Intel Launches New 2 Billion Transistor Itanium

It's the Intel processor for critical missions.

Running a mission-critical… mission? Intel this week introduced the Itanium processor 9300 series, previously codenamed "Tukwila," which delivers more than double the performance of its predecessor.

Helping boost performance in this two-billion transistor Itanium processor 9300 series is that it has twice as many cores as its predecessor (four versus two), eight threads per processor (through enhanced Hyper-Threading Technology), more cache, up to 800 percent the interconnect bandwidth, up to 500 percent the memory bandwidth, and up to 700 percent the memory capacity using-industry standard DDR3 components.

The processor's advanced machine-check architecture coordinates error handling across the hardware, firmware and operating system, and improves system availability by enabling recovery from otherwise fatal errors.

The Itanium 9300 processor employs the second generation of Intel Virtualization Technology to improve performance and robustness. Its Intel 7500 chipset can directly assign I/O devices to virtual machines, further boosting efficiency.

"Intel is committed to delivering a new era of mission-critical computing, and we are delighted 80 percent of Global 100 companies have chosen Itanium-based servers for their most demanding workloads," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president Intel Architecture Group and general manager Data Center Group. "Intel is continuing to drive the economics of Moore's Law into mission-critical computing with today's Itanium 9300 processor announcement, more than doubling performance for our customers once again."

Don't expect this to be something that you'd have at home to run Crysis, however, as the Itanium processor 9300 series ranges in price from $946 to $3,838 in quantities of 1,000.

Microsoft: Windows 7 Isn't Killing Batteries

Microsoft has said that the battery problems currently plaguing a number of Windows 7 users are not caused by the operating system.

Last week Microsoft said the company was investigating whether or not Windows 7 caused laptop battery life to deteriorate. People who have installed Windows 7 (stretching back as far as the RC release last June) say that their computer's battery life has taken a huge hit. One user reported that before Windows 7, he used to get seven hours of battery from his brand new laptop. Once he had installed Windows 7, it dropped to four hours on a full charge and even then, it was an optimistic four hours. Others said their laptop was telling them to replace their battery altogether.
Microsoft yesterday posted to its MSDN blog network and explained that to the best of its knowledge, Windows 7 is not destroying customers' batteries.
"Several press articles this past week have drawn attention to blog and forum postings by users claiming Windows 7 is warning them to “consider replacing your battery” in systems which appeared to be operating satisfactorily before upgrading to Windows 7," Microsoft says. "These articles described posts in the support forums indicating that Windows 7 is not just warning users of failing batteries – as we designed Windows 7 to do this – but also implying Windows 7 is falsely reporting this situation or even worse, causing these batteries to fail."
The company clarifies that this is not an issue with Windows 7:
"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement."
Microsoft goes on to explain how the battery replacement warning works, detailing that Windows 7 has a set threshold of 60 percent degradation (that is the battery is performing at 40 percent of its designed capacity). When your battery reaches this level of degradation, Windows 7 will suggest you replace your battery.
The company reiterates that this is a feature exclusive to Windows 7, so folks running Vista or XP could have thought their battery was fine, when in reality it was deteriorating the whole time.

Google Making Language Translation Phone

Stick it in your ear.

 It wasn't too long ago that using online translator services such as Google Translate or AltaVista's Babel Fish seemed like the magic that would erase language barriers across the internet. Now Google is working on a new software that could translate voice input nearly instantly – as if sticking a Babel Fish into your ear.

Google already has a working text-to-text translation service as well a voice recognition system it uses for its phone software, including Google Voice.

"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time," said Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, in a Times Online story. "Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. … If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently."

The challenge now, besides reducing the lag between input and output, is improving accuracy of voice recognition. After all, the spoken word has more opportunities of variation compared to text.

"Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch. But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you. The phone should get a feel for your voice from past voice search queries, for example," said Och. "The more data we input, the better the quality."

Do you think a real-world Babel Fish could eventually take away the need for people to learn multiple languages?

ATI Issues Fix for Grey Screening 5800 Series

As promised, ATI and AMD have issued a fix for a previously reported problem that causes grey or colored lines appearing on screens and in some cases crashing.

Users of 5800 series cards will be glad to know that ATI has released a hotfix for intermittent grey screen and vertical line corruptions that randomly appear while watching movies, playing games or when the computer is sitting idle.

The hotfix applies to Windows 7 32bit, Windows 7 64bit, Windows Vista 32bit, Windows Vista 64bit, Windows XP, Windows XP x64 and Windows XP Media Center.

Click here to download the hotfix.

As of yet there is no word as to why some owners of 5700 series cards are seeing the same problem.

Click here and here to read more about the problem

UPDATE: ATI has said hotfix applies to both the 5800 series and the 5700 series. 

UPDATE2: ATI now says they're still working on a hotfix for the 5700 series cards. The hotfix released yesterday applies only to the 5800 cards. They're still working on a fix for the 5700 series.

Microsoft Patching 17-year-old Windows/DOS Bug

A patch is on the way to fix up that ancient Virtual DOS Machine flaw.

Last month we reported that Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher at Google,discovered a security flaw in the Virtual DOS Machine that can allow a nefarious user to inject code into the kernel and possibly install malware.

The flaw spanned iterations of Windows operating system over the last 17 years, including:

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7

According to the BBC, Microsoft will be rolling out a fix to this bug in a February Security Update. The update will fix five vulnerabilities that allow attackers to hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.

The patch is expected to hit on Tuesday, February 9 but it's a good idea to have automatic updates turned on so that your OS will do the checking for you.