Tweak3D heeft een interessant artikel in elkaar gedraaid over het hoe en wat van de AMD Athlon. Alle specificaties worden nageplozen en uitgelegd in dit zeer informatieve en duidelijke artikel. Er wordt veel aandacht besteed aan de verschillen tussen de AMD Athlon en de P3, zoals in dit stukje over de 200MHz bus van de Athlon:

AMD licensed architectural technology from Digital to incorporate it into its Athlon processor. Called the EV6 Bus, this technology will take the Athlon well above what Intel is currently capable of. Originally, the technology was designed for Digital's Alpha 21264 RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processor.
The EV6 bus architecture gives the Athlon more I/O bandwidth than normal desktop PCs currently stuffed with "Intel Inside." As a side effect though, the use of the same architecture will theoretically let AMD Slot A motherboards use the Alpha 21264. Unfortunately, this will mean that it is totally incompatible with your Slot 1 processors. Intel and AMD will not sleep together this time around.

The Athlon's incredible bus bandwidth doesn't stop with 200MHz default speed. It also has a separate independent backside bus for the external L2 cache, just like a Pentium 2/III/Celeron. Unfortunately, like we said before, this hampers the chances of your overclocking success. Boo. But take it from us, the tradeoff is well worth it. At 200MHz, the bus's I/O throughput brings in 1.6GB/sec, which is double the capacity of Intel's GTL+ (Gunning Transceiver Logic) architecture - the one inside the Pentium 2/III/Celeron. Future Athlons (the Ultras) could double that bandwidth again by driving the frequency up to 400MHz. In comparison, Intel's will be running at 133MHz.

Bij de Techzone hebben ze twee Alpha coolers onder de loep genomen, namelijk de Alpha FC-PAL35T en Alpha PEP66T. Beide coolers zijn voor socket 370 plankjes maar er is een verschil: de heatsink, de ene heeft staafjes wat voor een iets groter oppervlak moet zorgen dan je hebt met een normale heatsink:

The two Alphas performed very close to each other, with slightly better performance for the PIN Alpha. Both units easily beat the stock Intel cooler by a wide margin.

Of course this means dick if the new coolers don't allow your CPU to run at higher speeds. After all, that's why we buy these coolers for. With the stock heatsink, the highest the Coppermine 550 would overclock to was 770Mhz. That's pretty good performance. With either Alphas installed, the P3-550 went all the way to 825Mhz! Does an extra 55Mhz justify a $35 cooler? It does to me!

Alpha has done a great job of these new Coppermine coolers. Either unit will give you outstanding performance. Which one you get should depend on what kind of motherboard you have. If you have a socket 370 motherboard, go for the PIN Alpha. If you have a Slot 1 motherboard, then the FIN Alpha may be a better choice as it doesn't block off as many DIMM Slots. Either way, you're going to get one great cooler.

Beide heatsinks zijn ongeveer evengoed, de heatsink met een iets groter oppervlak bleek net iets beter te presteren maar een halve graad verschil is niet echt spectaculair.

GamePC heeft vandaag (zover ik weet) de eerste plaatjes van een Intel Itanium systeem on-line gezet, het systeem lijkt wat op een Ultra-SPARC en is uitgerust met een 800 watt! voeding. De chip die ze te zien kregen liep nog op 500 MHz, nog 300 MHz te laag voor de introductie:

The physical layout of the computer really reminds me of looking at a Sun Ultra-SPARC or an SGI server. While I couldn't really tell how much faster (if at all) the 3D Studio MAX demo was, it did look pretty smooth. Intel was not giving out any kinds of benchmarks, saying that software applications have either not been completely ported over to 64-bit or fully Q/Aed, yet. How 64-bit computing will impact game industry is yet unclear. Somehow, I don't think John Romero is going to be porting the soon-to-be-released Daikatana over to IA-64 anytime soon. (Although, apparently, the N64 version will be out before the PC version. Hey, how hard can a 32-bit to 64-bit conversion be?)

Voor meer plaatjes en het hele artikel kan je hier gaan surfen.

Mobster schrijft dat er eindelijk iets wordt gedaan aan het monopolie van KPN, de drie grootste kabelbedrijven: UPC Nederland, Essent Kabelcom en Casema hebben hun netwerk samengevoegd om zo telecomdiensten te kunnen verlenen:

Ze streven naar een alternatieve infrastructuur. De koppeling zal, zo zeggen ze, gunstig zijn voor de tarieven. Op dit moment is de positie van de kabelbedrijven, die samen ruim 5 miljoen aansluitingen hebben, als telecomaanbieder nog niet echt sterk. UPC is koploper met 60.000 abonnees.

Essent Kabelcom en Casema hebben elk zo'n 1000 gebruikers. Beide ondernemingen storten zich de komende maanden op de consumentenmarkt. Casema hoopt het einde van dit jaar 16.000 abonnees binnen te hebben.

[...] KPN zegt erg blij te zijn met de nieuwe concurrentie. "Er is genoeg ruimte voor nieuwe initiatieven", meent een woordvoerder. "Kijk maar naar de markt voor mobiele telefonie. Bovendien is het voor ons belangrijk dat de markt zo snel mogelijk geliberaliseerd wordt, want hoe meer aanbieders er zijn, des te minder last wij hebben van toezichthouder Opta."

Nu er wat gedaan wordt aan het monopolie van de KPN moet nu ook maar iets gedaan worden aan het monopolie van UPC Nederland, Essent Kabelcom en Casema .

Kopermijn schrijft: "Kyle van HardOCP legt de FCPGA adapter van Powerleap op de pijnbank. Hij doet wat hij moet doen maar helaas nog geen nieuws over gebruik op de BP6."
Voor diegenen die het nog niet wisten: met dit geval kun je een flip-chip Pentium III of een Celeron II gebuiken op je oude moederbord met Socket 370 aansluiting.

What do you really say about the whole thing?

First off, the NEO 370 did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do. It works fine from what we can tell with our limited one-day testing period. You have to like it when something does what it is advertised to do. Yes, the Dually subject will be looked at and most likely we will amend this article.

Gisteren werd al gepost dat het apparaat nu eindelijk verkrijgbaar is. In de pricewatch staat het dingetje al voor Fl. 109, iets duurder dan de $25 die onze Amerikaanse vrienden betalen.

elguapo heeft het nieuws gesubmit dat Nina Brink opgestapt is als voorzitter van de raad van bestuur van World Online:

ROTTERDAM - Bestuursvoorzitter N. Brink van World Online treedt af. Volgens het bedrijf doet zij dat op eigen verzoek en 'in het belang van de onderneming'. Ze blijft wel adviseur van het bedrijf.

Brink kwam onder vuur te liggen nadat de beursgang van World Online was geflopt en de aandelenkoers kelderde. Pas na de beursgang werd duidelijk dat Brink een groot deel van haar eigen aandelen had verkocht voor een prijs van rond de 6 euro, vér onder de introductiekoers van 43 euro.

De Raad van Commissarissen zegt het vertrek van Brink te betreuren 'gezien de grote verdiensten van mevrouw Brink'. De taken van Brink worden vanaf donderdag (vandaag) waargenomen door S. Duffy, de vice-voorzitter van de raad van bestuur.

Bij 3D-Unlimited heeft men een review in elkaar gezet van de Diamond Viper II. De (bekende) conclusie is dat het kaartje niet zo snel is als de GeForce, wat ook kan liggen aan de slechte drivers, maar wel een hele goed prijs/prestatie-verhouding heeft.

There is no question that the Quake 3 scores were excellent and far above the Viper 770 Ultra, but the Viper II sorely lags behind in 32 bit. The 16 bit scores however were slightly higher than the 770, and the multi-texturing was far above the 770. What does this mean to you the gamer? Well, it tells you that the Viper II is not the cream of the crop, but it gets the job done and proves a worthy competitor in the value market. The Viper II can be found in the 130 to 140 range all over the net, so if you are looking for an excellent graphics card but can’t afford a Geforce, then the Viper II deserves some serious attention.

DPC had gisteren 1470 leden (23 nieuwe), wil jij ook lid worden, of begrijp je er niets van waar we het nu over hebben, kijk dan hier.

De DPC Hitparade Top 10 van 12 april 2000

1. 54,365 [Dutch Power Cows] wiho(1, Totaal:7,680,428)
2. 52,800 [Dutch Power Cows] Interior Lulu(2, Totaal:2,281,462)
3. 6,737 Shellshock & Sir Soes [Dutch Power Moo's!](31, Totaal:363,293)
4. 6,713 [Dutch Power Cows] Oezie Woezie(88, Totaal:171,564)
5. 6,330 [Dutch Power Cows] [eNeRGy](13, Totaal:681,649)
6. 5,929 [Dutch Power Cows] Jobe(22, Totaal:482,146)
7. 5,806 [Dutch Power Cows] #hekje team(24, Totaal:457,050)
8. 5,445 [Dutch Power Cows] Jurgen Wildhagen(6, Totaal:842,717)
9. 5,346 [Dutch Power Cows] ThE RaVeR(35, Totaal:326,897)
10. 5,160 grimlock0(325, Totaal:31,823)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 20:

11. 4,574 [Dutch Power Cows] L1BERATOR(181, Totaal:78,926)
12. 4,288 Evert(542, Totaal:13,296)
13. 4,202 [Dutch Power Cows] TEX(69, Totaal:214,011)
14. 4,162 Chainsaw(19, Totaal:560,200)
15. 4,044 [Dutch Power Cows] Eddict(23, Totaal:460,361)
16. 3,984 NCP-Viper(215, Totaal:64,918)
17. 3,943 Jorma(5, Totaal:1,006,169)
18. 3,784 bjonkhart(171, Totaal:83,482)
19. 3,764 [Dutch Power Cows] UT Fragteam(55, Totaal:240,483)
20. 3,759 MisterJ(52, Totaal:253,262)

De Top 15 teams van 12 april 2000

1.( 0) 827,253 Russian Team
2.( 2) 803,663 AnandTech
3.( 1) 795,674 Slashdot.org
4.( 1) 705,118 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
5.( 1) 482,676 Dutch Power Cows
6.( 1) 482,287 #DeathMatch
7.( 0) 416,566 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
8.( 0) 399,108 Team Warped (OS/2)
9.( 0) 388,128 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
10.( 3) 307,300 Japan Windows NT Users Group
11.( 0) 291,877 Libertarians for Privacy (Freedom Works!)
12.( 2) 288,577 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
13.( 1) 264,136 Team Hungary STB+
14.( 2) 250,105 L0phT Heavy Industries
15.( 0) 242,969 CCC.de
70.( 1) 60,198 The #koffie Team

Teams om ons heen (total stats):

16.( ) CCC.de (Tot:87,458,105, Gis:242,969)
17.( ) Team OS/2 Japan (Tot:80,910,834, Gis:192,538)
18.( ) #DeathMatch (Tot:76,315,039, Gis:482,287)
19.( ) PINGUIM: Portugal Is Now Going Up In Megakeys (Tot:71,945,611, Gis:186,345)
20.( ) Dutch Power Cows (Tot:69,259,651, Gis:482,676)
21.( ) SysOpt.com/Tweakit.com (Tot:68,065,876, Gis:160,691)
22.( ) Team FreeBSD (Tot:67,865,472, Gis:208,604)
23.( ) LinuxNET RC5 (Tot:67,324,062, Gis:68,610)
24.( ) Team BeOS (Tot:65,624,321, Gis:95,656)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in:
CCC.de: 76 dagen
Team OS/2 Japan: 41 dagen
#DeathMatch: 18138 dagen (49.6 jaar )
PINGUIM: Portugal Is Now Going Up In Megakeys: 10 dagen

Dutch power cows is vandaag 5e en heeft een kans van één op 87 om de sleutel te vinden!

The Register medlt dat Rambus Inc. de financiële resultaten van het eerste kwartaal bekend heeft gemaakt. De winst van 15,7 miljoen dollar was hoger dan verwacht, maar kon niet voorkomen dat de aandelenkoers gisteren 32 dollar daalde naar $214. Het merendeel van de inkomsten is overigens afkomstig van licenties die werden verkocht aan Sony (Playstation II) en Nintendo:

Revenues, at $15.7 million for the quarter, were a record, but after taking into account employee stock option charges amounting to $171 million, the balance sheet showed a paper loss of $166.8 million.

[...] So far, Nintendo and Sony have so far accounted for the lion's share of royalty revenues, bu Rambus said it expects some PC licence fees to come its way during its third financial quarter.

lemval meldt dat het niet meer lang duurt voordat we er uit komen te zien als borg, een professor is van plan een computer te nemen als implantaat om te kijken of die zijn lichaam ook kan besturen:

A UK cybernetics professor is planning to allow a computer to control his body and recreate his emotions in the latest of a series of high-profile experiments.

Professor Kevin Warwick will have a silicon chip implant placed in his arm and connected to his nervous system in an attempt to find out whether the computer will be able to move his fingers by copying signals from his brain.

If the experiment is successful, Warwick said his wife has agreed to also have an implant. This could let them share thoughts. "If someone has to know what I'm thinking, she wants to be the one," he said.

Warwick is conducting the experiment, which he hopes will begin in July 2001, because he believes that mankind needs to become cybernetically enhanced and he was bold in his predictions of where the technology might go.

Er wordt geen melding gemaakt van vrijwilligers die nodig zijn, dus mensen die ook wel zoiets willen hebben moeten nog even wachten .

TgF schrijft dat de Babbage printer, 150 jaar geleden ontworpen door Babbage, de uitvinder van de computer, nu eindelijk klaar is. De printer heeft een verrassend klein formaat *kuch* en weegt maar 3 ton :

In a world fixated with time-to-market issues, it is refreshing to discover a newly launched printer that has been a mere 150 years in development.

The London Science Museum has completed a mechanical printer originally designed by Charles Babbage as an output device for his Difference Engine, widely regarded to be the first computer.

Although Babbage never completed the Difference Engine, largely due to the relatively unsophisticated engineering processes of the 19th Century, boffins at the museum successfully built one from his original drawings in 1991. Now the 2.5 ton monster printer is complete, navigation tables produced by the mechanical computer - no luggable itself, weighing in at 3 tons - can be automatically printed.

De mensen van Tresh's Firing Squad schrijven dat zij met groot succes hebben geprobeerd een Celeron II 566 op een Abit BH6 te draaien. Dit vrij oude moederbordje bleek in staat deze nieuwe Celeron op 877MHz te draaien (103MHz FSB):

Well we do have quite a winner here. If you have an old school motherboard like this, and are looking for the nice kick in the pants, look no further. Both of the CPU's we tested clocked over 850 on our test beds. We are not sure as to how guaranteed the overclock success is; time will tell. But for those of us with BH6 motherboards, it is nice to have a good chance at breathing life back into a system that should have been out the door a few months ago. Also keep and eye out for the higher clocked Celerons coming out soon, they should have the same properties as this one: high multipliers, low FSBs, and core that won't push the envelope till the coveted giga is attained.

Onze dank gaat naar HJS voor de tip.

Bij EBN lees ik dat zowel de nieuwe Thunderbirds als de Spitfires van AMD een grotere L2 cache zullen hebben dan de P3 Coppermines:

That promise includes a ramp to 1.5-GHz Athlons, currently slated to appear by next January. Of more immediate interest will be the Spitfire and Thunderbird, Athlons with on-chip cache that will rival the new Coppermine chips rival Intel Corp. produces. Sanders confirmed reports that both the Spitfire and Thunderbird will contain a greater amount of on-chip level-2 cache than the Coppermines, allowing them to outperform Intel's chips in data-intensive applications.

Het artikel vertelt ook over de record-winst van AMD, zoals vanochtend gepost is.

Ook Hot Hardware heeft nu maar een review gemaakt van de Abit KA7, het bekende Via KX133 Athlon mobo. Het lukte hen de FSB van dit bordje op te krikken tot 115MHz:

Our first attempt was to overclock the Athlon 750 just using the abilities of the KA7. We were able to crank the CPU up to a high of 878MHz. with an FSB of 115MHz./PCI 35 and 2MHz. increment increase over the FSB. This provided excellent performance and stability with the SDRAM set to "Host" for 117MHz. with a "Turbo" (CAS 2) setting in the BIOS. We could not set the memory clock to "Host+PCI" or the machine would lock after a few minutes in Win98. A "Host+PCI" setting would run your memory at 152MHz. and the Corsair Module we used, just couldn't handle it on the KA7. However, because you can run the SDRAM clocks asynchronously to the FSB, you can still overclock the CPU and run your memory within spec. [break]Vanochtend nog werd gepost dat BXBoards het ding op 125MHz kreeg. Verder was HotHardware heel tevreden over de prestaties van het plankje:[/break] Fantastic performance all around for the Athlon at 750 and 878MHz. The KX133 chipset proves to have much better bandwidth versus AMD chipset boards we have tested here in the past. In addition, versus a 750MHz. CPU on an Intel BX platform, these scores look damn impressive as well. The KX133 is showing even better memory bandwidth numbers with an Athlon driving it versus its VIA Apollo Pro133A cousin.

Penstar Systems heeft de Abit KA7 gereviewed en kreeg de plank op een maximale busspeed setting van 105MHz, niet echt geweldig dus. Uit de Quake en 3DMark benchmarks in deze review blijkt bovendien dat de KA7 meestal net iets trager is dan de Epox 7KXA, maar groot is het verschil niet:

Overclocking takes patience and time. In the short time I have had to play with this board, I have not been able to get it over 105 Mhz FSB. On the EPoX board I was able to get this processor stable at 770 Mhz (110 FSB), and the 7KXA is not known as an overclocker. Once the board gets burned in more the FSB speeds should be able to increase to 110 Mhz and beyond. Reports have been trickling in that this board can be stable up to 117 Mhz. One limiting factor many are running into is that they try to run their memory at the higher ratio, and unless they have super memory, there are going to be errors and instability. MS over at Lost Circuits has shown that HSDRAM from EMS can be run at 199 Mhz (with highly retarded memory settings of course). Most memory sticks cannot do this, as even 140 Mhz+ is too much for the average PC133 SDRAM DIMM.

A new star is born! Bij HardOCP hebben ze een review online staan van de nieuwe Intel Celeron II 633. Natuurlijk proberen ze deze processor ietsje hoger te draaien dan waarvoor hij bedoeld is en het resultaat is werkelijk verbluffend: over de 1 GHz... Zo door de Q3 timedemo's zonder speciale koeling! Het wonderkind was toen nog niet helemaal stabiel:

First off the bad stuff about this. This Celeron CPU is NOT stable at this speed. I think it is of course possible to get it ROCK STABLE at the 1GHz+ mark with additional cooling and tweaking. Also when I say it is not stable, this is a marginal call. You can of course see we ran Quake 3 and SiSoft benchmarks with ease from the above screenshots. When we went to pile on the Prime95 "Torture Test" the CPU would falter EVERY time.

Moving the FSB speed back down to 100MHz did get the CPU VERY SOLID at 952MHz. You can still run it a 1Ghz out of the box with no tweaking, but it is going to crash sooner or later. We could boot and run the Celeron at 110MHz FSB but it was very unstable at that level. I think this CPU has some real promise when it comes to some Super Cooling this weekend. The default voltage on this CPU is 1.50 Volts, and we did bump the voltage to 1.65 Volts to get it stable. 1.65 is of course default for the Coppermine so I don't think there is much chance of damaging the CPU if it is cooled properly.

3DsoundSurge brengt ons een review van de Sirocco Pro speakers van Videologic. Het setje bestaat uit een versterker met digitale ingang, twee satellites en een grote subwoofer. Ondanks de vrij hoge prijs ($899!) waren ze bij 3DsoundSurge goed te spreken over deze speakers:

As reference system I used the Sirocco Spirit together with the Crossfire subwoofer which should, according to VideoLogic, be very close in performance to the original Sirocco which uses the same drivers for the satellites as the Spirit and the same subwoofer as the Crossfire. I have to admit when I read the Sirocco Pro press release the first time I expected it was another case of paying 2-3 times more money for 10% better quality. I realized already when I played the first song with the Sirocco Pro that the quality improvement was a lot more than just 10% but it didn't knock me off my feet. However the more I listened to the system the more impressed I become and now after having spent several weeks listening to this system I have to say I was dead wrong! The detail and accuracy of this system are not only noticeable better, they are significantly better than the other Sirocco systems (which are already well above average for PC systems). The difference is not just apparent when you play more sophisticated music with many instruments such as classical music. Even for standard pop music the difference in clarity, accuracy and detail of the mid-range and high-end are much more significant than I ever imagined possible at this price point.

Bij Gamers Depot is een review online geplant van de AOpen AK72. Dit KX133-bordje bleek stabiel op de default bus speeds en ging goed overweg met PC100 en PC133 geheugen.

As far as compatibility goes, the AK72 was quite the little trooper and handled everything we threw at it with no issues we could see. It even handles using mixed memory, PC100 and P133, just fine and will automatically adjust its memory timings to the appropriate settings during boot, which is a nice feature for those who want to upgrade to PC133 but aren't too excited about throwing away their PC100.


Just looking at this board one can tell that AOpen has crafted it to be very stable, by including a ton of power capacitors right behind the CPU slot. This is an important thing to look for when purchasing an Athlon board, as there have been some boards in the past which didn't handle some of the higher speed Athlon CPUs too well. OEMs and cheapskates alike will appreciate the AMR slot that lets you slap in a el'cheapo card that houses both modem and audio. Although most people see this slot as a complete waste of time, we do see the OEM value here.

Bij Anandtech hebben ze de 64 MB GeForce van SUMA onder de loep genomen, een aardig onbekende producent van hardware. Ze waren niet echt tevreden over de kaart en gaven het daarom een 5 (een 5 is daar nog net een voldoende):

It is not often that a company makes it debut into any market with a revolutionary new product. Most of the time, especially in the computer industry, companies build off of reputation formed by making quality products that are not necessarily considered cutting edge. Besides the marketing advantages that come with having a recognized brand name, advantages are also felt on the consumer front. Due to the fact that emerging and cutting edge products often cost a good amount of money, a consumer is usually wary of spending a significant amount on a brand that might not have the well-known reputation that others have. Although not new to Asia, SUMA System Corp. is brand new to the United States market, and their product, the SUMA Platinum 64 MB GeForce, is anything but old news. How does this new comer perform in such an elite market?

[...] Design-wise, the SUMA Platinum 64 MB GeForce does not stand out much. The only interesting aspect of the card is its incorporation of an AGP-Pro form factor. It seems to us that this would only scare consumers away, for fear that their computer will not provide enough power for the card. Rest assured, however, that as long as your motherboard is relatively new and of good quality, you should have no power problems running this card.

Als je de hele review wil lezen kan je, je browser deze richting op wijzen.

Mike Andrawes van Anandtech heeft een review gemaakt van het AOpen AX64Pro Apollo Pro 133A plankje. Ze waren er wel aardig content mee, alleen de hoeveelheid van 4 PCI sloten vonden ze te weinig en ze dachten dat het BIOS nog wel wat verbeterd kon worden:

The first thing you notice about the AOpen AX64Pro is the shiny gold plated heatsink that sits atop the 694X North Bridge, the heart of the VIA 133A chipset. It's the same heatsink that adorns the i443BX North Bridge on the AnandTech Editor's Choice winner AX6BC Pro Gold. Our thoughts on the gold heatsink are the same as they were back then - supposedly implemented to help conduct heat in a more efficient manner, the new heatsink does little more than make the motherboard more attractive. Our experience with the 694X North Bridge shows that heat is generally not an issue, as many manufacturers have forgone the heatsink completely. As with AOpen's other flag ship boards, the heatsink is an added touch that doesn't really hurt anything.

[...] The 4/1/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP/AMR) slot configuration is relatively weak in today's market, especially after we've started seeing numerous boards with 6 PCI slots. In fact, there is actually room on the board for an additional PCI slot without giving anything up and still complying with the ATX specification. Ideally, we'd actually prefer to see either the AMR slot take the place of the ISA slot or be removed completely, allowing physical space for 6 PCI slots total, which the Apollo Pro 133A does support. All four PCI slots are full length, but the sole ISA slot is blocked by front panel I/O connections. There is the chance that a full length AGP card may be blocked by the HDD connectors, but most standard video cards should be fine. Otherwise, everything is laid out beautifully with the ATX power connector out of the way and all HDD/FDD located at the front of the board. We're glad AOpen finally figured out the right location for that FDD connector

Flamez schrijft dat onze eigen BVD de mogelijkheid krijgt om een soort echelon op te zetten, het wordt legaal om alle telecommunicatie te onderscheppen en af te luisteren:

The new 'Act on the intelligence and security agencies' (WIV), which is currently debated by Dutch parliament, gives the powers of the BVD a new legal basis. Actually, it means mainly the extension of investigative powers. In each amendment on the original proposal, new powers are given. For instance, in the first draft of the new Act, the BVD got the power to intercept, record and listen into telecommunications. In the latest amendment, from the beginning of this year, the power to 'receive' telecommunications was added. This means the BVD is authorized to directly pluck telecommunications, for instance GSM-traffic, out of the air. In this way, the BVD is no longer dependent on the willingness of telcom operators to intercept traffic, but can create for instance their own parallel network of receivers to intercept all GSM-traffic. Also, this prevents providers from 'leaking' about the fine work the BVD is doing in this area.

The biggest extension, however, is the newly added article 25a. In this article, the BVD is authorized to intercept at random all international telecommunication that is not cable bound and scan the intercepted communication on items of interest (persons, groups, keywords). According to the explanatory note by the draft Act, this kind of random interception is needed to investigate if by any chance interesting messages are part of the international communication.

Ben benieuwd welke woorden we nu in onze e-mail moeten zetten, ik neem aan dat bomb, kill en president niet meer zo effectief zijn .

Kingston heeft aangekondigd om een nieuw soort Rambus geheugen op de markt te brengen, de zogenaamde SO-RIMM geheugen modules. Dit geheugen is bedoelt voor de high-end server markt en moet sneller en kleiner zijn de de normale Rimmetjes:

Fountain Valley, CA (March 27, 2000) - Kingston® Technology Company, Inc. today announced support for high-bandwidth networking and communications platforms utilizing Rambus® memory technology. Besides using already available Rambus RIMM™ modules, a number of forthcoming platforms will use SO-RIMM™ modules, which achieve high bandwidth transfers using a smaller module form-factor than RIMM modules.

Kingston Technology has accumulated over three years of experience in Rambus memory technology, having started a partnership program with Rambus in 1997. Working with Intel Corporation since 1998, Kingston has also enabled the RIMM module ramp for Intel's 820- and 840- chipset based platforms. Kingston is the memory industry's leader in providing high-quality RIMM modules to customers worldwide, having shipped approximately 100,000 RIMM modules to date.

Hoe duur dit moet worden is niet bekend, iets wat waarschijnlijk erg goed is voor de bloeddruk van de mensen die dit misschien willen kopen .

George Lucas heeft na uitgebreide testen met traditionele en digitale camera's besloten om Star Wars II digitaal op te nemen, meldt Nu.nl. De opnames voor Episode II beginnen in juni in Australië, daarna verplaatst de set zich naar Italië en Tunesië:

De nieuwe Star Wars film zal digitaal worden opgenomen. Dat heeft producent Lucas donderdag bekend gemaakt.

[...] Volgens Lucas is de techniek van het digitale camera's op dit moment goed genoeg om film te vervangen. De special effects afdeling van de filmmaatschappij zal de techniek verder verfijnen. Hierbij wordt nauw samengewerkt met Sony en Panavision.

Andy van BXBoads heeft in afwachting van zijn review al wat opmerkingen over de Abit KA7 op z'n frontpage gemikt. Hij heeft de plank nu bijna stabiel op 125MHz met een Athlon 650!

Testing on the Abit KA7 has been continuing, and I'm feeling rather sleepy after an 18 hour stint on this. Results are looking very nice now, and I've found a sweet component combination that is even allowing me to boot the 0.18u Athlon 650 @ 815/125! Not bad at all, and although things are not 100% stable at that speed (almost certainly due to the L2 limitations of my test CPU), its seems to be 100% stable at 6.5 x 120, which is the best I've done on any board to date!

I do have concerns about memory scores, these are much lower than the ones I've obtained on my reference VIA Apollo Pro 133A system, although using the +33 PCICLK option, gives a decent enough boost. But overall the board is looking very nice, and I think it is going to displace the Epox EP-7KXA in my own personal system. One thing is for sure, without wanting to pre-empt the review, this is the board that Athlon overclockers should choose. [break] Misschien is het voor mij toch interessant om een paar low level memory bechmarks op de KA7 en K7V te draaien . In een eerdere post van 11 april schrijft Andy trouwens dat hij z'n KA7 een maximale FSB van 109MHz kan trekken. Ik ben benieuwd hoe hij er nu opeens 125MHz uit heeft gekregen: [/break] As an overclocking board - well so far, the best I've done is 109Mhz with a 0.18u and 0.25u Athlon 650. This is 2 Mhz better than the K7V, but 6 Mhz -worse- than the best I can do with the Epox EP-7KXA, which runs at 745/115 Mhz effortlessly at 1.75v on the 0.25u Athlon, and at 1.65v with the 0.18u Athlon.

Ace's Hardware heeft een samenvatting gepost van de conference call waarin AMD vandaag haar (onverwacht positieve) winstcijfers bekend maakte. De belangrijkste punten die werden genoemd:

DDR en multi-processing chipsets in vierde kwartaal 2000 (jammer )

AMD heeft vandaag de financiële resultaten van het eerste kwartaal 2000 bekend gemaakt. Bij een omzet van 1,092 miljard dollar werd een winst van 189,349 miljoen dollar gedraaid, omgerekend $1,15 per aandeel. Deze cijfers zijn ver boven de verwachting van $0,52 winst per aandeel:

AMD today reported record sales of $1,092,029,000 and record net income of $189,349,000 for the quarter ended April 2, 2000. Net income amounted to $1.15 per diluted share. The company reported strong growth in each of its product groups - the Computation Products Group, the Memory Group, and the Communications Group.

Total revenues grew by 13 percent over the immediate-prior quarter ended December 26, 1999, and by 73 percent over the like period of 1999. In the immediate-prior quarter, AMD reported sales of $968,710,000 and net income of $65,080,000, or $0.43 per diluted share. In the first quarter of 1999, AMD reported sales of $631,593,000, and a net loss of $128,367,000, or $0.88 per share.

"AMD had the best quarter in its history," said W.J. Sanders III, chairman and chief executive officer. "Each of our product groups reported significant growth in the first quarter. Led by strength in PC processors and Flash memory sales, sales from AMD's three product groups grew by more than 13 percent sequentially and by more than 83 percent over the comparable period of 1999.

Thanks Arjan voor de tip.

News.com schrijft dat het uit bronnen bij AMD vernomen heeft dat de Thunderbird op een kloksnelheid van 1,25GHz gelanceerd zal worden. Een release 'mid-year' duidt er niet op dat de speculaties over een introductie op 22 april betrouwbaar zijn:

A high performance model called "Thunderbird" will also appear mid-year. Thunderbird is expected to run at 1.25 GHz at launch, according to sources close to AMD.

The company is also coming out with a more advanced version of its K6-2 chip, called the K6-2+, for notebooks this month. Hewlett-Packard is slated to come out with a notebook using the chip on April 17.