The Indian behind Intel’s super chip
When Intel launched its first six-core x86 microprocessor – a high-end processor to crunch huge amount of data – designed and developed by its Indian team, there was relief at its India office.
This made-in-India project, code-named Dunnington, was launched after another much-touted India-specific project – Whitefield – was aborted mid-way by Intel in 2005, citing ‘business reasons’.
Praveen Vishakantaiah, a Bangalore-boy and the first one from Bangalore to head Intel India’s operations led this project from the front.
Prior to this, he was the director of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group and has been part of the microprocessor design team.
He has rich experience in the development of Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium IV microprocessors at Intel.
Image: Director of Digital Enterprise Group Intel Technology Praveen Vishakantaiah, gestures as he answers a question during a press conference in Intel India Development Centre in Bangalore | Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
Trojan masquerades as iPhone game
Security firm Sophos warned on Thursday that e-mails being circulated on the Web that purport to offer a free iPhone game instead are carrying a Trojan horse that can take control of infected Windows machines.
The e-mails have subject lines like “Virtual iPhone games!” and “Apple: The most popular game!” The attachment is called “Penguin.Panic.zip,” which refers to the iPhone game of the same name.
The Trojan has been identified as Troj/Agent-HNY, Sophos said.
Sophos has not yet seen versions that run on Mac OS X, the Apple iPhone, or other mobile devices.
World’s smallest PC?
As reporters, we tend to be wary whenever a company claims to be the first, the best, or the smallest of anything. But when we saw an image of CompuLab’s Fit-PC Slim, we thought it could very well be the tiniest machine capable of running Windows XP yet.
The original Fit-PC 1.0 was already a minute machine, measuring about 4.7 inches x 4.5 inches x 1.6 inches and weighing about 1.1 pounds. The new model, however, makes the first version look bloated. Weighing less than a pound, the Fit-PC Slim takes up only about 4.3 inches x 3.9 inches x 1.2 inches of space. Despite a reduced size, the new system only had to surrender the extra Ethernet port found in the original, but in return offers an extra USB slot and wireless connectivity.
Specifications:
•500MHz AMD Geode LC800 processor
•512MB RAM
•2.5-inch 60GB HDD
•Ethernet and 802.11b/g connectivity
•Three USB 2.0 ports
•Mini-serial port
•VGA output
•Headphone and microphone jacks
•Linux or Windows XP Home SP3 operating system
The Fit-PC Slim is not available for order for now. So if you have your hearts set on this tiny PC, keep refreshing the international order page here.
Featured Freeware: CinemaForge
This combination video-conversion and creation tool boasts good speed and a nice set of features.CinemaForge’s polished interface is both handsome and rather simple to understand, the Tom Cruise of software if he weren’t into Scientology.
As a video converter, the application supports all expected formats. You also can choose to accompany any video with audio files of your choice rather than the original sound. When you click the digital-camera icon next to the File Input box, you’ll be able to browse your computer for still images to compile a video file. If you choose to perform this action, you can apply a few transition effects, determine the image interval, and add your own music files.
When last tested, CinemaForge still had some problems with audio conversion. The video slide show was generated quickly, but even upping the bit rate didn’t help the muddy audio quality. You can tweak certain aspects of your new video, including frame rate and quality. Cropping videos, applying a deinterlacing filter, and uploading videos to the Web are also options. Frustratingly, uninstallation must be done via the question-mark icon on the main interface. Despite the aforementioned quirks, though, CinemaForge is overall a solid piece of software.
AtomicView processes media quickly
If you have a lot of media to browse through, no matter what viewer you use, it’s bound to take some time. Whatever the project may be–from picking the best shots from a pro photo shoot to getting the most action-packed movie clips from a birthday party–you need a good way to browse, compare, and sort through your media quickly. The obvious choices on your Mac are iPhoto or iMovie, but if you’re looking for a different way to sort through several media file-types with added unique features, check out AtomicView.
An intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate through media quickly
(Credit: CNET Networks)
AtomicView offers a sparse, but intuitive interface for sifting through tons of images and videos quickly. It takes advantage of multi-core processors and your video hardware letting you work even while importing large amounts of high-quality media. Just drag-and-drop a folder full of images to the bottom of the interface and watch AtomicView quickly gather and display all the information about each image–without significant slow downs. From there you’ll be able to perform simple changes like batch rotating or batch renaming in only a couple of steps. You also can create groups to make it easier to find media from specific events.
Search using any number of different criteria to find specific images.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
AtomicView offers excellent viewing options, letting you go into full-screen mode with movable interface elements and different viewing variations to fit your workflow. A comprehensive search feature lets you search by a number of different criteria so you can find specific media in several ways. AtomicView supports ITPC, EXIF, and XMP Metadata formats and you can create your own fields to make finding specific shots from a subgroup of images extremely easy.
Full screen views make it easy to sort through and compare similar high-quality images
(Credit: CNET Networks)
While AtomicView doesn’t offer the editing tools of other programs, it’s the perfect fit for professional photographers and digital camera enthusiasts who need to sort through and analyze big folders of media. The image analysis-friendly interface, simple tools, and customizable views make it a natural choice for those who process large amounts of high-quality media.
How much for a Google Android phone?
The soon-to-be announced, first-ever Google Android phone will be priced at $200 with a two-year contract, according to a blog post on TechCrunch.
The tech blog said an “insider” had confirmed the $200 price tag, which is reasonable considering that AT&T is selling the iPhone 3G for the subsidized price of $199. That said, it’s still about $50 more than what we had expected. Earlier reports were that the phone would cost $150 with a two-year contract and $399 without a contract.
The HTC Dream will be the first phone that uses Google’s open-source operating system called Android. T-Mobile USA will be the first carrier to the offer the new phone, which is expected to be announced on Tuesday. Stay tuned for more rumors and details as the countdown to Android continues.
T-Mobile declined to comment.
Google Street View goes mobile
Street View endows Google Maps with a driver’s-eye view of the world, and now people actually on the street will be able to use it, too.
The company announced a new version of its Google Maps for Mobilesoftware that includes support for Street View, as well as walking directions and reviews of businesses. Google said the new version is faster too.
Google demonstrated Street View on an Android mobile phone in May. Now it’s available for BlackBerry phones and several others. (Click on the image above for an Android slide show.)
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News/Google)
The new features work on BlackBerrys with color screens and on mobile devices with Java abilities. Sorry, iPhone users. Visiting the Google site with an iPhone produces this message: “Sorry, Google Maps does not work on your Apple iPhone.”
The move isn’t a surprise. Google demonstrated Street View on a phone using the company’s Androidoperating system in May, hooked into the phone’s hardware so the view would change according to which way the user oriented the phone. TheAndroid phones are due to be announced Sept. 23.
Update 1:56 p.m. PDT: The Google Mobile blog now has some details and an explanatory video.
I downloaded, installed, and ran (once I figured out the new icon) the software fine on a BlackBerry. Launching it shows a start-up screen with the Street View person icon with brief instructions.
I did find the new version of the software somewhat more responsive, though data transfer speeds still impose a fair amount of waiting.
The Street View option is enabled when you click on an area; after a pause the software tells you whether Street View is available, and clicking the option overlays a pretty small Street View window atop the map. Using the scroll wheel pans the view left or right, again with some waiting on the network.
The ‘Rochester Cube’: CPUs move into the third dimension
Scientists at the University of Rochester have created what they say is the first true 3D processor–and it’s running at 1.4GHz.
Unlike past attempts at 3D processors, which were simply a number of processors stacked on top of one another, the “Rochester Cube,” as it is being called, was designed from the ground up to optimize all key-processing functions vertically, in the same way ordinary chips optimize functions horizontally.
So while there are other 3D chips, this design is supposedly the first to integrate each layer in a seamless and efficient way.
Hopefully, CPUs won’t ever get this powerful.
(Credit: Paramount Pictures)
Eby Friedman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rochester, says many in the integrated-circuit industry are predicting that miniaturization will reach its limit, at which point it will be impossible to pack more chips next to each other and the capabilities of future processors will thus be hindered. The solution? Expand into the third dimension, stacking transistors on top of each other.
Vertical expansion will not come without its difficulties, however. The key, according to Friedman, is to design a 3D chip where the multiple layers interact as if they were one. He equates it to designing a traffic system for the entire United States and then layering two more United States above the first and somehow getting any bit of traffic from either level to its destination on another level, while still coordinating the traffic of millions of other drivers.
“Complicate that by changing the two United States layers to something like China and India, where the driving laws and roads are quite different,” he adds, “and the complexity and challenge of designing a single control system to work in any chip begins to become apparent.”
According to Friedman, “This is the way computing is going to have to be done in the future. When the chips are flush against each other, they can do things you could never do with a regular 2D chip.”
My problem with the next big thing technology is that I get burned far too often. Remember how it turned out to be the Segway? Well, I’m still waiting for “cities to be redesigned” around that.
If what the Rochester scientists are saying is true, however, there is vast potential here for the future of computing power. Friedman says the 3D chip is essentially an entire circuit board folded up into a tiny package. So the chips inside something like an iPod could be compacted to a tenth their current size with 10 times the speed.
Sounds nice, but until I see major chipmakers making strides to put these in real products, I won’t hold my breath.
FoxTab turns your browser tabs into a spectacle
One of my buddies just tipped me off to a must-have tab management add-on for Firefox. It’s called FoxTab, and it’s a cross between Mac OS X’s Expose, Windows Vista’s Flip 3D, and the thumbnail view in Google Chrome. When you’ve got a lot of tabs open in Firefox, this offers a quick way to jump to the page you want without having to eyeball the name of each one.
To toggle it on you just hit a small keyboard shortcut and it zooms out all the tabs into a giant wall. You can also summon it with a small button that sits next to the address bar, or by choosing it from the right click menu. Once opened, you simply pick which tab you want to see by clicking it, or simply scrolling with your mouse wheel. It’s not nearly as smooth as Tab Effect, an eye candy tab switching add-on Rafe wrote about back in September of last year, but it’s neat nonetheless.
There are five different styles in all, and each one offers a different way to view the thumbnails you have open. My personal favorite is the standard grid view, which can be tweaked to include as many rows as you’d like. Windows Vista users are more likely to choose the stack view, which is identical to Vista’s Flip 3D. No matter what you choose, it’s a pretty svelte alternative to hunting down the page you want by favicon and text alone.
Note: This is an “experimental” add-on in Mozilla’s directory, so you must be registered there to download it.
Related: Surf your bookmarks by thumbnail with Bookmark Previews
FoxTab lets you see all of your open tabs as thumbnails. You can maneuver them with your scroll wheel, or swap what type of view you’d like on the fly. (click to enlarge)
Recent Comments