Tasty open-source AMD 3D goodness will surely follow!

AMD's John Bridgman has shared that the open-source R600/700 3D driver for Linux is becoming usable, slowly but surely. Months after releasing documentation, a programmer's guide, and sample code, their Mesa driver is beginning to do useful things -- more so than just rendering simple triangles.

The ATI R600/700 3D driver is derived from the Radeon driver rewrite and is currently living in a branch off of Mesa. DRM code that is also not living in the mainline code-base is also required for any level of 3D support. Bridgman shares on his blog that now approximately 25% of their test cases are passing, but the remaining majority are either crashing or rendering incorrectly.

With not even yet reaching the glxgears milestone, this 3D driver is currently not too useful for owners of the ATI Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series hardware. However, hopefully by the end of summer it will in good standing and usable.

Source: Phoronix

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I would love to use it . . . if I had a Linux distro install at the moment.

With KDE 4.3 being scheduled for release later this month, Sebastian Kügler on the behalf of the KDE developers around the world has announced the KDE 4.3.0 release candidate. KDE 4.3 RC1 further polishes and completes the K Desktop Environment 4 with the integration of many new Linux desktop technologies, new KWin effects, improvements across the board, and many bug fixes in KDE4 packages.

The KDE 4.3 RC1 announcement with the extensive change-log is available from KDE.org. The final release of KDE 4.3.0 is expected in late July.

Source: Phoronix

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Will August be the final release date? Stay tuned.

June has quietly slipped by, and Asus still hasn't introduced its Eee Keyboard as some expected. The self-contained keyboard-cum-nettop is still on the way, though. According to Tech Digest, Asus now intends to release it in late August.

Word of the new time frame comes from Asus marketing executive John Swatton, so it's pretty official. But why has it taken since January to get the thing out the door? Tech Digest attributes that to Asus' uncertainty about the Eee Keyboard's purpose. "Asus hasn't been too sure what it was all about either and to create another niche - as they did with the Eee PC - you've really go to have some idea of the best environment to put your innovation," the article explains.

Source: The Tech Report

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Good news indeed!

Earlier today the guys over at GeekSmack.net "confirmed" that Windows 7 was set to RTM (release to manufacturing) on July 13, which also coincides with Wzor's unconfirmed rumor last month. A few minutes ago sources close to the company, who wish to remain anonymous, have confirmed to Neowin that Windows 7 is indeed set to RTM on July 13.

After a year of furious beta testing and continuous leaks every other week, Microsoft is finally ready to give Windows 7 the green light to hit the market. Currently the Windows 7 team is working on polishing off the RTM build so that no show-stopper bugs
are present in Windows 7. The date, July 13, also coincides with the kickoff of the Worldwide Partner Conference that is taking place in New Orleans.

Note: Don't confuse RTM and GA (General Availability), as these are two totally different phases. RTM in a nutshell is typically the final build that we will see when Windows 7 hits GA later this year (Unless, of course, there's a show-stopper bug found), but is released to manufacturers so they can work out any bugs the software may encounter with hardware devices. General availability is scheduled to launch on October 22, which will give the tech savvy world time to save up money.

So with that said TechNet, MSDN, and a few other partner connections will also be getting the RTM build on July 13. So let the countdown begin!

Source: Neowin

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Now adding to The Pirate Bay drama.

Swedish regulators are looking into insider trading charges at Global Gaming Factory X, which saw shares jump several days before it said it would buy the Pirate Bay.

Source: AllThingsDigital - MediaMemo

It appears that sub-30% yields may not just be a problem for nVidia.

Availability of 40nm graphics processors might get worse before it gets better. According to EE Times, TSMC—the biggest manufacturers of GPUs for both AMD and Nvidia—continues to experience poor 40nm yields. Those poor yields may affect shipments for the second half of this year, the site says.

Here's the word from FBR Capital Markets analyst Mehdi Hosseini, as quoted by EE Times:

In fact, not only do our checks suggest 40-nm yields but, to our surprise, these have remained below 30 percent, affecting shipments in 2H09 . . . We believe yields are as low as 20 percent to 30 percent, which may explain the recent management change. We think some key customers who are increasing 40-nm tape-outs have already started to evaluate other foundries (UMC) in case yields do not improve soon.

Reportedly, TSMC recently admitted to yield problems at the 40nm half-node, but it claimed those were "largely fixed." The foundry firm also replaced its CEO last month.

Source: The Tech Report

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Firefox's new browser is a hit.

While still not as ubiquitous as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's new Firefox 3.5 browser was just released yesterday and is off to a great start. The browser was met with mostly positive reviews. Reuters stated, "There's no doubt that version 3.5 of Firefox is significantly faster than version 3...All in all, this is a major improvement over Firefox 3. Even if you're not currently a Firefox user, you'll want to give it a try."

CNET was slightly more measured commenting, "Firefox 3.5 is a much-needed improvement to the world's most popular alternative browser... While some of the improvements, such as the HTML5 and other developer enhancements will continue to make the browser their first choice, many of the other changes merely keep it in-line with the competition."

At the end of the day, though, Firefox 3.5's hot new features like HTML5 support and a faster JavaScript engine won over users. Downloads were blazing at 100 per second for much of the day yesterday. Mozilla's servers performed admirably under the load.

Source: DailyTech

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SLI in a small package.

EVGA today introduced the compact X58 SLI Micro motherboard (model number: 121-BL-E756-TR), supporting the Micro-ATX form factor. Don't be fooled by the small size, in performance figures this motherboard is a match for all standard ATX Intel X58 equipped motherboards, it supports all LGA1366 Core i7 processors to date, has six DDR3-1600+ memory slots, two PCI-Express x16 slots, a single PCI slot and one PCI-E x1 slot. In addition EVGA gives you full range of overclocking features including: EVGA VDroop Control, EVGA E-LEET support, enthusiast BIOS options and of course the chance to put a SLI or CrossFireX setup of video cards in a micro-ATX system. The board's build quality is also off the hook, 100% solid capacitors are used, and passive heatsink design is incorporated so the board is 100% silent. The EVGA X58 SLI Micro will be available very soon for around $200.

Source: techPowerUp!

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AnandTech's Derek Wilson explains triple buffering to the masses.

Our options with double buffering are a choice between possible visual problems like tearing without vsync and an artificial delay that can negatively effect both performance and can increase input lag with vsync enabled. But not to worry, there is an option that combines the best of both worlds with no sacrifice in quality or actual performance. That option is triple buffering.The name gives a lot away: triple buffering uses three buffers instead of two. This additional buffer gives the computer enough space to keep a buffer locked while it is being sent to the monitor (to avoid tearing) while also not preventing the software from drawing as fast as it possibly can (even with one locked buffer there are still two that the software can bounce back and forth between). The software draws back and forth between the two back buffers and (at best) once every refresh the front buffer is swapped for the back buffer containing the most recently completed fully rendered frame. This does take up some extra space in memory on the graphics card (about 15 to 25MB), but with modern graphics card dropping at least 512MB on board this extra space is no longer a real issue.

Source: AnandTech

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Perhaps this functionality will be introduced in the PS3 Slim.

To be fair, Sony made a bit of a mess of the backwards compatibility feature of the PS3. Initially the Playstation 3 shipped with the main processing unit from the Playstation 2, called the Emotion Engine as part of the SKU which meant that in effect, you were buying a PS3 and PS2 in one box, providing universally compatibility for all Playstation games. This feature was present in Sony's Playstation 2 for PS1 games, and it would have provided a good advantage over its main competitor Microsoft's Xbox 360, which only has limited backwards compatibility of original Xbox games. Presumably to cut costs to make pricing of the PS3 more competitive, Sony dropped the Emotion Engine from future SKUs severly crippling support for backwards compatibility.
It would appear that things could be about to change however, as it seems Sony have filed a patent for technology enabling the emulation of the PS2 Emotion Engine on the Playstation 3's beefy Cell processor.

Source: techPowerUp!

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Many users appear to be unhappy about the changes.

IDG News Service - YouTube plans to soon switch all of its members to a redesign of its channel pages that it has been testing for several months, although many people want the Google video-sharing site to give them the option to keep the old layout.

YouTube members have left 316 pages with tens of thousands of comments, most of them negative, on a recent official blog posting in which Google announced that all channel pages will be switched over to the new design on July 15.

In that announcement, posted on June 24 and titled "New Channels Coming Soon," Google also stated that all new accounts are now being created by default with the new design.

Google believes that the new design will provide in general a better user experience both for YouTube visitors as well as for members, who can upload videos, post information about themselves and aggregate favorite clips on their "channel" pages.

Source: Computerworld

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Adobe shuts down for the week.

Adobe announced it has shut down its entire North American operations for one business week to help cut costs as the global economy continues to hurt the American tech company.

The week-long shutdown started on June 29, with business expected to return to normal starting Monday, July 6, though the company has already carried out several cash-cutting moves in the past. For example, spending on travel and bonuses have both been slashed according to CFO Mark Garrett, with further cost-cutting in the works.

Adobe officials didn't announce how many of its employees will be affected by the shutdown this week – also, no one disclosed how much money the company expects to save from the week off.

Source: DailyTech

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I love the direction in which Mushkin is going with the HSF art. Very simple and sophisticated.

Popular memory manufacturer Mushkin, which is also known for power supply units and until last year, for video cards, plans to resume being a video card manufacturer, and an add-in card partner for NVIDIA. The company just announced plans on an entire lineup of products based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series, called Mushkin UltimateFX. It includes products starting from the GeForce GTX 260 896 MB base model, going all the way up to GeForce GTX 285 2048 MB, with models carved out based on clock speeds and memory sizes.

For the most part, it looks like Mushkin will use non-reference designs which we may be familiar with. One of their products resembles a similar design by Sparkle, while another bears resemblance with the reference NVIDIA design, albeit a green PCB (something PNY has opted for). The cards will be shipped in an a classic wooden jewel case, similar to to the "WoodBox" it shipped with its older products

Source: techPowerUp!

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Less than 100 available to a select few.

Rumors have been rampant recently about a new CPU from AMD that would reach amazingly high clock speeds and challenge Intel's Core i7 supremacy. The truth is a bit more subdued.

Every semiconductor manufacturing process can be improved over time to reduce defects and increase performance of the parts produced. This is how Intel and AMD are able to release CPUs with higher clock speeds several months after transitioning to a new process. There are always a few parts that do not perform as well as expected. These chips are speed binned and sold at lower price points and clock speeds rather than tossing them away.

However, there are a rare few that perform better than expected. AMD has collected the best chips from the Phenom II production line, and will be throwing them into the wild. The AMD Phenom II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR processor is a limited-edition chip created to showcase extreme overclocking with AMD's best. Fewer than 100 processors have been hand-picked and will be given away to elite overclockers. A few will also be given away in contests.

Source: DailyTech

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"In completely weird news today NVIDIA is said to be working on enabling its prestigious CUDA technology for AMD's GPUs. This solution will enable application developers to optimize their products for use on GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD, using the CUDA technology. Consequently, this will enable NVIDIA, currently the world's leading vendor of graphics processing units, to gain from the GPU sales of its main competitor, AMD.

There are a number of general purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing standards available today, including OpenCL and Microsoft's DirectX Compute, both of which are currently supported by two leading graphics chip makers, NVIDIA and AMD. However, the two rival companies have also developed their own solutions, with NVIDIA placing a big bet on its CUDA technology, and AMD trying to make up for lost space with its Stream solution. However, according to a recent news-article on the techradar, citing NVIDIA's chief scientist, Bill Dally, the company could be working on further expanding the working environment for its CUDA solution.

“In the future you'll be able to run C with CUDA extensions on a broader range of platforms, so I don't think that will be a fundamental limitation.” Dally said. While not directly confirming the support for AMD's platforms, he added, “I'm familiar with some projects that are underway to enable CUDA on other platforms.”

NVIDIA has gained the appreciation of a considerable number of application developers, a statement that can be verified by taking a look at the hundreds of applications that have been ported over to CUDA, available on the specially designed CUDA Zone website. The comparison to AMD's own solutions makes up for NVIDIA's strong interest in the fast-growing segment, where AMD is yet to make up for lost ground to its competitor.

“There are just a handful of things, and they're generally things that are already available in CUDA. CUDA has just got a lot more traction among the people who are programming parallel applications. It's an easier language to use,” Dally stated [via softpedia]. " "


http://www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-cu...port-amd-gpus/

NVidia announces new budget parts.

DirectX 11 isn't far from its being an official industrial standard. Both NVIDIA and AMD have high-end graphics processors supporting the standard in the works, though it is expected that by the time DirectX 11 reaches the masses, we will be into 2010. On the course, both companies have the time to perfect their designs on the new 40 nm silicon fabrication technology, which will build the first waves of DirectX 11 GPUs. One of the best ways of doing this is by building products based on the current architecture on the new process, and testing the foundry-companies' abilities to handle large market demands, while benefiting from low-manufacturing costs. Following AMD's introduction of the RV740, NVIDIA recently announced a new class of mGPUs based on the 40 nm process, and is having concrete plans of selling their desktop versions by this October.

Two of the important starting points for NVIDIA are the GT218 and GT216 graphics processors. The two have already being assigned mGPU branding of GeForce G 210M and GeForce GT 230M respectively. Their desktop versions are to be branded GeForce G 210 and GeForce GT 220 respectively. VR-Zone sourced the specifications of these GPUs, by running them on the upcoming GeForce 190.15 drivers.
To begin with, the GT218 is the entry-level 40 nm NVIDIA GPU. It is small enough to be integrated with an MCP chipset, if NVIDIA wishes so. The desktop version, GeForce G 210 (GT218/D10M1) has 24 shader processors, 4 ROPs, a 64-bit wide DDR2/GDDR3 memory interface, and clock speeds (as read by GPU-Z) of 603/1425/790 MHz (core/shader/memory). NVIDIA is ready with the reference design PCBs codenamed P690 and P691, which support GDDR3 and DDR2 memory respectively. The target prices of these products range between US $30~35, very much the grass-root.

The GT216 on the other hand, is twice as powerful (specs wise) as the GT218, and interestingly, half as powerful as the GT215 (mGPU product GeForce GTS 250M/260M). The desktop product is named GeForce GT 220 (GT215-300/D10M2). It features 48 shader processors, 8 ROPs, a 128-bit wide DDR2/DDR3/GDDR3 memory interface, and up to 1 GB of memory. At least one variant comes with the clock speeds of 625/1373/790 MHz (core/shader/memory). Its price range is $55~60. Products based on both these DirectX 10.1 compliant GPUs are expected to arrive in October

Source: techPowerUp!

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No LAN support? That sounds silly to me. The option to play lag-free local multiplayer is nothing but a good thing to have.

A new list of features surraunding the upcoming RTS franchise Star Craft 2 that might interest you were announced today. Starting with the big one, Blizzard has confirmed that Star Craft 2 will not support LAN multiplayer mode. The game will be entirely online based, multiplayer connections will go through Battle.net only, no LAN connections will be allowed.
Blizzard today also posted a new 7 minute video footage of some ingame action. Units from all the three races are captured in the video, you can watch it in high quality here.
Also unveiled during an interview with Shacknews was that players will be able to hire NPC mercenaries and use them in the single player mode campaign. StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder also detailed that again in single player campaign mode, there'll be additional objectives and optional quests which if completed will give players different bonuses. You can read the full interview with Dustin Browder right here.

Source: techPowerUp!

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It is good to see that he is recovering well.

After nearly six months away from Apple's helm, Steve Jobs is back. Kind of. The Associated Press quotes a company spokesman who says that, while the charismatic CEO has indeed returned, he'll only be at his office "a few days a week." Jobs will work from home the rest of the time.

The AP also confirms that Jobs got a new liver at the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee during his absence. The hospital reportedly declined to say when the transplant took place, but it did note that Jobs "was recovering well and his prognosis is good."

According to a previous report about the subject, Jobs won't resume full-time work in Cupertino until late July or August. Word is that Jobs got the transplant because the pancreatic tumor he was diagnosed with in 2004 metastasized to his liver. This condition became apparent last year, when Jobs lost a considerable amount of weight.

Source: The Tech Report

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Will you be able to build a shiny new PC with a 32nm Clarkdale processor this year? Signs point to yes, according to DigiTimes. The site quotes sources at motherboard makers who say Intel has pulled Clarkdale's mass-production schedule forward.

Reportedly, Clarkdale will account for a considerable 10% of Intel's shipments to PC makers in the fourth quarter. For reference, DigiTimes says Lynnfield will only make up 2% of shipments, while Core 2 Duo processors will represent 35%. That means we may see plenty of affordable, 32nm dual-core processors with integrated graphics out in the wild before Christmas.

Mind you, Intel already dropped the biggest bombshell four months ago, when it said Clarkdale and Arrandale would hit production late this year. However, the company has stayed mum on its exact launch schedule for the two processors, suggesting they could slip into 2010.

Clarkdale should use the same LGA1156 socket as upcoming quad-core Lynnfield CPUs. However, we heard earlier this month at Computex that it might not work in the same boards, since Clarkdale mobos will have graphics ports hooked up to the CPU socket.

Source: The Tech Report

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It's not final yet. Set to close in August.

The Pirate Bay has been (effectively) acquired by a gaming company called Global Gaming Factory X, who is plunking down nearly $8 million for the privilege. Their grand, surprising plan for the Pirate Bay is to pay content providers. Seriously.

Global Gaming Factory X is, in their words, the "biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world," making this story even more bizarre than it appears. This is sort of like GameFrog buying Demonoid, or, I don't know, Laser Quest buying Empornium. Odd, is the point.

Source: Gizmodo

Too bad this is only happening in Europe for now.

The European Commission proudly announced a handful of top mobile phone manufacturers have agreed to a European Union (EU) mandate for universal cell phone chargers.

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, and other handset manufacturers are expected to begin offering the universal charging units beginning in 2010 to European consumers. Research in Motion (RIM) and other manufacturers are expected to also utilize universal chargers, with manufacturer announcements expected in the future.

The universal charger will replace around 30 individual chargers, and will only work on European models of cell phones, the EU said in a statement.

Source: DailyTech

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Apple's iPhone 3GS takes the heat.

Apple boldly advertises the slogan "It just works", but Apple has its share of issues just like any other tech company. Among the recent problems included Mac display issues (which have been ongoing for over a year) and iPhone signal issues (also a year old problem).

Now another familiar problem has been reported. Apple's hot new iPhone is not just getting hot figuratively, it's getting hot literally. Reports of Apple's handsets turning toasty and colorizing from white to a toasty brown or rosy pink have been widely reported.

Reportedly, the phones are more likely to overheat when playing games or using the GPS. The iPhone 3G S packs a much faster CPU and graphics processor than its predecessor, a likely source of the heating issues. However, Apple thus far has denied the reports and refused to comment that there is a problem with the handsets.

Source: DailyTech

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Good news for Firefox fans.

EDIT: It's out!

Mozilla's much loved Firefox 3.5 browser is set to make an appearance in its final form on June 30. Firefox 3.5 has been in development for quite some time with numerous beta and release candidate variants littering the internet over the past six months.

Mozilla is touting this interim release in the face of increased competition from the likes of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 and Opera 10. According to Mozilla, some of the new features included in Firefox 3.5 are:

• A high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
• An improved Gecko layout engine
• Support fr Location Aware Browsing
• Support for HTML5 (including HTML5 offline resources)
• Various other stability and performance tweaks

According to Webmonkey, Firefox currently commands 20% to 25% of the browser market while Microsoft still leads the way with 65% to 75% market share. Mozilla is hoping that Firefox 3.5 will help to boost its browser share even further.

Source: DailyTech

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Tasty! Let's hope this turn out to be true.

A new rumor has sprung up that suggests Microsoft is looking at a third alternative for sending out copies of Windows 7: USB drives. There are currently two known ways to move to Windows 7 without buying a new computer: via retail or via download. The third solution would make it easy for users with netbooks without DVD drives, most of which are running Windows XP (as opposed to Vista), to upgrade to Windows 7. Of course, installation from USB is much faster than from DVD, so such an option could end up being adopted by a larger demographic. USB drives are still more expensive than DVDs to mass manufacture, however, so we doubt Microsoft would be happy with that.

CNET quotes an undisclosed source in its speculative report: "Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 on a thumb drive to allow netbook owners to more easily upgrade their machines." Microsoft confirmed in February that all editions of Windows 7 would run on netbooks but never disclosed how those who already own the low-end computers could get the operating system on their system. The currently only known solution, downloading a copy and putting the installation on a USB drive, isn't a process many netbook users would be happy to do. If the USB drive option is skipped, most will likely have a friend or a tech support guy get the job done for them.

Source: Ars Technica

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According to The Mole, yes indeed!

The Mole gives up the goods on Sony and Microsoft hardware plans this fall: price drops on both systems, with the 160GB PS3 model replacing the 80GB model before the PS3 Slim is released. Expect the Elite to replace the Pro models on the 360 side after Microsoft adjusts prices as well. New bundles are coming as well.

Source: Ars Technica

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