News for Wednesday, 18 June 2008

Engineers at the University of Michigan developed a processor whose consumption is particularly low.
The Phoenix, consumes only 30 PicoWatts in sleep mode, and 10 times less than ATOM under operation using a voltage of only 0,5V, a new record.
To reach at this result, they reduced the size of the power gates controlling the passage of the electrons and succeeded with better controlling the inevitable leakages which usually make it necessary to increase the voltage.
We do not know if these technologies will be usable in the production of CPUs for computers, but this is not the priority of the researchers who want to focus on medical implants or other monitoring systems which could, with tiny batteries, have a very long lifetime.

So as to occupy to the maximum the stage front while its competitors bring out their high performance video cards, Intel has revealed new information on its next architecture of processors called Nehalem.
One learns there thus that thanks to the integrated memory controller the data flow between the CPU and the RAM will reach the 32 GB/s, and 25 GB/s between two CPU placed on two different connectors.
To save on the maximum energy, the cores will be independent (like AMD does already) in voltage and frequency. It will be also the case for various components of the machine that will be able to manage their consumption and frequencies of operation in an independent way.
It is also necessary to become accustomed to the disappearance of the bus system that we have known for many years. They will be replaced by QuickPath system functioning with point-to-point protocol. Note that this feature is related to the processor, and it could be faster on the top-of-the-range models than on the others; these variations will be used to differentiate between the configurations and to justify a little the differences in price.

A reader has sent us the following information:
FNAC will soon send some of its employees for training at Orange so that they can master the mysteries of selling the iPhone. They could have them by July 17.
He has also obtained information on the tariffs of the devices, but without details, 99€ for the 8 GB, and 199€ for 16 GB, with the price of the naked iPhone starting at 499€.

Last december, Klausner Technologies has filed a suit against Apple and AT&T for a violation of one of Klausner's patents in the Visual Voicemail service.
But now an agreement has been reached among the parties involved: Apple has decided to buy a license for Klausner's patent. As usual in such cases, the price for that license was not mentioned.
Even more, Apple has also allowed them to sell the rights for that functionality to other companies, but only if Apple does not pay more to get the exclusive rights.

According to study and including 380 US developers, only 8% of them are currently working on Vista compatible project, while 49% are developing for Windows XP.
If there is not figures reported for Mac OS X, the study only indicates that the number of developers working for Mac OS X compatible applications increased by 380%. Good news for Apple, bad news for Microsoft.

Alex, one of our readers, sent us an email he just received from the .Mac team:

Dear .Mac member:
As you may know, your .Mac subscription is being upgraded to MobileMe, Apple's new Internet service for your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, and PC. This includes a new way to manage bookmarks across your computers and even push them over the air to your iPhone and iPod touch.
As part of the transition to MobileMe, web access to your .Mac Bookmarks will end in July 2008 and you will no longer be able to access or update your bookmarks at mac.com. Mac-to-Mac sync will not be affected.
To avoid losing any bookmarks saved on .Mac, please sync them with your Mac before June 30. This will ensure that MobileMe can keep all your bookmarks in sync going forward. Here's how: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1943
For more information on this transition, please visit the MobileMe FAQ.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1932
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
The .Mac Team

So, do not wait for the last minute for migrating your bookmarks.

As we already reported it, the new high-end HDs from Western Digital, known as Velociraptor, is not compatible with computers using trays to host their HDs, such as the Mac Pro.
As we wanted to test those drives, we have installed two Velociraptors (300 GB each) in a Mac Pro. We will not provide the procedure yet, as we did not find an easy way to complete the installation. However, below are 2 photos showing the drives.

In summary, we removed the huge cooling system from both Velociraptor, and installed copper-based heatsink. We then assembled both HDs together, and added a cooling system dedicated to 3.5” HD. We then installed such package in a 5.25” metal enclosure and fix it in the space located below the Superdrive of a Mac Pro. We then only needed to plug two SATA cables between the motherboard and the Velociraptors.
Below is the performance test of one Velociraptor:

When set as a RAID 0 volume, performance level is quite substantial:

To conclude, we challenged our heatsink system to further test its ability to keep the Velociraptors cool environment. For this purpose we ran sequential copies during 2 hours. The internal temperature probe never reached a temperature over the 39°C, demonstrating that such homemade installation was viable. Of course we would definitely prefer to see Western Digital releasing the Velociraptor in a format compatible with our Macs, as this drive is certainly the best model for Pro applications or users not willing to install a SAS.

The version 3 of Firefox 3 is now available for download from the following address:
http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx&lang=fr
It only weights 17.4 MB, demonstrating that an application does not need to be a large file to be properly coded.
As a reminder, Mozilla is trying for a Guinness World Record with the launch of Firefox 3 (number of download within 24 hours).

For a long time, the laptop was regarded as a second machine reserved people on the move, but one was obliged to have another principal machine.
The processors were the first to acquire enough power to break this myth. It is now the turn of the hard drives whose capacity has soared these last years.
Thus, Samsung now proposes the Spinpoint M6, a 2,5 " SATA disk that reaches 500 GB in a thickness of 9,5mm, that fits well the MacBook Pro 15 " and MacBook. This disk has 8 MB of cache and spins at 5400 rpm.
Our partner Macway provided a specimen to us, we assembled it in a MacBook Pro 15 " Santa Rosa.



As you note it, the disk is only 465,76 GB once fitted into the machine.
We quickly tested it, Its data transfer for read/write are rather good, exceeding the 65 MB/s at the beginning of disk, that is to say 15 of more than Western Digital 250 GB 5400 rpm which was inside the machine before.
Unless we put our ear onto the machine, it is inaudible even while being accessed.
Of course, the new generation of hard drives 7200 rpm of 320 GB must be more powerful, but if you make the choice based on the capacity, its performances will be amply sufficient.
The ideal of course is that Apple proposes one day to us a machine with two hard disks, (supplying a peripheral optical reader). In this case, one could dream of a SSD like disk system and a disk of 500 GB for the data. It would be in this case a strong competitor to the desktop machines!
You will find the article (in French) illustrating the change of disk of a MacBook Pro to the following address:http://www.hardmac.com/articles/61/