New Delhi, India — June 2, 2009 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced availability of the world’s first six-core server processor with Direct Connect Architecture for two-, four- and eight-socket servers. Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors (code-named “Istanbul”) extend AMD’s commitment to offering server customers superior value at every price point with unmatched platform flexibility.

Across a single platform, AMD can address the need for more cores and greater scalability with the new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor and offer a cost- and power-efficient solution with Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. Systems based on Six-Core AMD Opteron processors are expected to be available beginning this month from leading OEMs including Cray, Dell, HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems, along with support from motherboard and infrastructure partners. HE, SE and EE versionsof the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor are planned for the second half of 2009.

· Six-Core AMD Opteron processors leverage existing platform infrastructure and a low-cost, power-efficient DDR-2 memory architecture which can help lower system acquisition costs;

· HPC, virtualization and database workloads can benefit from increased 4P STREAM memory bandwidth of up to 60 percent[i] enabled by HyperTransport™ technology HT Assist, which helps reduce processor to processor latency and traffic;

· AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology and the AMD-P suite of power management features are available across all performance and power bands, ensuring no-compromise choice;

· The new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor has up to 34 percent more performance-per-watt over the previous generation quad-core processors in the exact same platform.

“Based on close collaboration with our customers, we believe there is a clear value shift changing the economics of the server market,” said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Workstation Business, AMD. “The new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor meets the increasing need for a combination of low total cost of ownership, superior performance-per-watt and scalability. Simply put, Six-Core AMD Opteron processors deliver top-line performance that’s bottom-line efficient.”

IBM (International Business Machines) has announced that it wants to help prepare the next generation of business and IT experts with online resources designed to educate students about hot technologies -- at no charge.

Six current offerings of the company are meant to provide students with access to tutorials, forums, games, and other resources. The offerings are also meant to help them develop marketable skills in hot job areas such as enterprise computing, Web 2.0 programming, and database management, claims IBM.
Additionally, through the Student Portal on the IBM Academic Initiative Web site, students can access a three-step tutorial on 'Service Science Management and Engineering' (SSME), a new academic discipline that brings together ongoing work in the fieldsof science, engineering, and business management, combined with the study of social and legal sciences. The SSME resources are aimed to prepare students to take advantage of a growing field of "hybrid" technology jobs that require multi-disciplinary backgrounds, such as environmental engineering, information analysis, and urban architecture planning.

Explaining the purpose of these training programs, IBM says that with progressive globalization, companies are looking for employees that offer deep technical knowledge and a broad understanding of business dynamics to help them expand into new markets. With support of statistics, IBM declares that IT will continue to be one of the fastest growing sectors. In addition, new global employment opportunities are expected to emerge based on the demand for integrated business and technology skills.

Apart from SSME, other no-charge resources namely Database Technology, Situational Applications and Web 2.0, Web Server Technology, Team-Based Development, Enterprise Systems, and Skills Certification and Job Opportunity Database are available.

People can get more information on IBM's Student Opportunity System here, and information on the company's Certification program here.

If you've followed the tech sector for any appreciable amount of time, you've no doubt heard the tale of Dell Inc. - one of those stories where a guy with a dream founded a company and eventually built it into a corporate giant. Right from the beginning, Michael Dell believed that the future of PC sales involve building and selling customized IBM PC-compatible computers directly to home users. The first computer of their own design, labeled the "Turbo PC" helped the company gross more than 73 million dollars in its first year alone. And by the turn of the century, Dell would become the largest seller of personal computers, with sales reported to be close to $25 billion dollars.

All good things must come to an end, as they say, and the last decade brought with it a global PC sales slump, as well as increased competition from manufacturers including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Gateway. When Dell lost its PC sales lead in 2006 following the union of Compaq with HP, Dell looked for a new avenue to increase their ownership base: gamers. Acquiring Alienware in March of that year, Dell gained some insight into leveraging their own customizable selling base with the hardware specs that more discriminating users craved. To further their efforts, Dell even partnered up with Vivendi Universal with product placement in their expansion pack F.E.A.R. Extraction Point - a move mostly unheard of heretofore. The past couple of years we have seen Dell's focus on gaming desktops with their XPS series sharpen, and today will see their latest offering, the more affordable XPS 630. Dubbed the "new challenger", the 630 is the beginning of a refresh of the XPS line, with updated specs and component choices. Available in black or red, the Dell XPS 630 is a customizable machine with support for dual graphics cards and the latest processors, and if we may say so, looks that kill.

Last year, Samsung released a 19" LCD monitor capable of being hooked up via a simple USB connection. To work its magic, the display uses an embedded video chip made by a company called DisplayLink that works like a sort of self-contained graphics processor. That's neat, but what if you already have a spare monitor you'd like to use via USB? Is there a cheaper alternative to coughing up the $300 or so for a USB display? As it turns out, yes there is. DisplayLink's video chip is also available in standalone USB-to-DVI adapters, which allow one to connect any monitor with a resolution up to 1600 x 1200 via USB.

The prospect connecting pretty much any display without an extra monitor port has obvious appeal, especially for laptops. USB only has a fraction of the bandwidth supported by the DVI interface, but DisplayLink nonetheless claims on its website that it's fast enough to allow "flawless DVD playback" and to enhance one's gaming experience in "most games." I was curious to put these claims to the test, so I got in touch with DisplayLink and the company graciously offered to send me a sample USB-to-DVI adapter. You won't find this exact device anywhere commercially. Instead, you'll need to look for an adapter built by one of DisplayLink's partners, such as this Sewell model that's available for $149.95. The drivers are the same, though, as should the hardware be in both adapters.

Trying the adapter in Windows XP
Since the usefulness of DisplayLink's adapter ought to be greatest to laptop users, I first tried it on my now-aging IBM ThinkPad T41 (yes, it's so old it's not Lenovo-branded). The machine has Windows XP Professional installed, and it includes a modest 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M processor coupled with a Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics processor and 512MB of RAM. Getting the adapter to work on this system was a breeze. I ran the installer, rebooted, and was good to go.

I tried three different LCD monitors—a 20.1" ViewSonic wide-screen display, a 19" LG wide-screen display, and a standard 17" LG—and they all worked flawlessly as soon as I connected them, just like they would through a DVI or VGA connection. DisplayLink allows you to configure multi-monitor settings right from Windows' built-in display control panel, although the company's own tray application provides a quicker way to change some of the same parameters, like the extra display's resolution and behavior. Everyday desktop tasks behaved smoothly, so I tried to pop in my Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD to test full-screen movie playback. The DVD played smoothly on the 17" display at 1280 x 1024, but playback on the 20.1" pegged my laptop's CPU to 100% and caused dropped frames. Normally, CPU utilization while playing a DVD on the machine's 1440 x 1050 display is quite low, so there's evidently some overhead involved with the DisplayLink adapter.

Toshiba just announced its membership in an alliance to develop system chips using 32-nm circuitry. That's well below the existing 45-nm processes used in manufacturing Intel's Penryn, for example. The alliance includes IBM, AMD, Samsung, Infineon, Freescale, and Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing. No surprise really, what with Tosh already in bed with IBM to develop chips using 32-nm processes. The agreement is good until 2010 and covers design, development, and the production of the itty bitty circuitry. A move which should reduce manufacturing costs for the alliance with the savings passed along to us consumers.

Four people sued the company, saying they expected its drives to offer greater capacity than that actually provided. Seagate manufactures its drives based on powers of ten, with 1KB equalling 1,000 bytes. The claimants argued that 1KB of storage should compromise 1,024 bytes.

On a 1GB drive, this would make the difference between one billion bytes of storage, and 1,073,741,824 bytes. Other manufacturers, such as Samsung and Hitachi, also measure hard-drive capacity with 1KB equalling 1,000 bytes, whereas all operating systems are based on 1KB equalling 1,024 bytes.

Because the lawsuit is a "class action", the settlement is available to all Seagate customers.

Seagate denies any fault, but it has offered to pay the refund for any drive which was bought between 22 March, 2001 and 26 September, 2007. The offer is awaiting approval by the presiding judge.

To claim a refund, buyers have to fill in a form quoting their product's serial number. If they wish to claim the software, they have to use a different online form.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of similar cases involving the definition of a gigabyte. In 2003, Apple, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba were sued over hard-disk sizes by a group of users. That case has not yet been resolved.

A suit against Amazon.com over the capacity of an MP3 player bought on the site was also filed in 2003, but was dismissed in 2005.

All the major flash memory card makers, including SanDisk and Kingston, were sued in 2004, but there has been no result in that case yet.
Another hard-disk giant, Western Digital, settled a similar suit in 2005, but it escaped having to pay refunds. The company offered a free download of backup software valued at US$30 and paid half a million dollars in legal fees, while denying liability.

links:
Home page: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/index.htm
Online Claim Form: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/submitClaim.aspx
Mail In Claim Form: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/doc-MailIn.htm