XKB schrijft: "Be heeft BeIA gepresenteerd. Dit is een nieuw OS speciaal geschikt voor internet toepassing zoals streaming video. Be probeert hiermee door te dringen in een markt die nog niet gedomineerd wordt door Intel en Microsoft.":

BeIA is a device-independent software platform for post-PC era Internet appliances focused on the personalization of multimedia and information-rich products that enhance a user's lifestyle. The design flexibility of BeIA allows Internet appliances to be configured as information devices such as personal online portals or financial management monitors. The adaptive configuration of BeIA also extends into entertainment devices such as movie or music download and playback systems.

"Today, consumers predominantly use general-purpose PCs to access the Internet, send and receive e-mail and conduct e-commerce transactions, but this is changing rapidly. While PCs have become an accepted tool for both work and play, for many people PCs are still viewed as complex, intimidating and unstable. They lack the 'instant on' gratification and media handling capabilities consumers have grown to expect from their home appliances such as televisions and other audio and stereo equipment," said Jean-Louis Gassée, chairman and chief executive officer of Be. "To truly make computing technology pervasive in the home, a new model for lifestyle devices is required. Our new BeIA platform is a foundation for that model." "The utility and pervasiveness of the Internet has created a need for a variety of targeted, affordable and easy-to-use devices other than the PC," said IDC consumer device analyst Bryan Ma. "IDC believes that Information Appliances (IAs) will address the needs of not only the technophobe, but also the PC user who will use IAs in an adjunct role in a number of different usage scenarios." A just-finished IDC report forecasts the worldwide information appliance market to grow from 11 million units and $2.4 billion in 1999 to a market of 89 million units and $17.8 billion in 2004.

Voor meer info, check hier de press-release.

Zoiah schrijft dat de nVidia Detonator 3.76 drivers voor Win9x en Windows 2000 alweer gesignaleerd zijn. Je kunt ze vanaf deze site downloaden. Kies daar je betreffende besturingsysteem.

Ace's Hardware onderzoekt in dit artikel de overklokbaarheid van de AMD K6-III processor. Vanwege de 256K full speed cache kunnen overklokkers helaas niet al te veel uitvoeren met dit CPU'tje. Het artikel geeft een aantal bruikbare tips:

Ok now that we have gone over realistic overclocking speeds for the K6-III, let's begin. First of all, we need to make sure that no other hardware devices are going to crash your system. It may boot up 50MHz higher then crash, and it might not even have been the processor's fault. Make sure that your PCI and AGP busses are running at their proper speeds (or lower): 33MHz/66MHz.

Note to VX and TX/TX-Clone chipset users: most VX/TX-based motherboards that have a 75 or 83MHz bus option also have an A-sync setting that will allow the PCI bus to run at 33MHz. I highly recommend that you use it. Also, bear in mind that the voltage regulators on older chipsets were not made to handle the amount of wattage required to run a 55W chip. Additional cooling for the voltage regulators is highly recommended on these types of boards.

Memory should be set for a higher latency (e.g. 3-3-3 or higher) to alleviate the possibility of your ram failing. Disabling UDMA is also a recommendation. These options may be turned back on after successfully overclocking (depending on stability).

Werd vorige maand MP3.com nog zelf door de muziekindustrie aangeklaagd (zie dit nieuwsbericht), nu is het precies omgekeerd. Gisteren heeft MP3.com een aanklacht ingediend tegen de RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) vanwege het uitvoeren van oneerlijke bedrijfspraktijken. Hieronder het bericht van ZDNet.

The complaint, filed Monday in San Diego Superior Court in California, accuses the association of engaging in unfair business practices, the company said.

"Since inception, MP3.com has faced the increasingly aggressive tactics of the RIAA and its leadership," said Michael Robertson, chairman and CEO of MP3.com (Nasdaq: MPPP). "We can no longer tolerate the bullying tactics of this not-for-profit trade association. After we get to the bottom of all of their actions toward MP3.com, we will vigorously pursue all of our legal remedies."

An RIAA representative could not be reached for immediate comment.

On Jan. 21, the powerful music industry group filed suit in U.S. District Court in New York against MP3 accusing it of violating copyrights with new features that send music to any computer. The RIAA also accused MP3 of illegally compiling an online library of 40,000 copyrighted albums.

WebWereld deed onderzoek naar de 0909 dialup internetprovider Camex (zie ook deze nieuwsposting) en kwam tot de conclusie dat er heel wat zaakjes niet kloppen. Zo doet deze eenmanszaak helemaal geen zaken met UUNet zoals op hun website wordt gesuggereerd. Het opgegeven postadres in Sittard blijkt ook al niet te kloppen, daar blijkt een sportschool te zitten. Al met al een erg raar zaakje, waar nog eens bijkomt dat de prijzen van hun service erg hoog zijn. niet erg interessant dus. Hieronder vast een gedeelte:

Van Luik (de eigenaar) geeft toe dat hij geen zaken doet met UUNet, terwijl dat wel op de Camex-site staat. Het Belgische dagblad De Standaard koppelde Camex aan telecombedrijf Tritone. Dat bedrijf heeft ook nog nooit van Camex gehoord, zo bevestigt algemeen directeur Andre Jurres van Tritone.

Van Luik zegt alle technische aspecten van de Camex-internetdienst zelf te willen verzorgen. "Ik bestel gewoon een ISDN 30 lijntje." Volgens de site gaat Camex op 1 maart van start in Nederland. Die datum wordt opgeschoven, zegt Van Luik. "België is als eerste aan de beurt. Daar is het concept nog nieuw en klinken enthousiaste reacties. Nederlanders zijn zo terughoudend."

Als het er ooit van komt dan nog is Camex niet goedkoop. De 0909-aanbieding is verhullend gesteld in euro's. Klanten betalen maandelijkse abonnementskosten van 23 euro (50 gulden) en eenmalige aansluitkosten van 35 euro (77 gulden). Per internetsessie wordt 0,25 euro (55 cent) in rekening gebracht, tikken betalen hoeft niet.

Check hier de rest van dit artikel. Thanks Arjan voor de tip!

Anand Lal Shimpi heeft review op zijn site gezet van het Abit VA6 mobo, gebaseerd op de Apollo Pro 133 chipset van VIA. Hoewel het plankje een aantal aardige features met zich mee draagt (ATA66, SoftMenu) blijkt de stabiliteit van een onacceptabel laag niveau te zijn.

The biggest and most inexcusable issue we had with the VA6 was its utter lack of stability. While all of the Apollo Pro 133 and 133A based boards we have tested, with the exception of a few notable entries (i.e. AOpen MX64), have been noticeably less reliable than the majority of BX motherboards we've reviewed, the VA6 we tested is definitely on the lower end of the stability scale. The board could not successfully complete any of our stability tests, and while they do require that the test system remain operational and stable for a full 24 hour period most motherboards in the past haven't had a problem making their way through our rigorous testing.

With the possibility that maybe our VA6 sample was flawed we proceeded to talk to other users that had purchased VA6 boards, and unfortunately our fears were confirmed when we hadn't received a single positive comment about the stability board from any of the VA6 owners we had talked to. Let's hope that the future revisions of the VA6 correct these stability problems, because as of now, the board isn't fit for sale.

Hans schrijft: "Gisteren is Yahoo! 3 uur down geweest door een simpele Denial of Service (DoS) attack. De crash is de ergste in de geschiedenis van Yahoo":

The popular Internet portal Yahoo Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) suffered a three-hour outage on Monday after a series of attacks were directed at its computers, blocking millions of people from entering the site to access news and other services.

The crash was the worst in Yahoo's history and stunned many online customers for the way it challenged the increasingly popular notion of the Internet as a reliable system for the exchange of vital information.

Although other popular Internet services like America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and eBay Inc. (NasdaqNM:EBAY - news) had similar, or worse outages as they embarked on a course of rapid growth, their problems were related to internal infrastructure rather than sabotage.

The fact that Monday's attack was directed at Yahoo, one of the most visited and most reliable sites on the Internet, raised new questions about the vulnerabilities of all Web sites.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo said that the outage, which began around 1015 PST on Monday, was caused by what appeared to be a planned attack from someone bombarding its servers with fake messages. The effect, she said, was to jam the servers and prevent real users from accessing requested information.

Het complete verhaaltje lees je in dit nieuwsartikel op - jawel - Yahoo! (bij de weg ook thanks to KMK en Nijpep die tevens dit nieuws instuurden).

Uit een onderzoek van SysControl AG is gebleken dat webservers met Microsoft Information Server een twee maal zo hoge downtime hebben als Apache servers. Het artikel is geschreven in het duits en aangezien niet iedereen dat even makkelijk leest heb ik hier een hap uit de brakke Babbelvis vertaling:

Examined if server, which uses Microsoft IIS software, fail on the average more than twice as long per month, as the servers, which use Apache Often commoditycommodity often commodity. The respective market shares are similar.

[...] This study period points out clearly that the tested servers, which use the Microsoft IIS Serversoftware in contrast to the freely available Apache Serversoftware are substantially fewer reliable.

It would be however a false conclusion to bring this directly with the quality of the software in connection. There are several, which point each day out short interruptions at the same time under the examined Websites with Microsoft IIS Serversoftware. This points Servers on regular starting again. On the other hand however 11 of the 30 at the best attainable Websites IIS Serversoftware use the Microsoft.

Nu we toch met het webserver verhaal bezig zijn: Netcraft heeft onlangs de januari cijfers van haar webserver survey bekend gemaakt. Het marktaandeel van Apache is, na een kleine dip in december, weer stijgende:

Hielko schreef een artikel met een aantal 3DMark 2000 T&L benchmarks op een naar 360MHz overgeklokte PII-350 met GeForce. Conclusie: T&L is goed, in ieder geval voor de zogenaamd trage processors:

T&L is absolutely a good thing, at least when you are using a CPU running at speeds around the 300-500 MHz above the 500 MHz it's still improving your fps but when you are using the Pentium or At 800 MHz (the fastest CPU available when writing this) the performance can is lower using T&L. If you are planning to buy a GeForce for you new computer and you want to buy the fastest CPU and graphical card available the best thing you can do is buying the GeForce because it's still the fastest card on the market today but you will pay for a feature which is next to useless.

Gisteren weer onze "normale" maandagflush gehad, met 310.000 blokken.

Verder wil ik iedereen erop wijzen dat we nog 20 dagen te gaan hebben tot de MegaFlush van 28 februari! Het is nog niet te laat om mee te doen.

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 7 februari 2000

1. DcP(98, Gisteren:17,970, Totaal:85,398)
2. my_sirion(25, Gisteren:12,455, Totaal:239,794)
3. Ferion Power!(74, Gisteren:10,998, Totaal:109,952)
4. 2fast4u(55, Gisteren:10,477, Totaal:146,428)
5. [eNeRGy](17, Gisteren:7,596, Totaal:307,500)
6. Sueno(69, Gisteren:7,206, Totaal:122,608)
7. steenbergen.j(109, Gisteren:7,036, Totaal:77,928)
8. Chainsaw(16, Gisteren:7,014, Totaal:307,875)
9. Gérard Pover & Wouter Pegtel(285, Gisteren:5,728, Totaal:19,608)
10. sienema(2, Gisteren:5,067, Totaal:962,933)

En de kanshebbers:

11. HarryB(14, Gisteren:4,997, Totaal:393,809)
12. TriLithium(258, Gisteren:4,954, Totaal:23,586)
13. fseising(176, Gisteren:4,727, Totaal:47,638)
14. misser(32, Gisteren:4,339, Totaal:205,985)
15. Lox(199, Gisteren:3,872, Totaal:38,983)
16. wildhagen(12, Gisteren:3,840, Totaal:419,422)
17. Jorma(4, Gisteren:3,597, Totaal:783,507)
18. Eddict(30, Gisteren:3,494, Totaal:209,593)
19. #hekje team(96, Gisteren:3,458, Totaal:86,513)
20. Nasty(9, Gisteren:3,420, Totaal:543,027)

De Top 5 teams van 7 februari 2000

1.( 2) AnandTech (770,973)
2.( 1) #DeathMatch (758,581)
3.( 1) Russian Team (752,910)
4.( 2) Slashdot.org (702,650)
5.( ) HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries (598,585)
11.( 4) Dutch power cows (310,362)
64.( 7) The #koffie Team (59,576)

Teams om ons heen(total stats):
32.( ) SwissTeam (Tot:36,942,025, Gis:99,807)
33.( ) BOFH@Chalmers (Tot:36,024,664, Gis:66,387)
34.( 1) #DeathMatch (Tot:35,550,330, Gis:758,581)
35.( 1) Winbiff Users Group (Tot:34,983,750, Gis:110,237)
36.( ) Dutch power cows (Tot:34,709,092, Gis:310,362)
37.( ) Michigan State University (MSU Spartans) (Tot:34,412,015, Gis:143,926)
38.( ) The #koffie Team (Tot:32,956,411, Gis:59,576)
39.( ) Japan Celeron Users Group (Tot:30,861,811, Gis:66,933)
40.( ) Team HP (Tot:30,085,635)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in:
SwissTeam: 11 dagen
BOFH@Chalmers: 6 dagen
#DeathMatch:-1 dagen
Winbiff Users Group: 2 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 11e en heeft een kans van een op 126 om de sleutel te vinden!

Tullius brengt treurig nieuws over één van de meeste populaire news readers: "Volgens de persoon die de veelgebruikte Forte Agent FAQ samenstelde, wordt Forte Agent en Free Agent niet verder ontwikkeld":

Unfortunately the alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent FAQ is no longer written or maintained by myself. Forte's new owner, has made it clear, without saying so directly, that Agent and Free Agent are not going to continue to be developed.

This is not degrading the quality of Agent and/or Free Agent. These are still the best offline newsreaders currently available. Unfortunately, this will not last, as other programs overtake in their development cycle.

No. I cannot answer Agent or Free Agent questions. No. I do not know if anyone has begun to maintain the FAQ in my place. A couple of individuals were considering it when I quit.

William Guynes

Afterburn bracht ons op de hoogte van de Quantum Fireball lct10 review van Storage Review. De Fireball lct10 heeft 512KB cache, een 10,2GB platter grootte en een rotatiesnelheid van 5400 toeren per minuut. Ondanks deze weinig opwindende specs bleek de lct10 dankzij een efficiënt design als beste te presteren onder de low-end schijven:

The Fireball lct10 is arguably the fastest budget drive around. Even so, that's not the story here. StorageReview.com readers (ourselves included) simply don't look at value drives when building a performance system. There are many applications, however, that require the utmost in quiet operation. In fact, here at SR, we're in need for the quietest drive around. The finalization and construction of our new testbed is imminent. As you can imagine, the boot disk in that new testbed needs to be the quietest around, to better subjectively gauge other drives yet to come. The Fireball lct10 looks like it'll be the drive we need for such an application. The promising thing is that this "QDT" technology doesn't seem to be limited to the value-class ATA arena. Quantum's upcoming Atlas V and Atlas 10k II have also been designed with acoustics in mind. These two drives' potentials for quiet operation excite us just as much as their status as the successors of two best-of-class drives. We can't wait.

afterburn schrijft: "WinInfo heeft een primeur wat betreft de release date van Windows Millennium Edition, die volgens hun gepland staat op 26 mei van dit jaar. Windows Me is de laatste (?) in de reeks van Win9x gebaseerde operating systems van Microsoft":

Millennium features a new TCP/IP stack, a System Restore feature, silent installation of USB keyboards, mice, and hubs, a Movie Maker application for recording, editing, publishing, and organizing audio and video content, the removal of Real mode DOS, and a number of other small improvements over Windows 98. Microsoft is designing this release around four key goals, digital media and entertainment, the online experience, home networking, and "it just works," a marketing phrase designed to promote Millennium's self-healing capabilities and compatibility with a vast array of hardware and software.

Windows Millennium Edition will also ship in a variety of foreign language versions. The Latin American version will debut alongside the English version on May 26th. German and Spanish versions are due June 9th. On June 16, 2000, French and Italian versions will ship, along with Brazilian, Dutch and Swedish versions on June 20.

AGN Hardware hield een interview met Brandon Crick van ACT Labs, fabrikant van het RS Shifter. Hier alvast een Q&A'tje over het ontwerp van deze schakelknots:

Q: The inner mechanics of it feel almost the same as a real car and I am almost willing to say it is usual a similar dynamic that goes on in a vehicle. Did you guys design this after any existing gearbox?

A: I would like to say we did, but the truth is we didn’t. What we did was more the feel that we were after and we experimented on everything from the old Corolla. They have that type of brush material that is between each of the gears on the actual plate. We just try to simulate the most of the resistance, and we then realized that best way to get that feel of shipping into each gear is to create something like a Detent. So when you try to roll something over, it kind of rows into the little prevence and that is how it will stay put.

You can actually slam on it. We have done testing of it in-house for about 6 weeks of durability testing. It was just incredible how it performed, we just wanted to make sure that it will not break down. We actually took it to frag shows and had the systems running the shifter. And what we were watching were these games totally thrashing it, so you know that it had to be something extremely strong.

Thanks Chillout voor de tip.

De Austin American Statesman (krant uit Austin, waar AMD gevestigd is) heeft een interview met Hector Ruiz van AMD online gebracht. Ruiz maakte enkele weken geleden de overstap van Motorola naar AMD en vervult nu de positieve van chief operating officer. Verwacht wordt dat hij Jerry Sanders eind 2001 zal opvolgen als CEO van AMD:

TECHMONDAY: How do you compare the different cultures at AMD and Motorola?

RUIZ: The cultural changes are always the most difficult ones. I am fairly comfortable with change. AMD is a place where things move very rapidly. Motorola is a company that is dominant in the wireless space. That leads to a different culture when you are King Kong in your space, as opposed to AMD where you are trying to nibble at this giant gorilla (rival Intel Corp.).

TECHMONDAY: What are some of the strengths at AMD?

RUIZ: The Athlon team is committed to making their product a success. There is an emotional attachment to making this a winner product. Athlon (AMD's high-performance microprocessor) has created a solid position to go forward from. Now we can start thinking about what is beyond Athlon and to think from a position of strength.

Via JC kwam ik bij Silicon Investor posting van Salomon Smith Barney, met een aantal erg interessante nieuwtjes en geruchten uit de chipindustrie. Wat dacht je van een 1,4GHz Athlon tegen het eind van dit jaar?

Activity for AMD's (AMD, 1S) high-end Athlons remained strong with pricing flat week-over-week. At least in the gray market channel, AMD appears to have better availability of high-end 800MHz processors than does Intel.We hear AMD is on plan to ship a 1GHz Athlons in production volumes by the end of the second quarter, with the possibility of shipping in speed grades up to 1.4GHz by yearend. Low-end processor demand remains firm. Trading of low-end processors remained firm in the gray market last week with the average Celeron discount to list improving from 6% to 2%. [break] Verder wordt melding gemaakt van een daling van de 64Mbit DRAM prijzen en wordt in de posting interessante info gegeven over de PIII leveringsproblemen:[/break] Intel is assuring customers that availability should improve across the board by February 27, its next scheduled price cut. There were a couple of spot price indications in the market last week that suggested firmer, rather than weaker, demand. One was the behavior of processor spot prices following a price cut, or ômoveö, as Intel calls them. In really weak periods, spot prices trade at a discount to list, and often fall ahead of scheduled list price cuts. Though prices were cut two weeks ago, they have been ôstickyö in adjusting downward, and are still trading at a 4% premium to new list pricing, down only marginally from a 6% premium last week.

NEC heeft een processor ontwerp onthuld dat gebruik maakt van 4 cores en bedoelt is voor handhelds en andere mobiele toepassingen waarbij een laag energieverbruik cruciaal is. Om energie te besparen kunnen de 4 cores afhankelijk van de gevraagde processor load ieder apart in- of uitgeschakeld worden:

he first prototype of the chip demonstrates a performance level of 1 billion instructions per second while consuming less than 1 watt of power according to Edahiro, who claims this as a world record. In normal operation, handling a job such as keyboard entry, power consumption drops to 50 milliwatts while it falls even further to 500 microwatts when in standby mode.

Compared to existing processors being used in handheld terminals for operations such as audio and video, NEC says prototypes of the MP98 offer equivalent capacity while consuming one fifth the amount of power at full capacity and one hundredth the amount of power in normal operating mode and standby.

Check PC World voor meer stof.

Penstar Systems heeft wat info gepost over de Tyan S2380 moederplank met Apollo KX133 chipset. Dit bord zal eind deze maand of begin maart beschikbaar komen en komt in versies met en zonder onboard audio:

There will most likely be some overclocking features available, but nothing breathtaking as Tyan is well known for fast and stable boards that have limited overclocking potential. The placements for the DIMMs, power plug, and drive cables are nicely placed as they will not get in the way of most coolers or cards. Tyan looks to have done a nice job in compacting the design. It should be very popular with enthusiasts everywhere.

AMD heeft bekend gemaakt dat het in Dresden een 1,1GHz versie van de Athlon heeft gedemonstreerd. Op zich is dit al heftig nieuws, nog leuker is dat het hier een prototype van de Thunderbird betreft. Het demo modelletje met 256KB on-die L2 cache werd bovendien vervaardigd op AMD's 0,18 micron koper-interconnect procédé:

February 7, 2000--AMD today demonstrated a 1.1 GHz(1100 MHz) version of the AMD Athlon™ processor manufactured in its Fab 30 facility in Dresden, Germany. The demonstration featured the newest version of the AMD Athlon processor that integrates high-performance on-die Level 2 (L2) cache. The device is manufactured utilizing AMD's leading-edge HiP6L 0.18 micron process technology featuring copper interconnects. The demonstration required no special cooling techniques and was shown in conjunction with a presentation at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

"The demonstration of a 1.1GHz AMD Athlon processor manufactured in AMD's Dresden facility shows we are executing on our process technology and Dresden production roadmaps," said Larry Hollatz, group vice president of Computation Products at AMD. "We continue to aggressively advance the technologies that enable future AMD processors to deliver superior performance levels."

AMD continues to expect first revenues from AMD Athlon family processors produced in Fab 30 utilizing its leading edge HiP6L 0.18 copper interconnect technology at the end of the second quarter of 2000.

The Adrenaline Vault vroeg 3dfx naar een reaktie op klachten die het kreeg over slechte dienstverlening van de 3dfx support afdeling. Volgens deze klachten zou 3dfx slecht reageren op support vragen in het 3dfxgamers.com message board en zou de helpdesk geen goede antwoorden geven op support telefoontjes. 3dfx weet het uiteraard allemaal van de positieve kant te belichten :

Q: Are there flaws in 3dfx's support structure that you are aware of and are planning to repair?

A: Even though we have one of the strongest support groups and set of support policies in the graphic card industry, we are constantly striving to improve customer support. We are in the process of consolidating our newsgroup forums by merging certain groups and adding new ones where they are needed. We will have 3dfx employees assigned to monitor each of the forums to ensure the accuracy of the information as well as quality and timely support. We are also adding a searchable database of problems that customers can use to expedite problem solving.

News.com schrijft dat Intel bevestigd heeft dat de Itanium later dit jaar op een snelheid van 800MHz geïntroduceerd zal worden. Verder maakte Intel bekend dat Itanium gebruik zal maken van een 64-bit brede bus met een datarate van 266MHz. Deze bus is 'dual pumping', een popi benaming voor de technologie die in de volksmond 'double data rate' wordt genoemd. In een multi-processor configuratie wordt de bus nog steeds gedeeld door de aanwezige processors, wat in principe minder geavanceerd is dan de point-to-point EV6 bus van de Athlon / Alpha.

Het maximaal addresseerbaar geheugen van de Itanium bedraagd 16 Terabyte (bron: Silicon Investor). Dit zal in eerste instantie beperkt worden door de 460GX chipset die slechts 64Gig kan trekken (altijd nog genoeg voor een lekkere server ).

Itanium kopers zullen in eerste instantie uit twee varianten mogen kiezen: eentje met 2MB L3 cache en een duurdere versie met 4MB third-level cache. Wat betreft geheugen biedt de 460GX chipset ondersteuning voor SDRAM en hoogstwaarschijnlijk ook DDR SDRAM:

"Eight-hundred MHz will be our speed at production; however, this is just the beginning," said Gadi Singer, one of the head researchers on the Itanium project. "The 800-MHz (chip) is being developed on a relatively new process and the architecture is not tuned yet for critical speed paths."

[...] The bigger issue Itanium faces is how much demand there will be for it. Generally, analysts believe that its number-crunching prowess will make it good for workstations and technical computing, especially the lofty edge of the workstation market that Intel has yet to fully penetrate.

Typically conservative business users, however, will mostly likely initially purchase Itanium systems for testing purposes before moving widely to the new chip.

Zie voor meer informatie dit artikel van News.com.

Dat is ongeveer wat een panel van wijze mannen en vrouwen tijdens de Seybold Publishing 2000 conferentie te vertellen had (en waar ik het, als halve Interaction Designer, volledig mee eens ben). Volgens hen ligt het succes van een website in de interactiveit van de geboden content (en dan bedoelen ze niet simpele rollover-knopjes-interactiviteit, maar interactie op inhoudelijk niveau). Waar hebben we dit eerder in de praktijk mogen zien?

The key to successful Internet publishing is reader interaction. That was the message from a panel of keynote speakers opening the Seybold Publishing 2000 conference here Monday. Web sites must encourage readers to provide site content through comments and discussions, the panel agreed.

[...] The difference between a boring site and an interesting Web presence comes down to user participation, speaker Philip Greenspun suggested. Greenspun teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is founder of ArsDigita, a Web development and hosting company that distributes open-source toolkits to those who want to build sites.

[...] A lot of journalism today is "boring," Winer said, and could be made more interesting by pulling readers in and allowing them to have more of a say.

Het complete artikel kun je nalezen bij PC World.

Intel heeft op de Solid State conferentie een presentatie gegeven van haar nieuwe 0,18 micron 'notched poly' procédé, waarmee hogere kloksnelheden mogelijk zijn met gebruikmaking van bestaande aluminium-interconnect technologie. Intel ontwikkelde voor de toepassing van deze nieuwe technologie een verbeterde Coppermine core met onder meer een grotere L2 cache buffer. Volgens Intel maakt het nieuwe ontwerp op korte termijn kloksnelheden mogelijk van 1GHz:

"This is a very provable aluminium technology with good yields," he said. "We will have a 1GHz design and it will manufacture. This will ship in volume this year."

The slides show that Intel has managed to make an 800MHz Pentium III Coppermine procesor that only consumes 26 watts. Hence, maybe not so many fans. The slides also show "estimated" SPECfp scaling, and that the 1GHz Coppermine will achieve a 1.20 percent achievement over published figures for the 733MHz CuMine part. There are "no kinks in performance scaling", the figures show. The, again estimated, SPECint figures show the same figure.

Other slides show that Intel has managed to use the same aluminium design interconnect similated at over 200MHz the targeted frequency. Further, Intel claims: "There is no performance compromise for using proven Aluminum (sic) interconnect".

Voor het complete verhaaltje kun je dit artikel van The Register nalezen.

Tom heeft een aantal AMD 750 Super Bypass benchmarks aan zijn KX133 review toegevoegd. De resultaten scheppen hetzelfde beeld als de benchmarks uit de reviews van SlotA.com en AnandTech: de AMD 750 met Super Bypass enabled komt dicht in de buurt van de KX133. Wel bleek dat de KX133 dankzij AGP4x duidelijk beter presteerde in de professionele SPECviewperf OpenGL benchmarks:

I hope all the upset souls have finally calmed down. 'Super bypass' is certainly an important feature for Irongate, but it's not making a Porsche out of a Chevy. Anyone who is in the process of buying an Athlon-system or platform should make sure that it carries the KX133-chipset. It's a matter of fact that Irongate has just become obsolete. This may be a bitter pill to swallow for all Irongate-owners, but those should please appreciate that in the PC-world there's always something better and faster around the corner. Changing from Irongate to KX133 is a rather questionable move though. Unless you are using OpenGL development software you might want to wait until the next Athlon-chipset that supports DDR-SDRAM.

Zie voor benchmarks het AMD 750 Super Bypass vs VIA Apollo KX133 artikel van Tom's Hardware Guide.