Monday November 19, 2007

- iPhone Calls home [Updated] - Lionel - 22:43:09

Digging into the iPhone applications, Uneasysilence has discovered that the "Stocks" and "Weather" applications communicate with an Apple server and that they send the IMEI number of the device. As this number is unique for every phone, Apple can easily trace every device.
Of course, this information has created quite an outcry and everyone is seeing Apple as a "Big Brother" without yet knowing the goal of this maneuver.
While waiting to know more, it is difficult to get an idea of the motivations which have lead to this initiative. But they could be valid. For instance, Apple could block web access to devices which have been stolen.

[Update]Heise Security has run further analysis on this topic and discovered that Apple is not sending the IMEI number from your phone. In fact the number sent by Stocks and Weather are different.

[translation by jwa]

- Samsung is Going to Sell its Memory Direct - Lionel - 22:33:07

Source : Digitimes

In August, Samsung provoked an outcry from its clients when it decided to raise the price of its memory chips 20%, selling them at a higher cost than the rest of the market. A new decision has come about which will further delicate the situation with its clients.
After having sold a flash music player and SSD drives, the company has decided to commercialise its memory cards, USB thumb drives, and other products based on flash under its own brand.
At the same time, in order to assure adequate supply and certainly to raise the price of flash memory, Samsung will be substantially decreasing the quantity of memory that it will sell to OEMs and other companies who have now become competitors.
They are giving themselves priority over the other manufactures to ensure their supply. It is unknown whether Apple will also be affected by this artificially created shortage, but they have been carefully diversifying their sources in recent months.
The first Samsung products will be sold in Europe where the company benefits from a good brand image.
So, in a depressed and losing market, the company hopes to make money by getting the beneficial profit margins that manufacturers of memory cards and USB thumb drives have experienced.

[translation by jwa]

- Abu Dhabi to Support AMD - Lionel - 09:32:25

With the release of the Core architecture and the first Core Duo, Intel signed its come-back as the leader in the filed of CPU founders. Unable to compete at the technology level, AMD first dramatically cut prices of its CPU models to try maintaining its market share. If the latest goal was not really reached, AMD margins decreased significantly, putting the company in a rather difficult position.
So, with a Capital Risk company controlled by Abu Dhabi signing a check of US$608 millions to acquire 8.1% of AMD, the Texan founder should be able to strengthen its R&D and improve its CPU manufacturing yields. This is true not only for CPUs, but also for ATI/AMD GPUs, in order to maintain the pressure on both Intel and nVidia.

[translation by Linathael]

- FB-DIMM Memory: Need for Low Voltage Modules - Eric - 09:31:58

Source : TGdaily

All Mac Pro owners can confirm that when FB-DIMM memories are fully loaded with processes, they rapidly become very hot, despite the huge integrated heat sink and the dedicated air flow designed to cool them down. The problem is mostly linked to the FB-DIMM architecture, each module featuring both memory chips as well as a dedicated CPU to manage exchange between the memory bus and the chips.
Overheating events leading to Kernel panics usually take place when large capacity modules are installed. To avoid such problem, hereafter are some tricks:
- avoid working in a warm environment
- leave some space between the back panel of the Mac Pro and the wall or any surface
- think of cleaning regularly the dust trapped in the air flow system, or on the components located in the Mac Pro.

You can also speed up the FB-DIMM dedicated fan via SMCFanControl 2.1. You will have to find the best compromise between noises and cool down efficiency. Probably the best application to monitor physical parameters inside your Mac Pro is Hardware Monitor (8,33€). One should keep in mind that such overheating events are usually only encountered with machines heavily loaded with processes, PCI Express cards and HDs

With the support of 800MHz FB-DIMM by the future Mac Pro revision, such frequency will not decrease the overheating tendency of such memory modules. Qimonda announced to have supplied its technology partner Supermicro with 2 GB configuration of low voltage 800MHz FB-DIMM for a demonstration at the ongoing Supercomputing Conference 2007 (SC07). Such modules are running at 1.5V instead of 1.8V, saving 20% of power consumption, and subsequently leading to lower heat release. However, one will need to update the chipset firmware in order to deliver only 1.5V to such modules, and one will have to identify if the subsequent lower performance level is worth saving on power consumption and heat release. There is currently no date for availability of such modules.

- GDDR5 around the Corner - Lionel - 09:29:00

Hynix introduced the first 1 Gigabit (128MB) GDDR5 DRAM chips.



Each 32-bits chip is able to operate at 5Gbps bandwidth and to process up to 20 GB/s of data. Depending on the graphic memory bus, data speed will evolve, from 160GB/s on a 256-bits bus, to 320GB/s on a 512-bits bus. With the latest memory bus, such chips will allow 2GB of VRAM to be managed on graphic cards.
If some users might think that this is a lot of memory for nothing, they should although consider that GPUs are currently used by OS X as well as Vista to boost display and rendering of both OSes. In addition, as the size of LCD panels will not keep increasing at a steady state, the future evolution in this field will be driven by higher resolution, always more pixels packed per inch, especially considering that doubling pixel density in both directions, the number of pixel to be managed is then 4 times higher.

[translation by Linathael]

- Google is Showing Interest in Mobile Telephony Again - Lionel - 05:18:27

Where will Google stop?
This is a question that everyone has asked for many years during which time the search giant has not ceased to grow larger and to consolidate its position and the revenue associated with it.
Since then, the company has begun diversifying it's activities, offering more and more internet services, although it remains dependent on internet service providers.
Its first real step towards other mediums than the computer is its Android project: an operating system for mobile phones. And it seems that Google hopes to launch it to the front of this market. The company will be willing to pay $4.6 billion to purchase a part of the 700Mhz frequency band that the United States government is going to auction off in 2008.
The stakes are high as these frequencies are interesting. Indeed, they have the advantage of offering an excellent range and permitting speeds interesting enough to imagine the emergence of a great number of communication products, which will most certainly contain the Google logo. It should be pointed out that the mobile market in the United States now approches $100 billion, so Google will most likely recover an important percentage of their investment.

[translation by jwa]

- Aluminum iMac Update - Lionel - 00:14:06

Apple has released an update to fix the video freezing problem which some people experienced on their 20" or 24" Aluminum iMac.
This update is not offered on all of these machines. It is only available for those machines that need it.
Note: For it to appear, it is necessary to have installed the iMac Software Update 1.2.1 in Tiger or the iMac Software Update 1.3 in Leopard.
It is a firmware update for the video card. Once the software is installed, it is necessary to run the "iMac Graphics Firmware Update" which is found in the Utilities folder.

[translation by jwa]