Tech News

• VIA and S3 Graphics to use Quad Band Memory (QBM) Technology

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "The QBM controller interface license provides VIA and S3 Graphics with the necessary IP coverage to incorporate QBM into their line of core logic chipsets. QBM technology doubles the speed of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory devices while maintaining the existing 64-bit bus structure common in today's general purpose computing systems and meeting market requirements for low cost memory modules.
  
  This license marks the first time that PC based systems will be able to interface to high speed DDR533 and DDR667 modules featuring QBM technology. New systems using QBM enabled chipsets from VIA and S3 Graphics will combine the fastest speed memory in the industry with the fastest processor bus speeds and maintain backward compatibility with today's DDR modules."

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• Anandtech on Quad Band Memory Technology

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  Anandtech has a write-up on the new technology and it looks to be quite promising for both the enthusiast and the motherboard maker. Basically a switching module is added to a regular DDR memory module.
  
  "The end result is that you get two DDR transfers per clock, or 4 bits of data are sampled per clock thus doubling the throughput of DDR (hence the name Quad Band Memory)."

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• Intel Dual Channel DDR

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "Much to the market’s surprise, Intel is reportedly to become the first company that will start mass-producing dual-channel-DDR-based Pentium 4 chipsets. Supporting motherboards are expected to enter volume production in early October."
  
  This new chipset from Intel, Granite Bay, will have dual memory channels for increased bandwidth but will only support DDR266.

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• SiS and VIA Back Away from DDR400 Chipsets

  Published: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "Seeing a recent cool-down in DDR400 fervor, Taiwanese chipset heavyweights Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies have both quietly pulled out from plans to promote DDR400-supporting chipsets."
  
  It would also appear that if motherboard makers wish to release DDR400 enabled products they will need to do their own compatibility testing and support.
  

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• New Branding for AMD

  Published: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 | By: Dennis

  Some of you may have heard of this already dubbed the "AMD me" campaign, the news post doesn't cover that much info but I did find this.
  
  "Costing US$28 million, the “AMD me” campaign, targeting both the enterprise and consumer markets, kicked off on September 16 in the US and will be launched in the rest of the world on September 23. The campaign advertisements highlight AMD’s current K7-based desktop-use Athlon XP and forthcoming K8 Athlon and Opteron processors, hoping to strengthen AMD’s overall brand awareness and recognition."
  
  Do you think it will change anything??

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• SATA Review with the Seagate Barracuda @ Lost Circuits

  Published: Monday, September 16, 2002 | By: Dennis

  This is a really good and quite lengthy article on Serial ATA. The Lost Circuits guys go into just about every aspect of Serial ATA and why it is better than the Parallel ATA (what we have now).

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• AMD Processor Roadmap *updated*

  Published: Monday, September 16, 2002 | By: Dennis

  I'm thinking maybe by Christmas?

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• China Has Google Again

  Published: Friday, September 13, 2002 | By: Dennis

  " Users in Shanghai and Beijing reported on Thursday that they could once again view Google, widely used by China's 30 million-plus Net users because it has a powerful feature for finding Chinese-language material online. "
  
  According to the report AltaVista is still being rerouted despite the ban being lifted. On a side note check out the PC in the news photo, I sure hope people in China aren't still using IBM PS/2's

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• Hammer Delayed

  Published: Friday, September 13, 2002 | By: Dennis

  " The desktop version of Hammer, which is code-named Clawhammer and will be marketed under the Athlon brand name, will ship to PC manufacturers in the first quarter of 2003 and will hit store shelves toward the end of that quarter or at the beginning of the next"
  
  Delays are inevitable but a missed launch window can really hurt market position, though making sure the chip is ready is the important thing. The next part of the article will not only hurt AMD but will also effect chipset sales for sure.
  
  " Similarly, the company will postpone the commercial release of "Barton," a new version of the Athlon chip with a performance-enhancing 512KB secondary cache, from the second half of this year to the first quarter of next year. "

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• KT400 Board From Soltek

  Published: Friday, September 13, 2002 | By: Dennis

  The latest edition to the Purple Ray series of motherboards from Soltek is called the SL-75FRV, (or SL-75DRV if you look at the HTML page header.) The board reads like a grocery list of chipset features including AGP 8x, DDR 266/333/400 and ATA 133 to name a few.
  
  I do remember seeing a QuakeCon picture of this board with a silver PCB, considering the timeframe I suspect it was a pre-release model.

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