Thursday April 10, 2008

- The big manoeuvres around Yahoo continue - Lionel - 14:35:42

Source : AFP

In order to become too large to be swallowed by Microsoft, Yahoo! is negotiating a fusion of their internet activities with AOL.
The size of the new entity would be harder to digest for Microsoft, who would have to decide how they could swallow it whole.
Yahoo! will be also ready to start to repurchase part of its stock at a price higher than that proposed by Microsoft. The goal is here to drive up the price of their stock, and also to reassure those which hold them. Far from giving up, Microsoft would like to ally itself with News Corp to swallow Yahoo!

All is thus far from being finished in this business that is at risk of launching a second Internet bubble.

[translation by crispin]

- IBM announces the fastest Unix server in the world - Lionel - 14:23:21

Source : IBM

IBM announced the launch of its new power monster, the Power 595.
This server is based on the Power 6 processor running between 4,2 to 5 Ghz. It will be proposed in configurations going from 8 up to 64 cores; with 64 cores this will be the fastest Unix machine in the world.
To cool these monsters in a restricted space, IBM has chosen watercooling that one hopes is more long lasting than that of the Powermac G5.

Here are some additional figures to give you an idea of its capacities:
- Each processor has 8 cores and each core has 4MB of L2 cache and 32 MB of L3 cache per chip. Each CPU is associated with 16 or 32 memory connectors.
- There are 16 disk slots.
- There are 20 connectors PCI-X.
This very particular market segment allows IBM to continue to develop processors that have a very high performance and a strong added value.

[translation by crispin]

- Details on the new iPhone 3G to Come - Lionel - 12:52:50

TG Daily is not really a rumors-type of website, and one should consider information published as reliable. According to them, Apple would release 2 version, with the same price tag, 399 USD for the 8GB unit and et 499 USD for the 16 GB model. An optional version featuring 32 GB of storage space would cost 100 USD more.
The iPhone 3G would be thinner than the first revision (2.5mm less) and its design slightly revisited to eliminate as much as possible the "plastic-touch" of some part of the device. The accelerometer sensor might have been tuned while the remaining GUI and software part would remain unchanged; otherwise it would have made developer's life a nightmare with a just not fully released iPhone SDK...
the new version of the iPhone will most likely be unveiled by Steve jobs during the WWDC Keynote in June.


[translation by Linathael]

- The iPhone will soon be compatible with the PS3 - Lionel - 11:16:51

Source : http://www.macworld.co.uk

The company NetBlender specialized in Blu-ray technologies should announce today a new technology called the BD Touch.
It will make it possible to use an iPhone or an iPod Touch as a remote control for a Blu-ray reader(such as the PS3).
It will be possible to interact with films, the bonus, and even (if the studios agree) to transfer the contents from the disk in the device.

[translation by crispin]

- Maybe the Cell will get into our Macs through the back door - Lionel - 07:27:04

Almost simultaneously with Toshiba's abandonment of the HD-DVD format, it was learned that Sony had agreed to sell their manufacturing equipment to them to produce the Cell processors and to give them 60% share of a joint venture based on this processor.

Some see this as a compensation or an incentive for Toshiba to throw in the towel quickly. Toshiba had not joined the Blu-ray camp and had announced that they wanted to focus on the online distribution of HD media.

They intend to propose accelerator cards using the Cell processor. They will be able to decode and encode the MPEG-2 and H.264 on the fly and will be in the form of PCI-Express cards.
In order to reduce the consumption of this processor, Toshiba will run them at 1.5 GHz (versus 3.2 GHz in the PS3), a frequency sufficient for this use, allowing the power drawn to remain between 10 and 20W.

Thus, with drivers developed for Mac, one could also have access to this kind of product, and rediscover a little of the knowledge to make IBM run in our Macs.

[translation by crispin]