first 40 years, but there is a lot of work to do in its next 40 years as the world and technology continue their transformation.

Using Your Computer Screen as a Television

I used to think people who watched TV and movies from their computer screens were insane. How could you possibly get comfortable at your desk? It wasn’t too long ago that even the largest of screens couldn’t give picture quality that was good enough to sit back and avoid squinting. If you didn’t have external speakers hooked up, forget about it.

As monitors upgraded to flat-panel LCDs, upped their screen size, stretched to wide-screen and adopted digital video inputs like DVI, watching a two-hour movie off your computer monitor has started to make more sense. Add decent built-in speakers and it’s a no-brainer.

A couple weeks ago I asked Apple to send me a review unit of their 24-inch LED Cinema Display. All I wanted was to check out their three-in-one cable system for notebooks, which includes the controversial new mini DisplayPort (more on that in a later post). But DisplayPort aside, I was finally convinced that turning your home office into a miniature home theater makes total sense.

I live in and work from a large studio apartment in Brooklyn, so space is in limited supply for me. My home office sits within a former closet across from my bed — five feet from the foot of my bed. The other night all I wanted was to lie in bed and veg out to some Law & Order: SVU (I’m a huge Ice-T fan) via Netflix.

I wouldn’t be able to fully lay out my limbs on the couch in front of my TV, so I decided to pull the LED display to the very front of my desk and see if I could stand watching this way. To my surprise it was almost as good as watching the traditional way.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this with a screen smaller than 24 inches. I’ve tried with my 19-inch HP wide-screen and it ends up feeling like I’m in the nosebleed seats. At 24 inches I could get far enough away from the screen, about 6 to 7 feet, so that I didn’t feel as if I was sitting on top of the display.

And when I was working at my desk, the 24-inch display didn’t overwhelm my desktop. I know you dual-monitor users out there will argue that 24 inches isn’t big enough, but you don’t live in my apartment, O.K.?

Contrast levels are a lot higher than in previous Cinema Displays – 1000:1 compared to 700:1. This results in a lot more detail in the dark and dirty scenes Dick Wolf’s franchise is known for. And while many people (myself included) groan about the new DisplayPort connectivity, which currently limits peripherals that can be connected to the display to only new Apple computer products, it does lead to improved picture quality over DVI.

According to the DisplayPort Web site, “The first version of DisplayPort provides over twice the capacity of single-channel DVI over the same number of wires through a much smaller and easier to use connector… In addition to greater resolution, DisplayPort also supports greater color depths and higher refresh rates.”

So while it’s a bummer that there currently isn’t an adapter to connect older Macs and PCs to the LED Cinema Display, it is exciting that there’s a new connection standard that the majority of computer manufacturers have adopted which, later this year, will really improve video quality on LCD monitors.

The built-in 2.1 speakers on the LED Cinema Display are pretty decent as well. Sure, you wouldn’t want to watch a blockbuster with only these on hand, but watching standard TV fare is totally doable.
My biggest gripe, and this comes as no surprise, is that the Apple Cinema Display is $900. Obviously, there are tons of manufacturers out there that are now offering wide-screen HD displays, so shop around. My only recommendations, if you’re looking to have your monitor work two jobs in your house, is to go with a minimum of 24 inches of screen size, make sure it has digital inputs like DVI or DisplayPort, and also features a 1000:1 contrast ratio at minimum.

But be wary of manufacturers who claim astronomical contrast ratios (such as 2,000,000: 1, which you’ll see out there). You can read about how manufacturers juice their specs here. I’m not saying manufacturers who quote such high figures are fixing their specs, but a number that stratospheric does make you wonder what they’re basing that figure on

Oracle-Sun changes the tech game

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) -- Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) pounced on Sun Microsystems a week ago, agreeing to buy the battered server maker for $5.6 billion, excluding Sun's cash. On the surface, the tech world responded relatively quietly to Oracle's bombshell by getting about the business of reporting earnings. Behind closed doors, however, the entire industry has been turned topsy-turvy.

One bold and unexpected deal has changed everything, and the ramifications will play out increasingly dramatically for months. Consider how the move affects the mightiest in the industry.

Oracle. Like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) CEO Mark Hurd, Oracle chief Larry Ellison understands that a broad product line and operational efficiencies in a commoditized industry lead to fat profits and a compelling pitch to customers. Selling enterprise software and hardware is a relationship business, and with Sun, Oracle gets more relationships and has more to sell to the customers it already knows. More than that, Oracle has proved an adept cost cutter in an industry known for growth, not thrift.

Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates that to achieve the $2 billion in operating profit Oracle says it can from the Sun purchase that Oracle will need to cut 5,500 to 10,000 jobs. People forget that plenty of those cuts will come at Oracle too, which uses its big acquisitions as excuses for blood-letting throughout the organization.

SAP. Suddenly SAP, the German software company that dominated its corner of the industry just a few years ago, is in play. That's because Oracle has completely outmaneuvered it, becoming a more complete and therefore more powerful player. The three most likely bidders for SAP are IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), HP and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). It's worth looking at the likelihood of each stepping up to what would be a minimum $50-billion transaction.
IBM.

The venerable hardware maker has done an admirable job of moving out of heavy iron and into software and services. It bid first for, but couldn't close, the Sun acquisition. IBM certainly could come back at Sun, but in a classic instance of game-theory behavior IBM knows it's up against an adversary with a demonstrated willingness to play the "crazy card."

(Read about Oracle's protracted battle for PeopleSoft to get a sense of the lengths to which Ellison will go when he decides he wants something.) Instead IBM may be pushed to do something even bolder now that it is competing more directly with Oracle.

HP. The conventional wisdom is that HP couldn't do another large transaction because it is busy digesting EDS. Nonsense. HP had begun to think of IBM as its one true competitor. Now along comes longtime partner Oracle as a credible threat. The quickest -- if most expensive -- way for HP to transform its pipsqueak software business is to buy SAP -- before IBM does.

Microsoft. The faltering giant danced with SAP years ago but didn't pull the trigger. Now Microsoft is locked unprofitably in a death battle with Google. In the last three quarters, Microsoft's online business has posted operating losses of $1.5 billion, including a $575-million loss last week. That's a massive amount of money to lose, even for Microsoft.

I've chronicled Microsoft's search-related red ink here and here. Microsoft insists it is playing for the long haul, and CEO Steve Ballmer last week disparaged Oracle's purchase. Microsoft better have something to show for its investment in online advertising because with each passing year it loses a little more relevance in software, a shocking development in an industry Microsoft helped invent.

Cisco. A wild card, Cisco is rapidly transforming itself into something unrecognizable just a few years ago. Cisco already announced a modest server offering, and it long has considered itself a software maker though it sold the code it writes on routers and switches. Cisco conceivably could bid for Sun or SAP. It clearly sees itself increasingly in competition with IBM and HP.

Ford, IBM Among Companies Signing China Deals Worth $10 Billion

Ford Motor Co., International Business Machines Corp. and Dell Inc. were among companies that signed 32 contracts today with Chinese companies that totaled $10.6 billion.

Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., EMC Corp., Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Amway Corp. also inked deals in Washington at a forum hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.

“Our two economies are highly complementary,” Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said at the event. “History tells us that openness and cooperation is all the more important amidst a crisis.”

The contract signing comes as the global economic slowdown curbs demand for imports in the U.S., causing Chinese exports to fall. The U.S. current-account deficit narrowed to $132.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, reflecting a smaller gap in the trade of goods.

John Ng, a senior vice president for Cisco in Beijing, said in an interview after the ceremony that his company’s contracts with China Mobile, China Telecom Corp. and China Construction Bank Corp. totaled about $300 million.

Bill Mannion, Microsoft’s senior director for OEM, said in an interview that the software company’s agreement with Lenovo Group Ltd. didn’t involve money and was an “affirmation to work together.”

IBM spokesman Ian Colley didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment. Ford didn’t immediately comment and neither did EMC spokeswoman Lesley Ogrodnick.

“We see this as positive for both countries’ economies,” Colleen Ryan, a Dell spokeswoman, said in an interview. “We are proud to support China’s rapidly growing technology and telecommunications infrastructure.” Dell isn’t discussing contract terms, Ryan said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Forsythe in Washington at mforsythe@bloomberg.net.

Pfizer and UCL sign stem-cell pact for AMD

Pfizer has linked up with University College London to develop stem cell-based therapies for ophthalmic conditions, notably age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness.The collaboration will examine how human embryonic stem cells differentiate into retinal pigment epithelium with the goal of developing therapies primarily for AMD.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will provide undisclosed funding to UCL and has been granted exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialise any stem cell-based therapeutic in the ophthalmology field that comes out of the pact. Ruth McKernan, chief scientific officer of Pfizer Regenerative Medicine, which was created in November last year, described UCL as “pioneers in the field of stem cell ophthalmology”.

She added that “while we have much to learn about how stem cells can be used therapeutically, we are confident that this relationship will increase that understanding”.Pete Coffey of the UCL Institute for Ophthalmology, said that “we have not only the benefit of Pfizer’s experience of the regulatory process and their expertise in stem cell technology but the ability, if this works, to produce on a much larger scale”.

He added that “it has huge implications, not only for our project, but for the field of regenerative medicine as a whole…and it is great that Britain is at the forefront of this research”.Pfizer excited about Wyeth deal Staying with Pfizer and chief executive Jeffrey Kinder has told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting that the New York-headquartered giant has “streamlined operations, reduced bureaucracy, set clear expectations and increased accountability, which has better positioned the company to combine with Wyeth”.

At the meeting, Mr Kindler also defended the decision to cut Pfizer’s historically-high dividend in half, from $0.32 to $0.16, saying that the move will help the firm put $5 billion towards the Wyeth acquisition. He also told shareholders that “I recognise our stock price isn’t where anyone wants it to be, but we have taken important steps to position Pfizer for steady, profitable growth.”

Mr Kindler added that "If we deliver on the potential of the many opportunities before us, then an improved share price should follow”. The AGM also saw shareholders approve proposals asking the company's board to give them an advisory vote on executive compensation and to make it easier to call a special shareholder meeting.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition review

AMD kick started 2009 with guns blazing introducing their latest Phenom II X4 platform on early January. Although the launch was comprised of just two processors, that's all AMD needed to compete head to head with the Intel Core 2 Quad range.

The flagship model, also known as the Phenom II X4 940, debuted at just $270, while today it can be had for the bargain basement price of $190. In terms of performance we found it closely matched the Core 2 Quad Q9650, which was considerably more expensive at $540 then, and even today it is still fetching around $330. This is an impressive feat for AMD, offering the best value in this price range.

Today AMD is releasing two new processors, the Phenom II X4 955 and 945, which are based on the same “Deneb” architecture though with a few notable changes. The most prominent change is that these are AM3 processors, and therefore can be used with either DDR2 or DDR3 memory. AM3 processors are also completely backwards compatible with AM2+ motherboards.

Although it was initially speculated that AMD would increase the L3 cache of these new Phenom processors from 6MB to 8MB, this has not been the case, and the Phenom II X4 955 still carries the same 6MB as its predecessors. The processor is however reaching new heights for AMD in terms of operating frequency, designed to work at 3.2GHz, it's fastest clocked quad-core processor the company has ever released.

Despite these improvements, the Phenom II X4 955 will remain affordable, with a suggested initial retail value of $245. This new processor looks as having the potential to be the ultimate upgrade solution for AMD users, as it can be paired with AM2+ motherboards that were released as far back as 2007.

Based on pricing, the Phenom II X4 955 could be best compared to the Core i7 920 ($290) and Core 2 Quad Q9550 ($270) processors, though it will be a tad cheaper than both. However it's not just the processor cost that needs to be considered here, as the Phenom II X4 955 can be used on both AM2+ and AM3 motherboards.

Furthermore, while AMD does expect DDR3 memory to become mainstream in 2010, the Phenom II X4 955 can be paired with ultra cheap DDR2 memory for now, postponing the migration to DDR3 until it makes complete sense financially for consumers.

Egyptian intel chief to meet Netanyahu

Egyptian intel chief to meet Netanyahu
Omar Suleiman to arrive in Israel on Wednesday for series of meetings with state officials, on backdrop of high tensions between Cairo and Jerusalem. On the agenda: Talks for Gilad Shalit's release, expanding strategic cooperation. Meeting with FM Lieberman also possible despite controversial remarks .

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman will arrive in Israel on Wednesday for a series of meetings with the Israeli political echelon, on the backdrop of high tensions between Cairo and Jerusalem.

Suleiman will meet with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and perhaps even with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, despite the latter's harsh remarks against the Egyptians.

Sources in the Foreign Ministry said that one of the goals of the meeting was to ease the tense relations.

Prime Minister Netanyahu will examine during his meeting with Suleiman possibilities to advance the negotiations for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. The talks on the matter have been frozen since former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert left office, and at this stage the new government has yet to form its policy on the issue.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu accepted a request by Ofer Dekel, the Prime Minister's Office emissary heading Israel's efforts to secure the release of its missing and captive soldiers, to leave his post. The prime minister has yet to decide who will replace Dekel.

with Barak on one of his previous visits (Photo: AFP)

The Egyptian minister is expected to land in Israel in the afternoon hours. At this stage there has been no official announcement on an expected meeting with Foreign Minister Lieberman. However senior state officials say that such a meeting could take place between Suleiman's meetings with Netanyahu and Peres.

The Egyptian minister is visiting Jerusalem on the backdrop of high tensions between Egypt and the Foreign Ministry, following Lieberman's past remarks, including, "The Egyptian president can come here, or go to hell."

Lieberman also threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit recently said in response that "Lieberman's foot will not step on Egyptian soil

New Intel chips prompt rise in demand for DDR3 memory

A new series of Intel microprocessors aimed at the computer server market has caused a spike in demand for DDR3 (double data rate, third generation) DRAM chips, according to Samsung Electronics.
Prediction: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner resigns by Dec. 2009?

The world's largest memory chip maker said Tuesday it has ramped up production of DDR3 memory chips over the past month to meet heavier demand related to the launch of Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series.

The production increase is important for DDR3 technology because new DRAM technologies normally find their way into the computer server market before finally making it into desktop and then laptop computers. As production of DDR3 increases, the price-per-chip declines, making them more affordable for less expensive devices such as PCs.

Server makers are generally willing to pay a premium for the increased performance of new memory chip technologies, while a sluggish PC market this year means vendors are less willing to trade up from DDR2 (DDR, second generation) chips because they're much cheaper.

DDR3 memory chips boast several improvements over DDR2, including twice the system performance, speeds up to 1,333Mbps (Megabits per second) and using at least 60 percent less power, Samsung said.

Intel plans to launch two more DDR3-only chip series in the second half of this year, according to a joint statement.

Samsung currently sells 1Gb and 2Gb DDR3 DRAM chips and several memory modules that have already been validated by Intel to work with its microprocessors.

AMD: Tough first quarter; Ready for Intel encroachment for thin, light notebooks

Advanced Micro Devices reported a first quarter net loss of $416 million, or 66 cents a share, on revenue of $1.17 billion, down 21 percent from a year ago. However, CEO Dirk Meyer said Tuesday that AMD is “more nimble” following the spin-off of its manufacturing assets, but the company projects revenue to slide in the seasonally slow second quarter.

Even though AMD’s quarter was tough it still managed to beat Wall Street’s low expectations. The company’s net loss (statement) included a charge of 4 cents a share. Excluding that charge, AMD topped estimates by 4 cents. The first quarter for AMD was about burning off inventory that was built for demand that never arrived.

The company has consolidated GlobalFoundries, the manufacturing joint venture, in its results but referred to AMD “the product company” as the chip design outfit. AMD’s chip design and product business had a net loss of $189 million.

Like its much larger rival Intel, AMD forecasted some balance in supply and demand. “The severe inventory corrections of the last quarter have stabilized,” said Meyer on a conference call with analysts. Meyer stopped short of calling the bottom like Intel has, adding that “I don’t know how anyone can do that.”

Meyer said customers are only buying the processing power they need. Notice AMD’s plan: It is pitching itself as a value chip maker and hinting that Intel gives you more processor than you need. He touted AMD’s Yukon and Congo platforms, which target light notebooks.

CFO Bob Rivet added that AMD saw some demand in the first quarter from value buyers. Nevertheless, Rivet said that second quarter revenue will decline from the first quarter for AMD. AMD hopes to be cash flow positive in the second half of the year.

However, AMD is still going to have a tough time. Meyer was asked about Intel’s launch of chips for the light, thin notebook market. Meyer said AMD wasn’t planning to cede market share, but noted the second quarter was “murky at best.” Meyer said that Intel’s CLUV move was in response to AMD’s move.

Updated AMD Notebook Roadmap Surfaces

Details about AMD's processor roadmap update for the notebook platform have surfaced on the web. Expreview guys grabbed a couple of slides and showed off the updated mobile processor roadmap. More details about the Sabine platform have been mentioned in the slides.

Last November, AMD had unveiled their processor roadmap for the desktop and the notebook platform. AMD mentioned about the Sabine platform for notebooks, which would include the Llano CPU, now known as the Accelerated Processing Unit. The Llano APU will be a 32nm process chip with four cores, a 4MB cache, DDR3-1066MHz memory controllers, and a GPU packed on the die.

DirectX 11 and Unified Video Decoder 3 technology support will be added to the Sabine platform. So by 2011, we can hope for DirectX 11 to appear in a more mature form, supported on a wide range of hardware.

Later this year, AMD will launch the new 45nm process Tigris platform for the mainstream notebook market. The Tigris platform will have single and dual core Caspian CPUs and a 780M chipset, which will be added in the second half of 2009. For the Tigris platform, a chipset bearing a RS880M north bridge chip and SB710 south bridge will be released.

In 2010, AMD will launch the Danube platform, the Tigris successor that will feature a 45nm process Champlain CPU with up to four cores, DDR3-1066MHz support, and which will move from Socket 1 Generation 3 to Socket 1 Generation 4. For the same platform, a chipset that will have a RS880M north bridge and unnamed SB8xxM south bridge chip will be released; along with that, a discrete GPU architecture code-named Manhattan as well.

Let's hope that DirectX 11 will be in a mature state by 2011. The sad part is that till 2010 we'll see DirectX 10.1 supporting hardware, which unfortunately is yet to be launched.

AMD expected to report bigger loss, lower sales

The company will report financials shortly after arch-rival Intel Corp. (INTC:Intel CorporationNews , chart , profile , more Last: 15.60-0.29-1.83%
4:00pm 04/17/2009
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio Analyst Create alert Insider Discuss Financials Sponsored by:INTC 15.60, -0.29, -1.8%) boldly declared a bottom for the personal-computer market, although many analysts were disappointed that the chip giant again did not issue a formal outlook. Still, Wall Street will likely look for validation of Intel's bottom call in AMD's report. Intel is the No. 1 maker of PC chips followed by AMD, so a sign of improving demand for Intel could bode well for AMD.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker is expected to report a loss of 66 cents a share on revenue of $1 billion, according to a consensus survey by FactSet Research. For the year-earlier period, the company reported adjusted results of a loss of 51 cents a share on revenue of $1.5 billion.

"I think we'll see an improving outlook from [AMD], but like Intel, the past quarter will be painful," analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group wrote MarketWatch in an email. Analyst Crawford Del Prete of International Data Corp. said: "I suspect it will be a tough quarter" for AMD. "I expect that pricing was probably very tough, although consumer demand for PCs was robust (compared to commercial), and it is a space where [the company has] an important footprint," he added. "Looking forward, it will be important to see if they see the same trends as Intel, and if they see the market hitting bottom.

" Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates noted AMD's strong focus on the consumer market, saying: "Consumer seems to have held up better than commercial. So AMD could be on par or better due to that emphasis, but this has to be taken against a background of the company's having given up some of its technological edge in recent quarters to arch-rival Intel. Share loss could swing results the other way." However, with the uncertainty in the broader economy, BMO Capital Markets analyst Brian Piccioni has been less upbeat about AMD, saying in a March 5 note: "We continue to believe AMD will perform poorly in a deteriorating macro environment."

Like other semiconductor manufacturers, AMD has reeled from the downturn that has led to a steep decline in demand in both the consumer and corporate tech markets. The company also has had to deal with its own issues.

Production missteps caused it to fall behind Intel, and had problems digesting its acquisition of ATI Technologies. But AMD recently has bounced back, earning positive reviews for new products, including a new server chip and new graphics products that benefited from buying ATI, analysts said. The company also recently spun off its manufacturing facilities into a new company called GlobalFoundries, a move that analysts also say should help ease its financial burden.

"AMD has had a tough quarter but they have had a number of recent mobile-design wins with products that are much higher-profile than they typically get, and their server parts seem to be moving well," according to Enderle

HP Pavilion dv3z Entertainment PC - 2.1 GHz, 80GB Solid State HD, 2GB RAM

The good: Inexpensive, highly configurable 13-inch laptop; excellent battery life.
The bad: Not as thin or light as other 13-inch systems; AMD processor lags in performance.
The bottom line: The 13-inch HP Pavilion dv3z offers a reasonable trade-off, choosing battery life and value over performance and weight.
Specifications: Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core (2.1 GHz) ; RAM installed: 2 GB ; OS provided: Windows Vista Home Premium

An inexpensive 13-inch laptop will always get our attention, and HP's Pavilion dv3z fits the bill starting at under $700; it is also highly customizable (our configuration was $893). We're fond of saying that 13-inch laptops are the smallest we could fathom working on for a full day, and the biggest we'd be willing to carry around on a regular basis--the popularity of Apple's 13-inch MacBook line points to this.
However, as much as we liked the HP dv3z's low initial price and customization, you can also get Apple's entry level plastic MacBook or HP's own retail-only Pavilion dv3510nr for only $999, and both offer faster Intel processors. The AMD-powered dv3z counters with a large 320GB hard drive and excellent battery life, albeit at the expense of a giant protruding battery

Similar to other current Pavilion laptops, the HP dv3z trades the typical glossy gray-and-black look for an upscale bronze tint, with a subtle crosshatch pattern on the keyboard tray and a slightly glittery finish on the back of the lid.
The series of lighted, touch-sensitive media controls above the keyboard looks nice, glowing either white, blue, or orange depending on status (Wi-Fi on versus off, for example). There's also a volume slider, but for sensitive volume tweaks, we still prefer a physical wheel; touch-controlled volume sliders can be finicky. When the system is off or asleep, the touch-sensitive buttons literally vanish into the mirrored strip above the keyboard.

The touch pad and mouse buttons have a highly reflective mirrored finish that offsets the bronze chassis color nicely. Fortunately, this touch pad feels like it has a slicker surface than some of the mirror-finished touch pads we've tried on 14-, 15-, and 17-inch Pavilions lately, which means less finger drag and more accurate mousing.

The 13.3-inch wide-screen LCD display offers a 1,280x800 native resolution, which is standard for screens 13- to 15-inches in size. The glossy finish can easily pick up stray light rays, however, and the dv3z lacks the slick edge-to-edge glass found in systems like the current 13-inch MacBooks.

While very configurable, with multiple CPU, RAM, and hard drive options, only AMD processors and ATI Radeon 3200 graphics are available on the dv3z. The starting $679 configuration includes a 2.2GHz AMD Turion X2 RM-74, 2GB of RAM (currently upgraded to 3GB at no extra charge), and 160GB HDD (also currently subject to a no-cost upgrade to 320GB). Interestingly, you have a choice of tray or slot-loading DVD burners; functionally, they're identical, but the slot-loading one costs an extra $25.

Our review unit had a 2.3GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core ZM-84 with 4GB of RAM, and, as expected, it fell behind comparable 13- and 14-inch laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, such as Dell's midrange 13-inch laptop, the Studio XPS 13-163B, which has a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600. In casual use--Web surfing, media playback, working on office docs--you're unlikely to notice the difference. Working with more professional apps, such as Photoshop, the difference is more pronounced

AMD CPU roadmap leaked

From what we can tell from the leaked slides, there will be a platform called Tigris that features a Caspian 45nm processor and DDR2 800MHz memory.

The chipsets are to be AMD RS880M-series and SB710 plus support for 12 USB 2.0 connections along with 6 SATA connections and 2 USB 1.1 connections.

Also detailed is the Danube platform, set for a 2010 release with the Champlain processor, four cores, DDR3 1,066MHz RAM, AMD RS880M chipsets and a SB8xxM for the RAID interface, clock generator, 4 PCIe GPP slots and 2 USB 2.0 ports.

The roadmap also featured details for the Sabine platform set for a 2011 release and will ahve the Llano Accelerated Processing Unit with 32nm integrated GPU, four cores, DDR4 1,600MHz RAM, an AMD SB9xxM chipset, 16 USB 3.0 ports and more.

Acer PC joins Nvidia's 'Ion' with Intel's Atom

Acer launched a PC Tuesday that attempts to bring PC-class performance to Atom-processor-based

The Acer AspireRevo is the first Atom-based PC from a major PC supplier to use Nvidia's Ion chipset that packs GeForce 9400M graphics, the same graphics used in the Apple 13-inch MacBook and MacBook Air.
By design, Atom is a more power frugal and, concomitantly, slower processor than Intel's mainstream Core 2 chip architecture.
The AspireRevo's marquee external feature is the diminutive size: the desktop is comparable in size to a laptop (though slightly thicker, about the size of a typical hardcover book). Internally, the device will test Nvidia's thesis that devices, such as Netbooks, that pair the Atom processor with Nvidia graphics offer much better performance than Intel-only (i.e., Atom-with-Intel-chipset) platforms.
This won't be quite the slam dunk that it was before, however. Intel recently started shipping the Atom N280 and the accompanying GN40 chipset, which for the first time on an Intel Netbook platform delivers 1080p HD playback.
"The AspireRevo...is perfectly suited for the living room, because Nvidia Ion provides a brilliant graphics experience with digital photos, watching video, and playing family-friendly games," said Gianpiero Morbello, corporate vice president of marketing for Acer, in a statement.
Nvidia listed the following capabilities for the Ion-based AspireRevo:
Ability to run Windows Vista Home Premium
1080p HD video with true-fidelity 7.1 audio
Popular games including Spore, Call of Duty 4, and Sim City 4 *
DirectX 10 graphics with advanced digital display connectivity
Accelerated video enhancement and transcoding using Nvidia CUDA technology

Pirates block hostage U.S. captain's escape try

The American ship captain taken hostage by pirates in the Indian Ocean jumped into the water from their drifting lifeboat in an attempt to escape early Friday, but he was quickly recaptured, a defense official saidThe standoff unfolding on the high seas off the coast of Somalia intensified Friday as U.S. naval reinforcements moved toward the scene. There were also reports that the pirates, desperate to reach shore with their captive, had themselves called in additional vessels and men.
French authorities, meanwhile, said Friday that they had intervened to end a separate pirate hostage situation off the coast of Somalia, one of the most notoriously lawless stretches of international waters. French forces moved to retake a yacht that had been hijacked last weekend, President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said in a statement. The operation left one hostage and two of the pirates dead. Four other hostages, including a child, survived, and three pirates were captured.
U.S. defense officials apparently have been reluctant to take such an aggressive approach to the hostage standoff involving the captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips, who was taken hostage Wednesday when four Somali pirates commandeered the U.S.-flagged container ship.

The Navy has asked hostage negotiators with the FBI for their assistance. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command and the overall military commander for the region, said Thursday that other warships were headed to the scene.

Defense officials said there were indications that the lifeboat was moving slowly in the direction of the Somali coast. There were some reports on Thursday that the boat had run out of fuel and was adrift in the Indian Ocean, but that did not appear to be the case, officials said on Friday. Even so, defense officials said it was likely that the boat was moving no more than 3 to 4 knots an hour, meaning it was still days from the coast.

Officials said FBI negotiators in Quantico, Va., were in contact with the pirates via a communications link on the Navy destroyer Bainbridge, which was within sight of the lifeboat.
An American defense official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said Phillips was in the water for a short period before the pirates hauled him back aboard.
The official said Navy P-3 aircraft and drones launched from the Bainbridge had since flown overhead and observed Phillips "safe and sound" back on the lifeboat. The official also said he did not know whether the Navy could have rescued the captain during the brief period he spent in the water.
"I couldn't tell you the standoff distance of the ship or whether they could have taken direct action," the official said.
The Maersk Alabama, the first American vessel to be captured by pirates in some 200 years, was commandeered for a number of hours on Wednesday, but the unarmed American crew of 20 managed to overpower the pirates and retake command.
The pirates retreated into a large enclosed lifeboat, taking Phillips as a hostage and apparently seeking a cash ransom.