More Asus netbook contraptions arrive

THE NOTEBOOK afficionados at Notebook Review have got an Asus N10JC-A1 netbook. Apart from the netbook credentials, this little piggy provides integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics plus a “discrete” 9300M – and the differences are quite alarming when you get round to benhchmarking graphics on it. The battery life seems quite good, even with the Nvidia part turned on. Give it a look, see?

TweakTown is giving an in-depth look into the Asus P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition X58 motherboard *cough*. Palm OC is the name of the overclock monitoring gadget that comes with the mobo. Overclocking the i7, however, is a bit more complex than a Core 2 Duo or Quad. The Asus mobo, however, seems to be on track. You’ve got loads of features CrossfireX and SLI. You can have your cake *and* eat it. Read it here.

Tech Gage has a run-down of which memory kit will suit the Core i7 processor best. Although not a specific brand-comparison, the article covers the many DDR3 memory ratings and their corresponding performance with the i7. Read the article, here.

Sticking a Phenom on a micro-ATX motherboard requires some clever power management, but Asrock will let you stick one on a 780GFullHD mobo of theirs. Compared to other 780G designs, Asrock has decided to do without the Sideport memory – which makes no difference when it comes to hi-res video playback but some when you try to game on it. Cheap as chips, say AMDZone.

The French have a website dedicated to that noble pursuit of Green Computing. It’s called Ginjfo – and that’s where you’ll find an eco-minded HDD enclosure from Vantec. The NexStar 3i, as it is called, has built-in power management and will power down or go to standby per your settings. Interesting concept.The review’s in French, so we’ve Googled it to English.

Techware Labs took a couple of non-reference Palit HD 4870s for a spin today. These cards come with a very light overclock and that ultimately useless Turbo switch at the back that’ll give or remove the 25MHz overclock. Give the review a look, but consider it’s using an E7200 to power a couple of HD 4870s.

Source : http://www.theinquirer.net/

Quartics Snags AMD Exec As CEO

Irvine-based Quartics, which is developing semiconductors for media processing, said Monday that it has named former AMD Executive Vice President Mario Rivas as the firm's new CEO. Quartics, which was started by former AST Founder Safi Qureshey, is developing media encoding and decoding semiconductors which support 1080p HDTV and related processing. Rivas was most recently in charge of AMD's Computing Solutions Group, and was Corporate Vice President at AMD's Office of Strategy Management. Rivas has also served at Phillips Semiconductor, Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), and Motorola. Quartics is backed by Enterprise Partners, Foundation Capital, and others.

Source : http://www.socaltech.com

AMD to intro netbook CPU to fight Intel's Atom

AMD is expected to announce a new CPU as soon as this week that is meant for use in netbook PCs, as per a Monday report. With the new CPU, the chipmaker wants to address two key issues, namely battery life and video performance. AMD's VP of Advanced Marketing, Par Moorehead, promises between 8 and 9 hours of battery life out of a netbook utilizing the company's CPU, instead of the sub-two-hour lifespan he has personally experienced from an unnamed, top-rung netbook.

Exactly how AMD hopes to quadruple battery life in the segment remains to be seen, but the chip itself is likely to play just one part of the equation. AMD should more easily achieve its second goal of improving video-processing performance. The company will no doubt turn to ATI, which it recently purchased, to endow the chip with integrated video processing capabilities.

To compete with Intel's widely-adopted Atom CPU, the new AMD chip is expected to be smaller than current AMD processors as well.

Source : http://www.electronista.com/

QuickTransit(R) Cross-Platform Virtualization Performance Boosted by Latest Energy-Efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) Processors

LOS GATOS, CA, Nov 10, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Transitive(R) Corporation, the leading provider of cross-platform virtualization software, today announced its support of the upcoming Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processors by AMD (AMD:

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AMD 3.04, -0.12, -3.8%) , which deliver greater performance within the same power envelope as prior generations of AMD Opteron processors. The new processors will offer greater energy-efficiency and performance to customers running Transitive's award-winning QuickTransit(R) enterprise product line.

"Transitive congratulates AMD on its upcoming release of the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processor," said Ian Robinson, vice-president of marketing for Transitive. "By deploying cross-platform virtualization solutions such as the award-winning QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64 or QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Solaris/x86-64 on systems equipped with these latest-generation AMD processors, customers can replace old servers with the latest x86-based technology while avoiding entirely the expense and delays of porting their legacy applications."

Transitive's QuickTransit cross-platform virtualization solutions enable software applications to run on any hardware platform without any source code or binary changes, and at speeds comparable to native ports. By deploying QuickTransit on the latest multi-core enterprise server platforms, CIOs and IT managers can replicate workloads that were previously tied to a single hardware platform and run them unmodified, without incurring the costs and delays of porting projects, and without disruption to end users. Furthermore, such comparatively easy workload replication can provide the basis for more cost-effective business continuity solutions, including disaster recovery, application scalability and dynamic workload re-balancing.

"AMD customers have benefited from Transitive's cross-platform virtualization solutions as cost-effective alternatives to porting legacy applications when upgrading their datacenter hardware," said Margaret Lewis, director, Commercial Solutions and Software, AMD. "Now, even greater efficiencies can be gained by deploying QuickTransit on systems that use our upcoming Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processors."

To address the most typical customer deployment scenarios, Transitive offers three configurations of its QuickTransit enterprise products: QuickTransit Workstation is intended for use on desktop and laptop PCs; QuickTransit Server is used for large-scale datacenter consolidation projects; and QuickTransit Legacy is a specialized version for application re-hosting from older legacy hardware running operating system versions that are no longer supported.

The QuickTransit product line is available from Transitive and its global distribution partners, which include HP, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Red Hat. Evaluation versions of QuickTransit can be downloaded from the Transitive Web site at: http://www.transitive.com/evaluate.

Transitive also offers a free Adobe(R) Reader(R) solution for Solaris/x86 users requiring fully-functional Portable Document Format (PDF) viewing capabilities. QuickTransit for Solaris/x86 with Adobe Reader can be downloaded from the Transitive Web site at: http://www.transitive.com/reader.

About Transitive Corporation

Transitive is a leader in cross-platform virtualization, and its award-winning QuickTransit technology is built into more than 16 million computers worldwide. QuickTransit allows software applications that have been compiled for one processor and operating system to run on systems with different processors and operating systems, without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports. As a result, QuickTransit allows IT managers to quickly and easily replicate legacy enterprise applications from the original hardware and run them on modern, standardized platforms without incurring the costs and delays of porting projects, and without disruption to end users. This workload replication helps enterprise customers improve business continuity, including superior disaster recovery, scalability and high-availability solutions.

Transitive's cross-platform virtualization technology is the foundation for Apple's Rosetta translation software (built into Apple's x86-based Macintosh computers) and also for PowerVM Lx86, which is available for IBM Power Systems enterprise servers. Transitive Corporation is located in Los Gatos, California with a research and development team in Manchester, UK. For more information, please visit Transitive's Web site at www.transitive.com.

Transitive, QuickTransit and the Transitive logo are registered trademarks of Transitive Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

 

Source : http://www.marketwatch.com/

Broad s/w ecosystem support for AMD's Shanghai

SUNNYVALE, USA: AMD announced ecosystem support by leading x86 operating system (OS) and virtualization partners for the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed "Shanghai."

Built on 45nm process technology, the enhanced processor will offer innovations for AMD software partners like Microsoft, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VMware specifically designed to improve OS and virtualization performance. Strategic improvements in comparison to 65nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors include a larger L3 memory cache, and features designed to further optimize application performance in virtualized environments. The new AMD Opteron processor is uniquely architected to handle more memory-intensive applications while also enabling customers of all sizes to operate a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure.

"AMD is seeing rapid industry growth and demand for cutting edge technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization," said Earl Stahl, vice president, Software Development, AMD. "As a result of our ongoing collaboration with software partners, AMD customers can soon easily upgrade to the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. Enterprise customers can leverage the ongoing enhanced performance and features like AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology that AMD continues to deliver, while protecting the investments made to their current software infrastructure."

With more companies turning to virtualization to help improve data center efficiency and costs, AMD designed the new AMD Opteron processor to deliver a robust platform that can manage customers' most demanding workloads, such as web hosting and complex database management, helping to maximize the business benefits of virtualization.

ISV ecosystem support
By collaborating with leading OS and virtual infrastructure vendors to help ensure applications are optimized for the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, AMD is providing customers with greater opportunity to utilize the software solutions that best meet the needs of their businesses.

"With the adoption of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to address customers' infrastructure virtualization needs, it's exciting to see the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor coming to market to help improve the performance and scalability of virtualized environments and help provide power savings benefits for customers," said Mike Schutz, director of product management, Windows Server virtualization at Microsoft. "We look forward to continuing to work closely with AMD to help customers utilize virtualization technologies and enable businesses of all sizes to make the most of their IT investments."

"Red Hat is committed to bringing performance, reliability and security to our customers as they expand their use of open source virtualization throughout the enterprise," said Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat. "As evidenced by our recent collaboration with AMD on live migration technology, Red Hat continues to deliver business value to customers via high-performance, standards-based virtualization solutions for heterogeneous environments."

"Sun is committed to working with AMD to include optimization and tuning advancements in the Sun xVM virtualization software portfolio in order to meet the desktop and server virtualization requirements of our customers," said Jim McHugh, vice president of marketing, Datacenter, Sun Microsystems. "Sun xVM Server, a datacenter-grade server virtualization solution, runs on 45 nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor-based systems and offers customers the ability to virtualize and manage heterogeneous workloads, including Windows, Linux and Solaris™ operating systems, as guests. Sun xVM Server is an easy-to-use, open source hypervisor that enables a simplified and secure environment for our customers."

"The VMware platform helps AMD customers to minimize capital and operating costs, increase availability of mission-critical applications, and promote energy efficiencies," said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances, VMware. "The advanced virtualization features in the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, such as AMD Extended Migration and AMD-V with Rapid Virtualization Indexing, can extend those benefits to optimize application performance in VMware virtualized environments."

AMD also recognizes support for its forthcoming and current Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors from software and virtualization partners such as Parallels, Transitive and Virtual Iron.

Source : http://www.ciol.com/

AMD Cool with Netbooks... For Now

It’s likely that the new chip will be smaller and more energy efficient than current AMD processors. And AMD, which acquired graphics card maker ATI not too long ago, will likely use ATI’s expertise to produce a chipset with integrated graphics capabilities that will allow for decent high def video playback without burning down your battery in a matter of seconds.

In the past, AMD’s comments about netbooks have left me wondering whether the company truly understands what makes these tiny notebooks tick. We won’t know for sure until AMD unveils more details about the new processor, but I’m still a bit dubious. Focusing on battery life is a good start. But I’m not convinced that graphics should be a high priority. Sure, it’s nice to be able to watch some web video or a ripped DVD on the go. But I’ve never had a problem doing that with an Intel Atom, or even Celeron CPU. If AMD can offer performance as good or better without taking a toll on battery life, that’s fine. But I’d rather see a focus on multi-tasking. A dual core, low power chip would be a nice.

Pictured above: a netbook with a dual-core AMD Turion and 690E integrated video. It's E like with Jag-u-ars, so, limited and drop-dead gorgeous. You know, for integrated video.

What I'm saying is that AMD doesn't have any "new" plans to get into the netbook market, they're already there and with damn fine hardware, even if it's just the one netbook. Since they announced Phenom in aught-six, they've stated that they had no intention of phasing out the K8 architecture (although I bet no one expected to hang on to it quite like they have) instead, cutting it down, tweaking it for super-low-power and decent, if improved, mobile performance.

Not that there's much on the Turion Ultra front, either. But whatevs.

[Read Full Story at Liliputing]