Planet Lowyat

Intel Quad Core processors is coming soon - AMD ‘Shanghai’

According to The Register,

Today, x64 chip maker Advanced Micro Devices will launch its “Shanghai” quad-core Opteron processors for servers and workstations, concurrent with its annual financial analyst day meeting and ahead of schedule by AMD’s reckoning.

The new chip - which offers more computing power, less heat dissipation, and better bang for the buck than its “Barcelona” replacement - closes some of the gaps that rival Intel has opened up with its Xeon x64 chips. And it gives AMD a chance to get its business back on track and get its server partners somewhat enthusiastic about AMD after a number of them got burned by the chip maker’s delay in getting its initial quad-core chips out the door last year.

That gave Intel an opening to chew into market share gains that AMD made with single-core and dual-core Opterons since the product was launched in April 2003. And with a revamped, Core-based product line, the Xeons certainly have done that, despite some technical reasons why the Opteron design is better.

The Opterons were launched to much fanfare as the first 64-bit x86-compatible processor, and one with a funky interconnect called HyperTransport that looks an awful lot like the QuickPath Interconnect that Intel hopes to start rolling out in servers early next year and which makes its debut in the Core i7 processors any day now. While the tier one server vendors were a little cold to the Opterons at first, IBM played around a bit with one machine, and then Sun Microsystems said it would partner with AMD to create a new “Galaxy” server line, followed by Hewlett-Packard, which created Opteron variants in its ProLiant rack and BladeSystem blade server lines.

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According to the rumors floating around the Sony Ericsson blogs, a Sony Ericsson announcement is planned for Thursday November 6th. The highlight of the announcement is to be the formal launch of the Rika as the Walkman W705 - the Walkman version of the G705.

The slider phone comes with a 240 x 320 display screen, 3.2 megapixel camera, built in WiFi and GPS. With a 120MB built in memory storage, the source says Sony Ericsson will bundle a 4GB memory stick together with the retail packaging, this could be different depends on your region though. Text messages can now be seen as a chat thread, iPhone style and etc.
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Another mile stone for Canonical teams. Good jobs!

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop and Server, continuing Ubuntu’s tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Features:

Productivity tools: Ubuntu supports all of your favourite web-based mail programs like Yahoo(TM) or Gmail (TM). But for the office, Evolution provides all the calendering, contacts and full function office email you need. Pidgin IM also puts you in instant touch with colleagues and integrates with your personal IM services simply and easily.

Browsing: Includes Mozilla’s Firefox 3 as the default browser. Faster, safer and themed browsing for users.

Photos: Upload from your camera or phone to F-Spot and manage, tag, share and sort your photos and upload easily to you favourite social networking sites.

Music and video: Plug in your PSP, iPod, MP3 player; share playlists with your friends; buy in the creative commons online music stores, stream more live radio and content from the BBC and plug in more devices with UPnP.

Office applications: Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations can all be delivered through Open Office. And, they completely integrate with the proprietary office applications out there. The big difference is that they are free.

Accessibility: At the core of the Ubuntu philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone and access should be free and complete whatever your economic or physical circumstances. Ubuntu is one of the most accessible desktop operating systems around.
Read more about the features of Ubuntu 8.10 in the following press releases:

Desktop edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.10-desktop
Server edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.10-server

Ubuntu 8.10 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS rather than upgrading to or installing 8.10.

Ubuntu 8.10 is also the basis for new 8.10 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and UbuntuStudio:

http://kubuntu.org/news/8.10-release
http://xubuntu.org/news/intrepid/release
http://ubuntustudio.org/8-10_release_note
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Asustek Computer plans to launch its first Android based Google phone in the first half of 2009, according to company sources. Asustek may initially sell the Android-powered handsets under its own brand in the Taiwan market before also launching customized models for overseas clients, said market sources close to the company.

In other news, the company sources also noted that Asustek plans to gradually phase out EMP-based handsets and instead will switch to handset platforms from Qualcomm and Marvell.

While launching its 3.5G P552w PDA phone in the Taiwan market on October 28, Asustek plans to launch one 3G handset model built using Qualcomm’s dual-core solutions in the first quarter of next year, the sources noted.

Asustek’s shipments of smartphones in the Taiwan market totaled 30,000 units in the first nine months of this year, and the company expects the annual shipment volumes to reach 40,000 units by year-end.

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Samsung have announced the I7110, a 12.9mm thick smartphone running Symbian S60 with a 2.6-inch AMOLED display. The I7110 includes both 3G HSDPA (900/2100MHz) and quadband GSM/EDGE, together with WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, smile-shot, blink-shot and an LED flash, with a secondary camera up front for video calls.

GPS on the I7110 can be used both for navigation and photo geotagging, and the handset comes complete with pedestrian navigation for ten cities in Western Europe. Alternatively it can be used in-car, with a built-in FM transmitter sending spoken directions - and music - through the car speakers with no cabling required.

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