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OCTOBER NEWS

 

October 31st, 2001

 

AMD's Official Response to Thermal Test Video Controversy
... and it pops THG's bubble.  At best, the hobbyist site's level of professionalism can be called into question for its dubious Palomino statements.  But more condemning is that AMD's broadly more extensive tests of the Intel Pentium 4 produced results that directly contradict the finding reported by Tom's Hardware.  This disparity casts serious doubts on THG's motivations for the "Falling Off Heatsinks" article.  Here are AMD's remarks:

Additionally, in it's own tests AMD observed that the Pentium 4 processor-based systems it tested did not continue to operate after their heat sink and fan units were removed. AMD used multiple unmodified, third-party, Intel chipset-based motherboards for its testing. The second part of the AMD videos shows the results.

In its widely criticized piece, Tom's Hardware stated:

After the removal of the heat sink, Quake 3 Arena is slowing down significantly, but the system remains fully operational. The surface temperature of the Pentium 4 processor is a mere 29 degrees Celsius or 84 degrees Fahrenheit. ... Pentium 4 dealt with the thermal disaster in an absolutely perfect manner. No data loss and no hardware damage is more than most of us would expect.

The temperature of 29 degrees Celsius that THG reports is obviously grossly in error -- for one, Pentium 4 throttling doesn't kick in until the die reaches about 70 degrees Celsius.  That Pabst used an infrared thermometer on the reflective surface of the P4 slug is a novice mistake and might be partly to blame, but the AMD video clearly shows that in seconds the P4's temperature shot up to 120 degrees Celsius before shutting down.

Confirming what we reported earlier today, note that AMD rejects THG’s argument that the German webpage was somehow responsible for AMD’s thermal protection circuitry:

I've been asked if AMD is just now suggesting this technology to board manufacturers or if this is a knee-jerk reaction to the press it's received. I believe the fact that the board used in our video already existed when the original story hit nullifies the need to ask that question.

 

Guardian: Carlyle Group Expose
Warning: the article contains harsh language.

 

Pravda: CIA Agent Met with Osama bin Laden Shortly Before September Attacks

The Internet publication spin-off of the Russian newspaper Pravda, citing a French report, claims that the wealthy Saudi mercenary met with a CIA agent in an American hospital in Dubai soon before the September 11th attacks. Whether the article is true or not, it is noteworthy considering that it reveals the tenor of a prominent media organization inside the borders of an ally.

 

Press Release: Crucial DDR Rising Fast!

At Crucial Technology, one of the world’s largest memory upgrade providers, we’ve noticed a trend in our memory sales we thought you might find interesting.

 

Intel's PIII-S Coming?

Nils shares Intel PIII-S information and comments on THG's Hot Spot article.

 

"AMD Burn" Motherboard Predates THG Video

According to inside sources, development of the motherboard used in the so-called "AMD Burn" video predates the infamous "Fallen Off Heatsink" article on THG.  This is significant because in THG's face-saving article published earlier this week, the hobbyist site actually tried to claim credit for AMD's development of such thermal failsafe circuitry.  The OEM motherboard in question is used in the recently announced Compaq Presario 8000.  "Anyone who knows the lead time on board design knows this has been in the works," our source said.  This "should put to rest any thoughts that this was spur of the moment engineering sleight of hand," our source continued. 

 

October 30th, 2001

 

AMD Spokesman: Yes, They Are Our Videos

Two videos circulating around the Internet depicting the thermal performance of AMD Athlon MP and Intel Pentium 4 CPUs in worst case cooling failures are indeed from the chipmaker, an AMD spokesman has informed us.  We have also obtained information about about a new system that will be released "immediately" that fully supports AMD's Athlon XP thermal diode as displayed in the video.

 

Ace's Hardware: nForce Review

Johan's tests show the new NVIDIA chipset in a very favorable light.

 

AMDMB: Intel Bribing Sales People?

Lars sends us a link to a thread on their message board reportedly containing an interesting memo from Intel marketing.

 

October 29th, 2001

 

Source of “AMDBurn” Video Speaks

Terry Wang claims the video is legitimate. You can obtain the original video here, and the new Part 2 video here. Part 2 shows similar tests conducted on an Intel Pentium 4. In this video, the P4 turns off a short time after the heat sink is removed. This is logical since even in fully throttled mode, the P4 produces more heat than can be dissipated without a heat sink causing the die temperature to continuously rise until the thermal failsafe is tripped.

 

US Preparing to “Steal Atomic Warheads” from Pakistan?

Special forces training for "exfiltration" operation.

 

Severe Interoperability Problems with Intel Chipsets: How to Fry Your i845 Motherboard

If you are considering an Intel i845-based motherboard (reportedly, this is also a problem with Intel i850-based motherboards) read this article first before you end up toasting your new toy like we did.  UPDATE: We follow-up with important news about the "Pin A2" test.

 

October 28th, 2001

 

Reading Your Email: Erosion of Rights During Crisis

The FBI makes a bid to pervasively scan email.

Stewart Baker, an attorney at the Washington D.C.-based Steptoe & Johnson and a former general consul to National Security Agency, said the FBI has plans to change the architecture of the Internet and route traffic through central servers that it would be able to monitor e-mail more easily.

 

October 27th, 2001

 

AMD Slaps Around Little Tom-Tom?

A video has appeared on the Internet countering a huge dose of FUD my former employer inexplicably dumped on his readership a couple of months back.  The new video, with AMD credits all over it, is entitled "How an Athlon(tm) MP 1.2GHz Really Copes with Heat Emergencies."  The piece demonstrates the AMD Palomino Athlon subjected to brutal circumstances such as heat sink removal while playing Quake III and boot up attempts when a CPU cooler is not attached.  In all scenarios, the Palomino comes out unscathed.  A similar though much less thorough test came out with unsurprisingly different results at Tom's Hardware.  Ouch!  Looks like dispensing bad medicine can result in a mouthful of looser teeth.  Good job Ben & Joe, perhaps you can also give THG a crash course in analyzing computer technology.

 

The video also presents the much more realistic situation when the CPU fan fails.  In that case the Palomino continued to play Quake III for several minutes before shutting down.  Again the chip was undamaged.

 

The main link points to a mirror, while the original link, which now appears broken, is here.

 

TechIMO: A New Affiliate

At Joel's request we have linked up with his buddies at TechIMO.

 

Domestic Terrorists Cited for Anthrax Attacks

In one of the worst possible turns for civil liberties, a day after Bush signed into law sweeping anti-terror legislation, government officials are now claiming that the recent anthrax attacks appear to be the work of domestic extremists.  Apparently besieged on two fronts, panic might now be the greatest enemy to our freedoms and to our American way of life.  Those in our government seeking to expand their powers will no doubt cynically manipulate the recent events to do so.  We must be more vigilant than ever to ensure that this power grab does not happen.  In the midst of this crisis, we must not lose our system of checks and balances nor relinquish control of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" or our cherished way of life will indeed perish from this earth.

 

Strange Email Problems

Over the last few days, several emails sent to us have either never reached us or were delayed for hours -- in one case about 14 hours.  If you have sent us important email in this timeframe and we have not responded, please consider resending it.

 

October 26th, 2001

 

Who is Joel Hruska?

Joel sends us a little information about himself. For information on any of our contributors, go to the bottom of our ABOUT page.

 

New Fossils of Giant Crocodile Found

The king of paleo-publicity discusses the 40-foot long, ten-ton dinosaur eater. The photo of the six-foot long croc skull is impressive.

 

Trade Center Death Toll Revised Downwards Again

According to the New York Times, the toll now stands around 2,950. The American Red Cross reports that so far 2,563 people are considered missing. At one point city officials said 6,700 people might have died from the attack on the twin towers.

 

Mystery Man Handed Over to the US

A Pakistani news agency is reporting that a "mystery man" was handed over to US officials in Karachi.  Reportedly, everyone involved was wearing masks.

 

Mississippi Crop-dusters a Misunderstanding?

Harmless white smoke and fertilizer claimed.

 

October 25th, 2001

 

Clockless Chip Technology

Joel sends this in. We're all used to measuring performance in terms of clock speeds--but if  these researchers out in Silicon Valley are correct, the entire method of designing chips with clocks may be headed for extinction. Check the article out for a look at new clockless chip designs--and the advantages of doing so.

 

AMD Sues Intel for Potential EU Evidence

In response to our inquiry, AMD spokesman, Drew Prairie, enumerates in detail his company's legal issues with Intel.

 

LostCircuits: Shuttle SV24 Review

Dr. Michael Schuette reviews the Shuttle SV24 Barebone System. It's currently the smallest fully functional PC available.

 

Intel to Revive PIII?

Nils claims he has the inside scoop. And he seems to have liked Darek's article.

 

Taliban Building Pakistani Refuges

As support for the Taliban inside of Pakistan continues to increase, the Taliban and their allies, many of whom live in Pakistan, are constructing refuges for their Afghan counterparts inside of Pakistan.  Meanwhile, the Pakistani military government is growing increasingly wary of cracking down on such activity since, after siding with the US, doing so might undermine the country's fragile stability.

 

AMDMB: NVIDIA nForce Review

Although the nForce appears to be the best integrated core logic solution for any CPU, VIA's inexpensive KT266A looks to offer better overall performance.  Underwhelming speed on business applications suggests that there may still be chipset latency issues which we encountered on an early preproduction sample.  Bandwidth tests are strong but not as otherworldly as Inquest's early results suggested (according to the results derived by Inquest and passed to me, StreamD demonstrated the most exceptional nForce CPU bandwidth performance advantages).

 

Custom Computer Cases

AMDZone has a review of a computer case from Computers Divine whose quality products well epitomize the enthusiast mindset.

 

Anthrax Likely a US Military Strain

The deadly bacteria used in recent American attacks is not a strain from Iraq or the Soviet Union, but part of the "Ames" strain used to develop defunct American bioweapons.  Furthermore, the level of refinement does not indicate state involvement according to a report from New Scientist.  This directly contradicts an article from MSNBC which cites circumstantial evidence for a sophisticated dispersal additive.  In fact, New Scientist presents opposing evidence indicating there was no anti-caking agent added to the anthrax spores involved in the mail-delivered terrorist acts.  Studies being conducted in Northern Arizona University should be able to discern whether or not the biomaterial was fermented by a state.  These studies should also be able to pinpoint the exact strain.  Meanwhile, the FBI continues to maintain that there is no evidence connecting the anthrax cases to the bin Laden network.

 

October 24th, 2001

 

Certain AGP cards will destroy Pentium 4 Motherboards?

Joel sends us this. According to Hardtecs4u, some newer AGP cards use 3.3 v even when 1.5 v is supposedly required for AGP 4X. Cards that use this signaling (and some GeForce2 Pro cards have been found to do so) may have major issues with i850 and i845 motherboards--and using the wrong type of card in one of these configurations will destroy both the card and the motherboard. Check the article out for details, especially if planning a P4 upgrade anytime soon.
 

Press Release: AMD Supports Microsoft at Windows XP Launch

AMD Athlon(tm) XP processor provides Extreme Performance for Windows XP.

 

Intel Strong-Arms Site

OC-AthlonXP.com, a new site published by enthusiast Anthony Skorochod, has been contacted via email by one of Intel's fleet of lawyers, a Benoit Philippe, regarding a parody of the "Intel Inside!" logo.  Intel demanded that Mr. Skorochod remove his "Trash Inside!" parody immediately or he will suffer the furious wrath of the perturbed and litigious chip titan.

 

Emulators, Inc.: Athlon, Athlon XP, PIII, and P4 Comparative Benchmarks

Darek Mihocka continues his interesting and engaging analysis.

 

The Intel Assessment of Hammer, Courtesy of Anand

Nils now gives us his, erm, frank opinion.  Not for the faint of heart.

 

Martian Probe Successfully Enters Orbit

NASA is relieved.

 

Photos Of Anthrax Letters

On FBI site.

 

October 23rd, 2001

 

Another Case of Inhalational Anthrax Reported

A New Jersey postal woman stricken.

 

US Helicopters Fired Upon Over Pakistan

Two choppers encounter strafing small arms fire.

 

Second Crop Dusting Incident Reported

Also in Mississippi, a U.S. Coast Guard post north of Natchez hit.

 

Update on Crop Dusting in Mississippi

Spencer Kittelson sends us this update. The chemical might be sodium chlorate which is used on cotton to defoliate it prior to harvest. Authorities have yet to release information on what the material actually is.

 

Probe to Reach Mars Today

After previous high-profile failures, NASA holds its breath.

 

Pakistan Destabilizing?

The country that risks most in supporting the US attack on Afghanistan is the country that helped found modern Afghanistan. A confirmed nuclear power, Pakistan might be edging towards an Islamic revolution. Protests grow and the eternal conflict with India over Kashmir intensifies.
 

10,000 Postal Workers on Anthrax Medicine

Number is in Washington D.C. alone. Pneumatic cleaning machine helped disperse infectious anthrax spores.
 

Who do Voodoo?

Joel does. Joel takes a look at modern Voodoo drivers and WindowsXP support.

 

Athlon MP Overclocked to 2.2 GHz

SuperPi in 48 seconds.  Looks like the Palomino has lots of headroom.

 

FBI Considers Torture

...as suspects refuse to talk.

 

AsiaWeek on the Taliban

Onerous propaganda or merely a different perspective: 55-year old Japanese doctor offers a head-spinning view of the Afghan ruling body.

 

Machiavellian Copyright Law Losing Support

Being pushed by a prominent Democratic senator and backed by Disney, the plan would require copyright protection mechanisms in "all interactive digital" devices.  Presumably this means everything from computers to TIVOs to XBoxes to MP3 players would all have to have built-in copy protection.  Attempts to defeat these mechanisms would be illegal.  Although the industry, including both Microsoft and Intel, oppose the legislation, these companies have their own nefarious plans they intend to unroll which the Hollings plan might derail.

 

October 22nd, 2001

 

Mississippi River-Going Vessels Crop Dusted With Unknown “White Substance”

Towboat, 17 barges and a pleasure boat hit 30 miles south of Helena, Arkansas on Friday. Determination of substance not yet released.

 

Sisoftware's Response to Drystone Downturn

We publish without comment Sisoftware's response to declining AMD Drystone scores reported here October 19th.

 

The Inquirer: Don't Buy P4 Socket-423

Buyer beware!  Mike puts up sage advice for those considering an Intel Pentium 4.

 

October 21st, 2001

 

c't: nForce Review

Apparently boards are available in Germany.  There are not many tests, but results are underwhelming suggesting that some of the latency issues we encountered might have been traded for bandwidth performance.

 

Update on D.C. Postal worker ill with Anthrax

D.C. postal worker's condition worsens. More postal employees to be tested.

 

Poll: Nuke Afghanistan?

Good Lord, these people can't be serious!  I used to work on tactical nukes and I pray to God in heaven that they are never used.  Reportedly these weapons, including neutron bombs, are being deployed into the Afghan theatre.  UPDATE: In the two or three hours since we have had this information up, the poll numbers have inverted from 75% For / 24% Against to 41% For /  58% Against.  About 4,000 votes have been cast against using nuclear weapons in this time.  The poll is important since it is positioned by an influential radio personality.  UPDATE 2:  As fast as the numbers turned around they seem to be flip-flopping again.  It is possible that a handful of people are manipulating the poll numbers since it is possible to vote multiple times.  I doubt this will prevent the author of the poll from still singing its results.

 

Australians to Attempt Airspeed Record

Scramjet test next week targeted to reach Mach 7.6.  Vehicle costs are 150-times less than NASA counterpart.

 

LostCircuits: HP Mako Dual-Core Preview

The good doctor of hardware sites takes the scalpel (no, he's not a medical doctor; Dr. Michael Schuette has legitimate credentials) to the HP PA-8800 SMP-on-a-chip offering.  A mind-blowing 35 MB of L1+L2 cache including 3 MB for L1 cache, this chip is a 1 GHz monster!  Unlike AMD's Hammer, you will not see this beast in laptops anytime soon.

 

October 20th, 2001

 

Crucial DDR-SDRAM Performance Benefits Over SDRAM

Joel gives a quick test showing the bandwidth performance of DDR-SDRAM over SDRAM.  This is the first part of an ongoing series.

 

October 19th, 2001

 

2GHz Pentium 4 Another Paper Launch?

During the heat of the Athlon-PIII race last year, Intel established a name for itself as King of the Paper Launches. With the Pentium III Intel could not match the clock speed yields of rival AMD’s Athlon, but would announce similarly clocked PIII’s anyway as an attempt to keep up in the public relations war. The practice of firing out press releases launching products Intel could not deliver became known as “paper launches,” a phrase coined by AMD’s CEO Jerry Sanders.

I had a front row seat on the inevitable and disastrous conclusion of this questionable practice when Intel announced the 1.13 GHz Pentium III a little over a year ago. At the time, I served as liaison between Tom’s Hardware and Intel and witnessed up close the implosion as Intel was forced to recall the flawed chip, a part that the CPU-maker tried to rush out before even seeing if it worked properly.

Now, it appears the wobbly Santa Clara chip titan might be returning to those unsteady tactics. The Inquirer has published an Intel memo that states in classic Intel-ese obfuscation and misdirection that the 2GHz P4 is going to be in short supply for several more months. In other words, in the middle of the worst economic settings in recent times Intel introduced the 2 GHz part and still cannot meet demand. The north winds of fall sweep in the odor of another Chipzilla paper launch.

 

Sandra Drystone Scores

Gabriel sent in very interesting observations regarding the decline of K6-2 and Duron Drystone scores on Sisoftware's Sandra:

 

Machine K6-2 400@400 (mobo Elpina TX PRO (Aladin IV chipset), aircooled, 6 X 66 Mhz)

Sandra 99  : Drystone Alu: 987 MIPS Drystone FPU: 473 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1se: Drystone Alu: 781 MIPS Drystone FPU: 478 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1te: Drystone Alu: 688 MIPS Drystone FPU: 486 MFLOPS

Machine K6-2 500 @ 600 (mobo Fic PA2013, aircooled, 2.9 V)

Sandra 99  : Drystone Alu: 1533 MIPS Drystone FPU: 725 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1se: Drystone Alu: 1397 MIPS Drystone FPU: 708 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1te: Drustone Alu: 1192 MIPS Drystone FPU: 724 MFLOPS

Machine Duron 700@700 (MSI K7TPro, aircooled 7 X 100 Mhz)

Sandra 99  : Drystone Alu: 2327 MIPS Drystone FPU: 962 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1se: Drystone Alu: 1963 MIPS Drystone FPU: 954 MFLOPS
Sandra2k1te: Drystone Alu: 1945 MIPS Drystone FPU: 960 MFLOPS

 

It seems that all of these platforms decline in score, while they all report the same reference score of 1350 for the Pentium III.  More data points from other chips would be interesting.

 

P4 Strategy?

Nils writes:

It is interesting to note that Intel killed Zilog by promising that the 8086 would be 'almost' upward compatible enough for automated porting of CP/M code from the 8085 - as long as nobody used the special Z80 specific instructions.


Then Intel reversed it's strategy by releasing the P4 and trying to force everyone to do massive code rewrites - perhaps just to take the code market away from the base that runs so well on AMD designs.

Of course the flies in the ointment for Intel are that the Pentium 4 has quirky and often sub-par performance, the chip has not been wildly embraced, Intel is having difficulty transitioning production to the P4 resulting in shortages, and the enormous 217 mm^2 die makes the P4 expensive to produce (which might be part of the reason for the shortages).  Intel is also having to delay Northwood, the 0.13-micron version of the P4, until next year leaving the chip giant at a performance disadvantage to archrival AMD whose Athlon XP is not only faster than anything Intel produces, but also cheaper than Intel's pricey P4.

 

The FBI, ISPs and Your Email

Measures to require ISPs to reconfigure email servers for FBI access.

 

Free McOwen

If you are wanting a follow-up to Tom McFadden's July article, check out this site devoted to the subject.  David McOwen faces enormous fines and multiple 15-year jail sentences for installing a Distributed.net screen saver on a Georgia school's computers.  Here is a quote from McOwen from the "FreeMcOwen" site:

 

This is David McOwen. I need everyone's help that possibly can. I worked at a school system 2 years ago that is part of the State of Georgia and was the configurator of the computers. They are now prosecuting me for Felony conviction with up to 15 yrs in prison and wanting $ 415,000. They are saying the Dnet client costs 59 cents per second for the Internet transmissions! If you or you know anyone that can help please contact webmaster@freemcowen.com. Beside my life and my family, the future of all that use the Internet and computers is at stake. Don't let them turn the good of computers into something so terrible. If it was so terrible it should be taken away from the world and not prosecuting one individual. People were panicking about rumors of the Govt tacking on a 5 cent surcharge to supplement the Postal service because E-mail is taking away from their business and now the State of Georgia is saying E-mail costs 59 cents per second and this is not a rumor!

Also we need to know if anyone in the United States or the world has been prosecuted for this. We need to know for sure that they are setting this dangerous precedent, making me an example and everyone is next. They did not give me an opportunity to just turn the client off, they also said that there was no harm done after they turned it off. How can they call it a felony then and looking for nearly half a million dollars! Please help in any way that you can, whether by E-mails or any other support.

 

October 18th, 2001

 

The Taliban

A note from the “other side” dated March of this year, a member of Afghanistan’s ruling body talks about the Taliban.

 

Molecular level transistors

Spencer Kittelson sends us this. Lucent/Bell Labs yesterday announced the fabrication of a molecular level transistor, one with a channel length that is the same size as a single molecule. The effective channel is about .001 micron which is at least two orders of magnitude improvement in existing technology and a full order of magnitude better than any lab technology. If fully implemented on a large scale die, you could fit perhaps 10,000 times more transistors in a given space (which would make for a 400+ billion transistor CPU!). Further, the method of fabrication utilized a bit of "self assembly" techniques which have long been predicted as a requirement for nano scale production. In this case, an organic semiconductor solution is poured onto the chip and the requisite molecules seek out and attach to the first gate contact. Subsequent processing adds the other gate contact. It's an elegant approach with fantastic potential. Go here for the webcast.

 

Intel P4 Northwood Benchmarks?

Although slim pickins,’ the results are pretty mediocre even on an i845 especially if they represent what a shipping 1.8 GHz Northwood overclocked to 2.3 GHz can deliver.

 

Low End PC

A new site.

 

AMD at MPF: Hammering Open Bottlenecks

Joel shares info from his hour-long conversation with AMD about the 64-bit Hammer.

 

AMD Dispels XP Recall Rumour

The AMD Athlon XP has been greeted with essentially universal acclaim since its introduction.  However, a recent rumor surfaced on the enthusiast site, OCWorkBench, alleging that AMD issued a recall on all remaining unsold stocks of Athlon XP's in Taiwan.  Responding to our inquiry, AMD Spokesman Damon Munzy reported that the number two chipmaker "has not recalled any Athlon XP processors" and that shipments of their flagship processor continue to ramp.

 

October 17th, 2001

 

Hammer Analysis

AMD's recently announced Hammer bridges the world of PCs with the world of supercomputers.

 

October 16th, 2001

 

Intel's Net Income Collapses by 95 Percent
The toll is heavy from Intel's questionable price war with AMD combined with the jellyfish-soft economy. Considering the much higher expenses "Chipzilla," as Intel was famously dubbed by The Inquirer's Mike Magee, incurs from manufacturing the enormous 217 square millimeter Pentium 4, the battle with AMD may have brought the ailing Santa Clara giant temporary wins with some in the media, but the price war has hammered Intel's bottom line. Intel's net income fell a distressing 95% from $2.51 billion to $0.106 billion (coincidentally, its R&D spending will be $0.100 billion dollars less than "previous expectations"). Profits before acquisition-related costs declined by a whopping 77% while gross margins were reported at 47%. Sales declined by 25%, 3% more than its chief rival, AMD, reported.

To compound the chip titan's problems, Intel is having difficulty transitioning production to the Pentium 4 as it fazes out its old CPU stalwart, the much smaller-died Pentium III. To add final insult to injury, AMD has recently released the Athlon XP, a cheaper chip that outperforms Intel's fastest P4, and Intel has recently stated that it must delay its only answer, P4 Northwood, until next year.

 

VIA Announces Details of New Processors
C5X, C5XL, and P4 socket compatible CZ discussed.  UPDATE: Information regarding the Socket-478 compatibility of CZA was not obtained from Glenn Henry, and Mr. Henry denies the accuracy of this rumor.  We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

 

First Steganographic Image in the Wild

Hidden encoded message in jpeg's finally found -- in an ABC test image.

 

AMD's 2 GHz Hammer to Reach a SPECInt Score of Over 1,400

Beating even IBM's new Power4.  Get your translator here.

 

India Shells Pakistan

Over Kashmir once again, but the stakes are higher as both countries have recently armed themselves with nuclear weapons and the conditions inside of Pakistan, arguably the birthplace of the Taliban, are brittle as the Pakistani government continues to support U.S. operations against Afghanistan.  American Secretary of State Colin Powell and Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf met to discuss the role of the Taliban in future Afghan governments.

 

October 15th, 2001

 

Press Release: VIA Announces Establishment of new VIA Platform Solutions Division

VPSD to provide VIA’s global customer base with innovative platform solutions for Servers, PCs, and emerging new generation of Information Appliances.

 

Press Release: AMD To Announce 'Hammer' Architecture Details
AMD's Fred Weber today will disclose architectural details of AMD's next-generation "Hammer" microprocessor architecture at Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif.

 

Press Release: New AMD Athlon(tm) MP Processors Extend AMD's Performance Leadership In Multiprocessing Server, Workstation Markets
High-performance multiprocessors align with AMD's True Performance Initiative to develop new processor performance metric.

 

First "Microsoft PC" Appears

Nils' triumvirate of Microsoft-AMD-nVidia now appears to be raising its collective head.

 

October 14th, 2001

 

Bush Stipulates Conditions For the End of Bombing

A new Yahoo article released hours after our last post now states Bush's explicit terms for bombing cessation: "'All they got to do is turn him (bin Laden) over, and his colleagues and the thugs he hides, as well as destroy his camps and (release) the innocent people being held hostage in Afghanistan,' Bush said."

 

Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Turn Over bin Laden

...according to Yahoo News.  Bush also rules out any further negotiations with the Afghanistan ruling body on the Saudi accused of the September 11th attacks.  Consequently, it now appears that Osama bin Laden is no longer the reason why we are attacking Afghanistan.

 

Anthrax

Nils Dahl presents one of the best primers on the dangerous bacteria that I have seen.

 

LostCircuits: Review of the Athlon XP

The good doctor, Michael Schuette, weighs in with his take on AMD's new offering.

 

Pixia Freeware Paint Program

Nils writes, "You may even find this program very useful for design work at your web site. This is the English language site for learning about and downloading Pixia, a freeware paint program by an expert Japanese programmer. The interface is 'different' than the usual stuff.  This is more a commercial quality paint program than a hobbyist 'fool around' tool."

 

AMD Patents

Michael Westman sent in more AMD patent information for your perusal.

 

October 13th, 2001

 

Five More Anthrax Victims in Florida

...all from American Media.  And AMDZone's "MaxHax," mentioned immediately below, has been proven correct on the Reno case.  Apparently a letter sent from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Reno has since been confirmed positive for the virulent spore.  MaxHax also maintains there has been an Anthrax case in Virginia involving a sailor in the Navy.  Apparently MaxHax himself has now become a victim of hate mail from some who claims he is spreading panic.  The real problem is that the public, rightfully, does not trust corporate media and this very instability is causing tremendous anxiety.  We, the American public, need the facts in simple unadulterated form -- no music, no soapy-eyed collages, no censorship, no propaganda.  The corporate media with it increasingly stilted and evocative coverage is creating a powder keg of fear and doubt in our country.

 

Anthrax Thread

Chris at AMDZone has published a link to a thread in one of his forums discussing the spread of Anthrax.  One longtime AMDZone message board poster is claiming to have inside CDC knowledge into the current Anthrax threat.  Although "MaxHax" does seem to get at least one fact confused, apparently he is a trusted member of that community.  As always, take any information from message boards cautiously.  Ironically and tragically, we are also having to exercise almost equivalent measures of skepticism towards reports passed to us by corporate media.

 

AMD Trademark Info

Michael Westman kindly sent in information that AMD has trademarked "Code 64."  Michael suggests that x86-64, AMD's 64-bit instruction set for its Hammer line of processors, might be marketed as Code 64.  This is sound conjecture combined with other AMD trademark data recently published at JC's News and Links.

 

October 12th, 2001

 

Vote in JC's Poll

JC is taking a poll to measure reader responses to recent Athlon XP reviews and he has an entry for VHJ.  If you have an opportunity, please go vote.

 

OK atoms, get in line. March!

Spencer Kittelson sends us this  - Since the Bose-Einstein condensation was predicted decades ago (a perfectly coherent and organized state of matter, much like a laser beam is coherent) it has been difficult and expensive to produce such conditions for study. Now, physicists at the Max Planck Institute have created a microchip that can produce such a state in seconds and at relatively low cost.
 

Robots at the WTC

Spencer Kittelson sends us this  - One of the things that grad students often get to do is be involved in ground breaking research and development. The WTC attack unfortunately provided an event which called upon robotics expert Robin Murphy, an associate professor of computer science at the University of South Florida and his team of students and robots to help out. Vivid pictures of the destruction can be found at here.
 

Part of NBC building to be closed as authorities test for anthrax

 

NBC Worker Tests Positive for Anthrax

The employee tested positive for a cutaneous - skin - anthrax infection. This type of anthrax infection is less virulent than respiratory anthrax that killed a Florida man.

 

Missing Girl Another Internet Hoax?

We tested the email address attached to this story and it is apparently inactive. In our nation’s currently sensitive climate, it is particularly unsavory if this message turns out to be a hoax.  UPDATE: This is indeed a hoax.  Those credentialed at UT who passed this message around, please beware of this fact.

 

Little Girl Missing in Austin, Texas

I am asking you all, begging you to please, forward this email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE. My 9 year old girl, Penny Brown, is missing. She has been missing for now two weeks. It is still not too late, Please help us. If anyone anywhere knows anything, sees anything, please contact me at zicozicozico@hotmail.com. I am including a picture of her. All prayers are appreciated!! It only takes 2 seconds to forward this on, if it was your child, you would want all the help you could get. Please. Thank you for your kindness, hopefully you can help us.

 

0.13 Micron Intel Pentium 4 Delayed Until Next Year?

Ace’s Hardware is reporting a rumor that Intel’s much needed 0.13-micron replacement to the existing P4 Willamette core will have to be delayed until next year. We have maintained for many months that the new 0.13-micron Pentium 4, code-name “Northwood”, would not launch in quantity until next year despite Intel’s promises otherwise. Combined with emerging rumors of Intel’s existing production problems, AMD’s recently introduced Athlon XP might find significantly less competition than expected for the lucrative Christmas buying season. Intel, infamous for “shooting blanks” after numerous “paper launches” over the last two years, might find itself eating crow instead of turkey this holiday season as its aggressive “pulling ahead” campaign might very well be backfiring. Initial reviews of AMD’s Athlon XP 1800+ shows that the chip currently deserves the performance crown over Intel’s fastest offering and now it appears Intel cannot respond until next year.

 

Apples and Oranges:  The Cyrix PR Debacle vs. the AMD Athlon Model #

Joel gives us his take on AMD's model rating.

 

October 11th, 2001

 

Benchmarks: AMD's New Athlon XP 1800+, Part 2

We continue our review of the Athlon XP with a look at the second important measure of a memory subsystem - bandwidth.

 

Corporate media agrees to censor all future Bin Laden tapes

...so much for free press.

 

Wristwatch PC running on Linux

Do you gotta have one?!

 

TechIMO.com launched on Monday

Joel Hruska let us know that his friend and colleague, Scott Wainner has a new site.

 

Does prayer really affect things or is it just a bunch of phony baloney?

Could there even be such a thing as metaphysics? Spencer Kittelson sends us these interesting findings.

 

Press Release: CMTL (Computer Memory Test Labs) Approves Kentron Technologies’ 1-GB, Low Profile, 133-MHz, Registered, ECC DIMM for Intel/STL2 (Tupelo) motherboard

A new CMTL-certified 1-GB, PC133 Dual In-Line Memory Module (DIMM) for 1U, hyper dense and blade server applications is now available from Kentron Technologies.

 

Press Release: National Scientific Corporation  Announces Equity Line of Credit Now Available  Process

NSCT receives notice that the SEC has declared the Form SB-2 effective which registers shares under the equity line of credit in which Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc. acted as placement agent.

 

Press Release: National Scientific Corporation Granted CIP Patent On Tunnel Diode Manufacturing Process

NSCT granted Continuation in Process (CIP) Patent #6301147 from the U.S. Patent Office for the manufacturing process of their Tunnel Diode Controlled Memory Products.

 

October 10th, 2001

 

Another Case of Anthrax Reported

35-year old Floridian woman who also works at The Sun has tested positive for the deadly spore.

 

Which Would Win Between a Pit Bull and a Burmese Python?

Pet owner finds out that pooch is tastier than tough.

 

October 9th, 2001

 

AMDZone Has an Extensive List of Athlon XP Reviews

I apologize for our coverage being fragmented and piecemeal, but I have been sick the last two days.  We hope to have another update either tonight or early tomorrow.

 

An Interesting Response to Afghans  

Spencer Kittelson sent in this link to a Dutch journalist's viewpoint on supporting the Afghan people with food, clothing, medicine, knowledge and radios.  We only wish we could get good information here in this country.

 

Press Release: VIA Technologies Announces Full Support for the AMD Athlon™ XP Processor 1800+
Broad product portfolio dedicated to comprehensive AMD processor support on all platforms

 

Press Release: AMD Announces Collaboration With Microsoft On Marketing AMD ATHLON(tm) XP Processor And Microsoft(r) Windows(R) XP
Activities to highlight new and improved customer experiences with AMD Athlon(tm) XP and Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP

 

Press Release: AMD Unveils New AMD ATHLON(tm) XP Processor; Drives Initiative To Develop New Processor Performance Metric
Partners rally around world's highest performance processor for desktop PCs.

 

Benchmarks: AMD's New Athlon XP 1800+, Part 1

We will have another article or two later today, but this is a starter on memory latency characteristics.

 

Control Your Computer with a Flip of the Wrist

A Sony developed wristwatch style strap lets you control mouse movements on a computer. It has great potential for reducing the intrusiveness of the man-machine interface and may make wearable computing more practical.

 

October 8th, 2001

 

Press Release: AMD Endows W.J. Sanders III Chair in electrical and computer engineering at University of Illinois

AMD announced that W.J. Sanders III, the company's Chairman, CEO and co-founder, has been honored with an endowed chair in electrical and computer engineering at his alma mater, the University of Illinois.

 

Music business looking for stricter  DMCA, CPRM 2 copyright protection

The Register on copyrights in the music business.

 

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Nils Dahl on the launch of AMD's new product-line.

 

100th Edition of ZZZ on-line

Edition includes coverage of scarecrow robot, robotic bartender, enormous energy towers, 19 keys keyboard and more....

 

PC World Shows VIA Reference P4 Chipset Beating Dell Intel i850-based system

The VIA system meets or exceeds the performance of the Dell system in all tests.  Thanks, MJS.

 

Lost Circuits: DDR SDRAM based SiS645 P4 Chipset Crushes Intel's i850

For Rambus holdouts that have been cursing me over the years, I'm sorry but I told you so.

 

Iran Declares Afghan Attacks "Unacceptable"

Some Iranians fear Iran might be next target.

 

Second Employee of The Sun Tests Positive for Anthrax

Offices shut down.

 

Chinese Troops Moving to Support Afghanistan?

Troop strength reported between 5,000 and 15,000.  Chinese allegedly threatened by U.S.-Russian alliance for control of strategic region.

 

U.S.-Russia Deploy Tactical Nukes in Afghanistan

Neutron bombs readied.

 

October 7th, 2001

 

Overclockers Australia: Review of KingMax TinyBGA PC2100 DDR SDRAM

The memory was able to reach 162 MHz x 2 at CL2.

 

Intel Itanium Benchmarks

Keith sent in this link to an article written early this year which shows benchmarks of Intel's Itanium on existing software.  The Itanium performs very poorly on 32-bit programs.

 

U.S. Begins Bombing in Afghanistan

So begins the "Bomb-by-night-food-by-day" campaign against one of the poorest countries in the world.

 

NATO Planes Soon to be Deployed Inside U.S.

As in an anti-globalist's bad nightmare, the first foreign forces ever to patrol the U.S. will soon be deployed.  No one is saying why a foreign force was called into the United States in the first place.

 

October 6th, 2001

 

Athlon XP Overclocked

Mario sent in the link to this genuine enthusiast site which seems to share our tastes in backgrounds.

 

In Defense of AMD's Model Rating System

"AMD's Model Number nomenclature, though not perfect, is a good start.  With it, consumers will have a better idea of the real power of AMD's chips in relation to Intel's."

 

October 5th, 2001

 

SysMark 2001 Handicaps AMD Chips

...but AMD and Microsoft have supplied a patch to correct this particular problem.  AMDZone has published a related article.  BAPCo's intimate relationship with Intel is well known throughout the industry.  BAPCo, which lists its office at the same address as Intel, has placed AMD's chips at disadvantages in the past as well.

 

Florida Anthrax Victim Dies

Mr. Bob Stevens died at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis after antibiotics failed against the infection.

 

Florida Anthrax Victim Reported

Bob Stevens, a 63-year old photo editor for The Sun, a popular supermarket tabloid, marks the first case of inhaled (pulmonary) anthrax since 1976. Concerns of a biological attack are raised, as the deadly disease is a common element of biological warfare stockpiles. Health officials, unsure of the source of the anthrax spores, are on the lookout for other cases since the incubation period for the disease ranges from typically seven days to as long as sixty days. Stevens, from Lantana, Florida, had just returned from a trip to North Carolina. He checked into the hospital Tuesday and was initially diagnosed with meningitis. Stevens’ current condition is grave.

 

Budget Gaming Showdown:  The GeForce2 MX vs. the Kyro II 

Joel reviews budget graphics.

 

Official British Document of Responsibility For September 11 Terrorist Attacks

Can you find the smoking gun?

 

Press Release: AMD Says Third-Quarter Processor Average-Selling Price Decline Was Larger Than Expected

AMD says that sales for third-quarter declined by 22 percent from second-quarter sales of $985.3 million to approximately $766 million.

 

U.S. Colleges turn over student records to FBI

Independent Media Center reports how the September 11 tragedy is affecting some colleges.

 

Security Issues - 2 CISCO PIX in trouble

An unnamed Cisco source reports that CISCO is having problems with the 506 and 515 secure firewalls. The 506 and the 515 are on line stops. THE PIX 506 is being replaced with the 515 LNR.

 

U.S. Cracks Down on Independent Media

No free speech for you!  The American government is pressuring host nation Qatar to "rein in" the popular and influential independent Arab television channel, al-Jazeera, seen over much of the globe.  al-Jazeera gives airtime to anti-American views.

 

October 4th, 2001

 

The Real Reason Intel Canceled the 2GHz Server Xeon

Industry sources have revealed that the real reason behind Intel’s recently canceled 2GHz Xeon server chip was not due to technical issues, but solely attributable to the poor performance of the MPU.  Reportedly OEMs pressured the chip giant to snuff the chip after seeing convincing benchmark results demonstrating that dual 1.2GHz Pentium IIIs soundly and consistently beat dual 2 GHz Xeon servers based on the Willamette core.  The Santa Clara CPU company now plans to accelerate the launch of “Prestonia,” the 0.13 micron server version of the Pentium 4, into early next year.  The first Prestonias are expected to debut at 2.2GHz, the minimum speed necessary, we are told, to reach performance parity with its more established, but much slower-clocked PIII older sibling.  Although Intel could easily introduce 1.5 GHz and perhaps even faster Tualatin PIII’s, the semiconductor firm has locked its fate with the P4 as it attempts to market megahertz over MIPS.

 

LostCircuits: VIA C3 800 Review
"...on a system level, the C3, clock by clock is roughly equal to the Pentium4 paired with the Brookdale PC100 SDRAM."  The C3's strengths are its low cost, low power consumption (enabling the Ezra to run without a fan) and good performance in certain server applications.

 

October 3rd, 2001

 

Short Takes: Kensington TurboRing Trackball
A great input device for $10.

 

Press Release: VIA Announces September Sales Results
VIA Technologies, Inc announces its net sales for September 2001 at about NT$ 2.6 billion (US$ 75 million approximately).

 

Greyhound Halts National Bus Service After Alleged Attack Leads to Fatal Crash

Apparently a man attacked the bus driver, cutting his throat.  The subsequent bus crash led to six deaths while the 32 others on board were injured.  It is not clear yet if this is another terrorist act related to the September 11th events.  The attacker was one of the six killed on the bus.

 

October 2nd, 2001

 

Updated Guest Opinion: A Pacifist’s Plea

Although I subscribe to the Geronimo School of Diplomacy (in fact, my mother is Apache-Cherokee, an odd combination), we received a heartfelt letter from a reader seeking a more peaceful solution to our crisis. The bow-and-arrow in our logo is there for a reason, but as an American I respect any well meaning person brave enough to speak his heart in a time that will bring them criticism.

 

Press Release: National Scientific Corporation Announces Successful Fabrication of Tunneling Diodes, New Memory
National Scientific Corporation announced today that it has demonstrated tunneling effects in silicon-based diodes labs in Ireland.

 

Press Release: IBM Launches "High-Powered" Initiative For "Low-Power" Products And Services
EPA Recognizes IBM Mainframe as Industry's First Energy-Efficient Server.

 

e3 Engine to Bring More Power for Less Fuel?

A new internal combustion engine design from British Engineering Firm Mayflower.  According to Mario, "very simple in concept is the use of a double pivot bearing design which enables combustion engines to have on the fly variable stroke and hence compression giving rise to 40% savings in economy and 50% in emissions with no loss in performance."

 

October 1st, 2001

 

X-Bit Labs: Intel To Release Dual-Channel DDR SDRAM P4Chipset in H2, 2002

… trailing the nForce 420 by about a year.  As we wrote September 20th, it has been our belief for quite a while that Intel has been strongly pro-DDR SDRAM, but could not act due to contractual obligations with Rambus.  We will see Intel’s commitment to DDR SDRAM start to unfold early next year.

 

Press Release: AMD Introduces 1.1GHz AMD DURON(tm) Processor For Mainstream PCs
New AMD Duron processor features 3DNow!(tm) Professional technology for enhanced multimedia computing.

 

On nForce and XP

Nils share his thoughts.

 

Just Foam 'Em

As our forces risk life and limb, here is Nils' novel strategy.

 

A Couple of 1.1 GHz AMD Morgan Reviews

AMDZone and AMDMB.  We will have our review up later this week.  AMDZone also has sent us information on AMD's new pricing.

 

Guest Opinion: Rebuttal of MSNBC's "Evils of Pacifism"

David Luke dissects the rhetoric and specious logic of manipulative journalism

 

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