AMD to Sacrifice CEO Hector Ruiz

There is no doubt that AMD has had a tough year, which reflected in over $1.5 billion US loss and multiple delays in releasing the company's first quad-core processor. The Intel competitors always seemed one step ahead of them, while they were busy taking up the ATI business. The recent unveiling of the Phenom processor caught AMD by surprise when the 9700 series had to be pulled off the shelves due to an issue
with TLB errata related to the L3 protocol. The tough luck doesn't end here.

Rumor has it that Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz is heading towards resignation in early April 2008.
Ruiz's leaving wouldn't be a first ever in the post-ATI fusion era, as the former executive, David Orton left in July after Chris Evenden left the company. The list of "deserters" goes on with names like Richard R. Heye (ATI Vice President between 2003-2006), Paul Dal Santo (who quit when AMD assimilated ATI) and Peter Edinger.

Ruiz started his career at AMD in January 2000 as chief operating officer in the Athlon era. Two years later, Hector Ruiz was named chief executive officer in April 2002, just before AMD revealed the Opteron and Athlon 64 series. It is true that Ruiz managed to increase the AMD market share from 18% to approximately 23%, but this was the result of the technology developed under the "reign" of the former chief executive, Jerry Sanders. AMD has always had trouble respecting the deadlines and they have made a habit of delaying the delivery of new technologies, but it was supposed that Ruiz would manage to give the company a firm direction in this respect.

Although AMD refuses to comment on these aspects due to the nature of the rumors, The Street Journal has reported that Dirk Meyer, the chief operating officer and president, is willing to pull Ruiz out in April next year - once his contract ends.

Samsung Might Go For Smaller Plasma Displays

It would seem that LCDs are a lot more popular than plasma displays nowadays, especially due to the fact that they're also available in smaller sizes that come at some pretty affordable price tags. And this is exactly the reason why the people over at Samsung SDI are actually taking very seriously into consideration the possibility of rolling out a smaller-sized PDP,
as for example a 32-inch version.

Thus, according to Max Wang and Esther Lam for Digitimes, it seems that the Korean company has been strongly influenced by the recent moves on the LCD panels market. Thus, as the worldwide demand for LCD panels has seriously increased, the most important names on the market have begun to take into consideration certain alternative solutions. And the first such alternative solution came from LG Electronics (LGE), which has announced that it plans to roll out in the near future a 32-inch plasma TV.

On the other hand, although Samsung would be ready (and willing) to start production on a new 32-inch PDP of its own, sources close to the subject at hand quoted by the two aforementioned journalists have confirmed the fact this won't happen very soon, due to the fact that the company simply doesn't have the spare production capacity.

Hence, PDP TV panel capacity is tight due to demands from Samsung Electronics (Samsung SDI's parent company), Philips and some China-based customers, the sources explained. As Samsung SDI has no spare capacity to produce the 32-inch PDP TV panels, it has no plans to start volume production in the near term, although production is already ready, it concluded.

Of course, as expected, the heat is on Samsung SDI, especially now that the Christmas shopping spree is approaching and most of the major vendors around the world are struggling to meet their yearly deadlines. However, taking into consideration the company's increased interest for PDPs, we might actually see one of these things hit the shelves early next year, when the production capacities will be freed up.

Quimonda Sqeezes Volts for 800 Mhz Supercomputing

Quimonda Sqeezes Volts for 800 Mhz Supercomputing
- The new DDR2s are 16 percent more economical
By: Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

The environmental-friendly memory card

The memory producer Quimonda have announced their partnership with Supermicro Computer, Inc in developing memory modules with decreased supply voltage. The company has already scored a great success in reducing the power consumption from the regular 1.8 volts to the 1.5 volts value. Based on their research, a 16 percent of memory power shortage would lead to an overall
reduction of 20 percent in terms of power consumption. Qimonda is supplying the industry's first 1.5V, 800 MHz DDR2 Fully Buffered Dual-In-Line Memory Modules (FB-DIMMs), that feature a low power consumption in terms of no performance loss. The company has already shipped the 1.5 volts memory modules to Supermicro in a 2 GB configuration to be used as demonstration at the Super Computing 2007 conference.

The tests performed by Supermicro Computer on two of their systems, SuperServer 6015TW-INF and the SuperServer 6025W-NTR+, have revealed that system-level power savings when using Qimonda modules operating at 800 MHz were as much as 20 percent in a fully loaded system, which would reflect, on average, energy savings of up to 40 watts per system.

Alex Hsu, chief sales and marketing officer (CSMO) of Supermicro thinks that "Supermicro's green computing initiative is all about helping its customers reduce the cost of ownership for the data center and helping to preserve the environment for future generations. Qimonda has a reputation for delivering lower power memory solutions, which makes them a key vendor in our own drive to Keep IT Green". If the practical testing proves successful, the Quimonda and Supermicro initiative could change the face of modern technology forever. Although the power-saving 1.5 FB-DIMM memories have passed the preliminary testing stage, the Quimonda and Supermicro "forgot" to mention either the date when these devices will be available for purchase, or an estimative price for the new, environmentally-friendly memory cards.

ATI Radeon HD 3870 and 3850: 55nm RV670

When the R600 GPU hit the scene last May in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it wasn't very well received by enthusiasts for a few key reasons. For one, the Radeon HD 2900 XT generally consumed more power and generated more heat than NVIDIA’s already well established GeForce 8800 GTS. In addition, the 2900 XT was also louder, more expensive, and also didn't quite perform as well as the 8800 GTS, not to mention it was missing UVD support. A home run product the Radeon HD 2900 XT was not.

From a technical standpoint, however, the R600 was promising. It had full DX10 support, top notch image quality, gobs of memory bandwidth, and a number of innovations like HDMI output with audio and new anti-aliasing modes. After testing the Radeon HD 2900 XT and watching it mature in the marketplace these past few months, we couldn't help but wonder how the R600 would have been received had AMD built the chips using a more advanced manufacturing process that could help mitigate some of its fundamental shortcomings.

We can stop wondering now it seems. Today is the day AMD has chosen to officially unveil the RV670 GPU, a derivative of the R600, manufactured using a 55nm process. The RV670 will be the GPU that powers the new ATI Radeon HD 38x00 series of graphics cards. However, we should point out that the RV670 isn’t a straight-up shrink of the 90nm R600. In this iteration of the 55nm RV670, AMD has also tweaked the GPU in a few areas in an effort to increase relative performance and efficiency.

We’ve had a quartet of RV670-based cards in house for a short while and have put them through the wringer with an entirely new and up-to-date test-bed running Windows Vista Ultimate and powered by a Quad-Core Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU. Read on for the full scoop...

TwinMos Rolls Out the Mobile Disk P1 USB Drive – Blingy, Mirror-Like

It really seems that bling sells, and sells a lot, since an increasingly higher number of various electronic products manufacturers come out with all sorts of products that, besides providing interesting (and somewhat useful) internal features, also come "packed" in a very attractive (and rather unusual) external casing. And that's exactly the case with the latest offering from memory manufacturer TwinMos, whose Mobile Disk P1 USB flash drive comes in a very shiny package, which compliments the very large storage capacities this thing can provide.

Thus, the drives from the new Mobile Disk P1 series feature a very sleek and smooth (almost mirror-like) external casing, as well as no less than 6 activity LEDs, which create a pretty interesting visual effect whenever data transfers are being carried out. Thus, its overall aspect recommends this particular family of storage devices especially for the more fashion-conscious of users, those people who want a device that will also draw other people's attention, besides carrying around their data.

Now, after taking a look at the drive's external appearance, it's about time to see what it can actually do. Thus, the TwinMos Mobile Disk P1 will be available in several models, with storage capacities of up to 32 GB (although just a 4 GB-version has been released for the time being), and, much like most of the other devices of this type, connects to a host computer via an USB 2.0 interface, thus being able to attain maximum data transfer rates of up to 480 Mbps.

Furthermore, the flash drive supports an optional password protection system and works with the most popular operating systems on the market, namely Windows /2000/XP/Vista, Mac10.1+ and Linux 2.4+. It's also very portable, measuring around 60 x 21.63 x 8.8 mm.

There's no word on just how much this thing is going to cost when it finally hits the shelves, but it will most likely cost a bit more than the company's other current offerings.

Play Around with Vista Boot Screens

With Windows Vista, Microsoft has delivered an evolution in terms of user experience. Still, as the operating system suffers a decent amount of customization, improvements on the Redmond company's original design are inevitable. And one of the aspects of Vista that could manage with a tad extra eye candy is the boot screen. Now on the adjacent image you can see a portion of the default Vista boot screen, which otherwise is pitch black. Well, nothing to get excited about there, but you have a few options to kick it up a notch.

First off, you can always dig up the Windows Vista hidden boot screen. All you have to do is make your way to the System Configuration Utility and enable the "No GUI Boot" option. Just follow this in order to get additional details about how to unveil the hidden boot screen in your copy of Vista. The tweak is harmless but, at the same time, it is also limited to only one image consistent with the Aero theme.

For a little more flexibility you could use the Vista Boot Logo Generator, put together by Danial Smith, a software developer from Kirriemuir. The Vista Boot Logo Generator is offered as freeware and will enable Vista users to set up high resolution digital images as the operating system's boot screen. In terms of personalization, the tool offers more options as the users can now actually select the photos that will continue to act as the Vista boot screen.

The image needs to be saved as a 24-bit Windows bitmap under two resolutions: 800x600 and 1024x768. Both versions of the new boot screen have to be loaded into the Vista Boot Logo Generator, and Save Boot Screen File As "winload.exe.mui" replacing the file with the same name in C:\Windows\System32\en-us. The Vista Boot Logo Generator also requires the "No GUI Boot" option to be enabled under the System Configuration Utility.