News for Monday, 21 May 2007

Last February, when we were among the first to install and test 2 pre-release Quad Core Xeon 5355 in a Mac Pro we could demonstrate that such raw power will mostly be useful for Pro users performing numerous parallel task or requiring intensive multitasking. We were also strongly advising to wait before performing such CPU upgrade as the retail price of such CPUs was simply too high to be justified.
According to Digitimes, Intel should cut prices of Quad Core Xeons on July 22nd, together with desktop and mobile CPUs as we already reported about. Prices should drop by 40 to 60%, making the update of a Dual Core Mac Pro to a Quad Core Mac Pro financially interesting: price of a Quad Core 2.66GHz Xeon 5355 will shift down to US$744, in other word 50% less than its current price. More interestingly for users mostly using multicore aware applications, such as the recent audio and video editing solutions from apple, the lowered clocked version of Quad Core Xeon will be "cheap" (Xeon E5310: US$209, E5320: US$256, E5335: US$316).

If AMD preserved its market share for desktop CPU by cutting its price, the Texas-based company could not compete on the mobile CPU market against Intel Centrino platform. Taking into account the explosion of notebook market, this is financially not good news for AMD. So, the company could not let Intel run the mobile world without any reactions. It was unveiled under the code name Puma. This platform will be powered by new CPU named Griffin based on a revised and power-optimized K8 architecture. Those new CPUs will be engraved at 65nm, while frequency, voltage and power consumption can be modified in real-time depending on the CPU loading. If the CPU architecture is not really new, the remaining parts of the platform are really innovative. The chipset will be using PCI-Express 2.0 and many components will communicate to each other via HyperTransport 3.0 (Power Mac G5 were using the first version of this interface). thanks to the purchase of AMD, the integrated video chipset will manage hardware-decoding of HD video H.264 or VC-1, while playing BD and HD-DVD contents almost without requesting CPUs usage.
One will of course be able to add a true dedicated GPU, to deliver more demanding 3D power, however depending on the type of usage, the system will be able to shift from the dedicated GPU to the integrated video chipset to save power. Like Intel, AMD added some flash-based memory to its mobile motherboard to save power by reducing HD request/access and speeding up system and application launches.
Puma is expected for 2008, and if Apple will probably not move from Intel to AMD, it will push Santa Clara's giant to keep innovating to maintain both its leadership and Cupertino among its customers. The price of the Centrino platform components will also probably be lowered to compete with AMD at the price level too.

Last week, Microsoft announced to have already distributed 40 millions licenses for Vista, even though Redmond's giant did not comment on the tricks used to push OEM to replace XP by Vista, and other coupons and discounts to update to Vista.
At the same time, Microsoft announced that Open Source projects, including Linux, were violating 235 of its software patents. This came as a surprise, as Microsoft is rather known for copying good ideas from others; and Open Source leaders quickly asked Microsoft to release the complete list of violation providing details about infringements. But so fat without any serious answer. So, Open Source leaders fired back to Microsoft, claiming that this announcement was simply untrue, and that Vista code was probably also using parts of instructions or technologies protected by third-parties patents; especially taking into account the amazing number of patents issued for concepts or featuring broad claims.
It seems that Microsoft is not really willing to directly attack Linux and Open Source, but rather push companies using such solutions to move to MS-branded products or support potential legal actions.

The French website Hardware.fr announce that Acer would release in Europe a 24" LCD display which could well be a huge success while pushing prices for such devices down.
It features a 24" TN panel in 16:10, with a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, responsiveness 5ms, a contrast 1000:1, and brightness: 400 cd/m2; while supporting connection via VGA or DVI. The latest is HDCP compliant so it can be connected to Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs players. Its expected price should be around 500€.
If Acer can do it, other companies can do it too, as there are not many LCD manufacturers on the market. Buying a non DHCP compliant LCD display would be considered today a mistake as it would not allow you to render full HD when playing a BD or HD-DVD video content.
Apple is probably the last company not having included the support for blue laser-based media in its hardware yet. So, will it be added to 10.4.10 or should we wait for Leopard?

A report from Pascal.

Thanks to my son and its Nintendo Wii, I discovered the Wii remote control and tried to use it to be connected to my Mac. When I started looking around, I found a Darwin project:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=183966&package_id=214095
This utility lets you:
1) recover all information from the Wiimote giving you the possibilities to develop scripts and applications for your Mac.
2) emulate a mouse thanks to the IR pointer.
For using the IR pointer, one needs an IR bar as the one below for US$20:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8267396&st=wii&lp=2&type=product&cp=1&id=1170290206406
Once plugged and configured it works fine. I did not try to use it with Front Row as it can be a solution for those not willing to immediately invest in a new Mac or purchase an Apple IR remote control.

The driver available in version 0.5 is really working fine and already available in Universal Binaries.