Hardware Archive

Over the past few years SATA has become a standard interface on hard drives and is starting to show up in many peripheral devices. Today we're taking a look at two similar hard drives to see if there's a performance difference between SATA and the older Parallel IDE standard.

Many companies backing Intel's Itanium processor are planning to announce a new alliance in September to try to make it easier for customers to adopt systems using the high-end chip. The group, called the Itanium Solutions Alliance, has several plans to make Itanium more useful, said a source involved with the outfit.

What is Cell? The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA, or, informally, "Cell") defines a new processor structure based upon the 64-bit Power Architecture technology, but with unique features directed toward distributed processing and media-rich applications. This article provides a concise view inside the Cell's architecture.

The challenger has called for a "shoot-out" over whose dual-core chip performs better. Question is, can it shake Intel's corporate dominance?

What is slewing? Agere Systems Engineer Sean Schultz demonstrates the LCK4013 clocking device to implement flexible processor-slewing algorithms in a PowerPC 970 environment.

"I had been looking for some time to find a way to get the same type of Software RAID support under Windows that is available under Linux for my multiple USB-2 and Firewire drives. Then, I found the coLinux project, and discovered a way to have my Windows and my software RAID too."

If you are not lucky enough to have access to a 64-bit computer, you might be wondering about some of the implications of having a 32-bit environment alongside the 64-bit one. Read on.

6 months ago N. Blachford wrote an article based on the 2002 Cell processor patent application. Since that original document, the Cell evolved considerably in both hardware and software. This new version has been rewritten to cover those changes. New sections have also been added to cover Cell software development and the design of the architecture.

The floppy disk was well intended, but its usefulness is now gone. Now, over 30 years later, the floppy disk needs to go for good.

More on the University of Texas grid project's mission to integrate numerous, diverse resources into a comprehensive campus cyber-infrastructure for research and education. This article examines the idea of harvesting unused cycles from compute resources to provide this aggregate power for compute-intensive work.

There are increasing rumors that Alpha might be brought back to life. The Inq sets the big 'if' aside and explores the possiblities: "What if there really is a will to get Alpha back into the changed market? What sort of chip would it have to be to have that good chance of success, if any?"

Looking forward to getting your hands on a Cell workstation? We were too -- until we talked to Linux for Cell kernel maintainer Arnd Bergmann. Learn about programming for Cell in general and for Linux for Cell in particular, and why the "workstation" that has been described in the press is more of a prototype Blade board, and a bit of a misunderstanding, in this Q & A session.

Roomba manufacturer iRobot has released a new, programmable vacuuming robot with a "virtual walls" feature to keep the little guy penned in to a particular area. A $60 software/hardware upgrade is also available to late-model Roomba owners. Also from iRobot comes PackBot, a small reconnaissance robot for military use.

As of June 8, 2005, you can download initialization and boot source code based on the IEEE-1275 Standard for Boot Initialization Configuration Firmware.