AMD talks critical 'incidents' in Intel rivalry

During a recent phone interview with CNet, Tom McCoy, AMD’s senior vice president of legal affairs discussed a few critical moments when its rivalry with Intel got particularly nasty. He believes that whenever AMD came up with new-generation technologies that could to pose a threat to Intel, the latter would just turn up the heat and break the law; citing the introduction of Athlon in 1999 as an example.

Back then, AMD's processor showed superior performance compared to the reigning champion, Pentium III, in pretty much every benchmark. McCoy claims the same happened in 2003 with the introduction of Opteron for the server market, whose use of an integrated memory controller and its focus on energy efficiency caught Intel off guard. Furthermore, he claims that AMD doesn't care about the $1.45 billion fine the European Commission slapped on Intel, but rather about the injunction on these kinds of practices that prevent their technology from getting to market.

Intel however believes the market already does a good job regulating itself, claiming that if Intel technology did not perform well and their product roadmap was not strong enough, customers would simply go elsewhere. Of course, AMD’s whole case was based on the fact that Intel paid or offered hidden rebates to manufacturers and retailers so that they only use their chips, leaving customers with nowhere else to go.

AT&T's 2009 smartphone lineup leaks online

A handful of slides supposedly leaked from AT&T surfaced over the weekend, showing just about every smartphone coming to the carrier for the rest of the year. These include devices running Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm WebOS, and Android operating systems; so you may find them particularly valuable in helping you plan out possible future purchases.


First up is the HTC Fortress, AT&T’s version of the HTC Touch Pro2, which is expected to run on Windows Mobile 6.1 (presumably upgradeable to 6.5 down the road) and will feature a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as a large touch screen display. A branded variant of the HTC Touch Diamond2, described as Warhawk, will follow in September boasting a similar touch screen display but no hardware keyboard. HTC also plans a new Android handset, dubbed Lancaster, which is aimed at social networking and features a sideways-sliding keyboard.

It seems the HTC Lancaster was originally planned for an August launch, though that could be delayed in order to put AT&T’s user interface on the device, rather than Google’s. Additionally the slides mention Palm’s Eos, a successor to the Centro that is expected to run WebOS, as well as an iPAQ smartphone from HP and a few BlackBerry devices that include a new Pearl supporting 3G and the upcoming Onyx.

Canonical working on Android emulator for Ubuntu

Android enthusiasts, developers or just plain curious sorts might find this interesting. Canonical is working on an execution environment for Android software to run inside an Ubuntu system, bringing all its applications to the desktop. The increasingly-popular mobile platform has seen a lot of speculation regarding its future, including plans to bring it to netbooks or other non-phone devices, and this seems like a firm step in that direction.


Eventually Canonical plans to publish the environment, along with its corresponding source code, for any Linux user to tinker with it. At such an early stage, they've produced little to note, but it makes you wonder if there are other developers working on similar projects behind closed doors. With the line between smartphones and desktops getting thinner, and given the open nature of Android, I can imagine a lot of people would find this interesting. Any increased awareness in Android is going to be beneficial from Google's perspective, and this is doubly true since the launch of their app store, which will need a lot of developer support to become strong.

Android phones make their way to China

Even more good news for Android today, HTC has recently announced that they have been working up a deal with China Mobile to bring handsets sporting the Google-backed platform into the country. HTC will be using their Magic smartphone model for this latest endeavor, which will be powered by a localized version of Android to meet the needs of China Mobile – though what exactly this localization entails isn’t clear. Hopefully such changes won't serve to make Android less open, as that has been one of its selling points since the beginning.

Other manufacturers have their sights set on China as well, including Lenovo, Samsung and LG. HTC may get a first to market advantage, though; if all goes as planned their first Android-based phones for China will go on sale next month. The move has the potential to greatly increase Android's market share, which will then put the onus on the Open Handset Alliance to ensure the platform gets the level of support it will need. They may face interesting challenges with the addition of a market like China, with “modified” versions of Android potentially becoming commonplace. Supporting various iterations of Android won't be an easy task.

Mac clone maker Psystar files for bankruptcy

Last we heard about Psystar they were touting some small but significant progress in their ongoing legal battle against Apple. However, in an interesting turn of events, it is now being reported that the unauthorized Mac clone maker has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company pins its financial mess on the poor economy and its suppliers’ increasingly difficult credit terms, though others speculate the Psystar bankruptcy may indicate that its legal backers may have dropped out.

Apple has maintained that Psystar received considerable financial backing from one or more unknown third-parties that want to see OS X licensing policies loosened. No names have ever been confirmed, but if such an arrangement has been taking place, the companies in question would be exposed on June 5, the date of the bankruptcy hearing. In the meantime, the company will be to continue to do business, but all legal actions against them will be put on hold as the bankruptcy court begins its proceedings.

Shuttle to unveil Via-based desktops at Computex

Via Technologies is slowly making its way into more systems with its Nano processor line. Both Samsung and Lenovo have announced netbooks featuring the low-power chips, while Dell recently unveiled a new server product based around the Nano platform. Now we are hearing that Shuttle, known for its small form factor systems, has two Nano-based desktops coming as well as part of their Embedded Slim series.


The XS92 and XS92F are “geared at light PC users” and will feature the L-series and U-series Nano processors, respectively. The first of these chips offers clock speeds of up to 1.8GHz and 25W thermal peak power consumption, while the latter ranges in clock speed from 1GHz to 1.3GHz but consumes a mere 5W to 8W – which also eliminates the need for a fan. Unfortunately, no further details have been revealed other that they are expected to start shipping sometime in June. Full specs and pricing details should be available at Computex.

Download of the Week: Notepad++

One of the best free advanced text editors, Notepad++, has undergone a slew of changes and version 5.4 is now available. If you’re unfamiliar with the program, it is an editor which supports an enormous spectrum of languages including C, C++, C#, Java, Javascript, XML, HTML, PHP, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python, Lua, RC resource, Makefile, ASCII art, Doxygen, INI, batch, ASP and VB/VBS source files. It also made our list of top applications to install on a fresh operating system.


Updated features include an added theme selector to switch styles.xml on the fly, a Google Chrome drag and drop feature, the ability to mark any occurrence with 5 separate colors, column selection, UTF16 detection without BOM, dynamically scaled fine numbers margin and quite a few other updates. Along with the impressive set of new functions, the program has seen several bug fixes and other tweaks. You can download Notepad++ 5.4 (2.57MB) here at TechSpot. The complete change log is present on the download page.

Take-Two officially dates BioShock 2 for October 30

During Take-Two's second quarter financial conference call, CEO Ben Feder has more or less confirmed the release dates for BioShock 2, claiming the highly-anticipated title will hit Europe on October 30 and the U.S. on November 3.

The game is expected to see a simultaneous launch on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms, but Take-Two's own documentation continues to list the SKUs as “TBA,” leading to speculation that a timed-exclusivity announcement may be on the way. Take-Two was reluctant to comment on this, however, adding only that these dates are considered “tentative” and subject to change.

BioShock 2 is set ten years after the events of the original game and places gamers in the shoes of a Big Daddy – the very first Big Daddy ever made in fact. New enemies arrive in the form of other Big Daddies as well as Big Sisters, and a multiplayer mode will be available for the first time, adding to the game's overall narrative with a prequel set during the fall of Rapture. You can see some of the first gameplay footage of the game here.

Intel unveils eight-core Nehalem EX

Intel has previewed a new Xeon processor designed for high-end servers, codenamed “Nehalem EX,” that will reportedly feature 8 cores inside a single chip and, thanks to Hyper-Threading, is capable of supporting as many as 16 program threads at the same time. In a briefing today, the company announced that it is on track to enter production of the chip by the end of the year, and expects to be shipping them by early 2010.


Nehalem EX will also double the memory capacity with up to 16 memory slots per processor socket, and offer four high-bandwidth QuickPath Interconnect links, which will allow for four-socket or eight-socket systems with as many as 32 or 64 cores and twice as many threads. Other specs include 24MB of shared L3 cache and support for Turbo Boost to shut down some cores and overclock others on programs that need few code threads.

In comparison with the current four-core and six-core “Dunnington” Xeon 7400 processors, Intel says the new Nehalem EX will deliver up to nine times the memory bandwidth, 2.5 times the database performance, 1.7 times the integer throughput, and 2.2 times the floating-point throughput.

HP recalls more laptop batteries

Earlier this month, HP revealed that a good number of batteries they had sold across several laptop models were defective. The situation resulted in a recall of 70,000 batteries, with HP issuing replacements for anyone who was affected. It appears that the scope of the problem was a bit larger than initially estimated, though, as now a further 15,000 batteries are up for recall following further inspection.

These batteries were only distributed in China, whereas the previous batch was distributed in the U.S. The situation echoes the battery woes that many manufacturers dealt with a few years ago, primarily Sony, but is nowhere near the same in size. Even with advancements in battery technology, will portable power always carry that chance of a defective batch resulting in customers’ laptops catching fire? Personally, I'm surprised we see it as little as we do.