SUPERMICRO WAS AT IDF showing off the usual server and workstation toys. Because it had a bunch of new products at Computex, and there haven’t subsequently been any really new Intel chips, the boards on display were evolutionary, not revolutionary.
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LSI AND REDHAT were showing off the next step in hardware virtualization, IOV or I/O Virtualization, during IDF. The idea is simple, make SAS or SATA cards aware of virtual spaces, speeding up I/O for VMs many times.
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AMD OFFICIALLY BROKE SILENCE on the Fiorana and Kroner platforms, right on top of IDF. Most of the specifications are already known, but there are a few interesting things left to tell you about.
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WHEN CISCO JUMPED into the blade server market with its first Project California blades, that was big news, but the hardware was a yawner. The new ‘Ventura’ blades we were shown at IDF are going to change the game, radically.
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WHEN I FIRST saw a Umid MBook M1 MID at CES, it stood out from a very crowded field of marginally differentiated devices. The M1, and the upcoming M2, are probably the best mobile PC or netbook out there.
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SEAN MALONEY GOT all the good toys to show off at IDF this year, with Larrabee, Jasper, Gulftown and much more. There is a lot of good silicon in the pipeline.
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EVERYONE KNOWS that Solid-State Drives (SSDs) are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts, which makes them faster and more reliable than hard-disk drives (HDDs). SSDs can also be manufactured in physical formats that are much smaller and thinner than their old-fashioned HDD counterparts. Nevertheless, the shape of the connectors that SSDs use to interface with devices has remained the size and shape of the traditional HDD form-factors.
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WORD HAS REACHED our tender ears that Braidwood, the Intel flash on mobo hard drive cache has been postponed. It won’t be coming out with the upcoming Westmere based CPUs, but it may slide in before Sandy Bridge with a platform refresh.
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AMD JUST BROKE an important psychological barrier with a sub-$100 quad core CPU, one of five released today. Between this part and a 785G chipset, you can make a tolerable desktop PC for under $300, plus case and PSU.
Update: X2s are not new, just the X4s.
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WE HAVE A TREAT for you today. Everyone likes a bit of softcore geek porn with smart looking babes talking in foreign accents and reading a second meaning into every other word they say. It seems Asus might have accidentally struck gold when hiring these chaps to introduce its O!Play HD Media Player.
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ONE OF THE MOST recognizable and influential Intel executives, Pat Gelsinger, is no longer with the company. His rather sudden departure means a massive reshuffling that reaches just about every corner of Intel.
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AS WE SAID a few days ago, Intel is launching the new Lynnfield CPUs and the P55 chipset that goes with them. The CPU comes in three desktop flavors and six server variants.
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IT LOOKS LIKE ATIC, one of the parents of GlobalFoundries, made a bid to buy Chartered Semiconductor. The deal has been rumored for some time, and it is now official.
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WHEN WE HEARD the specs of Evergreen, the scene was one of jaws hanging down and people almost falling backwards into the snowy ground. The only question at that point was, could TSMC make them on the 40nm process?
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THE BATTLE FOR GPU SUPREMACY this coming winter solstice holiday season is looking like Nvidia is bringing a dull butter knife and a blindfold to a howitzer fight. At least that is the impression its latest round of roadmaps is giving.
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