Recent Comments:
More details leak on AMD's Fusion platform, Fusion now officially the Palm OS II of CPUs {Engadget}
Aug 4th 2008 11:03PM The footprint will clearly not be 40 nm. 40 nm is the minimum feature size (usually what you'd call the lithographic node). As an aside, 40 nm is a half node, since the full nodes are 45 nm (as in what Intel uses) and 32 nm. CPU makers typically avoid using half nodes while foundries and GPU makers will use them. AFAIK, half nodes are usually just optical shrinks of the previous full node.
iPhone Dev Team unleashes Pwnage Tool 2.0 {Engadget}
Jul 19th 2008 9:42PM Yes, this has worked for me. The issue is only that pwnageTool seems to expect that the device already be in DFU mode before showing you how to get into DFU mode :S
Once you have the firmware, pwnageTool's work is basically done. Just put the iPhone/Ipod Touch in DFU mode and let iTunes do it's thing (note, this does not work with the normal restore mode, which is what I first tried).
iPhone Dev Team unleashes Pwnage Tool 2.0 {Engadget}
Jul 19th 2008 8:11PM Not working on my Touch 2.0 either, failing at DFU as well.
Photonic breakthrough could mean 60x faster internet speeds {Engadget}
Jul 16th 2008 10:54AM I work with PICs and I've met Ben Eggleton at a conference (the guy in the photo). While I can't find a link to the actual paper, I imagine this is likely something along the lines of a 6x100 Gbps all-optical switch being compared to the actual 10 Gbps network.
There are many, many groups working on PICs around the world and this is but a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to making a full PIC-based network. Still, they deserve to be commended for bringing mainstream press attention to the field :)
Amazon's MP3 store nearing global launch? {Engadget}
Jun 23rd 2008 9:44AM While I do like that DRM-free music is finally spreading, why doesn't the industry finally start transitioning forward to AAC (unprotected, obviously), or better yet, lossless audio to replace CDs?
I hate the fact that the Internet isn't moving forward from JPEG and MP3s both of which are quite inefficient by modern standards.
Hynix develops triple-level-cell NAND flash: 30 percent cheaper than MLC {Engadget}
Jun 4th 2008 11:47AM Without knowing the specifics its difficult to extrapolate performance. However, assuming they are just using refinements of exiting technologies these new cells will be as slow (or likely) even slower than current MLC.
While I am not an expert on NAND memory, this is the problem as I understand it. SLC cells only have two levels, 0 & 1. They are fast and easy to measure, as you just have to measure a 0 or a 1 when you read. Thus cells can be made small and the charge can be extracted rapidly as there is little charge in each cell.
MLC cells are typically 2-bit cells (thus have 4 possible states). This means they have to be bigger as they must hold more charge so that you can distinguish the 4 states in which they can exist which also makes them slower. Nonetheless, a 2-bit MLC cell is smaller than two SLC cells, thus they cost less to produce as each "bit" essentially is smaller than an SLC equivalent.
TLC would essentially extend the MLC concept to 3 bits, and thus now each cell can exist in one of 8 states. Presumably these 3-bit TLC cells are approximately 30% smaller than two 2-bit MLC cells making them again, cheaper to produce.
VIA Isaiah becomes Nano in quest to topple Atom and Puma {Engadget}
May 29th 2008 7:45AM You know, this thing isn't really competing with the single-core Atom head-to-head. According to Intel's docs, the 1.86 GHz Atom Z540 has a TDP of 2.4W (+200mW for Hyperthreading), that's roughly half the consumption of even the U2300.
If dual core Atom processors have an 8W TDP as projected, Isaiah would really be competing with the dual-core Atom part. Also, at 25W consider that Isaiah has a higher TDP than the MacBook Air's Core 2 Duo processor (20W TDP) and Intel's LV C2D (17W TDP) and ULV C2D (10W TDP).
All I'm saying is that the single-core Isaiah had better be packing some serious performance if it wants to take Intel head-to-head in the 8W+ TDP game.
Pioneer officially ends in-house plasma production, Kuro LCDs coming soon {Engadget}
Mar 7th 2008 5:05AM I really, really hope that they will license their plasma technology to Panasonic (or anyone else for that matter) so that plasmas with ultra-deep blacks will live on in one form or another. It would be a real shame for this technology to languish on a shelf somewhere collecting dust while all we get are inferior LCDs.
Bootable flash key makes disk encryption attacks super-simple {Engadget}
Mar 4th 2008 10:09AM @cibyr: The password should be overwritten when you enter sleep mode or shutdown. Once your computer is in sleep mode, the password's already gone. Also, sleep mode is a low power mode anyway, so your computer won't be doing anything, unmount all drives and remount them when the user logs back in.
The only case is when a user simply locks his computer while running a task that needs access to a secure partition. In reality, this probably isn't such a good idea in the first place if you have such precious data on that partition.
There are probably cases where the attack would work that isn't covered by these two scenarios, but these are probably the most common ones.
Bootable flash key makes disk encryption attacks super-simple {Engadget}
Mar 4th 2008 8:32AM Everyone's making such a big deal out of these attacks, and it's true that at the moment they are a problem; however, the problem is so trivial for OS makers to fix (overwrite the password in memory with a random string before shutdown/sleep).
