ASUS Core Unlocker to offer six Phenom II cores for the price of four
One of the more enjoyable aspects of some of AMD's recent CPUs has been the ability to unlock disabled cores upon them, thus allowing parts which ship as dual or triple-core CPUs to function as fully-featured quad-core processors. The arguably more exciting news is that we'll soon be seeing a Phenom II X4 branded part that is actually a six-core CPU with two cores disabled - Cores which can be enabled via an appropriate motherboard to give you a six-core Phenom at an even lower price.
What we've heard about the chip to date has been merely speculation, but we've now reason to believe the X4 960T is indeed a full-fat Thuban processor underneath - only, with two disabled cores. Clocked at 3GHz, the seemingly quad-core chip has all the inner workings of the hexa-core Thuban architecture - right down to the 6MB of L3 cache, 512KB of L2 cache per core and Turbo CORE technology.
And you know what that means, right? Yep, that means you should be able to unlock those two hidden cores with nothing more than a little jiggery pokery. Better still, for those wanting a hassle-free solution, pop the chip into an ASUS board and ASUS's Core Unlocker technology will scan your processor and automatically enable any working cores or caches that were previously hidden.
HEXUS has the full story.
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AMD posts $257M profit, increased gross margin
After Intel's huge numbers for the first quarter of this year, it's difficult to be impressed by pretty much any other companies finances at the moment (Google aside, maybe) - However, putting that to one side it's also been a very good quarter for AMD, who have posted a $257 million profit for this three month period to continue their run of improved financial health of late.
“Strong product offerings and solid operating performance resulted in record first quarter revenue,†said Dirk Meyer, AMD President and CEO. “We continue to strengthen our product offerings. We launched our latest generation of server platforms, expanded our family of DirectX 11-compatible graphics offerings, and commenced shipments of our next-generation notebook platforms to customers.â€
You can find the full results and accompanying press release on the AMD web site.
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NVIDIA reveals more Tegra 2 details
With the smartphone and portable device market becoming both more competitive and more lucrative, NVIDIA have released some more details about their forthcoming Tegra 2 architecture, which they hope will be able to snatch some significant design wins in the market segment which it targets.
The GPU deals with gaming and 3D user interfaces, while the dedicated video decode processor uses all kinds of intimidating technologies to deliver full frame-rate 1080p video and the video encoder allows 1080p recording. Lastly the image signal processor handles photography and the audio processor does what it says on the tin.
HEXUS has more on what Tegra 2 is all about.
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Trillian's New Rickroll Detection
There are many wonderful things being researched and developed in the world of technology these days. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and others are always pushing the limits of software to find new and interesting ways to complete tasks or make life easier. Cerulean Studios have added to the plethora of innovation by adding Rickroll detection to their IM application, Trillian 4.2 public beta.
Mozilla have actually implemented this feature as well in their browser, Firefox. Not to take away from Trillian's new feature in terms of innovation, as this certainly helps thousands of users avoid the torment of being Rickrolled out of the blue, it's still just an interesting novelty feature. Here are some of the highlights from the new 4.2 release.
- Windows Live. Trillian now supports signing in to WLM from multiple locations! File transfer speed has been improved (more to come), and mobile messaging is now supported.
- Notifications. You can now use notifications to directly retweet, reply to a tweet, and interface with mail right away.
- MetaContact Windows. When talking to a MetaContact, if you receive a message from another of their usernames the window will automatically switch for you.
- Instant Lookup for Hyperlinks. Move your mouse cursor on top of links to preview. Youtube links will show a preview image, too. Great for detecting NSFW links before you open them in browser, and will even resolve shortened links for you!
- Instant Lookup for Popular Terms. We now have more up-to-date Wikipedia data, and more relevant links for each popular term detected.
- Activity History. A polished look and powerful new asset view feature that lets you browse through images sent and received help improve history.
- Quicker MetaContact Creation. You can now drag and drop one contact on top of another to instantly combine them into a MetaContact.
- Other Updates. Support for Twitter’s new retweet mechanism, Twitter Lists, a customizable timeout for notification windows, and the return of custom avatar support.
- Skin Packs. Emoticon and Sound Packs have been moved to a more prominent location in preferences and are easier to change on-the-fly. You can also change contact list icons now with the new Icon Packs.
- Faster Setup For New Users. We’ve tidied up some of the screens in the installation wizard so new customers can get started more quickly than before!
You can check out the beta details at the Cerulean Studio blog and download it or the latest stable versions here. The Pro version will also be on sale for $10 USD for a limited time.
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Intel says Light Peak optical cables may succeed USB 3.0
While it would probably be cynical to suggest that Intel are deliberately dragging their heels when it comes to implementing USB 3.0 on their motherboard chipsets due to this, it certainly looks as though Intel are pushing hard to have their own Light Peak technology recognised as a successor for the USB standard judging by comments made by the company at the currently on-going Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
"We view this as a logical future successor to USB 3.0," Kahn said. "In some sense we'd... like to build the last cable you'll ever need."
A trend toward optical instead of electrical links raises the risk that separate optical cables could appear for many protocols, such as USB and serial ATA, said Justin Rattner, the head of Intel Labs, on the sidelines of IDF. Light Peak can run multiple protocols at the same time over one line, so all the data meant for the separate cables could run through one Light Peak cable instead.
PC World has the full story, while you can see an Intel video introducing Light Peak below.
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More team members leave Infinity Ward
I suppose this was inevitable given everything that has gone on in recent weeks, but it's increasingly looking like Infinity Ward will be left as a shadow of its former self once the exodus from this particular game developer has finished.
Longtime Infinity Ward employees Mark Grigsby and Paul Messerly have both left the studio, the team's lead animator and lead character animator, respectively. Grigsby had been with Infinity Ward from 2005, spending more than five years at the company. Messerly was there from the very beginning, moving from former Medal of Honor developer 2015 Inc. to Infinity Ward in 2002. Both former employees have updated their LinkedIn profiles to confirm that April 2010 marks the end of their tenures at the studio.
Kotaku has the latest on the story.
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