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« Computer News from April 2005 »

NEWS 2005, April


Toshiba and Sony to talk over a single hi-def DVD format
According to this PC Pro article it sounds like the new Sony leader has his head screwed on!

Howard Stringer as CEO of Sony appears to have broken the ice. Stringer is believed to be less concerned with Sony's proprietary technology than the technically-minded executives who ran Sony before him. He also has close relationships with Hollywood bosses.

As I, and many others have said for years, this is just a childish battle over who's dad is the best, lorded over by suits who couldn't give a monkey, as long as 'their' technology is the one that gets all the licence fees.

It is (was?) a fight no-one but the overpaid children in suits wanted. Certainly not consumers who would have voted with their wallet and chosen neither. Definitely not the major movie studios (pushed by their own suits) desperate for them to reach a compromise over high-definition DVD formats, so they can get on with pumping out lucrative, cinema quality films…

Most of you will be too young to recall the nonsense of the last format wars, though I'll bet your parents grumble if you mention it. The main contenders were Philip's with the V2000 (which, incidentally was the better of the three main technologies) verses Sony's Betamax verses JVC's VHS (which was the worst of the them). Several reasons were given for VHS winning in the end, but I'm with the one that claims it was because VHS had the most video films - easily three or four times it's nearest competitor and, given the number of rental stores that sprang up…

Technology snapshot, and my tuppence worth:

Are we seeing a picture here?
Apparently Hollywood wants to release 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'The Bourne Supremacy' as the first high-definition releases this year. Hollywood includes SonyPictures mind, so, licences aside, it has a conflicting interest to get it's product out the door too.

The way I see it HD-DVD has won this time around. The PS3 will probably still use Blu-ray, while HD-DVD goes mass market first with PC's, then with set-top players and recorders - that's hardly palatable for Sony. Blu-ray still has a few benefits, and it's all about patents at the end of the day - plus they are already working of the replacements in the back labs. So, if the players are sensible - IF - this is what I can see happening. If possible, they will marry any overlapping licences and technologies for this generation, then do a full license swap agreement for the 100Gb to 1Tb units they are working on. By the time these come out, around 2012, the world will be full swing digital, with HDTV the standard and streamed broadband video messaging commonplace.

Convergence is the key, and I think Sony will play along this time for the long term benefits where, I firmly believe, it will triumph.



AMD dual-core Opteron prices
Compliments of Digitimes and Xbit labs, via Taiwanese manufacturers, we have the following guide prices, with a release date of this Thursday, 21st for the 800 and 200 series, and the 100's put at autumn. Apparently the initial Opteron 200 and 800 series will probably be introduced at speeds of 1.80GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.20GHz with 95W thermal design power.

Prices for current AMD processors are here. For comparison, here's a few of this month's current prices:



Further AMD Dual core details: 64 X2
Largely from XBit Labs, I gather the initial dual-core desktop chips processors will be entitled AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, with similar labels for the 4600+ and 4800+ versions. The value, it seems is the operating speed (ie 2.40GHz for the best) doubled, on account there's two cores.

The site also reports that the upcoming processors will have a dual-channel DDR memory controller, 1 or 2MB L2 cache (either 512KB or 1MB of cache per core). As I mentioned earlier after speaking to them myself, it should fit existing into Socket 939 mainboards, subject to a BIOS update, and - (caveat time) - provided that they were made according to all AMD’s thermal and voltage guidelines.


Adobe to buy Macromedia
OK, have to say, never saw that one coming, nope! Anyway, in a friendly merger, subject to all the usual regulatory rules, Adobe Systems is acquiring Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. Interestingly, Macromedia's home page says they are to 'join forces' and directs you to the same press release at Adobe. It struck me as curious that they never had the statement, or one of their own, on their own website. Oh well.

It will be interesting to see where GoLive! fits into the equation. Personally I'm happy with a text editor, but the idea of merging all the best features of Dreamweaver and GoLive in one package is delightful.

Staying with Adobe for a moment, Creative Suite 2 is available for pre-order and will ship next month. Very nice it looks too.


Windows XP 64 and Longhorn
Windows XP 64 first. I never got an exact date when I spoke to some of their staff, but the release version is included in the latest 'Action Packs' sent to partners, partners being consultants like myself, rather than just giants like Dell. In real terms, it means it will be hitting the streets in the next few weeks, if not sooner.

Going to Longhorn, trade news has it that the beta will go to delevopers in June, with a more general beta release around October or oveber, leaving it more or less on target for release mid 2006.


Latest trade gossip ~ 17th:

AMD, double pace fast march for the Dual cores!
I was looking at four processor Tyan boards - labelled as '8 way motherboards' - and picking the brains of a few AMD staff at the CTO trade show. Dual-core Opterons will be available to buy next month, with dual core Athlon 64's in the shops for this July. I was expecting the first one's to be FX based but, apparently, the beast won't exist.

Actually, I thought one of the people I talked to was rather rude, dismissing the FX as 'just a gamers chip.' My bad, CAD users and graphic designers obviously have no use for the chips benefits like 128 bit memory controller over the 64 bit on the standard AMD 64.
Pttt!

I was also tad dismayed that they didn't have any running. Or it there was, it was behind closed doors. Anyway, while there's no guarantees, apparently existing motherboards should be able to run perfectly with just a BIOS update from the boards manufacturer.

There were sessions on the future of 3D graphics and on AMD64's plans, but I was that busy gossiping I missed them. What can I say, I haven't worn a watch in years!



Dual core Intel's shows it's face(s)
No date yet for Intel's dual core chip, but Dell are already taking advance orders for them, with shipping set as being "in a few weeks". You can read a review of the Dimension XPS Gen 5 here at PC Mag.
The specifications include:

'Looks the business', as the saying goes, and I certainly would never turn one down, although I'm looking to AMD for my next, myself.   Amazingly though, sycophantically so I thought, they gave it 100% in every category (in video, gaming, music and video)! Methinks the viewers gets to keep the toy…

I mean, come on, 100% means 'no room for improvement'. The insides looked cluttered, there was absolutely no mentioned of heat or noise issues, no comment that, nice as LCD's are, they don't deliver the goods as well as a CRT monitor.
Smiley Boggle! Oh yes, how can you claim it's 100% the best, ever - without mentioning or even showing the soundcard and speakers. Well d'oh!



Maxtor SATA-300's - Or not…
Have to say, I was a bit miffed about one distributor's AMD showcase apparently showing a Maxtor SATA-II 300 harddrive. As I only use and recommend Seagate myself I'm not deeply familiar with other brands. And yes, I did ask and was told, yep it's a SATA-300. Needless to say, at the time is both confused me and really annoyed me as I fully expected Seagate to tell me first.

Didn't help that I kept missing the Seagate techie I wanted to talk too. Anyway, as this .pdf shows, it turns out that the 7B300S0 is a Maxline III, a standard SATA/150, albeit with a few SATA-II features on the controller card, which is nothing new. Doesn't detract that it was impressive demonstration, running Nvidia's mermaid, but if there's one thing that drives me mental it's ignorance and/or misinformation in the trade.


NEC HD-DVD

NEC HD-DVD Don't know about Blu-ray devices, but I have it on good authority that NEC will have HD-DVD devices to market in mass for summer. Backwards compatible with existing DVD's, of course. Writers coming too, naturally. Can't wait!




XBox 2 news
Games Industry .biz have several newsbytes on the upcoming X-Box replacement, including the announcement that it will be formally announced over MTV on May 12th, with up to 3 million units released by Christmas.

One leading analyst put the price at '$249 to $299, but, unless there's a cut down entry level model, I reckon this is way of the mark. Off course, a lot depends of the final, set in stone, specs, but just the fact that it's possible it will feature a HD-DVD put's the price way past that, never mind the networking, broadband and hard drive components. We shall see.

Incidentally, if such things interest you, other pages on the site claim the name of Xbox's successor is Xbox 360. It it purported to have a concave shape, with a simple, round nexus with "Xbox 360" written inside it for the logo. All housed in a platinum-white box.


ATI X800XT All-in-Wonder
While I know such a creature exists, I was starting to think it was just some single unit scam in the vein of, "see, we can do it", then sweep it under the rug. Happily, I can announce, albeit as first-hand gossip, that they will start to filter into the market next month, with vendors SapphireTech and Connect 3D possibly your first port of call.

There's a raft of AGP cards in the vein of the X800XT and up too, but - and the techs I spoke too in the same mind - I don't get it. OK, maybe from a marketing point of view, but really, what the point in putting a £300 card in what is essentially an obsolete bus slot? *Shrugs*
Ah, I see, it will make the old machine faster. Have to point out here, putting a Ferrari gearbox in your Volvo wouldn't turn it into a racecar, nope!





Dual-core Opterons may be ready to roll now
AMD stole Intel's thunder being first to roll 1Ghz CPU's. Now, it appears, AMD are real keen to beat Intel to the punch and steal all the glory for being first to market with dual core processors too.

Reading into this article at The Inquirer and other gossip I've heard from the likes of DigiTimes et al, several vendors are preparing one, two and four/eight way dual core Opteron machines, probably initially clocking at 2.2GHz.


ATI's R520 'Fudo' card to support 32 pipelines
Staying with 'The Inquirer' was another article with news of ATI's upcoming cutting edge graphics card. It is initially expected to start with 24 pipes linked and will have over 300 million transistors. As is ever the case, I suspect fully populated 28 and 32 pipe versions will be available in very small numbers under Extreme and Ultra labels, with 'lowly' 16 pipe cards filling the mid-market end.

Not something I'd contemplate, but the mere idea of a pair of these SLI'd for 64 lanes of graphics already appears to have a few of the overclocking fraternity dribbling drool down their nitrogen coolers!



Google's little Urchin!
Google has bought up web analysis specialist Urchin, speculating that they might offer a free cut down version for webmasters in a similar way to the Picasso they released.

Given the current version of Urchin's amazing 'On Demand' tool is enterprise class and starts at a hefty $495 a month, it's out of most users price range. Urchin 5.7 is a more respectable one off $895 charge, but still requires admin rights to the web server. Clearly even the idea of a mass market version of this logging software will have webmasters like myself biting at the bit to try…



Of interest to some:
Inquirer's Intel desktop CPU crib sheet guide