12/24/2000: NVIDIA attacks in the professional segment

    Lately very active American company tries to include the whole market of graphic devices. For it it tries to give the jump to the segment of the workstations (workstations) professional, with his graphic chips of high yield Quadro2 Pro and Quadro2 MXR. Both models have been certified as compatible with the most important products in the field of the digital creation, as it is AutoCAD, 3DStudio Max, Mayan, Microstation, Pro/ENGINEER, SoftIMAGE|3D and others.
    One of the manufacturers first in offering products integrating these chips has been Compaq, in his models Deskpro Workstation AP250, Professional Workstation AP550 and Professional Workstation SP750, in all the cases mounting the card Gloria III of Elsa, probably one of the manufacturers who makes better cards based in chips of NVIDIA.
    Also Silicon Graphics offers teams with cards Quadro; in this case the models are Silicon Graphics 230, Silicon Graphics 330 and Silicon Graphics 550 Visual Workstations. Also, the cards with chips NVIDIA offers support not only for Windows but also for Linux.
    Nevertheless, NVIDIA has it still difficult before solutions like Diamond Fire GL2 (with a chip made by IBM) or even the outstanding figures Permedia, developed specially for this business, since it is not necessary to forget that the NVIDIA solutions are based on his successful "domestic" chips GeForce2 and GeForce2 MX, with only light finishing touches.

12/22/2000: Intel updates the specifications of the standard USB 2.0

    If a few days ago we were speaking about the future Serial IT TIES 1.0, today it touches the USB, a system of connection that begins being assimilated by the computer industry but that presents still important lagoons, especially facing storage devices.
    In this sense, Intel presents publicly the new review 0.95 of the specification Enhanced Host Controller Interface of the USB 2.0, which describes the interface between the software and the checker hardware USB. The technology USB 2.0 will be compatible with previous versions (1.0 and 1.1), from which he inherits the facility of connection and recognition, improving substantially the transference valuation, coming to 480 Mbits/s (60 MB/s). This will allow to begin seeing external hard disks USB of high yield, something unthinkable with 1,5 current MB/s.
    Microsoft, Apple, Network Hat and Sun, between others, have begun developing the future controlers software USB 2.0 from this specification. Intel hopes that by the middle of 2001 they should be in phase beta facing an immediate staging of the final controlers.

12/19/2000: Published the draft of the Serial specification TIES 1.0

    It stays already less so that the interior of the PCs could turn more clearly, without the classic flat cables or "strips" of hard disk. It finishes of there is published the draft of the Serial specification TIES 1.0 (IT TIES "in series"), sponsored neither more nor less than by companies like Intel, IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, Dell and APT Technologies.
    This new specification would happen to the current system IT TIES (or IDE) of data transmission "in parallel". The above mentioned transition should be realized without excessive problems, since these standards will be completely compatible at logical level (the work of transforming the information to be sent in series the checker will realize it), the first discs will include connectors for both standards, and probably adapters are made.
    The principal advantages advantages of the Serial IT TIES there would be the speed of maximum transference between disc and checker (in the first stage, 150 MBytes/s), his topology point to point (without need to establish teacher / slave rolls) and also a lot of minor thickness of the cables, since they will have only four connectors (instead of 80 ó 40 current ones), allowing a better ventilation of the components and more easy access to the same ones.
    Of course, other standards offer similar or even very top advantages (like the IEEE 1394 Firewire), but the Serial TIES has one very important: his cost should be relatively low, of the same order as the current one IT TIES in parallel. With this, his compatibility and his influential godparents, the difficult thing will be that it does not triumph... the year 2002 we will know it safely.

12/18/2000: Another motherboard DDR for Socket A

    Transcend, the well-known manufacturer of basic badges, has just presented his new creation: the TS-ALR4, a badge based on the chipset ALi MAGiK with support of memory DDR-SDRAM for the microprocessors Athlon and Duron of AMD.
    Thanks to his support of memory DDR-266, GB obtains a transference of 2,1 between microprocessor and chipset (or chipset and memory), and of 1,6 GB if there is used memory DDR-200. Other interesting characteristics of the motherboard are his 3 grooves for memory, with what his maximum capacity is of: up to 3 GB!!, 6 slots PCI (none ISA), groove AGP4X and four ports USB.
    Also the checker IDE is necessary to stand out with support for devices up to UltraDMA 100, and his BIOS, an ezBIOS designed especially by Transcend, that it allows a rapid recovery in case of mistake of the same one and facilitates the overclocking.