Barthos Computers Blog

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is a new software add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook that allows photographers to add details of the client and equipment for a photo shoot appointment in Outlook. This allows photographers to greater leverage the power of Outlook when managing their photography.

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot supports Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007 running on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Download: Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot

And it postpones free software update for older Apple TVs

Apple Inc. announced today that it has begun shipping the first MacBook Air laptops to customers, but the company acknowledged that a planned update to Apple TV has been delayed for up two weeks.

The company’s newest laptop, which CEO Steve Jobs called the “world’s thinnest” computer when he unveiled it two weeks ago at San Francisco’s Macworld, is shipping as of today, Apple said. The 3-lb. portable, which retails for $1,799 in its base configuration with a 1.6-GHz IntelCore 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory and a 13.3-in. LED-backlit display, is also supposed to be available at retail, in both the company’s own stores and its resellers.

Several calls to Apple retail stores in New York, Oregon and elsewhere, however, failed to turn up a MacBook Air. “We haven’t gotten our filthy little hands on them yet,” said a sales representative at the store on West 14th St. in Manhattan. When told that Apple had announced the Air’s availability, however, he added: “That’s good news. It means we’ll have them in in two days.”

He expects that his store will stock both the base model and the $3,098 configuration that features a slightly faster processor and swaps out the traditional platter-based hard drive for a faster 64GB SSD (solid-state drive) built from flash memory.

The computer and consumer electronics maker also revealed a delay in the free software update for current owners of Apple TV, the content-serving appliance that Jobs said is central to Apple’s entry into downloaded movie rentals.

“The new Apple TV software update … is not quite finished,” Apple said in a statement today. “Apple now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two.” When Jobs touted the revamped Apple TV on Jan. 15, he said the update would be delivered in about two weeks.

Apple did not provide a reason for the delay, saying only: “The new Apple TV software will be available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers within two weeks.” New Apple TV units – which cost $229 for a 40GB model and $329 for a 160GB device and sport the new software – ship to customers within 24 hours from Apple’s online store, according to information on the site.

Source: Computerworld

The NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver is a modified version of the NVIDIA ForceWare driver. The main purpose is to satisfy the users with better performance, image quality and compatibility. The NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver can enhance your experience in games, multimedia and general usage.

This project is especially suited for enthusiasts and gamers that want to have the best gaming experience. This driver includes NVIDIA’s new Control Panel. We?ve preferred to include the new Control Panel over the old one due to flexibility and stability reasons. The Driver has support for all GeForce/Quadro cards ? including mobile series (Go) as well.

Release Notes
* Initial Release
* Available for both Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit
* Wide Product Support (Desktop/Mobile)
* Improved Performance
* Improved Compatibility
* Improved Tweakcode
* Improved Resolutions and Refresh Rates Support

Supported GPUs
* GeForce 2-8 Series
* GeForce Go Series
* Quadro Series
* GeForce/nForce IGP (Integrated GPU) Series

Supported OSes
* Windows Vista 32-bit
* Windows Vista 64-bit

Download: NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver 1.16925

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday its fiscal fourth-quarter profit fell compared to the same period a year earlier, amid an ongoing reorganization of the troubled Internet company. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said its net income for the period ended in December fell to $205.7 million, or 15 cents a share, from $268.7 million, or 19 cents a share a year earlier. Meanwhile total revenue rose 8% to $1.8 billion. Net sales, which exclude payments Yahoo makes to other Web sites to acquire traffic, rose to $1.4 billion from $1.2 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had estimated Yahoo would report earnings for the fourth quarter of 11 cents a share, on net sales of $1.4 billion.

Last May, AMD introduced its much delayed Radeon HD 2900 XT at $399. In a highly unexpected move, AMD indicated that it would not be introducing any higher end graphics cards. We discussed this in our original 2900 XT review:

“In another unique move, there is no high end part in AMD’s R600 lineup. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is the highest end graphics card in the lineup and it’s priced at $399. While we appreciate AMD’s intent to keep prices in check, the justification is what we have an issue with. According to AMD, it loses money on high end parts which is why we won’t see anything more expensive than the 2900 XT this time around. The real story is that AMD would lose money on a high end part if it wasn’t competitive, which is why we feel that there’s nothing more expensive than the 2900 XT. It’s not a huge deal because the number of people buying > $399 graphics cards is limited, but before we’ve started the review AMD is already giving up ground to NVIDIA, which isn’t a good sign.”

AMD has since released even more graphics cards, including the competitive Radeon HD 3870 and 3850, but it still lacked a high end offering. The end of 2007 saw a slew of graphics cards released that brought GeForce 8800 GTX performance to the masses at lower price points, but nothing any faster. Considering we have yet to achieve visual perfection in PC games, there’s still a need for even faster hardware.

At the end of last year both AMD and NVIDIA hinted at bringing back multi-GPU cards to help round out the high end. The idea is simple: take two fast GPUs, put them together on a single card and sell them as a single faster video card.

These dual GPU designs are even more important today because of the SLI/CrossFire limitations that exist on various chipsets. With few exceptions, you can’t run SLI on anything other than a NVIDIA chipset; and unless you’re running an AMD or Intel chipset, you can’t run CrossFire. These self-contained SLI/CrossFire graphics cards will work on anything however.

AMD is the first out of the gates with the Radeon HD 3870 X2, based on what AMD is calling its R680 GPU. Despite the codename, the product name tells the entire story: the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is made up of two 3870s on a single card.

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TechSpot test all currently available Phenoms, from the 9600 Black Edition to the yet unreleased 9700 and 9900 models.

While Intel has been quick to regain a lot of the popularity lost during the past few years, that is no excuse to forget about the #2 company in computer processing. AMD made a name for itself with the original Athlon and Athlon 64 processors and it would only seem logical that its next generation product called Phenom (K10) was to raise expectations all over the place, and it did.

But as we know today, things did not go smoothly with the Phenom roll out, and to make things worse, Intel has barely stopped pounding with newer Core 2 CPU releases quarter after quarter.

The first batch of AMD Phenom processors finally went on sale last November, with the 9500 (2.2GHz) and 9600 (2.3GHz) models making a first appearance. Initial pricing was set at $283 and $251, however because their performance was lagging a bit behind its direct competition, AMD was quick to respond with a price reduction that set them at $251 and $209, respectively.

Today, two months after the release of these first processors, we are still left with the same 9600 and 9500 models out in retail. Due to the well publicized problems with the B2 stepping, AMD has held off releasing any further models until around March, when a new bug-free B3 stepping will become available.

This new stepping will refresh the current Phenom line-up, while adding a number of new processors. The Phenom 9500 will be replaced by the 9550 and the 9600 will be replaced by the 9650. Later on in the year, AMD is also set to release the Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors, clocked at 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz.

Although there has been a lot of negativity surrounding the new Phenoms, we have found them to be quite good overall. The biggest problem we current have with the processor is that it is not scaling very well, with the fastest announced processor being the 9900, which is going to operate at just 2.6GHz. Already we have found when testing the 790FX platform that if the Phenom is to stand any kind of chance against the Core 2 Quads it is required to at least match it at the same frequency. Then when you consider that most Core 2 processors offer serious overclocking headroom, it becomes clear that the Phenom has an even greater challenge ahead.

Today we will be comparing the Phenom 9500, 9600, 9700 and the 9900 (B2 Stepping) against the recently released Core 2 Duo E8400, as well as the very popular Core 2 Quad Q6600. An older Athlon64 X2 5200+ processor will be added to the mix as well.

Although the actual shipping Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors should be faster than what we will be showing you here, AMD has sent us engineering samples that in the meantime should give us a pretty good estimate of what to expect from them. The final retail versions of these two processors will be based on the improved B3 stepping. The Phenom 9500 and 9600 are retail versions that we have picked up from store shelves, so the performance of those will be identical from what you can get when purchasing either processor today.

See More at TechSpot

Analysts are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures in iPhone sales figures.

Analysts are mulling over Apple’s iPhone sales numbers and are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures.

Apple claims slightly over 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007 – yet AT&T this week revealed it ended the year with “just at or sightly under two million iPhone customers".

That two million has been boosted somewhat by an estimated 300,000-400,000 sales in Europe, analysts believe.

The discrepancy is that the 3.7 million iPhones Apple says it has sold and the estimated 2.4 million sold by its network partners still leaves 1.3 million of the devices unaccounted for.

That implies that around one in three iPhones are being purchased in order to unlock the device for use on other networks and/or for use with unapproved third party applications.

While it’s possible some iPhones were sold over the Christmas period but not activated immediately as new users (perhaps) worked to cancel their existing mobile contracts, the discrepancy still implies an active market for unlocked iPhones.

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook told analysts this week that the company believes the number of unlocked iPhones in the wild to be “significant,” but declined to furnish accurate figures.

Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research cites these figures in order to claim a substantial market in unlocked iPhones, and speculates this news may also mean a build-up in iPhone inventory.

“It indicates end-user demand for iPhone is lower than many investors may think based on Apple’s sales figure – and it points to slower iPhone sales in the current quarter, since much of this inventory is likely to be drawn down,” the analyst explains.

Jonny Evans, Macworld

A group of hackers calling itself “Anonymous” has hit the Church of Scientology’s Web site with an online attack.

The attack was launched Jan. 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help “save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing,” according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous.

Anonymous claims to have knocked the Church’s Web site offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which many computers bombard the victim’s server with requests, overwhelming it with data in the hope of ultimately knocking the system offline. True to its name, Anonymous does not disclose the true identities of its members.

The attacks were spurred by the Church’s efforts to remove video of movie star Tom Cruise professing his admiration for the religion, according to an Anonymous video manifesto posted to Youtube.

“For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form,” a creepy computerized voice states in the video. Anonymous followed up this dispatch with a second video blasting the media for failing to completely report the group’s criticisms of the church. This video was taken down Friday by Youtube, citing a “terms of use violation.”

Anonymous has managed to generate a measurable attack against the Scientology.org Web site. Over the past few days, the site was hit with several DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which flooded it with as much as 220M bps of traffic, according to Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks, whose company compiles data on Internet attacks.

The Anonymous campaign shows some level of organization. “220M bps is probably about in the middle of attack sizes,” Nazario said. “It’s not just one or two guys hanging out in the university dorms doing this.”

On average, the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and used up 168M bps of bandwidth. In the past year, Arbor has seen attacks on other sites hit 40G bps, or 200 times the strength of the Anonymous event.

Shortly after it was hit with the DDOS flood, the Scientology.org Web site was moved to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies, according to data compiled by Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company. Prolexic specializes in protecting companies from DDOS attacks.

A Prolexic spokeswoman confirmed that the Church of Scientology is one of the company’s clients, but declined to offer more details on the matter. The Church of Scientology did not return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

The secretive Church of Scientology’s practices, including its efforts to use copyright law to restrict the dissemination of information about the church, have engendered a lot of criticism within the Internet community. But one Web site set up to criticize Scientology – called Operation Clambake – called the DDOS attacks a bad idea. “Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card,” wrote Andreas Heldal-Lund, the Web site’s owner. “They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy.”

If publicity was Anonymous’ ultimate goal, the group has had some success. Late in the day Friday, seven of the top 10 stories on the Digg.com news-linking site related to Scientology or to Anonymous’ communiques.

Source: IDG News Service

The Microsoft operating system is improved by the soon-to-arrive service pack, but Windows Vista still is missing some features we’d like to see.
Tom Spring, PC World
With dissatisfaction over the Vista operating system persistent, can Microsoft right the OS’s wrongs with its upcoming Vista service pack?

Microsoft made the latest beta of Vista SP1 available to the public earlier this month, and after informally testing it for a couple of days, I find my PC is working more reliably–and some tasks especially file copying, take less time. But I was hoping for more out of SP1, such as bigger system performance gains and fixes for Vista annoyances including the oft-criticized User Account Control feature.

And if you are waiting for major improvements to switch to Vista, you’d better hope that Microsoft’s SP1 development team goes into overdrive before the service pack’s official release and gives you more compelling reasons to make the jump to the OS. Vista undergoes no major overhaul with the SP1 release I looked at.

By the way, Microsoft has said SP1 will ship sometime in the first quarter; sources recently said SP1 would appear in the next few weeks.

Key features in Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh (the downloadable beta’s official name) include improved reliability, security, and performance. In its description of SP1, Microsoft notes many tweaks are buried deep in the shell of the OS and include hard-to-quantify improvements–for example, support for a couple of emerging standards–Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT)–and better compatibility with third-party software and PC peripherals.
SP1 Boosts Reliability, Security, and Performance

On the reliability front, Microsoft says SP1 reduces the time it takes to boot and power down a Vista PC as well as the time it takes a PC to wake from hibernation mode, or to snap back after a photo screen saver has been running. Also fixed is the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL at boot up and the appearance of the password prompt.

Other fixes address the mysterious problem of how browsing network files eats up more network bandwidth than expected, compared to earlier version of Windows.

And lastly, Microsoft says it has devoted considerable effort to improving file and folder management. SP1 claims to cut the time it takes to extract files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder - but won’t say by how much.

However Microsoft does make some specific claims about performance gains. It says the service pack reduces by 45 percent the time it takes to copy files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system. A 50 percent gain is seen, Microsoft says, when copying files from a remote SP1 system over a LAN to a local SP1 system.

Microsoft’s TechNet has a full list of notable changes in Windows Vista SP1.

Source: PCWolrld

I bought a brand new PC with all the latest configurations spending a good lot on that. But obvious, I wanted the best out of it, and I got it too. Then, after a year or so has passed by, I find that it is not that fast as it used to be. It is not that brand new fast speed that you get with a new PC. With time, it gets more and more sluggish and it is particularly irritating when I am surfing the net or downloading something. What’s wrong with my PC and how do I fix my slow running computer?

You might be thinking that my problem is no different from yours. Almost all of you working out there must have experienced this problem and got a lot of different opinions and remedies from your buddies, most of which were good for nothing. I can say that you tried upgrading your RAM, formatting your PC, uninstall and reinstall your OS and worse, went for a change of your Mother Board and even the processor, but the problem still persists. All these I tried to fix my slow running computer but it did not help.

Here, let me give you an unwanted piece of advice which comes from my experience, the way I fixed my slow running computer. Perhaps you are pondering in the wrong direction. The problem does not lie in above components. The actual culprit is the Registry of your Operating System which might have gathered some scrap or got corrupted by certain spy wares or viruses.

The solution! It needs to be cleaned. The cleaning agent! Some Registry Cleaning Software could do the trick. Many people use this type of software with great results. You need to do this periodically (well, once in a year is good). This is something like servicing your car, try them out.

Corey is a self proclaimed Computer Expert. You can see detailed reviews on the top 5 registry cleaners and do a free scan or download at http://www.registrycleanersrated.com/ and see how I did Fix My Slow Running Computer.

Author: Corey J. Thompson

Steve Jobs once said that iTunes on Windows was like ?giving ice water to someone in hell?. Today, Apple is giving more ice water to the people of hell by releasing a public beta of Safari 3.0 to Windows users.

According to Apple, Safari 3.0 is 2 times faster than Internet Explorer and 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2 when loading pages. Safari 3 also executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.0.

What?s new?

Improved inline find. When using the Find Command in Safari (cmd-f), a find bar will appear on top allowing you to enter your search term. When a matched text is found, Safari will dim the page and show the selected match with an orange background with white border.
Drag and drop tabs.
Resizable text field ? Safari lets you resize textarea forms.
Windows and Mac users can now download the public beta from http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Refilling ink cartridges is now a relatively easy process that only takes some courage and practice to achieve consistent results. Many companies now sell refill kits that are bound to save you quite a bit of money in the long run. In addition, if you don’t want to go through all the hassles of refilling your own cartridges, you can now have them refilled for a fraction of the cost of a new cartridge.

One such company, Cartridge World, has locations in dozens of countries and has been in operation for nearly 20 years. Chances are, there is a location near you, so you won’t have to drive far to get a refilled cartridge. While they don’t actually refill your specific cartridge, you simply drop off your empty cartridge and buy a refilled cartridge in its place. The benefit of doing so, even if the cost is somewhat higher than refilling the cartridge yourself, is that they guarantee their products. If the cartridge does not perform as promised, you can return it within 90 days and have it either repaired, replaced, or your money refunded. Be sure to keep the receipt, however!

Another great location for refilling the cartridges is OfficeMax. Many of their stores now have ink refilling stations that make refilling much easier. Just bring in your cartridge and you can refill it right there and then for a portion of the price of a new cartridge. Staples and Office Depot so far haven’t followed suit, but hopefully they will offer the service to their customers in the future.

If you cannot find Cartridge World or OfficeMax around where you live, you can opt to buy remanufactured cartridges from a number of online companies. However, they too will not be as cheap as refilling the cartridge yourself. If you really want to start saving money, get a refill kit and do it yourself. It takes about 15 minutes to do if you haven’t done it before, but with practice you’ll be done in no time. The actual process is not as hard or messy as people tend to believe. The belief got started years ago when the refill kits were universal, so there was a high failure yet, and it persisted despite the changes in the way things are done.

Nowadays, you get a refill kit that is either specific to your cartridge or a few similar cartridges, so the instructions and the actual content of the kit is designed to make refilling your particular cartridge easy and painless. They all contain instructions that are attuned to your cartridge, so they are better sources of information than generic instructions found online. So, if you are considering refilling ink cartridges, now is the time to start saving money.

Want to discover how to find quality discount printer cartridges? Then make sure to visit http://www.findinkcartridges.com, a popular website that provides inkjet printer reviews, ratings and tips including information on recycle printer cartridges and the risks of refilling ink cartridges to your printer.

Author: John Synder

Looks like it didn?t take long for the first external build of Windows 7 to be leaked on to the interwebs. Black fumes were reported escaping Steven Sinofsky?s office earlier this morning after news Microsoft has delivered a Milestone 1 build of the next version of Windows to OEMs spread like wildfire in a dry grassy field on a hot summer?s day.

A member named ?kenipnet? on Neowin.net?s forums claims to have and installed this very build on his own desktop and laptop machines, and posted this short review on Neowin. For unknown reasons, it was later deleted by the poster, but fortunately the website administrator ?Neobond? has republished a cache version of the original post for all but Sinofsky to see. Of course there?s no way to prove this is true, but the facts appear consistent with ?other reports? of what the build contains. Take it with a grain of salt and a cup of tea, donuts sold separately.

“So here we?re at it, again

Over the weekend I finally managed to play with the build?. but disappointed.

One my primary machine, it asked for my SATA driver (never happened when installing Vista, as my drives were set as IDE in BIOS). After adding the driver from my USB thumb drive it would finally install. It didn?t boot after first restart, however.

On my laptop it installed perfectly, but with no driver support for the video card. After numerous tries I gave up in the end, so Aero is now left in the dark.

Oh well, so there?s nothing to show.

The build is 6.1.6519.

The GUI, as much of you have guessed, is very much like Vista. I don?t know if once the right video card driver is in place whether there will be flashy stuffs to surprise me. The system is very responsive, using barely 480MB of memory after boot.

Gadgets are now integrated into explorer. You can right click on desktop and select ?Add Gadget? or ?Hide Gadget?. There is a new gadget called ?Windows Media Center? that displays now playing information from the WMC. On the same menu, ?Display? is added above ?Personalization? which gives you direct access to display DPI settings. The page is much more polished than the one in Vista.

The start menu features a pin besides each item. Clicking on it toggles pinning/unpinning the item. Search in explorer is now states where you search within (usually being within the folder, as in Vista). You can now, however, adjust the size of the search box.

XAML fonts, called the ?Composite Fonts? are now added to the font folder. Perhaps WPF will be much more prominent in this release. It?s disappointing that I don?t have Aero running, or otherwise there might be some interesting stuffs to see.

A new application is added, dubbed the ?XPS Viewer?, no surprises, either.

Then finally, something interesting came up: the feedback tool. The feedback tool lists the ?pillars? of Win 7. You can see that Microsoft is aiming to fine tune this release as the case in XP rather than technological advancement as in 2K. highlights include?network aware?, with improved connection tools and detections. It will have the ability to detect which network you?re in and switch your settings and devices accordingly; With Live account, you can carry your IE settings and favorites with you; Gadget data caching; New Calculator, Paint, and Wordpad using WPF; install to desktop in 10 mins with only 1 reboot; instant streaming; better battery mileage, etc. All descriptions are scenario-based, so what will actually turn up is still yet to know.

Oh.. how could I miss this. A new boot screen does show up, finally. A full screen Vista-logon screen like boot screen with a beam scrolling across the whole screen near the bottom. Looks nice but reminds me of Win9x (well since XP we?ve been in the ?dark?, so surprised to see such a bright boot screen)!

I for one simply cannot wait for the new calculator. As long as no one gets into unrealistic release date guesstimations again, it?s all good fun. Although I don?t agree with what the poster described as a ?disappointment?, because there shouldn?t be any expectations. Let?s not make the same mistake twice.”

Author: Long Zheng

One of the major problems that occur with DVD ROMs is the it is not ejecting. You are trying to view your favorite movie and the it suddenly gets jammed mid way. The problem might well be with a faulty laser or something else that has gone awry with the disk. Would you then try repairing Digital Video Disk ROMs?

Nowadays, removable disk ROMs are available at throwaway prices. Therefore, it is more than probable that you would be able to strike a better deal for your new disk ROM. The new instrument would give you warranty as well as the stability of a fresh product.

The catch is that when you give your removable device to the service center they would take some time to correct the fault. Until you get your product back, you would not have the luxury of using an alternative or replacement. Your next best option is to repair this by yourself.

A number of ways are there by which you can repair your it by yourself without going to the service center.

- If the problem lies in a DVD tray not opening, then one of the easy ways out is to use a pin. If you look carefully at that ROM you are using, you would notice that just beside the indicator button there is a small hole. The hole is tiny and only a pin or something similar could be accommodated. If the front tray is stuck then push the pin inside the hole and wait for the sound of a click. Opening of the lock is indicated by the clicking sound.

- After running for a year or so, the DVD tray often becomes dirty and unreadable. The laser head also gets into a similar state. The best way out is to buy a disk cleaning kit, use it on the ROM. Insert the cleaning CD into the tray, and run it as an ordinary audio CD. After running for 3-4 minutes, the head of the laser will be cleaned. If the drive is still not cleaned, redo the whole process a second time. This is one of the less time consuming ways of repairing a Digital Video Disk ROM.

An alternative for using the head cleaning CD and fluid is the moist linen cloth. Soak a piece of dry linen cloth into spirit and make it moist. Then use the moist cloth to wipe the tray of your Digital Video Disk ROM and the laser head. Do not use cotton to wipe the head, as it might leave some of its finer fragments on it.

Suppose the disk you inserted is not showing up on the computer disk drive. The message given is ‘disk not found’. In such a situation, simply take out the DVD from the tray and wipe it with cotton or soft linen cloth. Wipe it in a clockwise circular fashion from the outer to the inner base. This would ensure that no harm is done to the data structure. When the disk is cleaned put it into the drive and run.

The best advice is to try repairing DVD ROMs by yourself first, and then call for help if necessary.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant for used DVDs, used movies, and used car stereos. You can find the best marketplace for used DVDs, used movies, and used car stereos at these sites for cleaning kit, laser head, linen cloth, used movies, and used car stereos.

Author: Victor Epand

San Francisco (CA) - AMD and IBM presented first details of its 45 nm production process at the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) today. While practical data for the consumer remains scarce, the two companies indicated that their production approach will bring performance improvements of about 15%.

Just about every two years, we are seeing a new process production process that pays tribute to Moore’s Law. And if you just got used to hearing about 65 nm processors (which were introduced in December 2005), we have to tell you that 45 nm will be the big story starting in about half a year.

Intel has been in the lead consistently when it comes to new production processes, but the company will see some increased pressure from AMD starting with the 45 nm generation. The first 65 nm processors were announced earlier this month, which means that AMD is currently trailing its rival by about a year; however AMD has put in place an aggressive transition to 45 nm, which is expected happen by mid-2008 or just about six months after Intel’s first 45 nm processors ("Penryn” core).

Intel has demonstrated a first functional 45 nm SRAM cell, the technologically which is typically first developed on a new production process, earlier this year. AMD has not yet announced the completion of such a product, but was able to provide a few details about its production process. According to papers presented at the IEDM, AMD will use ultra-low-K interconnect dielectrics, which are expected to help reduce interconnect capacitance and wiring delay. The company promises that the material will lower power consumption and increase microprocessor performance. As it appears, first SRAM prototype cells point to a speed increase of about 15%.

AMD said that it will continue to use deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) techniques to print circuits on its processors. Specifically, the 45 nm generation will be manufactured using 193 nm immersion lithography. Compared to previous lithography generations, AMD has developed in cooperation with IBM a technique that uses a transparent “liquid,” instead of regular water, to fill the space between the projection lens of the step-and-repeat lithography system and the wafer.

Lithography has moved into a remarkable phase of innovation over the past decade. DUV, which uses 193 nm light sources, has been in place since 1995, but was believed to run out of steam by 2003 or 2004. Back in 1997, Intel, Motorola and AMD created the EUV Limited Liability Corporation to develop an extreme ultraviolet process (EUV) to replace DUV at the 100 nm production level. Current estimates believe that DUV can be enhanced with lens materials and fluids to master even 32 nm structures. Beyond that, it appears that things are still somewhat uncertain. For example, Intel’s lithography roadmap currently states 193 nm lithography can be enhanced and applied to 32 nm chips and even to 22 nm devices, which are scheduled to arrive late in 2011. However, there is little doubt that DUV will be obsolete after that: An expensive to a new printing draws closer and, at this time, Intel engineers believe that EUV or a completely new method may be necessary for 16 nm processors in 2013.

Source: TG Daily