Intel Previews Quad-Core Chips, Talks Up Massively Cored RISC
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Chip maker Intel is hosting its semi-annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week, and its future quad-core chips for desktops and servers are the centerpieces of the event. Intel also previewed a future 80-core RISC processor, which appears to be a variant of the i860/i960 family of RISC chips that was used in the Paragon supercomputer in the early 1990s. READ MORE >

Chip Makers Embrace Co-Processors, Again
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If chip makers could put enough transistors on a chip, you could bet that by now they would have hard coded operating systems, middleware, and applications onto their circuits. Perhaps someday we will see such a feat, but in the meantime, the current crop of chip makers are looking to move beyond the familiar central processors with their cache hierarchies and memory and I/O buses to do what might be called asymmetric processing. READ MORE >

IBM to Try Selling Technical Services as Products
by Alex Woodie

When you think IBM technical services, chances are you think Global Services and the Fortune 500 companies that typically can afford these valued specialists. Over the next two months, IBM will be trying to change that perception, and its underlying reality, with the introduction of a series of bundles that combine the services of specialists with hardware and software, as part of a product-oriented sell designed to attract more small and mid size business (SMB) customers. But can Big Blue pull off the nimble transition? READ MORE >

As I See It: Pretexting
by Victor Rozek

"Pretexting" is defined as: A) Invading a country under false pretenses; B) Telling your spouse you're going to the store for a quart of milk and stopping for a quick beer on the way home; or C) Hiring a lot of lawyers to give the appearance of ethics and objectivity. (For the purpose of this pop quiz ignore the fact that attorneys are paid not to be objective and that lawyers are to ethics what politicians are to truth.) The answer could probably be any of the above, but if you picked "C" you're a winner, or in Hewlett-Packard's case, a loser. READ MORE >