News for Saturday, 14 June 2008

AMD talks up its new platform for laptops primarily thanks to the ability to connect on these machines an external video card via a NCV-Express train 8x connector. The card can then be used to connect an external screens or to accelerate integrated video.
Proof that they are pushing this platform is that they have signed a one year exclusive contract with JAE, the company which developed this connector.
Intel are a bit behind in the field of the video on portables compared to its competitors. All now propose solutions that use, in addition to the video integrated into the chipset, another more powerful chip that can be activated/deactivate when battery life is not crucial. They aim further with Larrabee, where it will be possible to choose the number of video cores that can be activated according to the required power.

Currently we are living through a wave of advertisements of SSD disks. Each manufacturer puts forward more or less enticing figures for data transfer speeds and also for the lifespan.
In order to keep everyone honest, Taiwanese manufacturers have decided to create the SSD Alliance; the goal is to define standard tests so that everyone speaks the same language and that the customers can really compare the products.
They have already brought out version 1.0 these tests, based on those practised by the JEDEC, the authority charged with defining the standards of random access memory; they invite the maximum number of manufacturers to join them.
One will be able to thus know if a MTBF of 4 million hours means that the disk will function at full capacity for tens of years or if, after this period, the capacity has deteriorated to a single byte.