Hardware Archive

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?"

The Cell Broadband Engine is a breakthrough microprocessor with unique capabilities for applications requiring video, 3D graphics, or high-performance computation for imaging, security, visualization, healthcare, surveillance and more. The following technologies are from the CBE Software Development Kit v1.0 that provides everything Cell software developers need to create, build, simulate, and test Cell applications.

HP has notified its partners and customers of the end of the line for its AlphaServer systems. According to a document seen by the Inquirer, the last order date is planned for the 27th of October 2006, with those systems delivered by December next year. The end of an era.

Some newsbits from the world of processors. First, IBM detailed power-saving techniques in the new PowerPC 907MP (the dual-core G5). Secondly, "Fujitsu's Sparc64 VI+ processor, code-named Jupiter and due for release in 2008, is a four-core processor with clock speeds of at least 2.7GHz, the company said Tuesday." And to complement today's batch of processor news, IBM unveiled the Xbox 360 processor.

P.A. Semi, a 150-employee chip startup, wants to make name for itself through attention to detail. The Silicon Valley chip startup, run by chip legend Dan Dobberpuhl-Dobberpuhl, its CEO, presided over the development of the Alpha processor while at Digital Equipment Corp. lifted its veil of secrecy Monday. The company will begin offering a new family of low-power, multicore, PowerPC architecture processors in 2006.

Achieve a level of high reliability in a microprocessor system by adding a second identical processor to a system to monitor and verify the system processor operation - also known as the lockstep processor technique. This tip demonstrates the integrated lockstep facility in the PowerPC 750GX processor.

Hewlett-Packard on Friday recalled 135 000 battery packs sold with its notebook computers shipped globally from March 2004 to May 2005. The product is being recalled following 16 reports of batteries overheating due to an internal short circuit, the company said.

Aopen confirmed that it will introduce a mini PC closely resembling the design of Apple's Mac mini (code-named Pandora) in time for this year's Christmas season. Apparently the device will sell in two versions for $399 (E327), with Linux, and $499 (E410) with Windows. No specs have been released yet.

With each successive generation of technology, we collectively make each leap faster and with slightly less pain. However, as a music fanatic, the jump from tape to CD/mp3 was a tough one for me. Enter the Plusdeck2 Tape-RW PC Cassette Deck. This fantastic device, supplied by geeks.com, has been one of the best devices I've had the pleasure of reviewing. Read on for the complete story.

After having a look at a very low-end camera two weeks ago, I've stepped a bit up in the range to have a look at a 5 megapixel model, a Kodak CX7530, which can currently be bought a Geeks.com for $175. Just like I found that the CX7220 was able to produce good 4x6 prints, I was surprised to see that CX7530 is capable of very good letter-size prints.

E-Ink, the pioneering electronic paper developer that's been announcing handheld devices "in a year or so" since 2001, has quietly found a manufacturer for its screens, and is not only offering developer kits, they've got an actual mass-market product set to launch in China q4. The folks at Hong Kong-based Jinke, makers of the $299/E250 E-Ink devices, are so excited, they're talking a V2 model running Linux with an SDK that allows for user-created apps before next summer. Read more.

Two interesting newsbits from the PPC world. Firstly, Genesi has announced that it will develop a dual 970MP (dual-core G5) server, named Open Server Workstation, following their Open Desktop Workstation. Secondly, Freescale has said that their dual-core G4 processors have been delayed until the second half of 2006. Update: "Libfreevec is a free (LGPL) library with hand-optimized replacement routines for GLIBC, such as memcpy(), strlen(), etc. These routines have been written specifically to take advantage of the AltiVec, and will only work on processors that include this unit."

As of September 20, 2005, you can download object code (free reg. req.) for the PowerPC 405 and PowerPC 440 core models for Open SystemC-compatible EDA design tools. The code is useful for software engineers interested in developing boot firmware, operating system, or application code for a PowerPC-based chip. Also, for hardware engineers interested in architecture decision support, early benchmarking, or high-level system design trade-offs.