AMD plans to move its production line to the 45nm manufacturing node in Q3 while releasing a few new 45nm processors before the end of the year.
In an attempt to reduce costs, AMD plans to move its production line to the 45nm manufacturing in Q3 of this year. The Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker already has two products currently using the next-generation processing: the quad-core Phenom II X4 800 and 900 series (Deneb), and the triple-core Phenom II X3 700 series (Heka). From a price and performance standpoint, these two processors have helped AMD compete against its main competitor, Intel, in the CPU market currently dominated by the rival chipmaker.
However, AMD is moving additional CPUs over to the 45nm processing as well, starting with the dual-core Phenom II X2 500 series (Callisto), and the Athlon II X2 200 series in June. By September, AMD will have added the quad-core Athlon II X4 600 series and triple-core Athlon II X3 400 series (Rana) processors. These should help AMD fend off Intel's assault when the rival company launches its three quad-core Lynnfield CPUs in the third quarter.
In addition to moving its desktop CPUs over to 45nm, AMD also has plans to launch several CPUs between Q2 and Q3 2009, most notably with the dual-core Phenom II X2 550 and 545 hitting the market by the end of the second quarter. The third quarter will see a large helping of new AMD releases: the quad-core Phenom II X4 945 (95W) and 8xx (95W), the triple-core Phenom II X3 7xx (95W), the quad-core Athlon II X4 630 and 620, the triple-core Athlon II X3 435 and 425, and the dual-core Athlon II X2 250, 245, and 240.
According to DigiTimes, there are also plans to release ten low-power consumption CPUs as well, including AMD's Phenom II X4 905e, Phenom II X3 705e and Athlon II X4 605e. These round out to a relatively great release schedule for the second half of 2009. A little competition between companies only means better products for the consumer.
Source : DigiTimes
New 45nm AMD CPUs Coming in Q3 2009
Ubuntu: Muslim Edition (Sabily) Review
A while back I looked at the Christian Edition of Ubuntu (that distribution has been cancelled apparently as per the note on its site). This time around I was pleased to find that there was a Muslim edition available. So I gave it a download and thought I'd add it to our collection of Linux distribution reviews.
Before I get into this review, let me state that ExtremeTech does not endorse any particular religion or any religion at all. We respect all people of no faith and all people who have faith. As you have probably figured out by now if you've been reading the distribution reviews I've been doing, I like looking at all kinds of operating systems. Some are more geared toward one niche and others to another. So a Muslim edition of Linux is certainly worth adding to our collection. 
However, if reading about a religion related distribution bothers you then I have the perfect alternative to provide you with endless hours of enjoyment: reading my stuff! That's right, you can visit my ET column archive and savor thousands and thousand of words I've written over the years on various topics. If that's not enough for you then you can also visit the tech blog I hardly ever update and you can also browse my clips site or the iPhone Software Reviews Blog I started but then later abandoned.
So don't say that you couldn't find anything interesting to read if this review doesn't float your boat okay? And please, no comments in the thread for this review about how you didn't come to ET for religion, blah, blah. Nobody is forcing you to read this review and you've been provided with fantastic alternatives featuring yours truly. So hit the links above and be on your way if you have issues with a religious related review.
Mystery virus strikes FBI, U.S. Marshals
The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were forced to shut down parts of their computer networks after a mystery virus struck the law-enforcement agencies Thursday, according to an Associated Press report.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it had disconnected from Justice Department computers as a precaution after being hit with the virus, while an FBI spokesperson would only say that it was experiencing similar issues, according to the report.
"We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies," FBI spokesman Mike Kortan told the AP.
The virus' type and origin are unknown, but spokespeople for both agencies said agencies' access to the Internet and e-mail was shut down while the issue was evaluated.
Government regulations require agencies to report any security issues to US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), but a call to CERT late Thursday for comment was not immediately returned.
Blaster Transformer Disguises as Laptop, USB Hub
While Soundwave the Decepticon definitely had cooler mini-cassette minions, Blaster the Autobot had way more style.
We don’t see people carrying boom boxes around with them these days, however, but laptops are commonplace – which is exactly what this new Blaster transforms into. Keeping with the USB theme, this one functions as a four-port hub – for your other Transformers Ravage and Grimlock USB gadgets, naturally.
Like all the other gadgets before it, this one is pricey at $60 and won’t be shipping until September.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Dinobot Transformer Goes From T-Rex to Mouse
Yesterday we brought you images of awesome Ravage Transformer USB drive. Today we bring you another melding of Transformers and computer technology with the Trypticon Decepticon command base and Grimlock Dinobot, which both transform from Tyrannosaurs into mice.
While both look far less like their classic Transformer counterparts than Ravage, it’s still more than enough to tickle the nostalgic parts of us.
With three buttons and an 800 dpi sensor, it’s not a lot of mouse for the money at $60 – but if you’ve gotta have it, it’ll be shipping in September.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Ravage Transformer is Best USB Stick Ever
Those who remember the classic first generation of Transformers will know that Ravage the Decepticon transformed into a cassette tape.
These days we no longer store our audio recording on analog tape, but rather in digital data. The Ravage of today would transform into another small-portable media form such as a USB stick. And here we have it:
At only 2 GB and $43, it’s definitely not cheap (and not shipping until September). But die-hard Transformer fans and collectors have probably already decided that they must have it.
Hopefully we'll get to see a USB Laserbeak next.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
More Guesses of Windows 7 Releasing in October
Now that we know that Windows 7 will be hitting us sometime this year in final form, now all the questions are aimed at narrowing down the date.
We heard from Acer executives that Windows 7 will be out on October 23, which sounds plausible, but there’s no other evidence to back it up. Today we have a couple other new entries in the guessing game.
Gathering statements made by Microsoft employees and charting it on a calendar, ComputerWorld figures that Windows 7 will hit RTM (release to manufacturing) on August 11. The magazine believes that if Microsoft follows the same schedule it set for Windows XP, the new OS should be out on October 11.
The next guess comes from long-time Windows journalist Paul Thurrott, who wrote in the final part of his Windows 7 RC review, “Microsoft also says it will finalize Windows 7 in mid-August and deliver it to the public in time for the 2009 holiday season. I can tell you, however, that the general availability date is a lot more specific than that: You'll be able to get the final version of Windows 7 publicly on October 15, 2009, according to the current schedule.”
While we don’t have any hard dates yet, and we won’t until Microsoft is ready to tell, it looks like everyone is betting on making it out well before Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Nvidia Says Intel Pricing is Anticompetitive
Nvidia has thrown in its two cents regarding Intel’s processor pricing and the company’s fine from the EU.
AMD made sure to comment on the news right off the bat and even posted the news on its website, but there hadn’t been a word from the Nvidia camp. In an interview with Reuters, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia this week accused Intel of unfair pricing.
Huang told Reuters that the reason why netbook makers don’t use Nvidia graphics is because Intel’s atom by itself is more expensive than purchasing a three-chip set (Atom with motherboard and IGP). According to Reuters, Huang says Intel prices its Atom processor $45, but sells a three-chip set for $25 to lure business away.
Intel, of course, is pooh-poohing the whole idea, claiming it competes fairly.
"We compete fairly. We do not force bundles on any computer makers and customers can purchase Atom individually or as part of the bundle," Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel told Reuters. "If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing."
Since Intel got smacked with a fine from the EU to the tune of $1.45bn experts say the company can expect to see a ton of civil suits from competitors. Will Nvidia be one of them? Not for now, says Huang.
"I hope it doesn't come down to that," he said, but did not rule out the possibilty completely. "We have to do whatever we have to do when the time comes. We really hope this company (Intel) will compete on a fair basis."
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Survey Says Microsoft Winning Mac vs. PC Battle
By now we’re very well acquainted with the back and forth game that Apple and Microsoft play with their television ads.
Apple’s ran those “I’m a Mac” ads for years, which hopes to convince the customer that Macs are cool and easy to use, while PCs are for boring accountants who like being riddled with computer problems.
After years of that, Microsoft recently launched a reported $300 million ad campaign that includes the Laptop Hunters television commercial series. The Laptop Hunters series shows fictional – but somewhat realistic – shoppers looking for a notebook. The running theme in each ad is that the MacBook is too expensive and the PC is the better buy.
Those ads are working.
At least that’s the findings of a study done by BrandIndex, who asked 5,000 people whether or not they believe they get good value for their money from a PC or Mac.
Apple had its highest BrandIndex rating in late winter, according to Ad Age, with a score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (zero means neutral). Apple today sits at a much lower rating of 12.4.
Microsoft sat near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2 presently, noted the report.
The shifts found by BrandIndex in value-perception are interesting in that Apple fell as Microsoft rose. Could this be attributed to Laptop Hunters? Perhaps, which also strikes at a particularly price-sensitive time in the consumer market.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Asus Supercomputer Motherboard Revealed
Asus finally launched the official product page for its upcoming P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard, built on two Nvidia nForce 200 chips and 7 PCIe slots.
Asus finally launched the official product page for its upcoming P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard, built on two Nvidia nForce 200 chips and 7 PCIe (Gen2 x16) slots. Mainly designed for CUDA parallel computing, the company said that users can shove four CUDA cards into the board (one of which should be a Quadro graphics card) to achieve nearly four teraflops of performance. Additionally, for consumers wanting tons of power on the gaming front, the new motherboard not only offers Nvidia GeForce 3-way SLI support, but also provides support for ATI's CrossFireX technology.
According to the specs, the motherboard is compatible with Intel's Core i7, i7 Extreme, and Xeon processors utilizing Intel's X58 + ICH10R chipset. The board also offers a system bus of up to 6400 MT/s, and six DIMM slots for a maximum of 24 GB of DDR3 memory using a triple channel memory architecture. On the storage front, the P6T7 provides six SATA (3 Gb/s) ports, two eSATA (RAID 0,1), and two SAS ports (RAID 0,1). For consumers who have loads of USB devices, the motherboard even comes packed with 12 USB 2.0 ports.
Asus also revealed several company-specific features supplied on the motherboard including a true 16+2 phase power design, support for CrashFree BIOS 3, EZ Flash 2, a CPU parameter recall, and a stepless frequency selection. For the workstation, the package contains a bundled diagnosis card for system checking, Asus' SASsaby card support, a diagnostics LED that checks key components during the boot process, and the Asus Heartbeat, LEDs that supposedly shine around the ASUS brand name after a successful booting process.
"The ASUS Workstation Series is the ideal foundation for a powerful PC," the company states on the product page. "It delivers awesome power, dependable performance and unparalleled multiple I/O scalability for the most demanding tasks and future upgrades. Also, it provide extreme power saving experience with EPU-6 Engine function. The ASUS Workstation Series intelligently reduces operation noise and dissipates heat through advanced and environmentally friendly methods to accommodate user needs."
As of this writing, the motherboard is not available on the market, however the company should release an official announcement soon regarding its availability and pricetag.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Terminator Salvation ( jom jom jom )
Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, “Terminator Salvation” stars Christian Bale as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
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AMD/ATI Beats Nvidia to the 1 GHz GPU Milestone
AMD boasted today that it has delivered the world’s first 1 GHz GPU. Is this a new product? Not exactly.
What AMD has done is that it has taken an ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, which normally runs at 850 MHz, and overclocked it to 1 GHz at the factory – air cooled – and voila, you have yourself the world’s first shipping 1 GHz GPU part.
In fact, if you had your own Radeon HD 4890, you might be able to reach 1 GHz too. Of course, AMD does have the advantage of binning parts to make sure that those with the most headroom get separated for this new SKU.
The flip side of that equation also means that any GPUs that aren’t able to hit the 1 GHz mark on just air cooling will be relegated to just the old “regular” pile, which will cap speeds at which the Radeon HD 4890 will run.
Look out for these juiced up video cards from Asus, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, Gecube, Gigabyte, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), ITC, Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology and XFX.
Stay tuned for our hands on with one of these cards where we'll put it up against a 'vanilla' reference board.
Interestingly enough, this is the second time that AMD has beat an arch rival to the 1 GHz milestone. Back in 2000, AMD beat Intel to the 1 GHz punch with its Athlon. Remember that? Take a trip with us down memory lane as we look back on Chris Angelini’s review of the AMD Athlon 1 GHz during his more innocent and much younger days.
Hackers Assault Facebook with Devious Phishes
On Thursday, the popular social networking website Facebook was the subject of a phishing assault after hackers successfully compromised several accounts.
On Thursday, the popular social networking website Facebook was the subject of a phishing assault after hackers successfully compromised several accounts. As a result, many passwords were stolen, thus allowing the hackers to send phishing emails to other Facebook members listed as Friends. Currently Facebook's security team is working on "cleaning up the damage," and has blocked the compromised accounts until further notice. Fortunately, the problem hasn't spread across the entire 200 million user network, only affecting a small portion of accounts.
Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said Thursday that the phishing emails urged users to click on provided links to fake websites. In turn, these websites--www.151.im, www.121.im, and www.123.im--were designed to resemble the Facebook home page. The victim, thinking they're logging back into the real Facebook, unknowingly provides their user names and passwords to the hackers controlling the fake websites. With the login info in hand, the hackers thus repeat the process, compromising the user's account, send additional phishing emails, and gather personal details listed on the account for identity theft purposes.
With this kind of personal information, hackers can send spam outside Facebook to legit email addresses, and eventually gather financial details including credit card and banking account numbers through the usual fake link process (pharmaceuticals, male enhancement, etc). What makes this phishing scheme so clever is that Facebook members are somewhat trusting in that friends are approved before becoming part of the "trusted" network: a message sent by Mom's compromised account looks legit enough to take seriously, its embedded link unsuspicious. On a personal level, Facebook accounts usually provide extensive details to friends, including home phone numbers, places of employment, email addresses, and other useful information. In short, it's a gold mine for hackers looking for more ways to send spam and steal identities.
“There has been a definite ramp-up of attacks on Facebook over the last several months,” Michael Argast, an analyst at security software developer Sophos, told the New York Times. “As the user community grows, the criminal community sees an opportunity to make money.” He also said that Thursday's attack may be tied into a recent scam where hackers breaks into a Facebook account, impersonates the user, and posts a message to friends asking for money because the hacker is "in a pinch" in a faraway country. Friends falling for the scam usually send thousands of dollars to accounts not associated with the original user.
Currently the Facebook security team has blocked the three malicious websites; user's can't even type the fake domains in messages or in the status bar. Thankfully, the latest attack doesn't involve malicious files that are silently installed on user PCs. Facebook suggests that registered members access the website using an up-to-date browser with a built-in anti-phishing black list. Members should also use different login names and passwords for every website requiring login information, and be suspicious of sketchy messages hitting the Facebook Inbox, especially those asking for login and password information, or those from Marcus and Tuan asking for users to judge their "performance" recorded during the Tom's Karaoke Night this past Saturday (shivers).
