In what we feel is an egregious example of backward thinking, Microsoft's Security Strategy Director Jeff Jones claims in a rather controversial whitepaper that frequent security updates make Firefox more susceptible to exploits. From his Technet blog , Jeff writes... "Over the past few years, there has been much discussion of the need for improvements in browser security, but few hard data studies performed to support assertions concerning the security of available browsers."
In his white paper he examines exploit severity, version to version trends, and forms an overall analysis of how each browser is performing relative to existing exploits in a three year cycle.
Samsung has been tooting their horn lately with their TB
drives and SSDs. They are yet again claiming another crown with their new incarnation of GDDR5. Samsung states in a press release that
"...it has developed the world's fastest memory, a GDDR5 (series
five, graphics double-data-rate memory) chip that can transfer data at six
gigabits per second..."
Graphics memory is used in almost all computing platforms to move massive
amounts of data related to video and generated imagery.
Ever have a problem with multiple device chargers and cords
splayed across the floor? One company has finally shown some innovation in the
portable power market. WildCharge
inc. has the world's only wireless charging system. The technology has
garnered a spot on TIME Magazine's list of the best inventions of 2007. In
addition, the gadget has won the International Consumer
Electronics Show 2008 Best of Innovations Award in the portable
power category. The device is called the "Wildcharger" and is capable
of charging up to five devices simultaneously without any wired connections.
“Samsung’s new F1
Series is our ‘racing green’,
environmentally friendly drive,” said Andy
Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales and marketing.
Samsung has announced today they are shipping their new "racing green" 1 terabyte
hard drives. The new drive is under the Spinpoint F1 series with the model
number HD103UJ. The features they flaunt are bold. They essentially claim
the crown on TB hard drives in respect to power, density, temperature, and
performance.
Read more here .
*update* availibility is increasing, read for locations
The lack of common sense, as well as a basic understanding of economic theory has plagued the debate over anti piracy measures for as long as we can remember. Though it is quite clear here in the United States that the content delivery business is still rife with idiocies, it's a blessing to see a considerable turnaround in attitude by Great Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association. The ERA is a UK trade organization formed specifically to act as a forum for the retail and wholesale sectors of the music, video, DVD and Multimedia products industry.
In an interview with the Financial Times (registration required) Kim Bayley, director general of the ERA said when asked about Digital Rights Management technologies that they are "...stifling growth and working against the consumer interest."
Holy cow! An industry lobbyist, and she's smart! When asked about the state of DRM laden legal downloads in the UK, she added, "Sadly, that amounts to an average of less than one 79p per download per head of population per year."
Her warnings come as retailers of digital and non-digital content eye the Christmas selling season nervously. With album sales down 12 million units year on year, and new figures showing the average Briton has bought less than 3 digital audio tracks in the last three years. It is no wonder that there's a sense of urgency behind her open request to the music industry to drop piracy protections. They clearly do not work and serve only to punish legitimate consumers. Next time I'm in Great Britain Kim, you've got dinner on me!
Along with the upcoming AMD RS780
chipset that includes DirectX 10 compliant IGP solutions, the NVIDIA MCP78S
chipset is similar. One of the primary differences is the utilization of the IGP
and GPUs. Power consumption has become a major concern for consumers,
this is due to the ever-increasing energy demands that each new generation of
technology presents. The main problem is how to push the envelope of
performance, while minimizing power consumption. NVIDIA has managed to implement
a way to reduce the power draw from the highest consumer in a desktop system,
which is the discrete video card.
Besides the standard six Sata II ports, twelve USB ports,
Gigabit Ethernet, and 2600MT/s HyperTransport 3.0 bus, the MCP78S chipset gives
the user the ability to pick and choose between integrated and discrete GPUs.
NVIDIA has been working on this project for quite some time, but it was
initially intended for mobile markets and was code named “Power SLI”. Back in June
of this year, the project was renamed Hybrid SLI and had yet to mention desktop usages.
All previous attempts to use this method of power saving
involved a bothersome process that required a reboot of the computer.
With NVIDIA’s execution, this process is instantaneous. During normal
operations, such as office work or web browsing, the discrete GPU can be
disabled. The entire graphics workload then transfers to the IGP. However, when
more intense operations are in need, such as gaming or Folding@home, the
discrete GPU can be initiated. This is an ingenious method that saves not only electricity,
but also the life of those 500$ video cards. Always a good feature for gaming machines
that run 24/7 like ours.
Expect the debut of the MCP78S in Q1 2008. 780 based
motherboards should follow suite. Hexus.net
ran across a photo contained in Abit’s product catalog that details the A-N78HD
motherboard that is launching January 2008. The actual real world power savings this technology provides should
be interesting to see.
Earlier today, AMD's press release detailed the culmination of their acquisition of ATI. They announced their all AMD platform, which is codenamed "Spider". Spider plans on combining the 7-Series chipsets, the HD3800 GPUs, and the Phenom quad-core processors into one cohesive platform with a good price point. Unfortunately, full availability is slated for H1 2008. Until then, check out their new CPU prices effective today , or read up at Tom's for their fascinating forty-two page low-down on the hardware itself. They definitely put those engineering samples to the test. It looks like AMD has not topped Intel yet, but they are at least moving forward with their new architecture after many delays. AMD is vital to the competitive nature of the dynamic duo. If they are to stay afloat and compete with Intel, this quad themed platform needs to work. The recent capital they acquired is estimated to get them through another six months of operation.
"...The exhaustion in the faces of our editors in the Munich lab is a
testament to the hard work they've put into this article over the past
few hours and days. We tested all three models of the new processor, the Phenom 9700, Phenom 9600 and Phenom 9500
, running each of them through our benchmark suite. Along with the
Phenom processor, AMD is also presenting its "AMD OverDrive" tool.
With the new 7-series chipset family, consisting of the 790FX,
790X and 770, AMD is simultaneously unveiling the Spider platform. Up
to four graphics cards can be set up as a Crossfire X configuration
using the new 790FX chipset..."
Bert Töpelt- Tom's Hardware
Just when AMD starts firing on all cylinders (Series 7 chipsets, PCIe 2.0, Radeon HD3xxx), a nasty issue pokes its head out of the woodwork. AMD discovered their Phenom 9700 2.4ghz CPU's have an issue with TLB errata that is related to the L3 protocol.When running certain client workloads, this errata can cause platform independant system hangs. Without the microcode update advantages of the Intel microarchitecture, AMD is forced to release BIOS updates for existing Phenom platforms. Until this errata is corrected, Phenom 9700's will be removed from the shelves. The Inquirer Reports...
"AMD WILL ONLY LAUNCH the Phenom 9500 and 9600. Even though the channel already got its hands on the Phenom 9700 (2.4 GHz) part, it will have to be pulled off from the shelves.
In a weird deja-vu, it turns out that the company found an errata in the TLB (Transition Lookaside Buffer), just like Intel did earlier this year with complete Core marchitecture. However, unlike Intel, that has a micro-code update function in all of its CPUs, AMD is forced to delay the introduction of the part.
This comes as a huge hit to AMD, at the time that evrything was looking somewhat better. On paper and in practice, its Chipsets Series 7 are world's finest at the moment - PCIe Gen2 implementation is near-perfect, old Athlon 64 X2 parts got a new life on them (insane HyperTransport overclocking options), while Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 are once again sparking a huge war in world of 3D graphics."
An interesting turn of events as an Abu Dhabi firm invests some much needed capital into AMD for an 8.1% stake in the company. Hopefully AMD can combine their gains from ATI and this money boost to pull the ailing corporation out of its slump. An Intel world without competition would not be advantageous.
"With oil prices surging and U.S. stock prices slumping, chip maker
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s sale of an 8.1 percent stake to the Abu
Dhabi government's investment arm represents the latest plunge by a
wealthy Middle Eastern nation into a troubled U.S. corporation.
It
also raises fresh questions about the appropriateness of Middle Eastern
firms owning large chunks of U.S. businesses that specialize in
advanced technologies.
Sunnyvale-based AMD, the world's No.
2 microprocessor maker, needs the $622 million investment from the
Mubadala Development Company to help lift the company out of a deep
financial slump.
AMD has lost more than $1.6 billion so
far this year, and has just $1.5 billion in cash on hand as it works to
pay down $5.3 billion in debt. The financial woes have caused AMD's
stock to fall more than 35 percent since the start of the year, a slide
that has wiped out nearly $4 billion in shareholder wealth.
The
infusion, announced Friday, is a necessary jolt for AMD is it hunts for
money to fund its counteroffensive against Intel Corp., the world's
largest chip maker, and amid a huge spike in investments in U.S.
companies from Middle Eastern nations..." JORDAN ROBERTSON
Last week, FastSilicon.com reported the image leaked by Chilehardware. At the time, the validity of the image was questionable. Today we were able to access the full document and confirm that the diagram came from AMD. Go here for resampled and enlarged images of the new diagram.
