News Bits: AMD Mobile Chipset Roadmap, Greenpeace Protests Apple, DSL Most Popular Broadband

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2006-12-15T16:44:10 -->

AMD's Centrino Pro competitor - Hawk, Griffin notebook CPUs

December 15^th - AMD is preparing to battle Intel's ever-successful Centrino platform. The current AMD mobile platform, called Kite, will be refreshed with the codename &quot;Hawk&quot; CPU, which will support 800MHz DDR2 memory around Q1 - Q2 of 2007, right on time to compete with Intel's Santa Rosa. It will most likely be a 65nm chip, and will be the foundation for future Turion and Sempron processors, both dual- and single-core.

New mobile chipsets will also debut with Hawk, and be able to support the HDMI interface, hybrid hard drives, and hybrid graphics chips. Hybrid graphics chips automatically switch between a dedicated and integrated GPU, depending on circumstances.

Hawk's successor will be &quot;Griffin,&quot; which, combined with the new chipsets, will be the &quot;Puma&quot; platform. This platform will support the final version of 802.11n (or at least AMD hopes), the VESA org's DisplayPort monitor port, the UVD (Universal Video DecoderP) technology, DirectX 10, PCI Express 2, and HyperTransport 3. Griffin will be a low-voltage processor. Griffin will go well into 2009, when AMD will start to churn out mobile versions of its Fusion platform.

Read More

 

Greenpeace bashes Apple's E-Waste

According to Greenpeace, Apple is &quot;now in last place among the 14 largest electronics firms in committing to phase out harmful and toxic substances and instituting recycling programs of products that have reached the end of their lifecycles.&quot; A group of e-waste activists will put on a demonstration at Apple's 5th Ave., Manhattan flagship store today, December 15, at 6:00 PM.

Read More

 

Panasonic announces Broadband Partner status with Verizon Wireless

December 14^th - Panasonic announced its Broadband Partner status with Verizon Wireless. Panasonic will be able to directly sell and activate Verizon Wireless Broadband Access for Panasonic Toughbook preferred channel partners as a Broadband Partner, which will make the process of providing customers with a complete wireless mobile solution more streamlined.

Panasonic has been forming relationships with industry leaders to deliver reliable integrated wireless solutions for eight years. Verizon BroadbandAccess service-equipped Panasonic Toughbooks are now available through authorized Panasonic Toughbook resellers. More information can be found at:

www.panasonic.com/toughbook

 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta now available for download

December 15^th - The beta version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 is now available for download. However, in order to try out CS3, one must already own a copy of CS2, and the full retail version at that.

Photoshop CS3 has been in the works for some time, and is expected to take features that were introduced in CS2 such as RAW processing further, with an increased amount of features. CS3 will also be able to work with the upcoming Photoshop Lightroom.

The CS3 beta is available for both Windows and Macintosh. Mac users will especially welcome this upgrade, as current Intel-Mac users have had to run CS2 under Rosetta.

Beta registration and download

Read More

 

1.25 million sign up for DSL on a weekly basis

A study conducted by market research firm Point Topic shows that 1.25 million people sign up for DSL on a weekly basis; the total number of subscribers has reached 173 million. The study showed that there are over 263 broadband providers.

The study was done over a twelve month period, and lasted until the end of September 2006. DSL is the most popular form of Internet service, with a 65.6% share of the broadband market. In Europe, DSL makes up 82% of broadband services.

The United States has the second largest number of broadband connections at 24.4 million; China is in first place with 34.9 million. Other countries in the top five include Japan, Germany, and France.

Read More

 

ATI Catalyst Mobility 6.12 drivers released

ATI has released its latest Catalyst Mobility driver suite, 6.12. The new driver set fixes numerous issues; release notes can be found here.

For a guide to updating your drivers, check the Updating Mobile Video Card Drivers thread in the forums.

 

Seems so ironic that generally Greenpeace members are left wing and liberal and a lot of the Apple crowd are left leaning too. Apple has the kind of brand where they can promote a product as being better for the earth and people would be willing to pay a bit more. They should set an example and make it so their products not only benefit those with AIDS (a la the red iPod) but also the environment.

 

Automatic-switching GPUs is intriguing. That is kind of weird that a brand like Apple would be so contrary as Andrew said.

 

DisplayPort... WTF??

So now in addition to Blueray vs HD-DVD, are we going to have HDMI vs DisplayPort?

Manufacturers can just kiss my ass if they expect me to keep track of all these competing standards.

 

I am not sure why the Greenpeace thing is still news, the report came out in September after which, Greenpeace apologized to Apple because of the way the conclusions were reached. I know I sound fanboish, but read the comments and the article and do a little research and you will quickly see that Greenpeace likes to spread FUD.

 

wow, that hybrid graphics thing looks promising...

 

It's good to know AMD is trying to make a come back... And I'm downloading CS3 Beta right now.

 

Doesn't the Sony SZ already have something like that Hybrid GPU?
It's a manual toggle that switches between an Intel GMA and Geforce 7400.

Sony SZ Review

The only thing AMD is doing is making the switching automatic??

 

Only two notebooks, the Sony SZ and an older 15.4" Uniwill, have manual hybrid graphics, but they both required reboots for the change to take effect.

Hopefully a lot more notebooks will have hybrid graphics with AMD officially supporting it as a feature in their mobile platform. But its effectiveness at increasing battery life will really depend on how low powered they can get their IGP and chipset. I think it'll give AMD notebooks the battery life advantage in notebooks with midrange and faster graphics cards compared to Intel notebooks with only dedicated cards.

Unfortunately, it looks like we have to wait for Griffin for the new architecture-based CPU. Seems the Hawk's only performance improvement is faster ram which won't close the performance gap between the Turion X2 and Core 2 Duo, especially when Merom is updated with a faster FSB in Santa Rosa.