AMD rolls out much improved Phenom II CPU

Faster more efficient 45nm chip marks a return to form for AMD

The suffering is over for AMD. The Phenom II processor officially launches today and it's an enormous relief to report that the new quad-core chip is a big improvement over the buggy, slow running first generation Phenom CPU.

TechRadar has carried out a full review complete with a bucket load of benchmarks. The short version goes something like this. The new Phenom II is not a revolutionary new design. For the most part it carries over the core architecture of its predecessor. But thanks to a successful shrink to 45nm transistors, it sports much improved performance and power efficiency. It is also officially free from bugs.

The headline news is a leap in clockspeed from 2.6GHz for the old 65nm Phenom to 3GHz for the new flagship Phenom II processor, the 940 Black Edition. That's not enough to take the performance crown from Intel's awesome new Core i7 processor. But it does give AMD a much more competitive CPU where it really counts - the meaty mid-range of the CPU market.

That said, the 3GHz official clockspeed does not tell the whole story. The new 45nm silicon is much more amenable to overclocking than AMD's old 65nm technology. You were lucky to get a few hundred MHz of headroom out of a 65nm Phenom. But some early Phenom II samples are hitting 4GHz on air cooling.

Power efficiency is another strong point for the new chip. Comparing the old 65nm flagship Phenom to the new Phenom II 940 Black Edition, overall platform power consumption drops 243 watts to 187 watts. Considering those figures are based on systems with the same motherboard and peripherals including hard drive, memory and graphics card, that's a massive boost in efficiency.

Price wise, the 940 Black Edition is likely to sell for around £230 including VAT. At launch it's joined by the slightly lower clocked Phenom II 920, a 2.8GHz chip. Both models are otherwise largely identical, with four cores and a grand total of 8MB of on-die cache memory. However, the Black Edition does benefit from an overclocking-friendly unlocked CPU multiplier.

Both chips are compatible with existing AM2 and AM2+ motherboards and support DDR2 memory up to 1,066MHz. They should already be available from your favourite online retailer and are surely worthy of shortlisting for anyone looking for an affordable quad-core processor.

Solid-state drives hit 1TB at top speed

Industry-best density pushes pureSilicon SSDs to head of pack

If you thought solid-state storage for computers was too small and too expensive, then it may be time to reconsider at least one of those factors, after the industry reached its first 1TB SSD.

The device is likely to be aimed initially at servers, but that doesn't take away from the impressive nature of pureSilicon's achievement, as announced at CES this week.

Space saver

The Nitro Series 2.5-inch SATA II SSDs start at 32GB and run right up to that 1TB monster we opened with. There's no word on pricing, but you can bet they won't come cheap.

PureSilicon says four of the 1TB drives can yield 4TB in the same space as the standard 3.5-inch hard drive most servers rely on today, thereby saving both space and energy consumption.

Fast with it

The leap in storage is thanks to a higher data density of 15.4GB per cubic centimetre, which pureSilicon says is three times better than in any other SSD.

Lastly, the drives are fast – supposedly, they push the 300MB/s limit of SATA II very close. Availability is slated for the third quarter of 2009.

iTunes Plus goes DRM-free

MacWorld 09: New song pricing, iPhone support... and not much else

Apple used its Macworld 09 keynote speech to confirm that it will be offering over 10 million DRM-free songs on iTunes.

Beginning today, all four major music labels - Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are now offering their music in 'iTunes Plus', Apple's DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

According to Apple, iTunes Plus will feature 8 million DRM-free, 256kbps tracks, a total that will rise to exceed 10 million by the end of March.

New pricing structure

Dropping DRM had been expected, as had a revamped pricing structure for the iTunes store. There are now three pricing tiers to satisfy the music industry - $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. The new prices will come into effect from April 1st.

Similarly, we'd predicted that Apple had cut a deal to allow music downloads over cellular connections. Sure enough, iPhone 3G owners can now browse the full contents of the iTunes Store without needing a Wi-Fi connection. The iTunes store seems to work over an EDGE connection too, which is good news for anybody with an original iPhone.

"We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio and our iPhone 3G customers the ability to download music from iTunes anytime, anywhere over their 3G network at the same price as downloading to your computer or via Wi-Fi," said the hormonally-imbalanced Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

"And in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points - 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 - with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29."

More chip cores can mean slower computing

Sandia boffins reveal you can have too much of a good thing

If dual-core computers are fast and quad-core machines even faster, then octo-core machines will approach the speed of light, right?

Wrong. Supercomputer researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have found that increasing the number of processors cores on individual chips actually worsens performance for many complex applications.

Sandia, whose Paragon device was the world's first parallel processing supercomputer, is a big player in the esoteric world of proto-exaflop computing.

Researchers there created a simulation of the next generation of supercomputers, and found a significant increase in speed going from two to four multicores, but an insignificant increase from four to eight multicores.

Not so sweet sixteen

Exceeding eight multicores causes a decrease in speed. Sixteen multicores perform barely as well as two, and after that, a steep decline is registered as more cores are added.

The problem is the lack of memory bandwidth as well as contention between processors over the memory bus available to each processor.

Multicore technologies have been considered a possible saviour of Moore's Law (the prediction that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit will double approximately every two years).

Multicore systems grew in popularity after clock speeds (and thus power consumption) on single chips became high enough to generate awkward quantities of heat.

This may be a problem affecting only supercomputers today, but unless researchers find a way around either the contention or the heat problems, the rapid advance in desktop computer processor technology could start to slow down, too.

Intel Launching Classmate PC Convertible Laptop Design at 2009 CES

Intel will officially launch the latest version of its Classmate PC reference design at the 2009 CES in Las Vegas. This version of the Classmate PC laptop will include tablet and touch-screen features and allow Intel and its OEM partners to offer two different types of low-cost laptops for school children. This version of the Intel Classmate PC will include an Intel Atom processor and support for Microsoft Windows XP as well as several Linux operations system flavors, including Ubuntu.

Intel is preparing to roll out the latest version of its Classmate PC design, which now includes tablet and touch-screen features along with an Atom processor, at the 2009 CES expo in Las Vegas.

The latest incarnation of the Intel Classmate PC now gives Intel and its OEM partners a choice of two different laptop designs for school children. In addition to the new convertible tablet reference design, the Intel Classmate PC still offers the original clamshell laptop design.

Intel began showing off the new design at its Developer Forum in August but actual Classmate PCs based on the new specifications will not be available until the 2009 CES, which starts the week of Jan. 5. All of the Intel Classmate PC designs will now use a single-core Atom N270 chip running at 1.66GHz.

The convertible Classmate PC will also support a version of Microsoft Windows XP that had been specifically designed for this type of laptop. The Intel design also supports more than a dozen Linux operating systems, including a version of Ubuntu.

Unlike the type of laptop created by the non-profit One Laptop Per Child project, Intel created a reference design for a low-cost laptop for school children that a local OEM could manufacture and sell. While this is one way to supply a number of low-cost notebooks to children, it also allows the local OEM, as well as Intel, a way to make a profit.

Earlier this year, Intel severed its ties to the OLPC project after a public dispute.

Since the start of 2008, a number of governments, notably Portugal and Venezuela, have contracted with Intel and local OEMs for laptops based on the Classmate PC design. Portugal announced a 500,000-laptop deployment and about a third of those PCs have been delivered to schools.

While the convertible Classmate PC design retains most of the features of the clamshell design, such as the 8.9-inch display, a handle that students can use to carry the notebook and a waterproof keyboard, Intel added some additional technology.

Intel incorporated an accelerometer into the Classmate PC design that will allow for the rotation of the screen image when using the tablet feature. Intel also adopted a single-touch capability with this version of the design that allows a student to use either a finger or a stylus pen. At the same time, the Classmate PC has a feature called “palm rejection,” which allows a student to lean on the notebook and write without interference.

The goal of these and other features is to allow students to have more flexibility when it comes to taking their laptops outside of the classroom and away from their desks.

When Intel and its OEM partners release the convertible Classmate PC design in 2009, Intel will also open up its APIs to allow ISVs to develop applications for the education market and allow third-party developers to take advantage of the tablet features.

Intel and OEM are also offering a four-cell lithium-ion battery that offers about four hours of battery life and a six-cell battery that offers up to six hours of battery life. The traditional clamshell design offers anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes of extra battery life compared to the convertible tablet version.

Although Intel is offering drivers that will allow the Classmate PC design to support Windows Vista, Galinovsky said that many of the chip maker’s OEM partners will likely wait for the release of Windows 7 before offering an upgrade from XP.

While a laptop based on the Classmate PC design retails from $200 to $500 in the United States, Intel does not offer a specific price for these notebooks. The convertible design is expected to cost a little more than the traditional design.

Besides the new tablet Classmate PC design, Intel is planning to talk about a new initiative that will begin to take shape in 2009 called the Intel Learning Series, which will bring hardware, software and services together as an overall offering for schools and governments interested in adopting the technology.