What is it?
With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMD and Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continue to improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations. Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores and other components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometer processors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009.
When is it coming?
Intel has been very good about sticking to its road map. A six-core CPU based on the Itanium design should be out imminently, when Intel then shifts focus to a brand-new architecture called Nehalem, to be marketed as Core i7. Core i7 will feature up to eight cores, with eight-core systems available in 2009 or 2010. (And an eight-core AMD project called Montreal is reportedly on tap for 2009.)
After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a 32-core project called Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its complexity (the company won't confirm this, though). That many cores requires a new way of dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32 brains pulling out of one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores to proliferate when the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012 is plausible (when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to 22nm), with 32 cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says "hundreds" of cores may come even farther down the line.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
USB 3.0
Features Overview :
Standard USB 3.0 Cables
* A new enhanced "SuperSpeed" data mode with 4.8Gbps raw transfer rate (nearly 10 times as fast as Hi-Speed USB 2.0)
* It operates in Full Duplex mode (to achieve 4 extra pairs of connections added for cabling)
* Completely Backward Compatible with USB 2.0 (despite of the change in cabling, the plug & receptacles have been modified for this feature)
* Instead of broadcasting the device's packet traffic to all the devices below the connecting host (like USB 2.0) it uses dedicated pipelining to each devices with the host system [Are you aware of Data Encapsulation of OOPs?]
* A single bulk transfer pipe can now manage multiple streams of data, in SuperSpeed streaming mode.
* Advanced power Management feature that provides supports for power consumption as per device demand & have low consuming sleep-modes.
* The voltage consumption has been downgraded to 4V from the previous 4.4V of USB 2.0 but the current up-limit is now significantly 80% increased now to 900mA - producing 4.5W at maximum power power utilization.
* Longer connector cable length will be supported. Although some speculate, at SuperSpeed mode the cable length will have to be limited to 3m (comparable to eSATA)
* PCIe2.0 Architecture has been followed & the signaling, encoding, equalization of data etc. are implemented the same way.
Operating System Supports :
Linux : The time isn't long past when Linux was critically blamed for NOT implementing support for new devices & drivers - but these days are gone, so far. With much of amazement, you will discover that the Linux is actually the first Operating System kernel to provide the native support for USB 3.0 with the release of version 2.6.31 on Sept. 10, 2009. While Fedora 12, OpenSUSE 11.2, Mandriva 2010 & Ubuntu 9.10 already backing it up, other distros are not left far behind. Obviously, the support is still not yet mature enough though but the developers are continuously burnishing to give a full-fledged SuperSpeed USB operative ability to the kernel.
Windows : As speculated, Microsoft is cooking the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to have USB 3.0 driver stack as an update while the rumor says that Windows 8 will be having native support for it. But, Windows 7 Service Pack is subjected to having a release schedule of Q4 2010 and as per the rumor, you can expect Windows 8 General Availability later in 2011 or most probably in 2012. So, for now, the driver software bundled with the devices you buy, are the only get-away to make the things work.
Apple : On the other hand, there's no fuss from Apple regarding their story of SuperSpeed adoptation. Probably they are looking for providing a bit more sturdy solution this time & not to recapitulate the buggy release, as they did with USB 2.0, subjecting to a production delay
Standard USB 3.0 Cables
* A new enhanced "SuperSpeed" data mode with 4.8Gbps raw transfer rate (nearly 10 times as fast as Hi-Speed USB 2.0)
* It operates in Full Duplex mode (to achieve 4 extra pairs of connections added for cabling)
* Completely Backward Compatible with USB 2.0 (despite of the change in cabling, the plug & receptacles have been modified for this feature)
* Instead of broadcasting the device's packet traffic to all the devices below the connecting host (like USB 2.0) it uses dedicated pipelining to each devices with the host system [Are you aware of Data Encapsulation of OOPs?]
* A single bulk transfer pipe can now manage multiple streams of data, in SuperSpeed streaming mode.
* Advanced power Management feature that provides supports for power consumption as per device demand & have low consuming sleep-modes.
* The voltage consumption has been downgraded to 4V from the previous 4.4V of USB 2.0 but the current up-limit is now significantly 80% increased now to 900mA - producing 4.5W at maximum power power utilization.
* Longer connector cable length will be supported. Although some speculate, at SuperSpeed mode the cable length will have to be limited to 3m (comparable to eSATA)
* PCIe2.0 Architecture has been followed & the signaling, encoding, equalization of data etc. are implemented the same way.
Operating System Supports :
Linux : The time isn't long past when Linux was critically blamed for NOT implementing support for new devices & drivers - but these days are gone, so far. With much of amazement, you will discover that the Linux is actually the first Operating System kernel to provide the native support for USB 3.0 with the release of version 2.6.31 on Sept. 10, 2009. While Fedora 12, OpenSUSE 11.2, Mandriva 2010 & Ubuntu 9.10 already backing it up, other distros are not left far behind. Obviously, the support is still not yet mature enough though but the developers are continuously burnishing to give a full-fledged SuperSpeed USB operative ability to the kernel.
Windows : As speculated, Microsoft is cooking the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to have USB 3.0 driver stack as an update while the rumor says that Windows 8 will be having native support for it. But, Windows 7 Service Pack is subjected to having a release schedule of Q4 2010 and as per the rumor, you can expect Windows 8 General Availability later in 2011 or most probably in 2012. So, for now, the driver software bundled with the devices you buy, are the only get-away to make the things work.
Apple : On the other hand, there's no fuss from Apple regarding their story of SuperSpeed adoptation. Probably they are looking for providing a bit more sturdy solution this time & not to recapitulate the buggy release, as they did with USB 2.0, subjecting to a production delay
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