Hardware Archive

Yesterday, we reported on an article about the demise of the Alpha. That article was the first part in a series about the future of processor design. Today, part II has been published: "In terms of the architecture itself, AMD's Athlon 64 platform, at the stage it is at right now, does not offer that much of a performance advantage, and AMD should not be resting on its laurels. This is because on the desktop, interconnects as such play less of a role. It's on servers and multi-processing systems that you can take advantage of scaling, and that's where interconnects such as HyperTransport have a role. But when you talk about a single-chip desktop system, whether it's one, two or four cores, the efficiency of the chipset still plays a very important role."

"To the outside observer, improvements in PC architecture are evolutionary but logical. Processors advance inevitably in speed and performance, in happy accordance with Moore's Law. For Nebojsa Novakovic, a consultant in high-end computing systems, that's hardly the case. The demise of the DEC Alpha processor is a case in point. A performance leader was killed off by corporate whim."

"Your friend the traditional hard drive may be undergoing changes soon. No, we're not talking about the threat that flash storage poses to the dominant storage medium, though that's an emerging player on the scene. No, our favorite plattered friend may be reorienting itself in a literal sense. Perpendicular storage is coming to a computer near you, perhaps sooner than you think. What is it? We'll break it down for you as Seagate comes to market with the first fruits of a promising technology." Update: People, you just got to watch the flash animation... It's... Really, just go see it.

"In this article, I'm going to be dealing in hard facts, coupled with a little bit of conjecture and speculation as to the future of mobile computing in 2006. When we look back on 2005 we can see it as primarily a year of transition. Since the debut of Intel's Centrino platform, coupled with ATI's release of the Mobility Radeon 9600, notebooks have been maturing as a competitive computing platform at an alarming rate. While I don't really think 2005 will be remembered necessarily as a banner year in new technologies, I think it was a strong transitional period. Mobile technology is maturing at an alarming rate; in 2006, we're going to see some major milestones."

"LIRC is basically a small server which can decode or transmit infra-red signals. This is a tutorial about how to set up the LIRC server and how to use it in order to control your system or specific LIRC-enabled applications with a remote control. Examples of simple or more complicated setups are also provided."

The CES ends today, yet we have heard nothing from the Atom Chip corporation-- the company who's claims generated a lot of disbelief six months ago. They promised to show their exceptional technology at CES-- yet no news has surfaced. Is it now safe to call their claims outright lies and deceit? Update: More, including photos, here.

"Over the past several years of computer hardware engineering, raw speed has been the primary goal of hardware manufacturers. This has traditionally come at the expense of power consumption, which has skyrocketed since the first days of the x86-compatible home PC. Just how much electricity does a computer and its related devices use? Are there disadvantages to turning everything off when you're done? This article will give you an insight into computer power usage."

"In 2005, vendors competed to provide ever-increasing processor power, with 64-bit chips and dual-core technology. Now AMD and Intel are shaping their multicore plans for 2006 and beyond. In the world of hardware, 2005 proved to be the year vendors pushed processor power to new heights as competition in the multicore processor space came to a head. AMD gained a 64-bit head start on Intel last year when it unveiled 64-bit extensions that allow x86 chips to accommodate more than 4GB of memory." In related news, Intel is going to dump its 'Intel Inside' tagline in favour of something new-- after using it for 15 years.

It's been a long, strange trip for the personal computer over 30 years. Ars takes a look back at the comings and goings of players in the PC market, from Altair to Zeta OS, to see how we got where we are today. "When you step back and look at the big picture, the overall dominance of the PC becomes clear. However, this was not always the case, and in fact it wasn't until 1986 that the PC platform first surpassed 50% market share. This was more than a decade after the first personal computer was sold."

"With the recent introduction of dual-core processors come more questions about system performance. Does a dual-core computer really perform better than a single-core CPU? How does it compare to a true multi-CPU system? What about Hyper-Threading Technology -- is it a thing of the past? Read on for an explanation of dual-core processors and symmetric multiprocessing and what it means to your computing experience."

How can a company be just about everywhere, and yet nobody knows its name? Just ask Michel Mayer, chief executive of Freescale Semiconductor.

"After reading the round-by-round account of our dual-core desktop CPU prizefight, it should come as no shock that AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips are the runaway victors here, laying out the Intel Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition 840 chips pins up. If we had to call out one chip, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is an outstanding bargain given the competition, but as our results show, any AMD dual-core CPU will serve you better than its similarly priced Intel equivalent."

Here is an 8 minute documentary about the recently unveiled 100$ laptop. It shows the laptop in action, and also discusses its aspects with one of the team members, such as the screen, the cheap keyboard, and much more. The video is in Quicktime, and this mirror gives better performance. My take: I am very, very, very impressed. The thought put into the details is just stunning. Every aspect of this machine has a function. Just astonishing.

"If you shop around, you can actually get a functional computer for $500 (EUR 425,-). But as we become more budget conscious, $500 seems to be a bit much for a standard machine, so what's our next target? Why, it's an over ambitious $100 (EUR 85,-) notebook. How companies accomplish this is their business; what we are interested in is what they ship out for a product when all is said and done. As of now, however, there is one thing that interests me even more, and that is, why would they want to sell me a $100 notebook in the first place?"