Wednesday, December 21, 2005

POWER to the people

POWER to the people: "Released in 2003: 276 million transistors per processor
Like the POWER3 and POWER4, the POWER5 unifies the POWER and PowerPC architectures. The POWER5 is also based on the 130-nanometer copper/SOI process, and features communications acceleration, chip multiprocessing, a larger L2 cache, a memory controller on the chip, simultaneous multithreading, advanced power management, eFuse (morphing) and hypervisor technology. IBM servers built with the POWER5 feature up to ten LPARs capable of running up to 256 independent operating systems on the higest end. POWER5 processors can be found hanging about in iSeries and pSeries servers, as well as in the first IBM entry-level UNIX/Linux box, the OpenPower? line. IBM introduced the POWER5+? processors, which are built with a 90-nanometer process similar to that used with the Cell Broadband Engine, in 2005. POWER5+ ups the clockspeed significantly -- on a smaller die"

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Visual C++ Developer Center: 64-Bit Programming

Visual C++ Developer Center: 64-Bit Programming: "Program Manager Kang Su Gatlin from the Visual C++ compiler team talks about 64-Bit programming a"

Thursday, December 08, 2005

My Way News

My Way News: " U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high - 77.6 years - and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday.
Still, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group - including the oldest of the baby boomers - have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese"

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

IBM eServer x366

IBM eServer x366: "Up to 64GB DDR II ECC memory"

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered - Intel Focusing On 45 nm Now

Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered - Intel Focusing On 45 nm Now: "Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered "

Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered - Intel Focusing On 45 nm Now

Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered - Intel Focusing On 45 nm Now: "These presentations included a short tour to the top-notch 65 nm production facility Fab D1D "

Sun Looks for a Sparc

Sun Looks for a Sparc: "The servers are based on Sun's UltraSparc T1 processor, formerly code-named Niagara, which the company initially had planned to release in 2006. The first T1-based systems available are the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000, which start at $3,000 and $8,000, respectively. "

The Real Story about Sun's Niagara

The Real Story about Sun's Niagara: "The Real Story about Sun's Niagara"

Monday, November 28, 2005

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too FarThose keys have security permissions that only allow the Local System account to modify them, so I relaunched Regedit in the Local System account using PsExec: psexec ?s ?i ?d regedit.exe

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

AnandTech: Inside Microsoft's Xbox 360

AnandTech: Inside Microsoft's Xbox 360: "The CPU itself features three of these PowerPC cores and is currently manufactured on a 90nm process, however Microsoft will most likely be transitioning to 65nm as soon as possible in order to reduce the die size and thus manufacturing costs. "

IBM Holds Servers

IBM Holds Servers: " revenue decline by 7.6%, and lost its third-place standing to Dell "

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Mac Rumors: Intel forms 'Apple' Group

Mac Rumors: Intel forms 'Apple' Group: "that Intel Corp. has formed an internal 'Apple group'."

Intel Faces Increased Risk From Flash-Memory Venture - Forbes.com

Intel Faces Increased Risk From Flash-Memory Venture - Forbes.com: "We believe Micron gross margins for its NAND business were roughly 20% in its most recent quarter, well below Intel's gross margins of 61%.' "

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Read two biometrics, get worse results - how it works | The Register

Read two biometrics, get worse results - how it works | The Register: "Daugman produces the calculations governing the use of two hypothetical biometrics, one with both false accept and false reject rates of one in 100, and the second with the two rates at one in 1,000. On its own, biometric one would produce 2,000 errors in 100,000 tests, while biometric two would produce 200. You can treat the use of two biometrics in one of two ways - the subject must be required to pass both (the 'AND' rule) or the subject need only pass one (the 'OR' rule). Daugman finds that under either rule there would be 1,100 errors, i.e. 5.5 times more errors than if the stronger test were used alone.
He concludes that a stronger biometric is therefore better used alone than in combination, but only when both are operating at their crossover points. If the false accept rate (when using the 'OR' rule) or the false reject rate (when using the 'AND' rule) is brought down sufficiently (to 'smaller than twice the crossover error rate of the stronger test', says Daugman) then use of two can improve results. If we recklessly attempt to put a non-mathemetical gloss on that, we could think of the subject having to pass two tests (in the case of the 'AND') rule of, say, facial and iris. Dropping the false reject rate of the facial test (i.e. letting more people through) in line with Daugman's calculations would produce a better result than using iris alone, but if the facial system rejects fewer people wrongly, then it will presumably be accepting more people wrongly."

Hyperthreading hurts server performance, say developers - ZDNet UK News

Hyperthreading hurts server performance, say developers - ZDNet UK News: "Hyperthreading hurts server performance"

Monday, November 14, 2005

My Way News

My Way News: "The UltraSparc T1 processor, code-named Niagara, has eight computing engines on a single chip, "