Hardware Archive

Having read the feedback resulting from my previous post on interrupts (itself resulting from an earlier OSnews Asks item on the subject), I've had a look at the way interrupts work on PowerPC v2.02, SPARC v9, Alpha and IA-64 (Itanium), and contribute this back to anyone who's interested (or willing to report any blatant flaw found in my posts). I've also tried to rework a bit my interrupt handling model to make it significantly clearer and have it look more like a design doc and less like a code draft.

HP scientists have made a small breakthrough in the development of a next-generation memory technology called memristors, which some see as a potential replacement for today's widely used flash and DRAM technologies. In a paper to be published Monday in the journal "Nanotechnology," scientists report that they have mapped out the basic chemistry and structure of what happens inside a memristor during its electrical operation.

Well-known game developer David Braben is a little bit fed up with the state of computer science education these days, which seems to have shifted away from learning programming to some sort of computer-oriented "life skills" class. As the father of eleven and nine year-old boys, I can attest that so far, despite a massive investment on the part of their school in computer equipment, their computer education has consisted mostly of "play this math game" and "don't be victimized by cyber-perverts." Braben's idea to stem this tide: a very, very cheap computer that students can learn to program on.

Startup chip design company Adapteva has announced the multicore Epiphany processor, which is designed to accelerate applications in servers and low-power devices such as smartphones and tablets. The RISC-based processor is scalable to thousands of cores on a single chip, and can sit alongside CPUs to provide real-time execution of diverse applications. The processor can accelerate tasks like hand gesture recognition, face matching or face tracking, but is not designed to be a full-fledged CPU.

About one month ago, I've posted an OSnews Asks item asking for details on how interrupts work on various architectures. Since then, I've been reading the manuals and comments, and have extracted what I found to be a summary of the specifics of each architecture. I've then written my first attempt at a portable interrupt handling model based on this data for my pet OS. Now I contribute this back to OSnews, so that these resources get more exposure for those who are interested.

Half the notebook computers and a growing number of desktops shipped in 2011 will run on graphics-enabled microprocessors as designers Intel and AMD increase competition for the units that raise multimedia speeds without add-ons. Processors with built-in graphics capabilities will be installed this year on 115 million notebooks, half of total shipments, and 63 million desktop PCs, or 45 percent of the total, according to analysts.

Leo Apotheker has big plans. HP (relatively) new CEO wants to transform the company, and is willing to break with almost everything his predecessor Mark Hurd set out. How about webOS on every computer shipped by HP?

IDC's newest survey of server vendors shows boxes running every kind of operating system -- except Unix -- sold more during the last three months of 2010. Sales of Linux servers rose 29 percent; Windows rose 16.8 percent, but most surprisingly, sales of mainframes shot up 69 percent – the highest growth rate IDC ever found on mainframes.

Okay, source material is more than 10 years old so this is not exactly news, but I think it's interesting anyway. This BeOS promotional video is a good reminder of how powerful modern hardware truly is, what hardware should be needed for light computer use, and how laughable modern desktop&mobile OSs are as far as performance is concerned. Here are part 1 and part 2 on YouTube.

"Yesterday, Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), the organization behind several display interfaces, has refreshed the DisplayPort Embedded standard, also known as eDP for short. The updated standard now includes a new Panel Self-Refresh feature that was developed to save system power and further extend battery life in portable PC systems. This was detailed to us during CES when we visited the DisplayPort booth at CES."

"The name Snapdragon is fast becoming well-known among consumers as the chip to have inside your smartphone. Offering speeds of up to 1.5GHz at the moment, it's certainly one of the fastest mobile chips out there. Qualcomm doesn't want the reputation of Snapdragon to falter, though, so the chip manufacturer has just announced an update that will have smartphone and tablet users drooling. The next iteration of the Snapdragon processor line is codenamed Krait and uses 28nm manufacturing technology. It will be offered in single, dual, and quad-core versions with clock speeds up to 2.5GHz. If the huge increase in performance wasn’t enough for you, Qualcomm also boast a 65% reduction in power use over existing mobile ARM chips."

And, of course, just as I decide to leave the live blogging to play a game of Left 4 Dead 2, HP drops the big bombshell right at the end of their press event: webOS is coming to PCs!

"They said it could be done and now they've done it. What's more, they did it with a GRIN. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have carried out the first experimental demonstration of GRIN - for gradient index - plasmonics, a hybrid technology that opens the door to a wide range of exotic optics, including superfast computers based on light rather than electronic signals, ultra-powerful optical microscopes able to resolve DNA molecules with visible light, and 'invisibility' carpet-cloaking devices."

"Researchers in the field of microprocessors are always looking to the future to see what new materials are available as our chips get ever smaller, faster, and closer to the limits of current component manufacturing. While graphene is seen as a material of the future, it has recently been revealed that it may not be a suitable replacement for silicon in CPUs. This is due to graphene having a very small energy state gap, meaning when it is used as a transistor it cannot be turned off. There could be ways around such a limitation that haven’t been formulated yet, but we may not need graphene for processor manufacture after all. EPFL's Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) has discovered that molybdenite (MoS2) may be the perfect replacement for silicon."