News Blog

As has been widely reported (for example, by EDN Magazine and both Brooke Crothers and Dan Ackerman here at CNET), Intel has delayed the first customer shipments (FCS) of its "Montevina" chipsets, part of the new Centrino 2 platform.

The delays are pretty short, however... a matter of just a few weeks.

Intel attributes the delays to two independent problems: one with FCC certification of the 802.11n WiFi feature in the chips (just "paperwork," Intel says), and one with the integrated graphics engines in some models.

Intel's probably right about the WiFi certification problem. I've been through the FCC certification process (for electromagnetic interference (EMI), at least); there sure is a lot of paperwork involved.

For the graphics problem, I see a couple of possible explanations.

Intel could have discovered a design flaw in the first production units severe enough to prevent them from being shipped, which would have caused a substantial delay while a new run of production units was completed. (See my earlier blog post, "Design flaws, defects, and faults", for an explanation of how design flaws are related to product defects and faults.) This delay would have been largely hidden by the usual rounds of testing, but perhaps it just used up a little more time than the slack that was available in the schedule.

Or perhaps there was a design or manufacturing flaw that didn't require trashing the first production run, but which did require some additional testing and qualification to reject specific problematic parts. This could be caused by slower or hotter operation than expected, for example. Such a problem would cause a shorter delay-- just the extra testing time. A statement from Intel in the Crothers post referring to "re-screening" suggests this is the situation here, although potentially that statement could also describe testing a second production run to ensure the problem has been solved.

I find it interesting that this problem is related to Intel's new graphics engine, which is certainly the most important element of the new chipset. Intel's previous integrated graphics products have been criticized for not really being up to the challenges of running Windows Vista, including by Microsoft itself, but due to pressure from Intel, Microsoft certified these chips as "Vista Capable." That's technically true-- I've used integrated-graphics platforms under Vista myself-- but the resulting shortfalls in performance and features probably discouraged many new Vista users.

Graphics engines are very complicated, and getting more complicated every year. Intel started out well enough in the graphics business when it worked with Real3D (now defunct) to develop the Intel740, a discrete graphics chip, but 18 months later it found itself already 18 months behind ATI and NVIDIA, and fell back to selling only integrated-graphics chipsets, where the graphics component is worth only a few dollars in incremental revenue.

Intel plans to get back into the market for discrete graphics chips in 2009 or (more likely) 2010 with "Larrabee", a multi-core CPU in which some cores are optimized for graphics processing. I think Larrabee will turn out to be a technical disaster, but Intel has leveraged its market domination to turn previous technical disasters into financial windfalls. Think of the Pentium 4's "Hyper-Pipelined" design, for example, which was too hot and too inefficient, ultimately forcing Intel to bring its predecessor, the P6 design, back from the grave several years later. Intel's current graphics engines, however, are barely worth selling today, and they won't be worth reviving after Larrabee has run its course.

In an open-source business, a vendor's biggest competition often derives from a freely available, "community" version of its product. By extension, an open-source vendor's biggest competition comes from the systems integrators that provide implementation services around that vendor's community software.

Crippling this competition--so tempting on the surface--tends to cripple all the benefits that come from it, including facilitated adoption of the software, and lower sales and marketing costs.

The question, then, is how to foster unfettered adoption of one's open-source software while still preventing would-be partners from undermining one's own ability to profit from the software.

Over the past two and a half years, my company, Alfresco, has struggled with this tension and has, I believe, come up with some winning strategies and policies. I share them here, in case they're helpful to you in your own efforts to build an open-source business.

Inexpensive circuit boards can work reliably with the fastest AMD quad-core Phenom processors when modifications are made, according to a report. This comes in the wake of mismatch issues between Phenom chips and select motherboards, as reported by Asia-based vendors.

Gigabyte AMD 780G-based motherboard

(Credit: Gigabyte)

The mismatch between high-end Phenom processors and lower-end motherboards became an issue when some Asia-based manufacturers attempted to plug in 9750 and 9850 Phenom processors into boards based on AMD's 780G chipset. The chipset is attractive to board makers because of its relatively high-performance integrated graphics. (A motherboard is the main circuit board in a PC.)

On Monday, AMD spokesman Jake Whitman said this to CNET's nanotech: the circuit's blog: "What people have done, mistakenly, is paired a 780G (chipset-based) motherboard with the higher frequency Phenom--the 125-watt Phenom."

AMD recommends using a higher-end 790 chipset-based motherboard.

Because of the higher thermal envelope of 125-watt Phenom chips, heat can cause stability issues on less-expensive motherboards, according to a report at tech Web site AnandTech. One of the problems is that some of the less-expensive boards claim support for 125-watt chips.

Against this backdrop, AnandTech demonstrated that motherboards with the 780G chipset will work reliably--with some modifications.

Boards were tested from Gigabyte, Jetway (PDF), ASRock, and Biostar. The tested boards from all four companies support the 125W processors.

"Each and every manufacturer, along with AMD, agreed that cooling the MOSFETS properly was critical to the successful operation of the board at stock or overclocked speeds with the 9850BE--and to some degree, the 6400+ X2," AnandTech said.

(A MOSFET, or metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, handles voltage regulation on the motherboard.)

"This is based on the board manufacturer utilizing a properly developed power delivery system that is designed to handle the 125W TDP processors and in the future, the upcoming 140W TDP Phenoms."

AnandTech said it got around the problem by installing a second fan or a modified heatsink. "We installed a secondary 120mm fan that provided enough airflow over the board to ensure stable operation under our load scenarios."

During a February earnings conference call, Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, repeated one thing over and over: graphics are in and the central processor is out. There is some truth to this. And Intel's plans for future silicon technology address this head on.

Pat Gelsinger, general manager of the digital enterprise group at Intel, spelled out Intel's strategies for future graphics technology on Monday. He addressed the higher-octane technology that will be built into future "Nehalem" processors and the highly sophisticated "Larrabee" chips that will be offered as "discrete" or standalone products.

First, some perspective. Intel--not Nvidia or ATI--is the world's largest supplier of graphics chips for PCs. The reason is simple. Intel-integrated graphics silicon is shipped in tens of millions of PCs every year. It's a low-cost--and relatively low-performance--solution that many PC vendors opt for. But that doesn't mean Intel is the premier supplier of sophisticated mainstream PC graphics technology. That distinction goes to Nvidia and ATI. Intel is a non-player. This is evidenced by the proliferation of Nvidia- and ATI-based graphics board reviews at enthusiast Web sites and the bigger role that graphics processors from these two companies play in handling increasingly complex visual applications.

And, as the Nvidia CEO has intimated, unless Intel responds aggressively, this could make Nvidia a direct Intel competitor in the future. Nvidia's newest GeForce 9600 GT GPU rivals, at the very least, Intel chips in complexity. It has 64 stream processors--each individually clocked at 1625MHz--and a 256-bit memory interface running at 900MHz and contains more than 500 million transistors.

NvidiaGeForce 9600 GT boards: each Nvidia chip has over 500 million transistors.

(Credit: Nvidia)

To address this, Intel intends to boost integrated graphics performance in Nehalem processors and, for the first time, offer a discrete (standalone) graphics product for high-end markets. Both Nehalem and Larrabee are targeted at the 2009-2010 time frame.

So, how will Intel improve Nehalem integrated graphics? Not surprisingly, more transistors and more bandwidth, according to Gelsinger. "Largely, integrated graphics is as much die area as you can throw at it and as much memory bandwidth as you can give it," Gelsinger said. "So, could we equal discrete graphics performance with integrated graphics? Of course." Gelsinger went on to say that Intel will focus on "more transistor budget, leading-edge process technology, and more memory bandwidth dedicated to integrated graphics."

Logistically, this will be accomplished by turning today's three-chip CPU into a two-chip CPU, he said. That means moving the graphics silicon onto the same die with the main processor. More specifically, the part of the chipset referred to as the "north bridge" is going away. The north bridge contains the memory controller and graphics controller. Both of these components will be moved onto the CPU die. The other part of the chipset referred to as the "south bridge" will remain separate. This includes I/O related components.

But Gelsinger said there are definite limits to what can be done with integrated graphics because of the big power and transistor requirements for high-end discrete (standalone) graphics products. They have "a very different price point and die envelope and power envelope. Some of the (discrete) graphics chips alone are 150 watts. We build whole platforms for less (power) than that," he said.

This is where Larrabee comes in. Gelsinger said that Larrabee--a "many core" chip--will target Nvidia and AMD/ATI's discrete graphics. "Obviously, if we're going to be competing in the discrete graphics marketplace, we think we're going to have to compete well...in terms of traditional benchmarks like 3D Mark," he said, adding that Intel will support traditional graphics interfaces such as DirectX and OpenGL. A big potential plus: since Larrabee cores will be based on the Intel Architecture, developers who already write code for standard Intel microprocessors can develop for Larrabee without learning a completely new architecture.

Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.

At the company's Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.

The New York Times is releasing a beta of an AIR application called ShifD (seen here on an iPhone), which enables users to move content--including Web links, notes, and Web maps--from their desktop computer to a mobile device.

(Credit: New York Times)

Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned.

Adobe has been working on AIR for at least two years, when Kevin Lynch, now Adobe's chief technology officer, first publicly spoke about it. The company plans to build AIR versions of many of its Web applications, including photo-imaging application Photoshop Express and Premier Express for editing video, he said.

AIR is software for making Web applications appear like more like desktop programs. Applications can run offline, access data on a person's hard drive, have a desktop icon, and run without the need of a browser.

Developers can use any Web development kit, such as Ajax frameworks, to write applications that will run on AIR or they can use Flex.

These Web-native desktop applications have become an active area of software development--Adobe says that there are over 100 AIR applications--and alternatives to AIR are starting to appear.

The Mozilla Foundation, makers of the Firefox Web browser, launched a project called Prism that brings offline access to Web applications.

Lynch said that AIR is far ahead of what Prism offers but he expects many other platforms that bridge the Web with desktops to emerge.

"We're just getting back the lost treasures of the desktop that we lost when we went to the Web," Lynch said.

He said AIR is not competitive with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems; it's a layer above operating systems that enables people to use Web development techniques and toolkits.

A version of AIR for Linux is expected later this year, he said. Adobe will also create versions that run on mobile devices in the future.

Salesforce.com on Monday will release a free toolkit that will allow developers to write applications on its Force.com hosted development platform using Flex and AIR. The main driver for bringing offline access to Web applications is mobility, said Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at Salesforce.com.

The New York Times, for example, has created an application with AIR that will enable people to transfer content, such as Web links and maps, from their desktops to mobile devices.

"Our customers want offline access because they have users in mobile contexts like people in hospitals with tablet PCs or retail settings like supermarkets," Gross said. "I think we're going to see a variety of new technologies around how to effectively create offline Web applications."

Adobe made the low-end edition of Flex open source to lure developers who prefer open-source and standards-based software because it does not tie them to one proprietary technology or vendor.

Lynch said that Adobe intends to use open-source software and practices more. He noted that many pieces of its development products are already open-source, including the scripting engine in Flash, which was donated to the Mozilla Foundation for inclusion in the Firefox Web browser.

Lynch, who was named chief technology officer of Adobe earlier this month, said Adobe's different product teams are changing to embrace rich Internet applications, AIR, and online services to complement its existing products.

"This is a very, very important time in Adobe's history. We've made some big shifts--Postscript, multimedia, the Web," he said. "Rich Internet applications is one of those important transitions."

Hosted business application provider Workday said Wednesday that it has acquired Cape Clear to create an integration on-demand offering.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Launched in 2006 by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, Workday sells online versions of traditional ERP business applications, such as human resources management and accounting.

Cape Clear's standards-based integration software, called an enterprise service bus (ESB), will form the basis for an integration on-demand offering the company plans to add to its products. The integration service will allow people to exchange information between Workday applications and those from other providers, including Microsoft Office programs.

Workday said it would continue to support Cape Clear's existing customers who use the software on-premise. Cape Clear founder and CEO Annrai O'Toole will join the company as vice president of integration.

Started in 2001, Dublin, Ireland-based Cape Clear was one of the first companies to build a product on nascent Web services communications protocols. Its job got harder once all of the large software providers built their own ESBs.

In his blog, O'Toole said the acquisition signals how integration software technology is essential to on-demand software and services-oriented architectures.

"It is this vision, that integration is at the heart of hosted applications--and not an on premise, bolt-on like other enterprise vendors believe--that separates us from the rest of the pack," he wrote.

XAware, an open-source data integration developer, announced Tuesday that it raised a $7.4 million third round of funding.

That translates into a total of $26.4 million to date in venture funding for XAware, which develops open-source software tools and components designed to reduce complexities in accessing and integrating data from a variety of sources.

VSpring Capital, an existing investor, led the third round, which included contributions from hedge fund GMT Capital and existing investors Sequel Ventures, ITU Ventures, and BMJP. Back in 2002, ITU Ventures led XAware's first round of funding, which raised $2.1 million.

"In the short time since the XAware open-source project was announced, we have had an exceptional number of visitors to XAware.org and thousands of downloads of XAware 5," Tim Harvey, XAware chief executive, said in a statement. "This funding will enable us to focus on rapidly expanding our community development and support activities."

Electron microscope image of early prototype.

(Credit: University of Texas at Dallas)

The University of Texas at Dallas has entered the race to produce a more powerful semiconductor using a $1.75 million grant from DARPA to develop a microchip that is "faster than anything" on the market today.

The new technology will still be silicon-based but will use photons rather than electrons to speed things up, according to a UT press release.

"This research is intended to produce a completely new class of components that could have a revolutionary impact on information engineering," Professor Duncan MacFarlane said. "The photonic integrated circuit (PIC) we're developing will be a versatile, programmable, scalable device that will process photonic signals and provide a sophisticated and practical interface with existing electronics."

Total internal reflection mirrors are fabricated using focused ion-beam micromachining.

(Credit: Erik Jonsson/School of Engineering and Computer Science, UT Dallas)

The military's vociferous appetite for hotter technology and market demand for more powerful chips are driving the research. "The current roadmap for semiconductor evolution envisions the need for just such an innovation in coming years, when current design and manufacturing processes are expected to encounter physical barriers to continued miniaturization," according to UT. The project, known as PhASER (photonic analog signal processing engines with reconfigurability), will develop a fundamental PIC that can act as a reconfigurable building block in forming a high-throughput, low-power, analog signal processor and overcome the limits of conventional silicon-based processing technology, according to DARPA.

The research will take place in UT's new nanophotonic development facility. Collaborators include Southern Methodist University and Dallas-based photonics technology company Photodigm. Northrop Grumman and Raytheon will evaluate the technology's performance in high-tech antenna systems and laser radar, according to UT.

(Credit: Vision Systems International)

The new combat helmet now being tested may become an integral part of the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, replacing the traditional jet fighter head-up display with computerized "symbology" projected directly onto the pilot's visor.

In addition to keeping pilots on top of navigation, weapons and other aircraft, the Helmet Mounted Display System will superimpose a binocular-wide field-of-view, infrared image of the world below, allowing the pilot to "look through" the cockpit floor at night. This will let a pilot turn in any direction and still be able to see a virtual heads-up display, replacing the information that is currently seen only at the front of the cockpit.

If it works, the F-35 will be the first tactical fighter jet in 50 years to fly without an HUD. The British Royal Air Force's Centre for Aviation Medicine is evaluating the helmet, which is manufactured by Silicon Valley-based Vision Systems International and Helmet Integrated Systems.

They may want to add the following label. "Warning: In case of crash, remove helmet before approaching natives for assistance."