Revolution again?

Do you like something innovative? For example first smartphone fully open sourced and based on Linux. I don’t think that anyone can be surprised by mp3 player. But what about this one? It is called Cowon D2 and it has several innovative features. Which one? Just look at the picture

Nothing innovative? It just looks like nothing interesting. This is first player which has touchscreen! And not small touchscreen like my watches, but really big one. Almost like on Pocket PC. Of course with such screen this device can play videos. No high-def, but do you need it? Let’s look on it’s specifications taken from product’s page:

Here we see 2.5 inch touchscreeen as I told you. Other is usual stuff for portable mp3 player. 52 hours for playback is a lot. I don’t think it’s true, but I hope for good things. What’s next:

Specifications are usual for such sort of players. What can I mention is that Cowon D2 supports not only mp3 and wma, but flac, ogg, ape. Another company that produces player with multi support is iRiver. There are several editions of Cowon D2. Black and white as you see on the picture. And 2 GB and 4 GB editions.

If all of what I have written impresses you - run and buy it. As for me - I’ll stay without player. Read books

Written by mente on April 12th, 2007 with no comments.
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ATI Intergrates Everything in Video Cards?

The Inquirer called it SECRET WEAPON. I call it nonsense. ATI wants to integrate computer in single video card?! For what reason? I have no thoughts, but I hope it won’t happen.
Some information on this news: R600 will have sound on-board. Nothing spectacular, but High-Definition sound. Video card’s performance doesn’t suffer, because sound will be made on the dedicated chip. The sound signal can be transmitted via HDMI both with video signal. Already known that Realtek will produce chips for ATI. You can check it by visiting download drivers page on Realtek site

Look at the bottom of the image. See? Driver is released. Wait for video card . Of course it’s still rumours, but who knows… In the end is new image of video card with R600 implemented.

I don’t think R600 will be released really soon, as I wrote before. Of course if this post is true. Have a nice day

Written by mente on April 6th, 2007 with no comments.
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Having R600 or G80 Onboard Means Many-cored System?

Some sage from IT market is afraid that soon there won’t be war between Nvidia and ATI. It doesn’t mean there won’t this companies. According to TheInquirer GPU vs. CPU wars will start soon. I can’t decline this preposition. Future graphic cards will have such powerful GPUs that they can substitute CPU. Of course if you use OS just to launch game. If you archive something or encode video forget about this future.

Now something becomes obvious. Why did AMD buy ATI? Because they wanted to develop chipsets for their own processors? Right and wrong. Maybe right, but not exactly. Also AMD wants to come to graphics market. They can use CPU technologies for GPU in future and GPU technologies in discrete graphics. Uniting GPU and CPU technology they can get Combo unit. Intel and Nvidia will be an outsiders. Nvidia have never made CPUs and Intel has just come to this market. AMD has experienced stuff for this. And ATI didn’t cost too much, as Nvidia. As we know ATI was losing the fight for top graphics card when AMD bought it. Telling truth they are losing now, but not in future. AMD has wise chiefs and I hope you understand what I want to share with

Written by mente on April 3rd, 2007 with no comments.
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Disaster?

Time changes everything. IT market is changing frequently than others.But basic tendency stays the same - development and new achievements. Financial side of IT market was the same for last years. There were losers and winners, geniuses and idiots.

Even IT market had a stable time. When nothing revolutionary was invented or introduced. Just developing of existing achievements. This development has one big disadvantage - once it will stop. Now it happens with financial side of IT market. Resellers don’t know what to do. They don’t have anything new, extraordinal. The best they can offer is big sweet box, in which your new video card is (for example). No new functions, gadgets. How can you differ Sapphire from Gigabyte on the graphics card market? Except box there are no differences, I bet. Resellers exist just for financial purposes. The worst is that resellers can’t do anything. They depend on company-manufacturers. If company-manufacturer can’t invent anything else, what will you do? Several resellers decide to make new own products. For example, notebooks, like TheInquirer said. Bad tendency, but what can you do? If you won’t provide something new you are eaten by competitors. Cruel world, but it is real world

Written by mente on March 19th, 2007 with no comments.
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Laptop and Desktop Comparison

Several weeks ago I had a choice to change my own desktop to same-cost laptop. I have made my choice and I want to share gathered information with you. This is some sort of review. Several paragraphs were written on my PPC, when I was underground going home, so mistakes can be found. I hope this article will help your choice, like it helped me.

I must warn you - I have made some limits. Desktop’s or laptop’s price mustn’t be over $1000. Also I don’t consider Apple products such as Mac book, PowerBooks, etc. Desktop has installed Microsoft Windows. So laptop has. Nothing extra ordinal in configurations.

(more…)

Other Resources: Best Laptops Compare Laptops & price in Australia

Written by mente on February 19th, 2007 with no comments.
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Many-cored processor is the key to high performance?

On Sunday in San Francisco Intel has shown experimental processor, which has 80 cores. Cores are common, the main plot is many cores. At the beginning Intel has shown processor working at 0.95 volts. Frequency was 3.16 Ghz and power consumption approximately 62 watts. The performance was amazing - 1.01 TFlops for one processor! Increasing the voltage processor frequency has been increased to 5.1 Ghz. Power consumption also has increased to 175 watt. Increased to 5.7 Ghz processor has shown a record of 1.8 TFlops for single processor. Power consumption was at the level of 275 watts. For example the highest performance computer has 65536 processors and can provide performance approximately 370 TFlops. So just two hundred Intel’s processor can beat the mightiest computer on the planet Earth.

Intel won’t make 80-cored processor public ever. It’s a prototype for future models. Serial model will have maximum of 16 cores, but even with them it is highly performed processor. Maybe Intel will even use technologies tested on this processor to make processor with integrated graphics. One or several cores will help to make it.

Written by mente on February 12th, 2007 with no comments.
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China has own processors

According to this article China has already manufactured own processor called Godson II. It has frequency 500 MHz and its performance is on Intel Pentium III level. Several days ago Chinese scientists introduced new processor called Loongson 2E. You can call it “improved version of Godson II”. It has 800 MHz frequency and improved architecture. Processor isn’t well spread because there are just several motherboards for them. But I hope Intel and AMD will get new competitors soon. Maybe in next 10 years.

In February 200 laptops with Loongson 2E will be presented. Half of them will be taken by engineers at Chinese Academy of Science. Other half will go to people related to this academy. Its like “test release”. Company, invented Godson II and Loongson 2E is called Sinomanic. If you’ll find official site of this company please comment it

Written by mente on January 28th, 2007 with no comments.
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Processor wars: AMD vs. Intel

Preamble. Several months ago AMD announced Fusion processor. It’s a multicore processor with integrated graphics core. It doesn’t mean that processor will be just dual-core or quad-core. It will be many-core. Every core will be specialized in its own task. Seems to me they want to integrate chipset and simple video in processor. Nice decision I tell you. The cost of the entire system will be lowered and the speed rises dramatically. Everything in one box, nothing outside. Of course if you want to have powerful videocard you always can buy it. It will be better than integrated.But all of this was just lyrics. The main plot why this post has been written - Intel’s answer. It’s called Visual Computing Group (VCG). But Intel’s aim differs from AMD’s. AMD tries to improve performance. Intel’s main aim is:

We are focused on developing discrete graphics products based on a many-core architecture targeting high-end client platforms.

It means Intel wants to integrate graphics. No special core for specialized tasks. No integrated chipset. Just integrated graphics. But further they will expand it for CPU specializations. That’s why they’re looking for good specialists. I think their VCG will be developed faster than AMD’s Fusion processor. Fusion is perspective future and VCG is realistic technology. But I believe in AMD. Don’t say I’m AMD fan. Intel can surprise us too.

Written by mente on January 23rd, 2007 with 1 comment.
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Open Source Phone is coming

I have found interesting video while I was browsing internet today. It’s an open source phone, called FIC Neo1973. It is based on Linux OS, has 2.8 inch TFT display with resolution 640×480, touchscreen. Phone has Samsung processor, built-in GPS system. Gadget has 128 mb SDRAm and 64 mb NAND flash memory. Interesting - will you lose all your data, when phone is low battery? Half-phone-PC is powered by 1200 mAh battery? Suppose it’s enough for this baby. I’m wondered why FIC doesn’t have Wi-Fi or at least Bluetooth. These standards are very popular now. But as you can see, it’s more similar with Pocket PCs than with phones. But developers decide to call it “smart phone”.

Now, OpenMoco is seeking for software developers for their gadget. I hope I have a free time, but I don’t think so. So - if anyone is interested to develop open source phone - welcome

Written by mente on January 20th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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PCI Express 2.0 Specifications

On this week PCI-Sig has released PCI-Express 2.0 specifications. General improvements are:

• Dynamic link speed management allows developers to control the speed at which the link is operating

• Link bandwidth notification alerts platform software (operating system, device drivers, etc) of changes in link speed and width

• Capability structure expansion increases control registers to better manage devices, slots and the interconnect

• Access control services allows for optional controls to manage peer-to-peer transactions

• Completion timeout control allows developers to define a required disable mechanism for transaction timeouts

• Function-level reset provides an optional mechanism to reset functions within a multi-function device

• Power limit redefinition enables slot power limit values to accommodate devices that consume higher power

But the main improvements are:

• The interconnect bit rate is doubled from 2.5GT/s to 5GT/s to support high-bandwidth applications
• Power source is doubled from 75W to 150W. Also 8-pin power-connector can provide additional 150W
• The higher bandwidth will allow product designers to implement narrower interconnect links to achieve high performance while reducing cost

• Reverse support of PCI-Express 1.x video cards and motherboards

I want to discuss the main improvements. The interconnect bit rate is doubled. But do you know that video cards don’t use all bandwidth of PCIe? They always enlarge bit rate for future purpose, but this future never comes. New PCIe specifications come faster. Improvement for power source has 2 sides. First side - video card can be more powerful and use more power (good side). Second side - we have new 8-pin power connector (bad side). You’ll have to buy it before video card (of course if video card uses more than 150W). And of course, reverse support. It’s great that you can connect your old PCIe 1.x video card to new motherboard with PCIe 2.0 support and reverse. Upgrade step-by-step, as I call it.

Summarize this new standard. All improvements are extensive. PCI Express is developed. And it has big future

Written by mente on January 17th, 2007 with 2 comments.
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