News for Friday, 29 August 2008

Via is a relatively small company designing and producing CPU, it was heavily quoted in news over the last few months as one of its CPU is powering the famous ASUS eEPC. Via is the main target of the forthcoming Intel ATOM processors. So one side we have AMD, Intel and Via for CPU, and on the other side ADM/ATI and NVidia for GPU. On this side, NVidia is expecting to compete with Intel Larrabee project thanks to its CUDA and GPGPU technologies aiming to use the huge raw processing power of GPU for some intensive tasks.
So, to face such competition, NVidia and Via decided to develop some partnership. NVidia will help Via to improve its nano processors. Such collaboration could allow NVidia and Via to offer in the future a hardware based on a mid-class CPU associated to several GPUs, the first one taking care of basic functions, while the second ones will manage display, rendering and heavy tasks.
For sure, we are at a technology road-cross as Intel is following the all-CPU strategy, while NVidia trust in an all-GPU future.

The race for offering the thinnest LCD panels for notebooks is almost now over, so manufacturers are looking to extend such technologies for LCD TV panels. If the size of the LCD TV has been over the last year the main marketing factor, one can not extend it further except to the cost of resolution/rendering.
So manufacturers had to find a new way to promote their models, and the thickness of the LCD TV is now the way to go. Sony announced the future availability (November) of a new ultra-thin LCD TV model, only 9.9 cm for only 12 kg! It will also feature a wireless tuner, so no direct wire between the panel and the rest of the hardware. It will cost around 3,000 Euro, a premium for a new and exclusive product.
This thickness record should not last that long as Philips already announced to have manufactures a backlighting system of only 1 mm thickness, making possible to produce 8cm thin LCD TV!!

So far GPGPU, or the ability to use GPU processing power for other tasks than display and rendering, has been essentially evaluated on Pc applications. Christophe Ducommun who offers the excellent shareware MovieGate has started to look into this technology to potentially integrate it in the version 3.0 of its software.
He has published on his blog the result of first tests. While using Core Video, Core Image, OpenGL and QuickTime, he could speed up its encoding from 25 fps when using only the CPU, to 60 fps when dedicating the task to a GeForce 8800 GT installed in a Mac Pro Quad 2.66 GHz. This is really interesting as the performance gain is obtained by only dedicating few tasks to the GPU. Open CL to be introduced with Snow Leopard should further improve such system.
For further information and reading Christophe's report, please follow the link: http://web.me.com/cducommun/Site...

So far, NVidia was refusing to license out SLI to other motherboard manufacturers and/or competitors. NVidia wanted to be the only one to offer its technology, associating specific chipset to the simultaneous use of two or more NVidia graphic cards. However, the future Intel chipset X58 should be natively compatible with SLI.
While Intel will have to have its chipset certified by NVidia, it should not be a problem. This was part of the deal for NVidia to obtain license for Nehalem-compatible chipset. For NVidia it is also a way to further promote CUDA as performance gain will be even higher if SLI. If we finally get optimized drivers, there should not be any hardware issues for us to get SLI in our future Xeon Nehalem-powered Mac Pro.

Hereafter is a report from one of our reader:

I looked at the preferences of the new beta version of Safari 4 seeded to developers. In the previous version we could select or not 64-bits addressing via get-info. This option disappeared in the last version seeded, and when looking in the info.plist file, one can discover that 64-bits requires at least Mac OS X 10.6...
It might indicate how Apple intends to promote/open 64-bits for previous version of Mac OS X...

There are currently two hypotheses for this change:
- Apple spotted problems for running 64-bits Safari 4.0 on current and previous version of Mac OS X, and will then restrict its compatibility with Snow Leopard while waiting for a patch for making it fully functional on previous OS X.
- Apple aims to lock Safari 4 to Snow Leopard to further define the difference between the current version of Mac OS X and its future evolution planned to be released by the end of the year.

A fault was discovered in firmware 2.0.2 of the iPhone.
In order to make the device secure and to avoid the imports that could reach the data, Apple proposes to lock it with a code that blocks the iPhone, only allowing emergency calls (this code is different from protection by PIN code of the SIM). However one finds that on the latest firmware, Apple forgot to deactivate the home key of the locked apparatus. It is thus possible, without entering the password, by pressing twice on this key to jump to the address book.
While waiting for the arrival of firmware 2.0.3 that will correct this fault, it is enough to modify the destination of this short cut in the preferences, by allocating, for example, the function iPod to it.
Apple have certainly done well with such a blunder at this time when the adversaries of its telephone make huge fires from any fault.

In a coincidence of the date, Microsoft has scheduled a press announcement on 9 September, when Apple is expected to present its new iPod.
Wanting to tease us, Microsoft merely published the following image inviting us to say goodbye to later.

Alas, Amazon Germany seems to have let the cat out of the bag and showed what should be announced.

On September 9th, Microsoft will present the first mouse without a red LED or a invisible laser, but with a blue LED which is expected to further improve the functioning of mice especially on difficult surfaces.
The future will tell us whether this new diode actually improves things or whether it is merely a way for Microsoft to set themselves apart from the competition.

Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) backlighting has two major inconveniences: they consume a lot of energy and manufacturing requires the use of mercury and arsenic, two poisons.
When Steve Jobs announced that Apple will be progressively abandoning this technology for LEDs even Greenpeace applauded the initiative.
Now, although LEDs do not use these metals, they contain Gallium Arsenide, which California has now placed on the list of potentially carcinogenic materials according to a publication of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Fortunately, there is no risk of Cancer from using a MacBook Pro. Rather, this is so that precautions for those who work in factories producing LEDs can be reenforced.