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Tech News for Friday June 9th 2000.Symantec
Develops Antivirus Software For Palm Symantec announced the development of the first antivirus software for the Palm OS platform, just days after the discovery of the world's first virus to plague cell phones proved viruses can move swiftly to the realm of handheld smart devices. There are no viruses, worms, or Trojan horses known to be targeting handheld devices, but experts say the Palm OS is just as susceptible to these threats as any operating system, the company said. According to Symantec (stock: SYMC), the software, currently a prototype, uses a "microengine" to help antivirus researchers detectpotential threats directed at the handheld. Pricing and availability have yet to be determined. Corel
Slashes 320 Jobs In Cost-Cutting Step. Troubled Canadian software maker Corel detailed plans to slice 21 percent of its workforce as part of a drive to cut costs by $40 million, the company said after the markets closed Thursday. Corel (stock: CORL), Ottowa, is eliminating 320 of an estimated 1,300 positions across all departments. The job reductions will consist of layoffs, attrition, and the termination of contractors, the company said. "This was not an easy decision to make," Michael Cowpland, Corel CEO, said in a statement. Significant cost-reduction measures were expected since the company's merger with software developer Inprise/Borland was scuttled by mutual agreement May 16. Nintendo
answers rivals with Game Boy Net adapter. Nintendo had better be prepared to pull a rabbit out of the hat before Sony's Playstation II is launched. Nintendo, the world's second-largest home video-game maker, said it will sell an adapter that links its Game Boy consoles to the Internet via cellular phones, keeping pace with similar moves by rival game makers Sony and Sega.The maker of Pokemon game software and trading cards said the 5,000-yen ($47) online adapter will be available around the winter holiday shopping season. The company will also introduce a new version of its Pokemon game, adding new characters, near the same date. Linux
Kernel 2.2.16 Released - Fixes Security Hole. Sendmail.net has posted a warning that Linux kernels up to and including 2.2.15 have a serious security exploit that could allow users to gain root access via the setcap(2) call. Apparently this feature goes undocumented in many Linux-based systems, and allows users to break down root access permissions into a series of capabilities, which then allows them to exploit the security hole. Handspring
to go public in two weeks. The handheld computing start-up will sell 10 million shares to the public, priced between $17 and $19 per share, the week of June 19, according to papers filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Handspring markets the Visor personal digital assistant, which competes with devices from Palm and those based on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system. The Visor has stood out in the crowded handheld market because of its Springboard expansion slot, which allows customers to easily upgrade their PDAs with cell phone, digital camera and MP3 player add-on cartridges. The devices themselves are typically cheaper than Palm or Microsoft products. Handspring last week lowered the price of its stock offering, which was initially expected to be priced between $19 and $22 per share. The move was a reaction to April's drop in the stock market and the lackluster Wall Street performance of Palm, which traded as high as $165 on its opening day in February but is now hovering around $25. Handspring is looking to raise $160 million in the IPO, according to Credit Suisse First Boston, the underwriter of the offering. Something
to think about. You boot up Microsoft Windows and click on the Microsoft Internet Explorer and call up the Bill Gates Net Worth Page. The page is not sponsored by Microsoft. But every 15 minutes it updates what Gates is worth based on the current price of his Microsoft stock. He owns not quite 742 million shares. At 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Gates is worth $51,134,342,368.75. But then the stock slips a little. At 4:30 he is worth $51,041,623,706.25. In 15 minutes, he loses nearly $93 million. This is the wonder and the horror of Bill Gates. The wonder of how one man's ideas can transform the world. The horror of how one man's wealth can be so vast that he can drop $93 million without a twitch. Site
News Update. News posts should begin to pickup again next week. We are in a middle of software deployment and I've had my hands full. Tech News for Thursday June 8th 2000.Sony
to launch portable version of PlayStation. TOKYO--Sony's game-making unit, Sony Computer Entertainment, today said it will launch a portable version of its older, 32-bit PlayStation console in a bid to remain ahead of the pack in the lucrative video game market. The new product--Psone--can be connected to mobile phones, allowing players to download game programs or exchange data with one another, Sony said in a statement. PSone, priced at 15,000 yen ($142), is one-third the size of the 32-bit PlayStation console that has enjoyed runaway sales of some 70 million units in the past five years. But unlike the world's most popular handheld game player, the Game Boy by SCE archrival Nintendo, the PSone has to be plugged into an electric power source, largely limiting it to home and automotive use. PSone sales in Japan will start on July 7, and in the United States and Europe in the autumn. Sony will aim for combined shipments of the older PlayStation and PSone of 8 million units per year. 4.7GB
DVD Peripherals Unveiled. This is very exciting news: Imagine using DVD record able disks on your video camcorder and then simply put the disc in your PC and edit all your footage. Hitachi to Release World's First 4.7GB DVD-RAM-Standard Compliant DVD Camcorder. DVD Video Recorder, and DVD Drives for PCs Also to be Released Digital Media Group of Hitachi, Ltd. today announced that on August 25 it will release the world's first DVD-RAM camcorder in Japan. In addition, a DVD-RAM video recorder will be released on the same day, and volume shipments of 4.7GB DVD-RAM and DVD-ROM drives for PCs will follow after the end of June. The DVD-RAM products are based on the 4.7GB DVD-RAM standard. In the field of audiovisual (AV) equipment, the pace of the shift to digital video and audio continues to increase at a rapid pace. At the same time, the advent of faster CPUs and the growing capacities of hard-disk drives is driving a migration of AV applications to the PC and other digital appliances. To enable this process of convergence to achieve its full potential, there is a need for a large-capacity media format that is compatible with both AV equipment and PCs. DVD-RAM standard is based on the concept that holds compatibility in both video recorders and storage devices for PCs through DVD-RAM disk media. Setting DVD standards is a mission of the DVD Forum, which is comprised of more than 200 member companies from around the world. Through their efforts, DVD is fast becoming the key storage media for providing a bridge between AV devices and PCs in the DVD world of the 21st century. Microsoft
Breakup Is Talk Of The Web. It's a little old news now but the DOJ has ruled that Microsoft must be broken into two separate companies. I still disagree with the ruling because the people should choose what they do or do not like. What is really frustrating is that the Government makes a ruling without understanding how the whole IT system works. The Microsoft ruling is just about on every tech news site. Here's one of my favorite quotes that pretty much sums it up for me: "Seen from
Europe, it is a plain joke," jr39 said. "I think that we have never
seen a private company broken up by a Justice Ministry decision in any European
Community country. Any country would just dream to have a Microsoft on its
territory. Poor U.S. citizens who have to pay for all this nonsense." Tech News for Wednesday June 7th 2000.3Com
modem spin-off will regain old name. I'm not sure if you were aware that 3COM is selling off it's modem division which comes as no surprise. These days every user is scrambling for DSL or cable modem internet connections and analogue modems are becoming something of the past. The majority of users on the internet are still most likely to be analogue modem users because they are simply waiting for DSL or cable in their area. Anyway, the new modem "spin-off" from 3COM will be renamed back to US-Robotics. 3Com, a once-leading purveyor of data-networking equipment, tomorrow will announce that the dial-up modem business it's spinning off will emerge with the same name it had when 3Com bought the company in 1997, an acquisition that eventually proved disastrous. It will be called U.S. Robotics. The company, formed between Taiwan's Accton Technology and Singapore's NatSteel Electronics, will be based in Chicago and will gear up to full operation by Sept. 2, 3Com said. ATA/100
Upgrade. TechExtreme tests the first ATA/100 hard drives that have just showed up on the retail market. I think the conclusion is right on the money (no pun intended) that it would be wiser decision (and cost effective) to upgrade other more important components like Video or CPU instead of moving all your drives to ATA/100. ATA/100 will become the standard, as have all the others before it (ATA 66, 33), but what remains the question for most consumers and businessmen looking to upgrade their systems with new hard drives with the new technology about whether or not the performance increase is worth the cost now.Of course, it has 100MB/sec burst data transfers, but will that yield a significant increase in a users applications, games, operating systems, etc? Perhaps, but their are many costs and other factors to consider. Naturally, upgrading to a motherboard that supports ATA/100 will not yield all older 66/33 models inoperable to your computer, but it is an added cost to consider. ATA/100 drives are still relatively expensive. Costs saved on any components can be used on other, more important, parts of your computer. Judge
Could Rule Today on Microsoft. I doubt anything will happen soon even if the Judge rules against Microsoft. The software giant will then keep the whole issue in the appeals court for months (or maybe years) before anything actually happens. Update: MSNBC News wire reports that the Judge will make a final decision today at 3pm (EST). SEATTLE (AP) - With final arguments in hand, a judge overseeing the historic Microsoft Corp. antitrust case may be ready to rule on whether to split the computer software giant into two separate companies. On Tuesday, Microsoft attorneys filed a fresh response to the Justice Department's breakup plan. The company's filing - a day earlier than expected - cleared the way for the U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who sits in Washington, D.C., to rule at any time. As his company was taking care of the last-minute legal work, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was in Washington, D.C., appearing at a congressional hearing on the future of high technology in the United States and around the world. In its filing, Microsoft, disdainful of the department's response to the company's earlier concerns, asked Jackson to include previously suggested language that would give a broken-up Microsoft more freedom to enter into agreements with software developers and computer makers. ``Instead of agreeing to correct the many defects in the revised proposed final judgment, and thereby minimize the damage that its entry would inflict on a wide range of participants in the computer industry, the government has agreed to only a few cosmetic changes,'' Microsoft's lawyers wrote. Tech News for Tuesday June 6th 2000.Via Debuts Cyrix
III Processor. Via Technologies on Tuesday introduced its Cyrix III processor, which operates at 533- to 667-MHz speeds for desktop systems and mobile computers. The microprocessor is compatible with the Socket 370 interface and features Via's Dynamic Power Caching Architecture. New
email virus spams mobile phone users. Mobile phone customers are being targeted by a new computer virus that Internet security experts said is the first of its kind. The virus, called "Timofonica," is reported to be "in the wild" in Spain, where customers of the phone company Movistar have been hit with annoying computer-generated phone calls, according to the antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab. The virus type, known as a worm, targets phones that use the European GSM mobile standard Security experts said the virus is the first to hit mobile phones, although they emphasized that the worm is propagated by computer and not via the telephone system. They also said the attack is relatively benign, as it does not destroy computer files but merely delivers a message disparaging the Spanish telephone company Telefonica. "It's an annoying message type," said Chris Vargas, president of F-Secure, an Internet security firm that also reported the worm this morning. "The virus' purpose is to propagate a harmless message." Maxtor
Now Shipping Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drives. The new hard drive ATA/100 standard took me totally by surprise. For the first time this week I was reading about VIA motherboards supporting ATA/100 drives and I believed it to be a typing error. Maxtor is now shipping the first batch of ATA/100 or 100mb/sec hard drives starting today. Remember you need a ATA/100 compatible IDE controller which is either on the new VIA motherboard or may be available on a separate controller. As far as I know there no Intel motherboards that supports ATA/100 drives. However, you will be able to run ATA/100 hard drives on any ATA/33 and ATA/66 hard drive controller but obviously you will not obtain the full throughput of 100mb/sec. Maxtor Corporation today
announced that the company is now shipping Ultra ATA/100 DiamondMax(TM) IDE hard
disk drives. Maxtor's DiamondMax 60, DiamondMax Plus 40 and DiamondMax VL 30
hard drives can support data transfer rates of 100 MB per/second in all systems
that support the new Ultra ATA/100 standard. Domain
Hackers Target internet.com. The rash of domain name attempted thefts that was first reported last week continued today with internet.com Corp., publisher of InternetNews.com, among the latest targets. The would-be hijackers succeeded in forcing a change in the public Internic record for internet.com. As of mid-day, the WHOIS record for internet.com incorrectly listed BCS Inc. of Montreal, QC as the domain name owner. The domain name root records were not changed and traffic to the site was not affected. internet.com technical staff was assured by NSI that the DNS records would not be re-directed and the mistake would be rectified within hours. Alan Meckler, internet.com Corp.'s Chairman and CEO, said, "It's clear there is a security issue here that Network Solutions' needs to address," but Meckler said he was confident the appropriate steps were being taken to minimize any possible damage from this attack. "When you have valuable property, you have to expect it will be greatly sought after," Meckler said, adding that he had directed the company's legal department to pursue the matter with the FBI. The
final frontier: DSL. Not really the final frontier since there will be more advanced communication methods on the horizon but for me who is finally getting DSL installed over my 56k modem makes it seem like the ultimate upgrade. Jeff over at ViaWest is taking care of my DSL setup and I can't wait to have the 750k/sec speed piped directly into my basement. Ericsson
Puts Bluetooth In PC Card, Phones. The war is heating up between Firewire and Bluetooth which are both competing communication standards for portable devices. If I'm not mistaken, Firewire was developed by Apple and Bluetooth was introduced by IBM. Communications supplier Ericsson (stock: ERICY) unveiled a PC Card and a mobile-phone prototype with built-in Bluetooth technology Monday at CommunicAsia in Singapore. The Bluetooth PC Card connects to a laptop and enables the wireless transfer of data between the laptop and a mobile phone. It will hit the market in late 2000, the company said. Bluetooth Home Base, a technology prototype, will allow Ericsson's T36 and R520 mobile phones to connect to a fixed telephone line automatically whenever it's out of home-base range. Availability was not announced. Intel's
Timna chip delayed. When ZDNET flashed this news alert on my desktop this morning I was thinking that Intel is having very bad luck this year - to say the least. One problem after another is plaguing Intel and what bothers me is that the company tries to quietly sweep it under the rug. In this day and age with the hustling & bustling on the internet is it not as easy as it used to be for a big company to make mistakes and keep it out of the limelight. Memory translator hub problems have caused Intel Corp. to delay the introduction of its Timna processor for value PCs until the first quarter of 2001.The delay is due to problems with a component called a memory translator hub. The MTH, a design taken from Intel's problematic 820 chip set, will allow the Timna chip, which was designed to work with Rambus memory, to work with less expensive, more readily available synchronous dynamic RAM. MSDN
to deliver Windows Me final in July. The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) is now advertising that it will ship the final version of Windows Me to its Professional and Universal subscribers sometime in the second week of July. And since MSDN typically sends out CDs weeks after the product becomes available, this announcement suggests that the June 13, 2000 RTM date that's been bandied about is pretty accurate. "Windows Millennium Final Edition (English)" is listed to ship in the second week of July, according to the MSDN Web site. "Windows Millennium Edition is a Windows operating system for home users, coming out later this year. It is designed so consumers can experience the possibilities of digital media and home networking, and offers the broadest support for consumer hardware and software." The June CD shipments included Windows Me Beta 3. But because of the rapid release schedule for the final product, the final release is becoming available within days of the Beta 3 CD shipment. So MSDN is shipping the final release in a special shipment during July. More
Windows Millennium News. I must say that I'm looking forward to Microsoft's next incarnation of Windows. No more MS-DOS layer but with full compatibility with the most recent Windows entertainment titles. Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition beta testers got hold of what could well be the final release candidate for the new Windows 9* release that has been in beta for close to a year. Build 2535 is Release Candidate 2. Tech News for Monday June 5th 2000.AMD
Thunderbird benchmarks. I'm not sure how the FiringSquad was able to obtain a AMD Thunderbird CPU so fast when they were just announced today. I suspect a NDA was in order here - included with a early preview version. If you take a close look at the Thunderbird benchmarks you can see how the CPU shines when performing video benchmarks. Someone finally scored over 8000 in 3DBench! Overall ZD Benchmarks show a marginal but respectable performance gain over Intel processors. View the full article here or click the link above. It will be very interesting to see how the new AMD motherboards stack up against the competition. Cisco
eyes Hollywood with digital film demo. Late last year it was mentioned that in the future digital movies will be transferred via the Internet to projectors in theatres to prevent theft and current titles would be delivered on time. Now it appears to becoming a reality: As Hollywood grapples with the ramifications of the Internet explosion, Cisco Systems this week may give the film industry another technological breakthrough to think about. The Internet network-equipment company will be the first to transmit a full-length, 80-minute film as a digitized file. The film--called "Titan A.E."-- tomorrow will be sent in digital form from a computer system in Burbank, Calif., to a movie debut across the country in Atlanta. New
standard could help make home networks a reality. I was planning on ripping up the walls in my house to add home-networking but it looks like some companies are planning to make the job of wiring the house easier. Unfortunately I don't plan to wait until 2001. New technology that allows consumers to connect their computers and other electronic devices through existing power outlets just got one step closer to reality. A consortium of high-profile tech firms today announced they have picked a technology that will serve as a common way for connecting electronic devices to the Net through electrical outlets. The HomePlug Powerline Alliance has chosen a technology by a little-known firm called Intellon that will allow consumers to use their homes' internal electrical networks as the medium to share Internet access, play video games, talk on the phone, and enjoy movies and music throughout the house. The powerline technology will feature data transfer speeds at 10 mbps (megabits per second), a rate fast enough to handle music and video downloads. Companies have marketed visions of people turning on a stereo in the living room and sending music to a PC in another room, while a computer in a bedroom could program the video cassette recorder. Consumers should see products hit store shelves by the first half of 2001, said HomePlug's Mantovani. Initial powerline products will include home networking kits, Internet appliances such as Web pads, and regular home appliances such as Internet radios, he said. Sega,
Motorola to develop Internet cell phone. This has to be the strangest combination: TOKYO--Sega Enterprises, the world's third-largest video-game console maker, announced an agreement today with Motorola to jointly develop new cellular phones that can access the Internet. The two companies will develop new software allowing mobile phones to hook up to the Internet and process data at high speeds with technology now used in Sega's Dreamcast home game machines, a Sega spokesman said. The new cell
phone, to be launched in the spring of 2001 in the United States and other
countries, will be able to download games and video as well as other forms of
data from the Internet, the spokesman said. The
top 10 Internet security threats. If you are running, or plan to setup any form of Internet commerce then this article is a must for you. SANS Resource has posted a list of the top 10 internet security hacks and what you can do to prevent hackers from breaking into your systems. The majority of successful attacks on computer systems via the Internet can be traced to exploitation of one of a small number of security flaws. Most of the systems compromised in the Solar Sunrise Pentagon hacking incident were attacked through a single vulnerability. A related flaw was exploited to break into many of the computers later used in massive distributed denial of service attacks. Recent compromises of Windows NT-based web servers are typically traced to entry via a well-known vulnerability. Another vulnerability is widely thought to be the means used to compromise more than 30,000 Linux systems. Sony
makes Playstation an open format. This is a very smart move by Sony. Thing about it: Opening the Playstation to an open format for developers to freely develop third party products without any restrictions. This could mean Playstation add-on peripherals for your PC. TOKYO — In a bid to dominate the videogame business and establish a beachhead in embedded systems, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. will sell on the merchant market the high-performance microprocessors and graphics chips used to drive its Playstation 2 game console, beginning next year. The company will also open up the platform's format, a move analysts say could dramatically swell the number of Playstation users. Sony will back up its drive into the merchant market with a $1.2 billion investment to expand its semiconductor manufacturing plants. "With this investment, we will enter into a new business phase," said Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment. Increased production capabilities mean "we will be able to provide customers with powerful and flexible processor functions," he said. DirectX
8 Preview. Reactor Critical has posted a preview on Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 8.0 API. For those of you who are not familiar with DirectX, it is a programming interface developed by Microsoft to allow much simpler and standardized development environments for your PC's multi-media devices. No release date was given but I suspect we may see DirectX 8.0 in Windows Millennium which should ship sometime later this month. The current version of DirectX is 7.0a and you can download it here. Read the full article here. KYRO
3D and PowerVR Series3. There's another video card player on the market we have not heard from for sometime. The VR-Zone had posted some benchmarks online of the KYRO utilizes the innovative PowerVR Tile Based Rendering to avoid the memory bottleneck and deliver state-of-the-art 3D graphics image quality and stunning 3D graphics performance, with crisp 2D graphics, studio quality video playback, and DVD decode support. KYRO is the result of the partnership agreement between ST and Imagination Technologies that was announced one year ago, and combines Imagination's acclaimed PowerVR technology with ST's world class digital video skills, process technology expertise, and manufacturing capability. AMD
Thunderbird/Duron announced today. I expect AMD's stock to jump through the roof today with the release of the new Athlon Thunderbird series CPU. From the benchmarks I've seen so far on the Thunderbird - it decimates any Pentium III on a mhz by mhz comparison. The main difference between the Athlon "classic" and the new Thunderbird is that the designers moved the L2-cache directly onto the CPU die, thus it operates at the same clock frequency as the CPU. 3dNews has posted several links to AMD Thunderbird articles:
Tech News for Friday June 2nd 2000.Microsoft's
South Africa Office Blasted. This one hits a little closer to home since I was born there. JOHANNESBURG - An explosion rocked the South African office of Microsoft on Friday, shattering windows but causing no injuries, a company spokeswoman said. ``There was an explosion at around 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) this morning. Nobody was hurt,'' TerryAnnecke, marketing director for Microsoft's South African operations told Reuters. She said the blast was caused by an unidentified device and occurred in the courtyard next to the company's office in Johannesburg. There was no structural damage to the building. ``Police and forensic teams are still working at the scene,'' Annecke added. Police were not immediately available for comment. No staff, apart from four security guards, were in the building at the time of the explosion. The company's 150 employees were asked to work from home or visit clients today. Microsoft head office in Seattle, Washington had been notified. Hewlett-Packard
Offers Refund. If you purchased one of the new HP Jornada 420, 430 and 545 PDA's then the company is offering a refund due a production error. The production error prevents the PDA to display the advertised 65,000 colors and now only displays 4,000 colors. ``We promised customers that the product could deliver 65,000 colors, so we're offering a full refund,'' McGrath said. The error marginally affects the quality of photographs shown on the screen, about half the size of a postcard. Owners who are dissatisfied can contact H-P for the refund, or return a 545 to the store, McGrath said. The Jornada 545 has been selling very well, McGrath said, but would not give any numbers. AMD's
Thunderbird to debut Monday. The Thunderbird is essentially an enhanced version of the Athlon, a line of processors that has been credited with turning the company's fortunes around. Its release is expected to spark a new round of competitive battles with Intel. To be incorporated into high-end consumer systems and business desktops, Thunderbird will run at speeds ranging from 750 MHz to 1 GHz and higher, according to sources. The Thunderbird Athlons, for instance, will contain 256 KB of secondary cache integrated into the processor. The cache improves performance because it holds data that the processor needs to access quickly. Current Athlons come with 512 KB of secondary cache located near the processor but on separate chips. Although larger, the cache on current Athlons is slower. Tech News for Thursday June 1st 2000.Intel
prepares new i815 and i815e chipsets. Just about every
interesting news article today revolves around hardware..... For consumers, the 815's most important new feature is support of 133MHz synchronous dynamic RAM. Because PC133 memory's data bandwidth is higher than that of the PC100 memory now supported by Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) chip sets, it should boost PC performance. PC 100 offers bandwidth of 800MB per second, while PC133 delivers 1GB per second.The chip set will come in two flavors, called 815 and 815E. The 815E adds Intel's new ICH2 memory controller hub, which includes an ATA 100 disk drive interface, integrated LAN (local area network) and an additional Universal Serial Bus port, sources said. Seagate
Cheetah X15 ST318451LW review. The first batch of 15,000 RPM hard-drives are slowly showing up on the market. Storage-Review tests the latest model from Seagate. The X15 is the first hard drive to feature a 15,000 rpm spindle speed. Unlike Hitachi's attempt at 12k operation, 15k speeds are a significant improvement, along the lines of going from 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm or from 7200 to 10k speeds. With other manufacturers gearing up for eventual migration, 15k seems here to stay. SIS
Introduce Chipset For AMD. Intel and Via are one of the more popular motherboard chipset developers on the PC market today. Intel makes the infamous i820 and the popular BX chipset, while Via makes AMD Athlon chipsets. "Chipset" refers to the hardware controller chips on the motherboard that handle devices such as memory and other I/O devices like serial/parallel ports. SIS has been making chipsets for sometime now but have not been as popular as Intel or Via. Now the company will be shipping a new generation of AMD chipsets that sport some very impressive features. Take a look at this:
Not a bad list of features. Expect to see SIS AMD motherboards around Q3 of 2000. Adobe
Photoshop V6.0 details emerge. It's simply amazing to see where the BetaNews team obtain their information from. So far I've never seen incorrect information printed on their web site and the information usually shows up there first. Adobe last week shipped the first beta of the next-generation of its flagship program Adobe Photoshop. Version 6.0 is quite a bit beefier than its predecessors, with new features and enhancements which include the ability to create a Web layout, cut it into parts, assign alt tags, create text, then choose "Save for Web" and have Photoshop create the HTML automatically. Other improvements include more layer features and tools to create more advanced graphics. Cluster
project brings cost per Gflop to new low. The clusters, known as "Beowulfs," have helped bring down the cost of supercomputing while offering scientific researchers a more hands-on relationship with them. Called the Kentucky Linux Athlon Testbed 2 (Klat2), the scalable clustering system uses new network concepts and cheaper Ethernet hardware to achieve a cost performance of $650 per gigaflop. Commercial supercomputers cost around $10,000 per Gflop, which the Beowulf approach has reduced to $3,000 per Gflop. Then even further reductions in cost were achieved by the University of Kentucky team by using 100-Mbit/second Ethernet hardware in a new configuration called a "flat neighborhood" network. Previous clustered designs have relied on high-performance gigabit networking hardware. Klat2 uses the 3DNow! 32-bit floating-point vector extensions to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon processor to improve performance. Sixty-four 700-MHz Athlons were used to achieve more than 64 Gflops on a benchmarking problem involving 40,960 simultaneous linear equations. The benchmark results ranked 150th in Jack Dongarra's list of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. Raid
Guide. Ars-Technica has posted a detailed document on exactly how Raid (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) devices work. This is a very useful article if you plan using using a Raid drive system in your machine and cannot decide which Raid-level to use. We quickly came to realize that there's a serious hunger out there for information on RAID, but simultaneously, there' a serious lack of reliable and easy to understand info ready to be consumed. Intel
slashes CPU prices. Intel is getting very nervous about AMD's rapid head-way into the CPU market. Not to mention all the failures the company has been experiencing over the last several months with the i820 chipset and RAMBUS. To pacify the investors and increase CPU sales the company is slashing CPU's by a hefty amount. Intel slashed its low-cost Celeron chips, cutting prices on the mobile version of the chip by up to 44 percent. The largest mobile price reduction came on the 550MHz mobile chip, reduced by 44 percent to $96 from $170. A new 600MHz mobile Celeron chip is expected next month. Desktop Celeron chips, on the other hand, were reduced by between 5 and 19 percent. The largest cuts in this category came on the 600MHz desktop Celeron chip, which fell by 19 percent to $112 from $138. Other desktop Celeron cuts were more modest, running from 5 percent on the 500MHz chip, now priced at $69, to 10 percent on the 566MHz, now priced at $93. Intel, as reported by ZDNet News, will introduce its 633MHz and 667MHz desktop Celeron chips next month. When it comes to the Pentium III chip, Intel reduced desktop chips by as much as 31 percent. However, pricing on its new 933MHz and 1GHz (1,000MHz) Pentium IIIs held steady at $774 and $990, respectively. The largest price cut came on the 800MHz Pentium III, which fell 31 percent to $385 from $562. Intel made healthy price cuts, ranging from 20 to 27 percent, on the remainder of its desktop Pentium III chips, which include 866MHz, 850MHz, 750MHz, 733MHz and 700MHz clock speeds. Intel 667MHz and 650MHz, reduced by 23 percent and 20 percent, respectively, joined the 600MHz, 550MHz, 533MHz and 500MHz Pentium IIIs on the bottom rung of the pricing ladder. All six chips are now priced at $193. Finally, Intel lowered prices on several mobile Pentium III chips. The company's 600MHz, 650MHz and 700MHz mobile Pentium IIIs were reduced by between 31 and 34 percent. The 700MHz chip, for example, was reduced by 32 percent to $380, while the 600MHz was reduced by 34 percent to $209. Fujitsu
Introduces 0.11 micron Technology. Another major technological breakthrough has taken place by Fujitsu. Hopefully by the next year we will see 0.11 micron CPU's that operate significantly cooler, use less voltage and are clocked significantly faster. Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. (FMI) today introduced its new 0.11 micron gate length (0.11um Lgate) ASIC process capability, featuring the industry's lowest power, fastest transistors and most compact memory cells.Fujitsu's 0.11 micron technology (0.07 micron Leff), which will be available by the third quarter of 2001, features shallow trench isolation (STI) techniques, chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) for all planarization and CoSi2 in transistor gate and source/drain. The all-layer copper-interconnect process uses five to eight levels of metal and low-k (k <= 2.6) dielectric techniques. Initial products developed using the very deep submicron process will support devices with as many as 56 million gates per chip. The gates will be characterized at 0.85V to 1.65V, with analog and I/O blocks to be available in both 2.5V and 3.3V. The junction temperature range is -40(degrees)C to 125(degrees)C. Densities are twice those of ASICs manufactured using Fujitsu's 0.18 micron process technology.
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