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AMD Drops Prices On Certain Chips
As AMD casually outed their new processor pricing lists. Over all AMD dropped the Athlon series between 2 and 25 percent based on the model. The highly sought after Athlon II X4 645 dropped from $112 to $102 and the eco-friendly 605e dropped from $122 to $98. Dual core and triple core Athlons were shown love as well with cuts between 3 and 12 percent, and 5 and 25 percent respectively.
There are many Phenom deals as well with the dual-core 560 dropping from $102 to $90 bucks. The EE quad-core 905e processors got a price drop around $65.00 dollars bringing the price to $100.00. AMD’s much touted 9xx Black Edition saw roughly a 10 percent price drop too with the flagship Phenom II X6 discounted from $239 to $205.
‘Do Not Track’ Internet Legislation, Advances
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California is a moving closer to making into law the first Do Not Track legislation in the U.S., aimed at protecting Internet users from invasive advertising.
The proposed Senate bill, SB-761, passed a Senate Judiciary Committee vote late Tuesday, but it still has a long road ahead before having a chance of being signed into law. It now moves on to the Appropriations Committee, and must also pass the Senate and State Assembly before being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.
Still, it’s the first time such a bill has made it out of committee, and that’s a big deal, according to John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “This is the first time that a ‘do not track’ bill has actually had a hearing and been debated and then voted forward in the legislative process,” he said.
The bill would give California consumers a simple way of opting out of data collection systems that keep track of their online activities. “It puts up a no trespassing sign on our device,” Simpson said.
Opponents of the bill, including Google, the Direct Marketing Association, and the wireless industry group CTIA, say it puts an unnecessary burden on online commerce.
Online marketers love this type of data because it helps them fashion highly effective targeted advertising. But many consumers don’t want to hand marketers every detail of what they do on the Web.
Under the proposed law, users would have a way — possibly a through a browser setting — of telling Web sites not to track them. If a company disregarded this and collected data without permission, it could face stiff fines.
Apple Outs Patch For Tracking Issue
May 6, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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As Apple promised last week in several discussions regarding its location tracking issues, iOS 4.3.3 addresses three bugs related to the database of location information on iOS devices. Firstly, it reduces the amount of the cached location information to a week’s worth, rather than relying on a size limit, as it previously did.
Secondly, it no longer backs up the cache to your Mac or PC via iTunes upon syncing, so the information isn’t available to anyone with access to your computer. And finally, the cache is now deleted from the device when Location Services are disabled in iOS’s Settings app.
Apple has also announced plans to encrypt the location information on iOS devices itself in the next major update to the operating system, which presumably means it will be incoporated into iOS 5.
The iOS 4.3.3 update applies to the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, third-generation iPod touch, and the fourth-generation iPod touch. Exceptions to this fix though, are the iPhone 3G and the second-generation iPod touch, both of which were supported by the original release of iOS 4 when the location database is believed to have been created but have since been dropped from compatibility. Also missing in action is the CDMA iPhone 4, although some reports have suggested that it didn’t log data in the same way as the GSM model.
AMD Outs Phenom II X4 980
AMD just let the world see the glory of its processor prowess with the introduction of its fastest quad-core processor; which is called the Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition.
The chip is said to run at a lightning fast 3.7GHz. The processor is also features a 6MB of L3 cache and a 125W TDP. Like previous Black Edition processors, the new Phenom is unlocked, which will also those techies to freely overclock the Phenom over 4GHz with no issues.
Intel Developing Thunderbolt Technology
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A new interconnect technology being developed by Intel could be ready for market by 2015 and will be able to move data between computers at up to five times the speed of its recently launched Thunderbolt technology, an Intel researcher said earlier this week.
The new technology uses silicon photonics, which combines silicon components with optical networking, to transfer data at up to 50 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters, said Jeff Demain, strategy director of circuits and system research at Intel Labs, at a company event in New York.
Intel expects the technology to be ready for use in PCs, tablets, smartphones, televisions and other products by 2015, Demain said. As well as being faster than today’s interconnect technologies, it’s expected to lower costs because the components will be built using existing silicon manufacturing processes.
The technology could possibly be used in TVs and set-top boxes to carry video streams at much higher definition than those available today. Image resolution is likely to quadruple by the middle of the decade, when successors to 1080p have arrived, and that will mean more data has to be pushed to the TV.
It should also enable faster data transfers between smartphones, tablets, PCs and peripherals such as external storage drives.
The technology still has a way to go, but Intel showed its progress at the event in New York Wednesday. It showed what it said were working prototypes of the silicon chips used to transmit and receive the laser signals.
PC Sales Up This Year
The research firm Canalys is stating that overall worldwide PC sales grew by seven percent last quarter. The firm is report believes the Apple’s iPad was the main factor for the increase. Nevertheless, the jury is still out on whether a tablet can be considered a true PC.
According to Canalys, tablet shipments in the first quarter of 2011 were 6.4 million units and Apple had a 74 percent share. Be advised, Android tablet sales are expected to increase in the later part of 2011.
In the world of true PC’s like laptops, desktops and netbooks, HP is still the king, with 14.6 million units shipped and a 16.6 percent share. While Acer is second, with a 12.8 percent share and 11.3 million units sold last quarter. In reference to year-on-year sales, overall Acer sales saw a drop of 5.8 percent and 6.5 percent respectively. Dell was close on the heels of Acer at third with an 11.3 percent share, and sales of 10 million units and 2.8 percent growth.
ARM Has Explosive Quarter
ARM is kicking but this quarter by reporting another yet another quarter yesterday, their sales were up 26 percent year-over-year.
The revenues for ARM hit $191 million, with a profit of about $35.5 million. Unfortunately, the bad currency exchange rates reduced the profit to $20.3 million.
Analysts are estimating that about 1.85 billion ARM-licensed chips were manufactured this quarter and global shipments are expected to surpass 8 billion units by the end of the year, making ARM a part of the billion dollar club.
The sales were driven by the strong demand for smartphones and tablets which ARM owns a considerable share of the market since many manufacturers use their processors like the Cortex.
2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
April 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor. The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.
Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets. Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance. Our question is what will the performance be based upon?
Intel’s 22nm MIC To Debut Soon
Word on the street is that Intel may debut their first Many Integrated Core (MIC) using its upcoming 22nm process technology and expects to have more than 100 developer sites for MIC by the end of 2011.
Intel’s MIC micro-architecture is expected to be used for highly parallel applications in the high end computing arena such as scientific exploration and research and weather modelling. Just like its competitors such as AMD’s FireStream or Nvidia’s Tesla, Intel is not fond of MIC replacing processors.
During his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Intel’s Kirk Skaugen, VP of Architecture and GM said that compatibility with x86 will give MIC certain advantages. Kirk also went on to say that MIC would act like a co-processor where you can use the same compilers, the same tools, and the same VTunesthat power.
Intel Z68 Chipset Coming
Sources in the tech industry are claiming that the Z68 chipset from Intel is scheduled to debut on May 8th.
The Z68 is specifically designed for high-end Sandy Bridge processors since it is equipped with additional features that are apparently absent on current P67 and H67 boards.
The Z68 is said to have improved overclocking performance, in addition to support for RST SSD caching and a slew of extra enhancements geared towards the high-end markets.