Truth Behind the death of Intel’s Larrabee

Intel, a well known company, had plans to Roll out a discrete Graphic card chip better known as larrabee, The GPU ( Graphic Processing Unit ) was beleived to compete with the industry kings in Graphic field i.e. AMD-Ati & nVidia. It was said that Intel was working too hard to develop this GFx chip that was based on x86 architecture. The highly appreciated work by Intel was suddenly annouced as delayed indefinitely.

A industry report by Techeye claimed that a hardware designer at Intel said that Larrabee would have changed the Graphics industry significantly as the platform was more flexible in terms of usability and programmability when compared to AMD or nVidia. Its been sometime now since we see high powered Gfx Chip by nvidia or Ati ( AMD) , As better the technology gets they wont be suporting the x86 architecture, this might give larrabee an edge to compatiblity.

“Intel is not a one-shot company. But there is a whole product plan and roadmap still in place,” an anonymous Larrabee engineer reportedly said. “Intel has the luxury of being able to release stuff in its own time, there are not too many other companies that can do that.”

AMD & Nvidia has their own advantages, Intel might just work again on the Larrabee and we might see something better, unless Intel Kills the project.

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March 13, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware

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Transformation to Hard drives

The year is 2010, its time some thing undergo changes. Technology has never been at ease, it changes everyday, something new turns up and outdates other. Now The Hard drives as we know them , are about to undergo a major format shift, this format shift will be the biggest in the last 30 years. It is being said that by early 2011 all harddrives will change how we the users store our data on them. The HDD’s will use advanced format to achieve this. This enhancement will help store more data, more effeciently & while conserving power usage. But the problem arises when we think that right now many users are still on Windows XP, who dont plan to migrate soon to Windows 7.

“The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not,” said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.
By change in technology, it means that there were times when the hard drives were just few megabytes in size, and formatting them with a 512byte block partition made a whole lot sense, but what now ? when people are using 1TB ( 1024 GB) as a standard Drisk for their computing needs. This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem,manager said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.

Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.

“You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk,” said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.

This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.

“We can put more data on the disk,” he said. “It’s about 7-11% more efficient as a format.”

Source | BBC

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March 11, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware, Microsoft, Other

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Windows 8 to get USB 3.0 mainstream

As Claimed by Intel, USB 3.0, will get mainstream with Windows 8**

Technology is always something that consumes time and resources to grow out, either its HDMI or going higher into High Definition or the USB bus that gives us the basic taks related to computing, Technology plays a tricky role with everything. USB 3.0 is something pretty close to that. There were speculations of USB 3.0 to get mainstream sooner, but recently Intel’s representative speaking at CeBIT in germany cleared that USB 3.o will still take a couple of years to evolve and get mainstream. It was cleared that USB 3.0 will become mainstream only till the next version of Windows ( supposedely called Windows 8)(Unconfirmed by Microsoft)**

Microsoft current version of Windows, i.e 7, was released on octuber 22nd 2009, which proved out to be a major success. Windows 8** or the next version of Windows Client OS is yet to be time tabled, but estimates say there is a probable chance of getting a release by 2011 end or in 2012. But Intel’s representative told clearly that USB 3.0 will indeed be supported fully in the next Version of Windows. There are ongoing rumours about Windows 7 to include the support for USB 3.0 in its first service pack that is due in April of this year.

Bit ‘O’ Fact

USB 3.0 is capable of delivering dramatic performance improvements over version 2.0, which maxes out at 480Mbps. By contrast, provided that a computer’s hardware (the type of storage drive and motherboard) play nice with USB 3.0, the technology can, at least in theory, deliver transfer rates of up to 5Gbps. One of the best things about USB 3.0 is the fact that it’s fully compatible with its precursor, version 2.0.

Windows 8** Microsoft added sometime back ” Who says we will call it Windows 8″

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March 6, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware, Microsoft

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Apple Sues HTC for Infringment of patents

Apple has taken legal action against phone maker HTC, alleging it has infringed patented technology. Apple issued a press release announcing it has sued HTC, According to the suit, HTC smartphones borrow key architecture and hardware elements from Apple’s handset.

below is the Re-production without change of the official press-release by Apple as taken from Softpedia

CUPERTINO, California—March 2, 2010—Apple® today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone®, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide.

This is not the first time Apple has made a move like this, back in december of 2009 when it countersued Nokia on some similar grounds, The VP then said “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours.”. The legal action has been filed with the US International Trade Commission and a district court in Delaware.HTC has yet to respond to requests for comment.

Official update from HTC regarding the charges by Apple : : “HTC is a mobile technology innovator and patent holder that has been very focused over the past 13 years on creating many of the most innovative smartphones. HTC values patent rights and their enforcement but is also committed to defending its own technology innovations. HTC only learned of Apple’s actions this morning via media reports, and therefore we have not yet had the opportunity to investigate the filings. Until we have had this opportunity, we are unable to comment on the validity of the claims being made against HTC.”

Source | BBC |Softpedia

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March 2, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware, Other

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AMD to Ship 12-core, without cutting down feature set

AMD is coming up with its new core design, that will include 8-core and 12-core . This range will be called as “Magny-Cours” server processor design. As posted on the Company blog , the chips are already shipping to customers. The reports come out and clear that there will be no cut-down in the feature set,Its been said that AMD is focusing to the next-generation processor design, so as to keep up with the pace of its rivals.

Scaling back the features for marketing purposes is really not a very appetizing prospect for us. We believe that you should have the full set of features, no matter where you buy in the stack. You won’t see us scale back the memory speeds. You won’t see us scale back the I/O speeds. You won’t see us pull features. That is not our way to bring products to market,” John Fruehe, the director of product marketing for server/workstation products at AMD, said.

On the other hand, INTEL is dedicated cutting down features from its less priced desktop or server CPU’s in order to make them seem good in market. On the contrary AMD, intends to keep the same feature set so as to provide a better functioning desktop or server CPU and hence a more comfortable and satisfied customer.

“When you look at our existing AMD Opteron processors as well as our upcoming new products (Magny-Cours), you see two big themes: we don’t compromise on features and we are going to deliver the feature customers care most about: value. As you look at our products, you’ll see that as you move down the stack, from those fastest processors that everyone lusts after (but few buy) down to the value-priced processors, you’ll see the same set of features. You won’t see AMD artificially limiting the capabilities or punishing a focus on low power,” Mr. John Fruehe noted.

XbitLabs reports that, according to unofficial sources, the AMD Opteron 6000 series of processors will be made up of three CPUs with clock speeds of 1.90GHz, 2.10GHz and 2.20GHz. The company also aims to release three standard-voltage 8-core chips at 2.0GHz, 2.30GHz ans 2.40GHz, along with two high-efficiency 8-core processors with clocks of 1.80GHz and 2.0GHz. Furthermore, AMD also intends to launch a highly efficient (HE) AMD Opteron 6000 12-core chip at 1.70GHz, as well as a special edition (SE) 12-core AMD Opteron 6000 at 2.30GHz. Maximum stability for these 12-core chips will be enabled by reduced frequencies for the L3 cache memory and integrated memory controllers, compared to 6-core and quad-core chips

Story Base| Softpedia

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February 24, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware

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