AMD in a surprising move announced today that they will have at least one 45nm processor released before the end of Q2 2008.  The next two 45nm processors won’t be released until the end of this year.  It looks like AMD is following Intel’s lead in this aspect.  Release the high end expensive processors first, then the more affordable mainstream processors later.  Taken from The Reg:

“First up, there’s the successor to the current Phenom X4 9750, a 125W beast that will be superseded later this quarter by a 45nm version of the chip. The new 9750 will only consume 95W. So say said industry sources, cited by a variety of Chinese-language websites.

The current 9750 is clocked at 2.4GHz, and contains 2MB of L2 cache and and 2MB of L3 cache. Its successor is said to contain 6MB of L3 and be clocked in the 2.4-2.7GHz range, which suggests to us it’ll have a model number somewhat higher than 9750.”

Yet in other news, AMD Phenom’s have reportedly hit a compatibility glitch.  Issues arise from the Phenom 9750 & 9850 125W models to work properly with the 780G chipset.  AMD just can’t seem to get a break.

Apple has refreshed their iMac desktop lineup with the new Intel Penryn processors.  The Penryn chips are 45nm process that provides increase onboard L2 cache memory along with lower power consumption.  The Reg reports:

“The standard three iMac configurations again include a pair of 20in, 1680 x 1050 models and a version with a 24in, 1920 x 1200 display. Moving up the line, the Core 2 Duos are clocked at 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively. All three CPUs sit on 1066MHz frontside buses and contain 6MB of L2 cache.

Curiously, Intel’s price list doesn’t currently include 1066MHz FSB Core 2 Duos that also contain 6MB of L2, so these are either 1333MHz desktop parts underclocked, or 1066MHz ‘Montevina’ laptop processors that Apple’s got ahead of the upcoming Centrino 2 launch.

Despite the faster FSB, the iMacs still come with 800MHz DDR 2 memory; 2GB of it in all but the entry-level configuration, which has 1GB. All three desktops have dual-layer multi-format 8x DVD writers, and 250GB or 320GB of 7200rpm SATA hard drive storage.”

Western Digital seems to think they can come into the enterprise market with their shiny new VelociRaptor drives.  WD has announced they will be releasing an SAS version of these new hard drives specifically aimed at the enterprise market.  Unfortunately, my personal experience with the 74GB and 150GB Raptors in RAID configurations has been grim.  Even Supermicro’s engineers recommend staying away from Raptors for RAID configurations in their servers.  They’re just too flaky to work properly in the array.  Hopefully Western Digital iron’s out these kinks and can become a contender in this growing market to add some competition.

The battle between CPU and GPU rages on.  According to this article over at The Inquirer, the VP of Sales over at Nvidia has stated the CPU is dead.  He states numerous references from this TG Daily articlein his argument that Intel and AMD are crapping in their pants because CPU technologies are a dying breed.
Here’s what he had to say:

“I don’t know how much this will mean to you all but for those that don’t know a war has just started that will likely be written about for years and which will affect everyone who owns a PC. Everyone.

Basically the CPU is dead. Yes, that processor you see advertised everywhere from Intel. Its run out of steam.The fact is that it no longer makes anything run faster. You don’t need a fast one anymore. This is why AMD is in trouble and its why Intel are panicking. They are panicking so much that they have started attacking us. This is because you do still [need] one chip to get faster and faster – the GPU. That GeForce chip. Yes honestly. No I am not making this up. You are my friends and so I am not selling you. This shit is just interesting as hell.

Today your PC plays video (its our chip that makes that work), you play games (its our chip that makes that work), you rip movies (yup our chip again) – you get the picture?”

Although Roy does have a point, the video card takes on a lot of multimedia tasks, but the CPU is needed to execute and run these processes.  Unless Nvidia has something up their sleeve where a next generation GPU can also take on these tasks, these accusations and rants are null.

A non existent gap that is.  These tri-core processors mainly exist for the AMD quad core processors that have a failed core off the assembly line.  They disable the failed core and re-badge it with a tri-core model.  AMD did not create these processors to be different, it was done to reduce expenses.  Instead of the failed processors being trashed and getting $0 for them, they disable the failed component and re-badge it to make up the difference.  Not bad in terms of a business strategy but the PC community begs to differ.  Looking at the benchmarks over at Toms Hardware that compares the AMD Phenom X3 8750 to a similarly priced Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, it doesn’t do all that well except in some multi-threaded applications.  Even with some of those the performance looks grim.

The quad core AMD Phenom counterparts can’t keep up with Intel’s latest quad core’s which is a serious drawback in this cutthroat industry.  If AMD can revamp these processors(later revision) and tune the performance for a Q2 release then maybe we can have some serious competition for Intel.  In the mean time, AMD’s only defense for market share is to cut their prices dramatically compared to Intel’s CPU’s.  These new processors from AMD kind of remind me of the 5 cylinder engines from Volvo, they took a different engineering approach.  But in Volvo’s case they don’t have to considerably reduce the price to compete with other manufacturer’s V6 models.

Toshiba has announced they will be planning to ship 512GB solid state drives by 2009.  Toshiba currently is preparing to ship 128GB solid state drives to the market by June of this year.  The news of course belittle’s Samsung’s announcement of 256GB SSD’s by 2009.  This is great news and everything but unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat(literally) then the SSD market will take a long time to replace current hard drive technologies due to performance issues.  The current SSD units on market are considerably slower than current hard drive technologies especially with random read and write operations.  Hopefully they double or triple the performance every time they double the capacity to make it worth while.

Intel has announced price slashes for their desktop CPU’s.  The Reg reports that the Core 2 Duo Quad Q6700 has been cut from $530 to $224.  Additionally, the Core 2 Duo E6850 was reduced by 31% from $266 to $183.  Intel also released a new part number this week, the Core 2 Duo E8300 spouting a clock speed of 2.83GHz, L2 Cache 6MB, and a 1333MHz Front Side Bus at $163.  Other cuts follow:

Intel Processor Models & Reductions
Q6700 -50% to $266
Q6600 -16% to $224
E6850 -31% to $183
E7200 -0% Intro’d at $133 NEW
E4600 -15% to $133
E2200 -12% to $74
E2180 -14% to $64
E1400 -0% Intro’d at $53 NEW
E1200 -19% to $43
Celeron 570 -0% Intro’d at $134 NEW
Celeron 560 -20% to $107
Celeron 550 -20% to $86
Celeron 440 -17% to $44
Celeron 430 -23% to $34

AMD has announced that their graphics division ATI is releasing the Radeon 4800(RV770) series early!  Amazing, considering AMD just recently announced their Q1 2008 earnings which touted a $358 million loss.  This is exactly what AMD needs to do.  Put the shortcomings and bad news behind them to push forward.  Nvidia has been killing the gaming and enthusiast market with their GeForce 8000 and 9000 series.  They have been untouched in terms of graphics horsepower.  The new specs of these units look promising and hopefully will also lower power consumption for those green friendly users in mind.

Western Digital launches a new 300GB Raptor to their hard drive arsenal.  This one still touts the 10,000RPM spindle speed of its predecessor but there’s something different about this one.  It has 2 x 2.5″ platters inside its 3.5″ housing.  This shrinkage sports a comfortable 35% increase in data transfer rates.  That’s impressive considering how fast the current Raptor hard drives are.  Can’t wait to see some real world performance benchmarks to see if this is really true.  The Reg reports.

According to this article over at The Inquirerit’s do or die time for AMD.  The Opteron processors are a huge revenue stream for AMD and the fiasco that’s been going on these past two or three quarters has put them in a tight position.  They have been missing product release deadlines, earnings are falling, and have commenced job cuts for the next quarter.  Can their new chip architecture Barcelona save them? 

Initially it was released last fall but since it was so buggy they had to pull it off the shelves.  Now they have re-released the chips and seem to be doing much better.  But the performance is still lacking compared to Intel’s counter parts.  Intel is already in the 45nm processor market, AMD is still a couple of quarters away from releasing this technology to the public.  It’s a cut-throat business and this blood bath is far from over.  This summer and fall will be the true test of time for AMD.  Intel’s products are kicking ass and taking names in terms of power efficiently and performance.  For the consumers sake, AMD needs to stay in business and offer competitive products to give Intel a run for its money.  If AMD disappears who knows what Intel will be charging for new processors.

The SSD arena seems to be on par if not outperforming Moore’s Law.  Moore’s law states that the power of microprocessor technology doubles every 18 months while the cost to produce it is cut in half.  Lately in terms of processing power this seems to hold true, not every 18 months but around every 12 months.(See Intel, AMD, & IBM processors).

Technewsworld.com has an article explaining the history, current status, and future of these technologies.  SSD NAND drives have matured from tiny 256MB drives in 2002 to 16-32GB units in 2007.  Additionally, the prices of these units have dropped dramatically but are still not affordable to the everyday consumer in comparison to regular hard drives.  At the time of this writing, Newegg has the Super Talent FSD32GM25M 2.5″ 32GB SATA SSD drive for $569 while a Western Digital Scorpio 160GB 2.5″ SATA drive runs for $79.99.

Performance is another very important factor when it comes to Solid State Storage.  Anandtech has a good review of the Super Talent 16GB drive.  If you take a look at their performance charts, you’ll notice that these drives are not too shabby in regards to loading times such as operating system boot-up or opening a game.  But when it comes to other intensive tasks such as file compression, encoding, or just copying a file they are terrible performers.  Almost 300% slower than normal hard drives in some cases.  There’s much needed improvements in this sector if these drives are to someday replace standard hard drives.

To help transition to the wonderful domain of Solid State Storage, some hard drive manufacturers have introduced hybrid hard drives.  These drives combine the regular hard drives we’re used to with onboard SSD capacity to serve as a buffer for most commonly accessed files.  This will help pickup the performance of regular hard drives while decreasing power consumption because the drive doesn’t have to seek for data as much.  Samsung has a few of these drives already listed on their website with specifications.  Unfortunately they don’t seem to be available at any retailers yet.

Finally, another big concern for these drives are their reliability.  SSD devices have limited write-cycles before certain memory addresses are no longer operable.  Average flash storage will wear out after 300,000-500,000 write cycles but “higher endurance” devices have been marketed with 1-5 million write cycles.  Most of the newer SSD devices come with a 5-year warranty so this issue doesn’t seem to plague the newer drives as it did with older devices.  As time goes on this technology becomes more reliable and is approaching the reliability of standard hard drives.

SSD/NAND technology looks promising and the market for them is definitely gaining grounds.  More so in the portable devices arena than desktop or server because of their extremely low power consumption.  As the market demands more of these units, the more research and development manufacturers will put into reducing the cost of this technology while increasing capacity and performance.  Let’s all hope this happens sooner rather than later.

I keep seeing more articles and blogs about the failure of Windows Vista.  I can’t help but think about what is going on behind the scenes right now at Microsoft.  What are the collaboration idea’s flying around the conference tables.  How far into Windows 7 are they really in terms of the source code and do they still have possible alternatives on the table to change or scrap it.  Is it really going to come out in 2010 or are they just blowing smoke up every one’s asses to try and retain market share.

For the longest time, the PC markets have been divided.  You either owned a Mac or a PC and the software was not interoperable between them.  Recently, Apple has an operating system that not only handles their own apps but also has the ability to run Windows and Windows related applications via virtualization software(you could also dual boot).

Here’s what I think:

Microsoft should create their own Linux distribution.  Yes!  It’s a crazy idea, not new, but it can work and I’ll tell you why.

• Almost every other operating system besides Windows is based on some sort of Unix or Linux flavor.  If Microsoft’s operating system was also on this same infrastructure they would have a lot more alliances.  The open source community will be able to find, fix, and patch security holes to help collaborate with Microsoft’s support team.  Of course all these new patches would have to be verified and released by them “officially”.  Software would be interoperable across all platforms, Linux flavors and Mac’s alike. 
• Hardware manufacturers are still having driver issues with their hardware working properly in Vista.  See the Creative Labs and Nvidia forums.  ATI’s hardware seems to have less headaches judging by the amount of complaints.  But then again, Nvidia also has more market share so take that for what it’s worth.  This will also give the driver teams less overhead as they only need to make Linux based drivers, not to mention they’ll have the open source community behind them.
• Software publishers, same thing.  Even with the release of Vista Service Pack 1, it broke a few software packages.  Granted, no where near as many XP Service Pack 2 during its release but still notable.  Again, they will have the open source community behind them to find/solve issues and work ’s.  They can still charge for licencing and deter pirating with some sort of activation like Microsoft/Adobe.(the activation system is a bit buggy too but that’s for another article).  Windows/Critical updates will be similar to the update system in Ubuntu.  Simple and streamlined.
• Microsoft has released the virtualization Hypervisor feature in Windows Server 2008.  Modify and port this feature over to their Linux distribution as a virtualization layer similar to Wine.  It should have the ability to run not only Windows operating systems but also Windows based applications on the fly.  No need to run it within a virtualization program as the Hypervisor layer will be integrated into the operating system and you can open the programs as if you’re in Windows.
• Microsoft’s Enterprise sector will have to slowly be revamped to work under this new infrastructure.  Windows Server and it’s features will have to ported over but once it’s done once then everything can be modular like Mac’s Leopard and server counter parts.  SQL Server and Exchange, same thing.  But all of this, including Windows Server versions, SQL Server, Exchange, etc. SHOULD all work under the Hypervisor feature just like it does now in the Windows Server 2008 version.  This will help smooth out the transition over to the new operating system structure.
• I’m sure there’s a lot of other things I can’t think of or I’m missing but would like further input on this from the Open Source community.  How would this community feel about Microsoft converging into them?

Yes, it’s an enormous change for Microsoft.  But, they themselves said they wanted to be more interoperable.  It doesn’t get much more interoperable than this.  Microsoft Linux 2012 or Winux has my vote.

The CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, publically fires backat Intel and other critics for saying that discrete graphics cards are becoming obsolete. Analysts continuously comparing Intel against Nvidia has apparently angered Huang into a public tizzy. Huang sets the analysts straight, “Nvidia is a Visual Computing company, not a semiconductor corporation”. Also adds that Nvidia’s goal is “to make GPUs better and deliver great experience.” He rants on: “We don’t typically like to do this. It’s just that we’ve been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin’ day. Enough is enough”.

Shiver me timbers! Huang definitely has his panties in a bunch by keeping all of his feelings bottled up and then unleashes publicly against Intel. I wonder if Nvidia has a nice compensation plan that includes therapy. Did I just say that out loud?

Huang continued saying that Nvidia’s graphics can’t even be compared to Intel or anything that Intel has to offer in the near future. Adding “We bring 20-30-40x the performance advantage and 27x the price/performance ratio.” Well, he’s right, for now. At least until Intel integrates their own GPU in the upcoming Nehalem processors and pulls a fast rabbit out of their ass(hat?).

The Register has an interesting article about top-level OEM executives complaining(behind Intel’s back) about selling directly to distributors, retail, and consumers. Intel CEO Paul Otellini fires back and says that this is our business, we’ve been doing this for decades. I agree with him and at the same time I agree with catering to customers demands. But this is a bit far fetched coming from OEM’s. Consumers and businesses have every damn right to decide what they want to do in terms of their own PC’s. If they want to build their own(DIY’s) then so what? Regarding upgrades, If they bought a Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. they should be able to purchase an Intel chip to replace the one that’s in it without going through the OEM channel they originally bought the PC from. That’s the beauty of Intel’s business model, it gives the customers choices.

The article also mentions certain criticisms about Intel catering specifically to Google for building their own systems in data centers.  It mentions that Intel designs motherboards just for Google with low-powered chips, low-end memory, and low-end disk boundaries.  Intel is a company that is out to make profit and if that means designing something specifically for bulk purchase then so be it.

Call me crazy, but this “computer” or Asus Essentio PC, looks similar to an Xbox 360.  The sides are even rounded and protrude out like the 360.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool looking unit and I wouldn’t mind it being part of my Home Theatre arsenal.  Especially when looking at the specs!  But I just hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate as the Xbox 360’s frying with the Red Ring of Death, yikes. 

Anyways, this hot little number will have a Bluray drive onboard, 1080p HDMI out, 7.1 Surround Sound, 802.11n WiFi, 250GB-1TB Hard Drive, Nvidia 8600M GT Video, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR capability, and a whisper quiet 23.9dB operation.  Warm fuzzy feelings are optional.