Newsgroups
AMD launches K6-2 with 3D Now!
India is Intel land but now AMD has decided to take Intel head on and has launched the AMD K6-2 processor with 3D Now! technology. PC makers like IBM and Fujitsu have promised support to AMD and will sell certain models in their PC ranges using AMD K6-2 processors.The processor supports the Super 7 initiative pioneered by AMD to propagate the concept of Socket 7 compatibility for x86 processors. Super 7 is a backward compatible socket with a 100 MHz bus speed.The 3D Now! technology propounded by AMD and implemented in the K6-2 is a set of 21 new instructions in the K6 instruction set. It should be of special interest to game developers since it allows them to accelerate the frontend physics and geometry functions of the 3D graphics pipeline to enable full performance of the 3D graphics. DirectX 6 promises support.
Microsoft Certification
Microsoft has teamed up with NIIT to provide training for courses leading up to Microsoft Certificates of MCSE ( Microsoft Certified Software Engineer) & MCSD ( Microsoft Certified Software Developer). These courses consists of various papers on different subjects and are open only to those enrolled in or having completed professional courses.Microsoft & NIIT have also introduced online training for this at: www.netvarsity.com/mscert
Intel News
Intel has announced that it is delaying the launch of it’s next generation "Merced" microprocessor by another six months. It is said that the extra time is needed for testing the highly complex 64 bit processor which is being developed in cooperation with Hewlett-Packard. The IA-64 processor will now be available around mid-2000.At the same time, Intel has reduced the price of it’s popular chips by 12% to 32%. The price of the 400Mhz PII is down by 12% to $722 whereas the PII 350Mhz is down by 16% to $519.
Intel has announced it’s new line of Celeron processors which are essentially the poor man’s Pentium II. They are available from 233 to 300Mhz.
Also awaited is the much talked about Slot-2 technology in the new high speed Pentium IIs above 450Mhz. It is though a risky venture considering that slot 1 has yet to be accepted as a standard by the market.
Bye to Byte
The 23 year old Byte magazine will close down its print edition and go online by August. This marks the end of an era of information in which Byte was a dominant technology magazine having 1/2 million subscribers. It also shows a beginning of the shift of print media to the internet which is all the better for end users like us.Copper & Chips
Copper chip technologies have generated lot of interest since IBM and Motorola announced independent working versions of this technology last year. Unfortunately, fabrication plants have to be upgraded to shift from aluminum to copper. These upgrades are proving to be costly. Novellus systems has announced a manufacturing system that could bring smaller, faster and cheaper copper chips to the market for 30% less than similar aluminum based chips. It is being hailed as the first complete production system for copper interconnected chips. Use of copper brings more conductance and lesser generation of heat also at at the same time reducing size. As chip technologies reach the 0.13 micron level, copper chips will play an an increasing role in the shape of things to come.4GB of RAM!!!
Samsung electronics announced that it has completed development of technology required to manufacture DRAM chips holding upto 4 gigabits of data. Until now chip makers were limited to the rule of 0.15 micron. Now, narrowing the gap between components is difficult’ as at this level of miniaturization, the laws of physics work against the scientists. Samsung’s developmental breakthrough allows them to separate tracks and components by only 0.13 micron, meaning that more can be squeezed onto the chip’s surface. For DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) , this means that 4 gigabit chips could be on the anvil in another three years rather than the next decade as had been forecast earlier.In other memory news, Texas Instruments has sold off it’s memory chip making plant to Micron Technology Inc. for $800 million. Texas instruments is now focussing on the more profitable DSP chips. Hyundai has stepped up production of it’s latest 64MB SDRAM chip while halting DRAM production in an effort to stem the glut in the memory markets which has arisen due to huge amounts of stocks .
AT&T weds TCI
AT&T corporation has bought cable TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. in a deal worth around $50 billion. allowing AT&T to provide one point access for phone, internet, cable TV to a very large combined subscriber network of it’s own and TCI. This will allow it to break the monopoly of local phone companies and will provide new vistas of opportunities for users for fast access at the click of the button. Internet access may be done on cable TV lines using cable modems at speeds of 10Mbps!!! (Wow)
ISPs get approval
The Government announced clearance for corporatisation of the Dept. of Telecommunications(DoT) making it a PSU named India Telecom. It has then decided to allow authorized ISPs to set up international gateways for data transmission. Maybe now we can hope more cheaper Tcp/Ip accounts and better lines.
Digital Cameras
L
eica has announced it’s S1 camera which priced at 8.5 lacs is a photographers dream. A single snap size is 76MB!! and resolution is 5140x5140 pixels (wow!!). S1 is the first digital camera to offer the clarity and depth of a normal camera at varied image sizes. The camera comes with it’s own PCI card for transferring images at great speed instead of using a slow 16550 UART serial port. The card transfers each snap of 76MB size in seconds. This is Leica’s first foray into digital photography and hence is commendable. Who knows how great their next products will be!!
