Monday 19 December 2011

Dell Kills All Netbooks


 Christo [PCD]    19 Dec : 11:31
 None    Hardware

Focus will be on thin and powerful machines

Focus will be on thin and powerful machines

For a few years, the netbook world was jumping with the small (and relatively inexpensive) machines were selling very well. That netbook heyday is over now with sales of the small machines dropping as the tablet becomes the portable computing device of choice for many people. One of the more popular Dell netbooks to launch was the Mini 10 back in 2009.

That netbook was reasonably popular, but the sales waned during its production run. Dell has now announced that it is no longer going to sell netbooks. The company will instead focus on its more recent successes with thin and powerful machines that compete against the Apple MacBook Air and other models such as the new Dell 15z.

"We sold through the Dell Mini some time ago. We're committed to the highly portable space and have focused on delivering thin + powerful solutions, for which we've seen strong success, particularly in our XPS line," Matthew Hutchison, director of Dell Global Consumer PR told CNET in an email.

The fall from grace for the netbook began when Apple rolled out the iPad during the second half of 2010 and many consumers flocked to the tablets rather than netbooks and notebooks. Even Intel has moved on now with the company focusing on Ultrabooks rather than netbooks.

Intel is working hard to promote the Ultrabook, which was originally promised at a price of under $1,000. Some of the machines were offered at that low price, but many of the Ultrabooks on the market sell for much more than $1,000.

Some companies like Acer see the Ultrabook as a way to become more profitable like Apple. Apple is able to sell premium notebooks at very high prices (compared to its PC competition), and its customers still keep coming back for more.

Source: CNET


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Seagate Joins Western Digital in HDD Warranty Massacre


 Christo [PCD]    19 Dec : 11:31
 None    Hardware

Some desktop and notebook barebones drives will have their warranties slashed from 5 years to 1 year.

Some desktop and notebook barebones drives will have their warranties slashed from 5 years to 1 year.

Last week, Western Digital revealed that it was cutting the warranty on its Caviar Blue/Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two years. Now, it looks like Seagate just couldn't stand by and let Western Digital have all fun when it comes to cutting hard drive warranties.

The Register is reporting that Seagate is upping the ante by slashing some warranties from five years down to one year. Here are some of the "highlights" of the warranty cuts:

Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 5 years reduced to 3 years
Barracuda and Barracuda Green drives: 5 years reduced to 1 year
Barracuda XT: 5 years reduced to 3 years
Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 5 years reduced to 1 year
Momentus XT: 5 years reduced to 3 years

The new warranty policy will go into effect on December 31, 2011. According to The Register, Seagate made this "to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries."

By aligning to current industry standards Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers rather than holding long-term reserves for warranty returns."

If manufacturers and consumers ever had any doubts before about embracing solid state drive (SSD) technology, maybe now is the time to start making the shift to rid us all of spinning media.

Sources: The Register, PC World


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Thursday 08 December 2011

AMD Launches 16 Core Interlagos Opteron Servers, Targets HPC, Cloud Computing


 Christo [PCD]    08 Dec : 13:08
 None    Hardware

500,000 cores already shipped since September

500,000 cores already shipped since September

AMD launched its much anticipated Bulldozer architecture for the consumer market last month, but many were disappointed at the performance numbers. Now the company has officially launched new processors using the same architecture for the server and workstation markets, but things have changed significantly.

The key difference is in the software used to process instructions. The consumer side is reliant upon Windows 7 and earlier operating systems, which are unaware of the shared nature of the Bulldozer architecture. Resource sharing is inefficient at best, and the full possibilities of higher Turbo Core frequencies are missed.

AMD has worked to ensure optimization and/or support on many commonly used server operating systems. Linux 2.6.37, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Xen 41, Ubuntu 11.04, and VMware vSphere 5.0 already have OS hypervisor support for Bulldozer, while others such as RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and Windows 8 Server are currently in development.

AMD is specifically targeting the High Performance Computing (HPC) segment, with over 500,000 Bulldozer cores already shipped to this market since September. The AVX, FMA4, and XOP instructions require software to be recompiled in order to take advantage of their performance enhancements. Java 7 was mentioned as a program that was being worked on.

The Opteron 6200 series was formerly codenamed Interlagos. It is scalable to 4 sockets supporting 16 Bulldozer cores each. The fastest model is the 6282 SE at 2.6Ghz, with a maximum Turbo Core frequency of 3.3GHz and a TDP of 140W. The Opteron 4200 series was formerly codenamed Valencia. It is the most similar to the FX series (Zambezi) launched in October, but it will support up to 2 sockets with 8 cores each.

Both series support DDR3-1600 memory natively, but there will be official support for DDR3-1866 through specific OEMs. Opteron 6200 CPUs have quad memory channels, while the Opteron 4200 chips have dual channels. 1.35v low voltage memory and 1.25v ultra-low voltage memory is also supported, as are Load Reduced DIMMs (LRDIMMs).

The L1 cache is arranged as 16KB data per core and 64KB instruction per module, while the L2 cache is 1MB per core. Opteron 6200s have a shared 16MB of L3 cache per socket, while Opteron 4200s only have a shared 8MB per socket.

In order to speed time to market and lower validation costs, AMD has designed its new Opterons to function on its previous platforms using the G34 and C32 sockets. The company believes that its lower total platform costs over Intel’s Xeon platforms impart a significant advantage. For example, the AMD Opteron 6276 will ship at the same price as the Xeon E5640, but will outperform it by 89%.

Cloud computing requires high throughput, scalability, density, and power efficiency. AMD thinks that it can gain significant market share by claiming the lowest x86 watts/core in the industry at 5.3W for Interlagos and 4.375W for Valencia. The new C6 power state reduces power consumption at idle by up to 46% over the previous generation by enabling core power gating When a core is halted, its context is exported to system memory and voltage is removed from the core.

Intel will be launching new server and workstation products based on the Sandy Bridge architecture next year, but AMD also has plans for the future with its Piledriver architecture. Sepang will use the C2012 socket and replace the Opteron 6200 series, while Terramar will use the G2012 socket. Both new platforms will support PCIe 3.0.


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