Intel Is Cooking a 96 GB/s QuickPath Interconnect

The upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference is set on taking us by surprise. Rumors are slowly leaking about wonderful innovations in the processor world, from the small, fragile and extremely
energy-friendly from Intel, the Silverthorne, to impressive monoliths that suck up more power than two halogen bulbs and dissipate enough heat for a barbecue feast in the open.

The latter processor is the one that caught my eye (you cannot miss a 170-watt behemoth that easy). This is impressive in its technical specifications, with all its 30 MB of L2 cache, but it is also the first processor to be built with a new, powerful and revolutionary technology. Nicknamed the "Tuckwilla", Intel's behemoth features the brand new QuickPath interconnect, a technology that will surely replace the obsolete front side bus that's been around for years.

The International Solid-State Circuits Conference show program reads that Intel will detail upon its upcoming Itanium processor (those who claimed that it's slowly dying will have quite a surprise). The processor is implemented in 8M 65nm CMOS and features huge sizes ( 21.5×32.5 square millimeters). It also comes with four dual-threaded cores, a system interface and 30 MB of L2 cache pool.

"It looks like Tukwila's QPI links are running at 4.8GHz, which is about the same speed as Hypertransport 3. Realistically, Intel will pack quite a bit more bandwidth on - because they are using 4+1 QPI links, compared to the 4 HT3 links that AMD will be using in future MPUs. What's most impressive about Tukwila is the memory bandwidth - it has the same bandwidth as a full 4 socket Opteron system, all in one socket," claims Real World Technologies analyst David Kanter.

The four processor cores will be linked by the QuickPath interconnect, that would allow data peak processor-to-processor bandwidth of 96GB/s, with a peak memory bandwidth of "only" 34GB/s. The QuickPath is formerly known as CSI (common high-speed serial interconnect) and is Intel's response to AMD's Hypertransport 3.0 that can only carry 41.6GB/s in both directions.

ISPs Blamed for Piracy All Over the World

The French President’s initiative, to consider blaming the Internet Service Providers (ISP) for whatever copyright infringement happens in their networks, has caught on big time all over the world. The final step that was expected for all to start pointing fingers was last week’s International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s opinion, and they said that ISPs "allowed copyright theft to run rampant on their networks, causing a massive devaluation of copyrighted music."

No sooner said than done, when the British Phonographic Industry caught
wind of that happening, it instantly turned the stand-by phase it was in into full scaled offensive. The BPI’s Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor, told Webuser that "The time has come for ISPs to stop dragging their feet and start showing some responsibility, by taking reasonable steps to counter illegal music freeloading. Their failure to do so until now is extraordinary - and it can't be allowed to go on."

I’m not sure why the providers are to police their networks, it is clearly the easier road to take, but the effectiveness of this could have serious consequences on the overall Internet life. First and foremost, the music industry must understand that it’s not the tracks that should bring in the most cash, but concerts and other merchandise. It looks like the future of music is free, online and ad supported. Second, if the penalties are applied to those sharing files, it would bring an uprising, in my humble opinion. The culprits to be found are too many and we’re not in the Middle Ages, to punish an entire community and leave three or four standing.

"We have been negotiating with ISPs to implement reasonable procedures under which they would advise customers if their account is being used to distribute music illegally, and then, if the advice is ignored, enforce their own terms and conditions. But UK ISPs refuse to do even that on any meaningful scale," Taylor told the cited source.

Microsoft Launches Dynamics CRM 4.0

Dynamics

January 30, 2008, marks the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 on international markets around the world. The global launch of Dynamics CRM 4.0 is synonymous with the customer relationship management solution's availability in no less than eight languages. But today is also the debut of a Microsoft 12-week global launch tour that will permit companies across the world to test drive Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is positioned as a key component of the company's Software plus Services business srategy. In this regard, Dynamics CRM is no longer limited to an
on-promise solution. Customers deploying version 4.0 will find that they can enjoy the full advantages of a Web-based on-demand solution. And of course that Microsoft also provides a bridge between Software and Services, allowing for a cocktail of on-promise software and on-demand services. The Redmond company even provided a few examples of its partners starting rolling up the update from 3.0 to 4.0, almost immediatelly after the product initially shipped back in December 2007. Case in point: Increase Ltd..

"The first upgrade for our on-demand Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers was completed just four hours after Microsoft delivered the new 4.0 release," said Neil Benson, director of Increase. "I’ve been very impressed by the quality of the product, as well the extensive training and tools that accompanied this release. Customers are impressed with the rapid deployment — in fact, it now takes longer to send the contract and receive the signature than it does to deploy the customer’s hosted system."

Microsoft has also emphasized that the new multilanguage and multicurrency, as well as its multitenant architecture, make it an ideal solution for companies with worldwide operations. Dynamics CRM 4.0 is now available in Danish, English, Finnish, Dutch, French, German, simplified Chinese and Spanish with support for Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hong Kong Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, traditional Chinese and Turkish coming in the following 90 days.

"We selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 because it had the global capabilities to support the large-scale rollout to our company’s 12 business units," said Mark Lasswell, CRM executive sponsor and president of the Civil Infrastructure Client Group at CH2M HILL. "With the ability to leverage our existing IT infrastructure — largely Microsoft-based — we have a single global view for managing accounts and opportunities across the enterprise."

Google Bringing the 2000's 2D Back

Google has its mind set to be the reigning champ of advertising. Fair and square, it is probably going to become that, now that the DoubleClick deal is about to go through, and with the newspaper ad sales that it is eyeing, it might break the barrier that held the Mountain View-based company in check this far.

The Internet company has decided to introduce printed barcodes in newspapers, in an attempt similar to that of Digital Convergence,
that tried to strike rich with it in 2000. The response received then wasn’t positive, but it wasn’t negative either: it was indifferent, and many know that it hurts the most. The big disadvantage that the project had at the time was that people, in order to use the barcodes, had to buy a reader from the company and a handheld barcode scanner. Google is now taking advantage of the technology available and it is trying to resurrect the idea, because all you’d need to use of that now is a phone that has a camera and zooming options. That and a web connection with it, but that’s currently defaulted with most handheld mobile phones.

Another big problem that the late 90s startup Digital Convergence had to overcome was the privacy issue, back then, when everybody was afraid of doing almost anything in order to prevent personal data collection online. Google already has the data, so that shouldn’t concern it at all.

If you don’t remember the campaign back then, or if you cannot figure out what good any printed barcodes can do, here’s what Google thinks about them: "2D barcodes are a way to encode information, just like conventional barcodes – but 2D barcodes can encode significantly more. This information can be read by devices with cameras, such as cellphones. For advertisers, using 2D barcodes in newspaper ads can be an effective and flexible way to engage with potential customers. The benefit to readers is an easier, quicker way to get more information about businesses that interest them."

Interested?

Googlebombs Half Defused

About a week ago, the Google Webmaster’s Guild (ok, Blog, but it sounds like a secret organization) brought back into attention the Googlebombs, saying that they have been defused after a prolonged and sustained effort from their dev team. The algorithm they came up with actually works… some of the times.

Not familiar with the term "Googlebomb"? Also called
a "linkbomb" because it’s not always connected to Google, it is actually a sort of a prank that has people attempting to cause someone else’s site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query, in an attempt to lower its credibility and create an overall embarrassing effect.

Ryan Moulton and Kendra Carattini both wrote about the way that they had dealt with the problem and about what they put together to be their "defusing kit." Apparently, the algorithm they developed worked like a sort of deeper inquiry, trying to match the words in the query to those on the site. In plain words, if it ain’t there, it’s not going to show, and that should usually be enough.

Philipp Lenssen of blogoscoped.com found an interesting Googlebomb still ticking: searching for "dangerous cult" will find the website of Scientology.org. This case is interesting because the site actually contains the word "dangerous", but "cult" is not there. And as the Webmaster’s Guild said that they weren’t looking for a manual resolve of any problem, they’ll be looking at some more work to come up with a solution. I would be the first to remove the result from the query’s search results page and then figure out what went wrong, but they seem to want to do it by the book.

Luckily, the bombs have been pretty much defused. Unfortunately for us, the solution to partly include in the "funny" URL that pranksters sent, in order to create one such bomb, words on the site means that they will still continue, perhaps at an unmodified scale. Long live the Bomb Squad!