PA Semi Samples Homegrown Dual-Core Power Chip
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Startup clone Power chip maker PA Semi announced yesterday that it has completed the design of its first dual-core Power variant, the PWRficient PA6T-16228M, and that its fabrication partner is now sampling chips to potential customers. PA Semi has also put together a reference board for potential customers to put the chip through the paces with a number of different operating environments, including Linux, VxWorks, and Neutrino. READ MORE >

Intel, AMD Push and Pull for X64 Market Share
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices both had something to celebrate in the fourth quarter, according to market share statistics compiled by Dean McCarron at Mercury Research. According to McCarron, AMD was able to get 25.3 percent of the overall X86-X64 chip market's shipments in the fourth quarter, thereby taking a slightly bigger piece of the pie and getting the largest market share that the company has ever had in its history. READ MORE >

VMware, XenSource Launch Virtualization Bundles
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The battle over the virtualized server environment on X64 servers continues to heat up, and yesterday industry juggernaut VMware is rejiggering its products a bit in an effort to blunt competitive attacks from XenSource, the creator of the open source Xen hypervisor, and Virtual Iron, which created its own hypervisor and management software two years ago and which has subsequently adopted the Xen hypervisor to get more traction for its complete virtualization package. READ MORE >

The X Factor: One Socket to Rule Them All
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Vendors in the information technology business talk about standards more than just about anything else, something that the advent of the open systems business and Unix taught them to do two decades ago. But from their point of view, standards are a terrible thing--unless you happen to own one. We have standards for operating system features--POSIX and TCP/IP being two big ones--and standards for networking--Ethernet of ever-increasing speed--for storage--PCI, PCI-X and now PCI-Express peripheral slots and SCSI, SATA, and SAS disks--and for main memory--FB-DIMM and DDR2 modules. And now, perhaps, is the time for a standard CPU socket and interconnection scheme. READ MORE >