Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Fujitsu revs faster server chip. New Sparc64 processor assumes greater importance with the company's alignment with Sun. [CNET News.com] I cannot wait to see what impact, if any these new chips will have on the Sun Enterprise servers like the top of the line E25000 series. 128 Cpus is a lot of horsepower by anyone's measure and if you can run at close to 2Ghz, you WILL blow even the biggest Itanic unit out of the water, just by virtue of your overwhelming SpecInt and SpecFp performance. 11:29:34 PM    comment []

Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life. A computer science professor who died in 1999 was a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with surprisingly practical applications. By Margaret Wertheim. [New York Times: Technology] Here's a guy that was a real Art and Technology genius. I've heard of Huffman encoding before, but I had no idea the guy was still alive until recently. Just like RSA, Ron Rivest is still kicking it in terms of patents and commerce. Occasionally those Computer Scientists do make good on their inventions. Even Tim Berners-Lee is now finally being given pity money for giving away the Web. 11:27:37 PM    comment []

US hardcore not interested in the Net. Are you a 'Resistor' or just 'Unconnected'? By Tim Richardson . [The Register] One third of the U.S. population is not on the 'Net. That group, that third is made up of conscientious objectors who 'chose' not to use technology. The other group choose not to have any access to the technology. I'll tell you something right now that will put this in a different perspective. This is a time where the kids of that one third are looking at their friends, and seeing what they have. They watch TV and see what the characters in shows have. The desire to consume is omnipresent and that next generation of adults WILL consume where their parents did not. That one third will erode, each year as the hardcore group dies off a little bit each year. 11:02:14 PM    comment []

Intel to unveil 64-bit extensions in Nocona on Monday. Intel Corp. plans to unveil its first processor with 64-bit extensions technology next week, sources familiar with Intel's plans indicated Tuesday. [InfoWorld: Top News] This is a little bit like Intel eating crow. They once poo-poo'd AMD's intention to release it's 64-bit hybrid chip. Then they flailed around for about 6 months, not wanting to change their strategy. Then AMD shipped these chips, and about 3 days later they said they were going to accelerate plans for a 64-bit hybrid chip. Now, they got a codename and a scheduled release date for their own 64-bit architecture. AMD originally got its start when IBM demanded Intel second source the CPU's for their IBM PC. Without that AMD wouldn't have ever existed. Intel gave them a shot at the big time, and like all good competitors drove Intel to adapt and compete in a better way. Monopolies are a bad thing, and this object lesson for Intel proves that. Too bad Microsoft wasn't as equally shaken up. 10:05:59 PM    comment []