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Adobe Gives Up On Windows XP
Adobe said today that the current CS6 version of Photoshop will be the last one to support the operating system.
Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty said in a blog post that the Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. He said that modern performance-sensitive software requires modern hardware graphics interfaces that Windows XP lacks, in particular a way to tap into the power of GPUs. By only working on newer operating systems and hardware Adobe can bring in significantly better performance.
Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers, he said.
Adobe hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we’re headed with future releases of Photoshop. It is hard to see how any serious user of Adobe products could be using an XP machine anyway. The move away from XP started with CS 5 which only ran on Vista.
Intel Going High-Performance
Intel has been hinting that it is developing high-performance lower power server chips to speed up cloud services or data-intensive applications like analytic.
Apparently this will involve the integration of a converged fabric controller inside future server chips. This will make server communication faster while helping data centers operate at peak efficiency.
Raj Hazra, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group said that Fabric virtualises I/O and ties together storage and networking in data centres. If you add in an integrated controller you get a wider pipe to scale performance on cloud platforms. He said that the integrated fabric controller will appear in the company’s Xeon server chips in a few years as part of Intel’s cunning plan to bring the controller to the transistor layer.
Samsung Goes HSA
It seems that the IFA 2012 show in Berlin was a good show for AMD as well, or to be precise, it was good for the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation founded by AMD, ARM, Texas Instruments, Imagination and Mediatek. Samsung has joined up alongside six new members.
The HSA Foundation was created back in June at AMD’s Fusion Developer Summit as a foundation that will deliver new user experiences through advances in computing architectures in order to improve power efficiency, performance, programmability, portability across computing devices and general support of software across a broad spectrum of devices in order to remove the need for code rewriting for various different platforms.
Senior Manager of Technology Marketing at AMD, Sasa Marinkovic, noted on the AMD blog that there is no doubt that the HSA Foundation is off to a good start and in addition to Samsung, they are more than happy to welcome six additional companies including Apical, Arteris, MulticoreWare, Sonics, Symbio and Vivante.
AMD Details Vishera
AMD will launch three eight-core processors led by the AMD FX 8350 but it also plans to launch two six-core processors for people who like to spend a bit less.
The AMD FX6350 is a 125W six-core with a 3.9GHz base clock and 4.2 maximum turbo core clock. It comes with 14MB of cache, supports DDR 3 1866 and comes in AM3+. Naturally this is a 32nm SOI product just as its predecessor as AMD is not ready for 22nm fun yet.
The runner up is a 3.5GHz clocked six core that turbos to 4.1GHz, all that while staying in 95W TDP envelope. The name is FX 6300 and these two boys should launch together. The rest of the specification is the same as with faster brother. These two processors will replace the Zambezi based FX 6120 and FX 6100. These parts as well as FX 6200 that is also a part of Zambezi legacy are all selling between $190 and $250 which is definitely not a lot of money for quite powerful processors.
Microsoft Silent On Windows 8 Pricing
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With just two months remaining before the retail launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has yet to provide pricing on its new OS.
Analysts today blamed Microsoft’s attempt to accommodate both desktops and tablets with Windows 8 for the lack of information.
“The delay in releasing pricing is all about uncertainty around the PC market and competition from Apple,” argued Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. “Microsoft needs to price Windows in a way that looks smart versus Apple’s OS X, doesn’t leave money on the table with commercial PC customers, and enables OEMs to compete better with the iPad.”
The delay in pricing Windows 8 is real: During the Windows Vista and Windows 7 cycles, Microsoft unveiled retail prices weeks before each OS made the RTM, or “release to manufacturing,” milestone, and four or more months before retail sales started.
Microsoft disclosed Vista prices 58 days before that edition’s RTM, and 148 days before retail availability. Windows 7′s prices were made public 28 days before RTM and 120 days before its on-sale date.
Is Nokia Sitting On A Gold Mine?
August 31, 2012 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Mobile phone company Nokia might be suffering, but the big technology companies are hoping that it does not wake up to the fact it is sitting on a troll’s gold mine.
Recently Nokia flexed its muscles and orderied Apple to pay Nokia a royalty fee for each iPhone sold. Logically it could clean up if it hit Google with something similar over its Android operating system. According to IP expert Florian Mueller, Nokia holds the most patents relating to the cutting-edge 4G/LTE technology.
This puts it in a position similar to what Microsoft had with its 2G/3G technology which allowed them to collect half of all the profits of each Android device sold. This gave Microsoft more than $3.2 billion per year so this indicates that Nokia will make triple this amount in the future. Nokia has sued HTC, RIM and View-sonic and their defence against Nokia is weak.
To make matters worse Nokia signed a 2010 cross-licensing agreement with Motorola which precludes Google from transferring the numerous patents it recently acquired from Motorola Mobility. This means that any protection that Google might have gained from owning Motorola Mobility are not counted. But this is only the tip of any iceburg and indicates how the entire mobile phone industry can be stuffed up by patents.
Recently a Google executive claimed that a standard smartphone contains more than 250,000 separate patented technologies. All of these have to be paid before a product can be released. What is worrying is that Nokia own a vast majority of this patented technology.
AMD Cuts Radeon Prices
After the recent price cut back in July, that included a $50 price cut for HD 7970, HD 7950 and HD 7870 graphics cards, AMD has apparently decided to cut some of these prices even further taking the HD 7950 3GB graphics card down to $320, or just in line with Nvidia’s recently release GTX 660 Ti graphics card.
AMD has already dropped the HD 7970 from $479 to $429, HD 7950 from $399 to US $349 and the HD 7870 down from $349 to $299. The new price cut skips the HD 7970 graphics card but includes the HD 7950, HD 7870 as well as the 1 and 2GB versions of the HD 7850.
The most important is probably the price cut for the 3GB HD 7950 which battles it out with Nvidia’s recently released GTX 660 Ti. The HD 7950 3GB is, according to the report, will receive a $30 price cut placing it at $320. The HD 7870 2GB graphics card got another $50 price cut pushing it down to $250 which probably makes it one of the most interesting mid-range graphics cards on the market.
AMD also decided to drop price on 1 and 2GB version of the HD 7850 graphics card taking them down by $40 to $190 and $210, respectively.
Will Microsoft Sell The Surface RT For $199?
August 23, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Microsoft’s Surface for Windows RT tablet will sell for $199 when it ships on Oct. 26, according to an unidentified source in an Engadget story.
At that price, Microsoft would surely be selling below its costs, analysts said. However, Microsoft could take the loss in hopes of making up revenues on apps and media sales for the device.
Also, Microsoft would be trying to make an impact against the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire sold at the same $199 price, since Microsoft arrived arrived late to the tablet game.
Engadget said it learned the price from an inside source at Microsoft’s recent Tech Ready15 conference, where launch details for Surface were announced.
Microsoft said the Surface tablet would be priced in-line with Windows RT tablets from other makers such as Asus, which hasn’t announced a price. However, given the components in the Surface and other Windows RT tablets, analysts have suggested it could cost more than $600.
Toshiba Cancels Windows Tablet
Toshiba on Tuesday officially confirmed what Microsoft recently hinted at: It won’t be delivering a Windows RT-based tablet anytime soon.
“Toshiba has decided not to introduce Windows RT models due to delayed components that would make a timely launch impossible,” the Japanese electronics company said in a statement to Bloomberg earlier today. “For the time being, Toshiba will focus on bringing Windows 8 products to market. We will continue to look into the possibility of Windows RT products in the future while monitoring market conditions.”
Last June, Toshiba showed two Windows RT-based concepts — a tablet with a docking station and a “clamshell” design that resembled a keyboard-equipped ultralight notebook — at Computex. The devices were not operational, however.
Based on those concept devices, most had included Toshiba in the slowly-growing list of OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that were believed to be preparing Windows RT hardware for launch this year or early next.
Will Qualcomm Buy AMD?
This wild rumor is not completely without merit, as Qualcomm did acquire a piece of AMD, or AMD’s handheld graphics business to be precise, and it would not be too surprising to see Qualcomm after the whole company sometime in the future.
Samsung on the other hand is not an entirely impossible choice, but at this point it won’t be acquiring AMD either.
It looks like market players want to see the acceptance of Windows RT that will finally prove how important ARM processors really are and knowing AMD, the worst is behind them, as 2012 was the year of many chances, cancelation and anything but good execution for them.
Meanwhile Qualcomm is doing great in the ARM market, although its Snapdragon S4 line suffers from insufficient 28nm production, but due to its on-chip LTE implementation the chips are sought after, especially in the United States market.