News.com meldt dat Windows 2000 Data Center vandaag in produktie is gegaan. Hiermee komt een eind aan het langst draaiende software project van Microsoft. Data Center moet concurreren met midlevel en high-end Unix servers, die ingezet worden voor doeleinden zoals data warehousing, e-commerce websites en wetenschappelijk of industrieel onderzoek. Er worden maximaal 32 processors en 64GB's geheugen ondersteund.

Aanvankelijk was het de bedoeling dat Data Center hooguit 120 dagen na de release van de Professional en Server editities van Windows 2000 op de markt gebracht zou worden, maar in goede Microsoft traditie heeft de release date wat vertraging opgelopen. Serversystemen met Win2k Data Center zijn nu vanaf 26 september beschikbaar. Voor de prijs geldt geheimhouding tussen Microsoft en de OEM:

Microsoft today released Windows 2000 Data Center to manufacturers, bringing to a close the longest-running development project in the software maker's history.

[...] Systems preloaded with Windows 2000 Data Center will be available Sept. 26. The lag between the time the manufacturers receive the software and actually ship systems loaded with the OS reflects the lengthy process of creating support services and infrastructure.

[...] Microsoft is positioning Data Center to compete with midlevel and high-end Unix servers, according to group product manager Michel Gambier--a market in which Microsoft hasn't made much of a dent.

[...] Microsoft does not discuss the pricing of Data Center, Gambier said, leaving it to the manufacturers to determine the price of the entire system, with software and support. "The pricing of Data Center is confidential between Microsoft and the OEM (original equipment manufacturer)," he said.

3DLabs en Real Time Visualization (RTViz), een divisie van Mitsubishi Electric, hebben vandaag aangekondigd dat zij gaan samenwerken bij de ontwikkeling van een gecombineerde polygonen en voxel accelerator. Het eerste produkt van de samenwerking is een geoptimaliseerde Oxygen driver waarmee de OpenGL en voxel graphics van een RTViz VolumePro accelerator real-time geïntegreerd kunnen worden weergegeven:

3Dlabs®, Inc. (Nasdaq: TDDD - news) and Real Time Visualization (RTViz), a division of Mitsubishi Electric, today announced a technical and marketing collaboration to tightly integrate the products of both companies. This collaboration is expected to enable a new class of advanced visualization applications that require the seamless blending of polygonal graphics and voxel-based volumetric rendering. The first results of this collaboration will be optimized drivers from 3Dlabs for its Oxygen® family of professional graphics accelerators that enable the real-time integrated display of OpenGL® graphics and volumes rendered on RTViz VolumePro(TM) accelerators. These drivers are expected to ship from 3Dlabs in the third quarter of 2000. Both companies are actively investigating longer-term board and silicon level inter-operability of their product lines.

Voxels (volume elements) represent the internal structure of objects acquired from real world sample data such as CT, MRI, Ultrasound, sonic, radar and other discrete acquisition methods. Polygons define surface characteristics and are represented as geometrical mesh triangles. Users have long desired the ability to render and visualize both primitives together in real time. For example, doctors need to visualize the scalpel (polygons) inside the brain (voxels) and geologists need to visualize well-head data (polygons) inside the earth's fault subsurface strata (voxels) as they search for oil.

``The merging of polygonal and voxel techniques establishes the next significant advance in 3D graphics technology -- enabling a wide range of advanced vertical applications on the PC,'' said Jamie Jacobs, General Manager of Real Time Visualization. ``3Dlabs' leadership in professional graphics and their responsiveness to the requirements of integrated 3D graphics makes them the natural partner for us as we undertake this new initiative that will leverage the technology leadership of both companies.''

``RTViz is the undisputed leader in hardware accelerated volume rendering with the highly innovative VolumePro architecture and we are delighted to work closely with this highly-regarded team,'' said Neil Trevett, vice president of marketing, 3Dlabs. ``We will be working hard to support the needs of RTViz and to enable end-users, integrators and OEMs leverage the power of interactive, real-time, seamlessly integrated voxel and polygonal rendering.''

The Tech Zone heeft een review gepost van de Abit BX133-RAID, een plankje met 5 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, 3 DIMM slots en een HighPoint HPT370 IDE RAID controller voor 2 additionele IDE channels. Als we The Tech Zone mogen geloven is dit het ultieme 440BX board:

This is a great motherboard... I firmly believe that Abit has milked every last drop from the Intel 440BX chipset with this motherboard. The Highpoint HPT370 controller's ATA-100 and RAID features are very righteous. Performance in that area far exceeded any of my expectations. It seems that any driver and chip compatibility issues that Highpoint may have had in the past are exactly that... In the past. Again, this was a very stable motherboard. It never crashed or stuttered once in all my testing.

Yes, the same issues that have plagued the BX chipset in the past are still present on this motherboard. Based on what I've seen Abit has done a spectacular job of getting the kinks out for overclocking up to the 140fsb range. The Celeron 2 566 that I used was only stable at 850mhz if I jacked the core voltage up to 1.9v. Yet on this motherboard I was able to run stable at 1.7v. When higher Celeron2 core voltages are available in future BIOS versions, I'm sure I could easily hit 935mhz on this motherboard at 1.9v. This is a very sweet overclockers' motherboard for Celeron2 and P3 CPU's that are not already running on a 133fsb.

In any case... This motherboard would fit the bill nicely for a server if you're looking for high performance and don't want to break the bank. This is indeed the best BX motherboard Abit has produced. Too bad they saved the best for last!

biobak schrijft: "The Register meldt dat Intel volgend jaar de 2 GHz barriere wil halen met hun P4. Dat moet gebeuren met de P4-Northwood, de opvolger van de P4-Willamette. In de 2e helft van volgend jaar moet de 0.13 micron Northwood op de markt komen.":

But, as first revealed here from the Computex show last June, there will be a further rev of the Pentium 4 slated for volume production in the third quarter of next year, using a different package. That will form part of a move to the "Northwood" Pentium 4, which is likely to hit 2GHz+ clock speeds at launch.

[...] The Pentium 4, codenamed Northwood, will shrink to .13 micron and be delivered to customers in the second half of next year, displacing the Pentium III platform and, at the lower end, be available with the so-called Brookdale SDRAM chipset, which is likely to support double data rate (DDR) memory.

But, before then, as reported here, Intel will change the socket. Since we first reported the 479-pin Willamette, Intel has decided to drop one pin and is now naming the package the mPGA478. McComas believes the extra 55 pins are related to additional power consumption needs.[break]Daarnaast vinden we bij C|Net een verdere bevestiging dat VIA volgend jaar een 1GHz Samuel 2 processor op de markt wil zetten zoals we ook eerder konden lezen in een artikel van The Register. Over deze 0.15 micron chip zegt David Wong, een analist van de Duitse Bank in Hong Kong het volgende:[/break]"They've actually got a giga processor that works on paper, which is, in and of itself, a significant achievement"[break]Leuk, maar de kern waar het allemaal om draait is niet mis:[/break]The Samuel 2 is still likely to lag behind rival Intel and AMD chips, which have larger cache memories built into their processors. Cache memory saves processors from accessing the computer's banks of memory chips, making overall operation faster.

We wachten met spanning op volgend jaar.

The Flying Dutchman liet weten dat Virtual Hideout een cool artikeltje heeft gepost over het vervangen van je suffe groene en amberkleurige case LEDjes met een paar hippe exemplaren. De operatie is een fluitje van een cent en levert een leuk resultaat op:

Van Smith van Tom's Hardware Guide heeft de SiS630, i810E en de ALi Aladdin 7, drie low-budget chipsets elk met sound & graphics geïntegreerd, eens met elkaar vergeleken. Uiteraard bleken ze alledrie zwaar beroerd te presteren op het gebied van 3D games, maar voor hetgeen ze gemaakt zijn (word processing, simpel internetten e.d) zijn ze goed genoeg. De SiS630 geniet lichtelijk de voorkeur vanwege zijn lage prijs t.o.v. de Intel 810E die maar weinig sneller is. De Aladdin 7 is alleen aan te raden als hij gekoppeld kan worden met de zeldzame K6-III waarvoor hij ontwikkeld werd.

The SiS630 did not perform well on 3D intensive tests, but, then again, neither did the other two boards. Even so, the SIS630 was noticeably the weakest on 3D tests. Although display quality was roughly equivalent to the i810E, the SiS630 make a notably poor fraggin' platform.

Motherboards based on the SiS630 are generally quite a lot cheaper than those based on the i810e. With a larger feature set than Intel’s chipset, excellent stability, low price and business performance roughly equivalent to the i810e, motherboards based on the SiS630 are some of the best values around for running business and Internet applications.

Both the SiS630 and the i810E have obvious scalability advantages over the Aladdin 7 since the fastest Socket 7 chip currently tops of at 550MHz. We do not recommend, however, spending nearly one thousand dollars (US) for a top rung PIII and plopping it into a motherboard containing one of these chipsets as it would be akin to putting a Dodge Viper engine into a Toyota Echo.

[...] In summary, these chipsets are not quite the laughingstock that they might initially appear to be. These products help enable a new generation of affordable computers with unprecedented feature sets for the budget segment. The chipsets enable systems with very reasonable performance on business and Internet applications along with reasonable performance on entertainment tasks like casual gaming and DVD playback. An ALi 7 equipped motherboard armed with a 550MHz AMD K6-2+ will almost certainly outperform 99% of the laptops currently in use and will probably outperform a similar percentage of presently installed business PCs. I know many software engineers who would be delighted to be upgraded to such a system, with their productivity enhanced by reduced compile times, increased system responsiveness and greater work satisfaction.

Thanks Arne de Graaf voor de tip!

C|Net heeft een interessant artikel gepost met daarin informatie over Intel's Northwood en Tualatin processor. De Northwood staat gepland voor het derde kwartaal van 2001 en wordt een verbeterde versie van de Pentium 4 'Willamette'. Volgens geruchten gaat tijdens de introductie op minimaal 2GHz draaien en zal hij zowel RDRAM, SDRAM en DDR SDRAM ondersteunen.

The Pentium 4 is coming soon, but that is only the first of a number of products coming from Intel in the next 16 months.

The company is preparing to launch its Pentium 4 early in the fourth quarter and will then follow the release with a number of processors for different product segments, according to sources. The chip will run at 1.4 GHz, Intel has said.

Toward the end of the third quarter in 2001, the company will come out with Northwood, an improved version of the Pentium 4, according to Bert McComas, an analyst at InQuest Market Research. McComas examined Intel's most recent product roadmaps and posted an article on the roadmap on his company's web site. [break]Meer informatie is er bekend over de Intel Tualatin wat de codenaam is voor de 0.13 micron Pentium III waar je eerder al over kon lezen. Tualatin zal in totaal 512kB integrated cache bevatten in plaats van de 256kB bij de huidige P3's. De bussnelheid wordt zoals bekend opgekrikt naar 200MHz.[/break] Before that, in the middle of 2001, Intel will come out with Tualatin, a version of the Pentium III made on the 0.13-micron process, more advanced than the current 0.18-micron process, McComas said. The micron measurements refer to the size of certain features on the chip. By shrinking the features, a manufacturer can make the chip smaller as well as boost its performance.

Along with being faster, Tualatin will also contain a larger secondary cache, a bank of memory close to the processor that boosts performance, according to one source. Tualatin Pentium IIIs will contain 512KB of integrated cache, compared to 256KB of integrated cache on current Pentium IIIs.

Tualatin will also come with a 200-MHz system bus. The system bus serves as a data conduit between the processor and the rest of the computer. The current Pentium III system bus tops out at 133 MHz.

De mafkezen van PC Monkey vonden het nodig om een waterkoeling installatie op hun oude vertrouwde Voodoo3 3000 videokaart te planten. Het installeren was vrij eenvoudig te doen, jammer alleen dat er geen spectaculaire resultaten werden behaald. De core wist van 166MHz stabiel op 190MHz te draaien:

To cool down the Voodoo chip located on the card we're going to use a coldplate configuration. Essentially, instead of a standard heatsink there will now be a water-cooled piece of metal that rests against the chip cooling it down. For this we'll need to be inventive. All of the things used in this design can be bought at Wal-Mart. In fact, two of them were…

I started off with an oldschool water cooling tool that I used in my first water cooling experiment, plumbing supplies! The black topoff pictured here has been used by tons of fellow water coolers across the web because it works. If you look at that black cube on the top it just screams, "I'm the same size as a computer chip!" Grab a hacksaw and lop it off, this will give us that back plate for our cooler. The front will consist of a piece of sheet metal.

After the cooler was attached to the card, it was time for some overclocking. The results unfortunately were not as high as I had hoped. I was able to raise the clock speed up to 190MHz from the default of 166MHz. Anything more than this resulted in lockups or bad artifacting on the screen. I was hoping for a lot more but I suspect that the memory and not the chip itself limited the card's overclocking.

Zo, we hebben AT weer naar hun rechtmatige plek verwezen, zodat wij de ons toekomende eerste plek weer kunnen opeisen. Het verschil was maar liefst 255.000 blocks in ons voordeel.

Tevens zijn er 6 mensen bekeerd, wat ons totaal alweer op 2765 leden brengt. Dit is natuurlijk veel te weinig, dus ga ook meedoen !

De DPC hitparade top 10 van 10 augustus

1. 87.436 [Dutch Power Cows] Bill Goldberg (19, Totaal: 1.305.436)
2. 83.148 [DPC]-Killemall says: Mad Scientist did it ... (10, Totaal: 1.680.784)
3. 82.683 [Dutch Power Cows] Interior Lulu (2, Totaal: 9.014.526)
4. 45.235 [DPC] Ethan Hunt (121, Totaal: 313.743)
5. 38.239 [Dutch Power Cows] wiho (1, Totaal: 11.988.595)
6. 28.810 [Dutch Power Cows] The LawnMooh'er Men (4, Totaal: 2.527.761)
7. 25.322 [Dutch Power Cows] Chakotay (12, Totaal: 1.629.325)
8. 23.247 [DPC] Tuur -> Saludos a todas las vacas! (8, Totaal: 1.691.617)
9. 21.438 [DPC] Team Frikandel Speciaal (79, Totaal: 494.409)
10. 20.628 [Dutch Power Cows]HHS-SI (66, Totaal: 596.180)

En de nummers 11 tot en met 30

11. 18.120 [DPC] - CrashNet - PCR/Bilderbeek (58, Totaal: 640.184)
12. 17.673 [Dutch Power Cows] Collin de Grazer! (39, Totaal: 807.861)
13. 16.514 [Dutch Power Cows] Team Budiman (54, Totaal: 661.976)
14. 16.434 [Dutch Power Cows] ROYAL NUTS (142, Totaal: 280.271)
15. 16.356 [Dutch Power Cows] HzelZ Qubit IBM (68, Totaal: 567.188)
16. 15.427 [DPC] Quakers United | Cewle Coown' Cadavers (7, Totaal: 1.835.158)
17. 14.297 [Dutch Power Cows] Panic IRC Team (212, Totaal: 192.625)
18. 14.058 [DPC] willie (61, Totaal: 626.816)
19. 13.469 [Dutch Power Cows] Graasland (44, Totaal: 739.575)
20. 11.873 [DPC] Cyber Cows Unlimited (15, Totaal: 1.463.898)
21. 11.089 [Dutch Power Cows] cows say moo (138, Totaal: 284.984)
22. 10.676 2fast4u [Dutch Power Cows] (6, Totaal: 2.112.058)
23. 10.569 [Dutch Power Cows] BaDMaN (13, Totaal: 1.564.445)
24. 10.465 [DPC] Pallas Athene CSHH (84, Totaal: 465.428)
25. 9.873 [Dutch Power Cows] Rancho Relaxo (137, Totaal: 285.772)
26. 9.749 [Dutch Power Cows] Diadem (445, Totaal: 77.738)
27. 9.582 [Dutch Power Cows] [eNeRGy] (21, Totaal: 1.171.643)
28. 8.751 [Dutch Power Cows] V.P.A. (76, Totaal: 516.329)
29. 8.386 [Dutch Power Cows] Team EDG Ermelo (67, Totaal: 577.611)
30. 8.306 [Dutch Power Cows]_______PcDealer (103, Totaal: 377.522)

De Top 15 teams

1. (1) 1.578.872 Dutch Power Cows
2. (1) 1.323.675 AnandTech
3. (1) 843.434 HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries
4. (1) 832.757 Russian Team
5. (0) 586.001 Slashdot.org
6. (1) 362.960 Team Warped (OS/2)
7. (1) 351.091 The Amiga RC5 Team effort
8. (0) 317.296 Team EvangeLista (Macs Rule! :-)
9. (1) 262.916 Ars Technica Readers
10. (1) 246.698 Japan FreeBSD Users Group
11. (0) 234.537 Japan Windows NT Users Group
12. (103) 233.528 Team Demon Internet
13. (1) 229.532 Libertarians for Privacy (1-800-ELECT-US)
14. (1) 216.755 Team Win32 (Windows)
15. (3) 210.976 SysOpt.com/Tweakit.com

Teams om ons heen (total stats)

4. () Russian Team (Tot: 256.436.027, Gis: 832.757)
5. () Team Warped (OS/2) (Tot: 248.230.597, Gis: 362.960)
6. () HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries (Tot: 235.645.052, Gis: 843.434)
7. () The Amiga RC5 Team effort (Tot: 222.335.923, Gis: 351.091)
8. () Dutch Power Cows (Tot: 195.625.369, Gis: 1.578.872)
9. () Japan FreeBSD Users Group (Tot: 192.210.464, Gis: 246.698)
10. () Libertarians for Privacy (1-800-ELECT-US) (Tot: 169.661.913, Gis: 229.532)
11. () @stake L0pht Labs (Tot: 157.735.704, Gis: 179.686)
12. () Japan Linux Users Group (Tot: 157.686.913, Gis: 194.642)
(Teams waarvan de score van gisteren ontbreekt, hadden geen score in de top 100!)

Wanneer halen we ze in

Russian Team: 82 dagen
Team Warped (OS/2): 44 dagen
HackZone Team -- Combined power of Russia and exUSSR countries: 55 dagen
The Amiga RC5 Team effort: 22 dagen

Mijlpalen

MegaFlush 6 stats

Gisteren: 84.549
Totaal: 9.743.065

Dutch Power Cows is vandaag 1e en heeft een kans van één op 23 om de sleutel te vinden!

Over bij Penstar Systems hebben ze de IBM 34GXP eens vergelijken met de Maxtor DiamondMax 40, twee zeer populaire 7200rpm harddisken met 2MB cache en een seektime van 9ms. De Maxtor drive kwam het op het gebied van performance en geluidsproductie wat beter naar voren, maar werd wel duidelijk heter dan zijn IBM concurrent:

When comparing drives, a few things you need to look out for is heat and noise. A really fast drive will most likely generate more heat and noise than a slower one, but that is not always the case. When the Deskstar 34 GXP’s came out, they were faster than the competition but were slightly more noisy, however, they ran much cooler than any of the competing products in that performance range.

In this comparison the Maxtor was actually quite a bit more quiet than the IBM drive, but it got really hot (as in almost uncomfortable to touch). The IBM clicked more and could be heard outside the case very easily, but it still ran cool to the touch. If heat in your case is a big factor, this is definitely something to think about.

The Maxtor drive seemed much more solid, but the electronics below were not protected in the least bit. The IBM drive on the other hand had a clear plastic covering on many of the chips that could protect them in case of a fall or being struck by another object.

Lees hier het complete verhaal.

T-Break brengt ons een review van de Chaintech 7AJA, da's een Socket A KT133 bordje voor je Duron of Thunderbird met 5xPCI, 1xAGP, 1xAMR en 1xISA. Dankzij de multiplier dipswitches onboard en een bios waarmee je bussnelheden tot 166MHz in stappen van 1 of 2MHz kunt instellen is dit plankje erg tweaker vriendelijk:

Overclocking has to be one of the biggest attractions on the 7AJA. The four dip switches found below the DIMM slots have been described in the user’s manual as “clock-ratio adjustment switches.” Put this together with a BIOS that offers upto 160MHz FSB in 1 or 2 MHz increments and you have what any Overclocker will call a killer motherboard. Of course, all this sounds very good on paper but were we able to succeed? Well, yes and No…

We first tried out the board with the older 700MHz Duron and before adjusting the clock-multiplier, increased the FSB. To our surprise, we were able to run this particular 700MHz Duron very stably at 106MHz (Just a reminder that we were unable to take it above 101MHz in all of the previous motherboards.) Next came the dip-switches adjustment which I changed to the setting of 7.5 (the default of the 700MHz Duron is 7.0) What did I see at the POST? AMD Duron running at 750MHz! Yeah baby yeah! It actually worked! After 7.5, I switched it to 8.0…Got POST at 800MHz – but unfortunately none of the benchmarks completed. Anything over 8.0 did not POST, but hey, you don’t hear me complaining!

Then I decided to try out the newer 600MHz Duron. I thought I’d start out with the clock multiplier adjustment which I set for 7.0. No luck – the CPU still POSTed at 600MHz. Even the 6.5 setting didn’t make it run any higher. I’m guessing that AMD have implemented some kind of new technique for locking the multiplier- hopefully a future BIOS update from Chaintech will solve this. Having failed with the multiplier, I proceeded to overclock the good old fashion way- adjusting the FSB. I was able to go upto 111MHz with the 600MHz Duron, which made it run at 666MHz. Anything over that (but below 116 FSB) posted but couldn’t complete benchmarks. But again, you won’t hear me complain. As far as t-break is concerned, the 7AJA is the king of overclocking in Socket-A motherboards.

Ik kreeg een mailtje binnen over deze Asus A7V review die net bij HardwareCentral is verschenen. Net zoals eerdere artikelen over dit VIA KT133 Socket A plankje was de reviewer erg enthousiast over zijn features en performance. Hieronder vast een gedeelte uit de test:

For overclockers, the A7V is a must-have. The ability to change the multiplier on Socket-A processors is simply invaluable. Moreover, the A7V’s multiple fan headers, Jumper-free BIOS, flush socket lever, and wonderful stability make it ideal for overclockers. The only other board thus far with the ability to change multipliers is Abit’s KT7, now up against stiff competition thanks to the A7V.

For a workstation environment, the A7V is ideal as well thanks to its stability, support for a wide range of new AMD processors, AGP Pro slot, and ability to accept up to 1.5 GB of SDRAM or VCSDRAM.

Further, the A7V’s ability to support up to eight IDE devices, four at ATA-100, is noteworthy. We’re happy as well to see Asus’ use of Promise’s ATA-100 controller, as in the past, we’ve found its drivers and BIOS to be stabler than their Highpoint counterpart’s.

The only real concern we have with the A7V is its price tag. In general, the A7V runs for about $20 to $30 higher than other Socket-A boards, which may be significant for some users. For the beginning user, whether that extra $30 is worth it for the Asus name and features is questionable (not many people buy a Mercedes as their first car). For the power user, however, the A7V is absolutely worth every penny.

Planet Hardware heeft een review neergemikt van de ViewSonic PS790 monitor met een 19" Invar short-neck shadow mask beeldbuis die een maximale resolutie trekt van 1600x1200 bij 76Hz. Hieronder wat meer info over zijn beeldkwaliteit:

The bottom line feature with any monitor worth its salt is how well it can display images. The PS790 is really a top performer in this area, serving up bright and vibrant colors at every resolution. The overall sharpness of the picture is fairly good for a non-flat CRT, but leaves a little to be desired. The image tends to blur at the very edges of the display, and is not at the overall sharpness quality of other brands (such as Hitachi and Sony models).

We found the brightness of this model to be very strong in 32-bit, but lagging behind other brands in the 16-bit realm. These are both REALLY nit-picky differences to note here, as most monitors employ the exact same tubes making image quality comparisons an exercise of personal opinion. If you are seriously in the market for a new monitor you owe it to yourself to cruise down to a retail store like Best Buy and compare various models in the size and price range you are interested in.

Gamers.nl schrijft:"De uitgeverij PCM wil een verbod omdat er volgens hun autoreursrechten worden geschonden. Een verbod zou slecht nieuws voor Tweakers.net en soortgelijke sites betekenen.":

PCM (onder meer uitgever van de Volkskrant, Trouw, AD, Het Parool) vindt het belachelijk dat op Internet iedereen zomaar content van elkaar kan en mag gebruiken. Daarom heeft men een proces aangespannen tegen Kranten.com, een site die de headlines van alle grote Nederlandse dagbladen op 1 pagina heeft verzameld. Volgens PCM wordt daarmee het auteursrecht geschonden.
Waar ze verder moeite mee hebben is dat er direct naar het krantenartikel gelinkt wordt. Bezoekers die een link volgen komen direct bij het artikel terecht, en gaan daarmee voorbij aan de frontpage. Dat zorgt voor minder advertentie-views, en dus voor minder inkomsten voor PCM.

Een verbod op Kranten.com zou in ieder geval de manier waarop Tweakers.net nieuws brengt flink veranderen. Sowieso zouden we alleen nog maar naar de frontpage van een andere site mogen linken, in plaats van direct naar het artikel.
Gelukkig haalt Tweakers.net het overgrote deel van het nieuws nog van collega-internetbedrijven, in plaats van bij een bedrijf uit de "oude economie" dat weinig snapt van de dynamische wereld die Internet heet...

Uitspraak van de rechter op 22 augustus. Reken er maar op dat wij dat met argusogen zullen volgen.

Gait postte dit artikel van Nu.nl in de nieuws-submit queue. Te lezen is dat de beta-versie van Office 10 nu ook standaard voorzien is van spraakherkenning. Concurrent (*kuch*) Wordperfect van het noodlijdende Corel had al langer een aangepaste versie van Philips' Freespeech aan boord:

Microsoft heeft bèta-testers gemeld dat Bèta 1 van de nieuwe MS Office is gelanceerd met als codenaam Office 10. Eén van de belangrijkste vernieuwingen is dat het zakelijke softwarepakket wordt uitgerust met spraakherkenning. De nieuwe versie van MS Office wordt in 2001 verwacht. Eén van de nieuwtjes is, dat Word straks met spraak kan worden aangestuurd in zowel een dicteermodus als in een commandomodus, zo melden testers.

Zoals het zich nu laat aanzien zijn de vernieuwingen in Office 10 niet echt spectaculair: het is meer een uitgebreide upgrade dan een volledig nieuwe versie. De eerstvolgende grote verbouwing zal in 2002 plaatsvinden met Office.net. Ondertussen is Microsoft ook nog bezig Office naar het Mac-platform om te bouwen.

Op Realworldtech.com is een interessant verhaal van Dean Kent te vinden over een aantal actuele ontwikkelingen op chipset gebied. Het ziet er naar uit dat Intel een groot deel van de fabricage van chipset voor Intel-processoren aan VIA over gaat laten. Sinds enige tijd heeft VIA een volledige licentie voor de productie van P6-chipsets (de huidige Intel-architectuur) , en waarschijnlijk zullen ze die ook krijgen voor de P7-core (Pentium 4 en de opvolgers daarvan) Voeg dat bij het marktaandeel van 90% dat VIA al heeft voor het AMD platform en je krijgt 1 fabrikant die in z'n eentje het overgrote deel van de chipsets produceert. Dit jaar bedraagt het marktaandeel al zo'n 40%, en dat zal komend jaar alleen maar groeien:

According to Richard Brown, Director of Marketing in Taiwan, VIA will deliver "a minimum of 42 million chipsets to the market this year -- probably substantially more". Assuming the total number of PC system shipped reaches the forecast of 130 million, this would give VIA at least a 30% market share for the entire year, possibly over 40%.

Though VIA is generally seen as a strong supporter of AMD processors, with their Super Socket 7, Slot A and Socket A chipsets, the main reason for their huge gain in market share over the past year is due to the support of Pentium II/III processors. Now that Intel has granted a full license for VIA to product P6 chipsets, some have speculated that VIA may now all but abandon AMD.

VIA continues to ramp production and reportedly contracted with Hyundai for additional capacity of about 10K wafers per month - right about the time that the Intel licensing agreement was made. The speculation here is that Intel has essentially handed a percentage of the chipset market to VIA and the additional capacity will be needed in the near future.

Assuming this is true, VIA will own at least 90% of the Athlon chipet market, and at least 50% of the P6 chipset market by the end of the year. There is currently no information available regarding any possible licensing for P7 chipsets, though VIA has indicated that they are proceeding with that end in mind. [break]Teloops wordt ook nog even opgemerkt dat de DDR-chipsets voor zowel Intel als AMD tegen het eind van het jaar op moederborden te vinden moeten zijn, waarbij de Intel-set waarschijnlijk wat eerder op de markt zal komen:[/break] VIA is sampling their DDR capable chipset for Intel processors later this month, and expect to be in volume production by the end of the year. A DDR chipset for AMD processors will likely come out several months later, which means product appears to be unlikely until Q1 2001.

(Thanx Arjan voor de link)

cappie schrijft: "Alle hardware van tegenwoordig cruised steeds dichter richting de grenzen van hun basis-elementen: silicium, koper, goud en zilver. Er wordt geschat dat we de absolute grens over 10 a 20 jaar gaan bereiken, wat natuurlijk slecht nieuws is voor de echte tweakers. Gelukkig heeft men daar 't volgende op gevonden:

Je pakt een stukje DNA, een handje vol wetenschappers en al het goede van de digitale techniek, en wat krijg je dan?

Op DNA gebaseerde electronica wat wel 1000x sneller en kleiner is dan al die meuk waar we tegenwoordig mee werken. Componenten die 10.000x kleiner zijn dan de huidige (denk aan de transistoren in CPU's nu)"

An international team of scientists have said August 9, 2000 that they have made the world's first DNA motor, seen in this computer model, paving the way for molecular electronic circuits thousands of times faster and smaller than silicon chips. The DNA motors, which assemble themselves, pave the way for the development of minute electronic systems composed of molecular switches and other elements which could be produced by mixing components in a test tube. Something has to be done to revolutionize electronic circuit assembly because conventional processes are going to run into a brick wall within the next 10 to 20 years

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