Core i5 750 - Core i7 860 and 870

Goodness gracious great processors of fire... can you believe it has been nearly a year ago since Intel released the dazzling Core i7 series processor? What an instant hit directly from the start they were. The problem with Core i7 however is that it is a slightly expensive platform, especially in combination with X58 chipset based motherboards... also your average X58 motherboard will set you back a good 250 USD alone, add to that the cheapest 289 USD'ish Core i7 920 processor and then well, you'd still need to build the rest of the PC.Read more : http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-750-core-i7-860-870-processor-review-test/

Radeon HD 5870 1 GB Gets First Listing

Nearly a week ahead of its launch, Dutch retailer Salland Automatisering briefly listed a Radeon HD 5870 1 GB accelerator from a now-masked manufacturer (we are fairly sure it's Sapphire, looking at its part number "21161-00-50R" that resembles the part number scheme of other products from this manufacturer). Since Salland's pricing is usually consistent with those of other major European retailers, it gives a coarse indication of what you would have to pay for a Radeon HD 5870 1 GB: 268.90 EUR (excluding taxes), 319.99 EUR including taxes applicable in The Netherlands. AMD's Radeon HD 5870 1 GB accelerator is slated for September 23. It also comes in a 2 GB variant priced slightly higher, and an Eyefinity Edition planned. Salland was quick to withdraw the listing.

Source: Techpowerup.com

First Android phone already vulnerable to attacks

Less than a week after the release of Google’s T-Mobile G1 smart phone, security experts detected a serious security flaw in its Android operating system that leaves it wide open for hackers to launch drive-by attacks on users’ devices.The security vulnerability, detected by researchers at Baltimore, Maryland-based Independent Security Evaluators, follows last week’s release of Google’s T-Mobile G1 phone Oct. 22, which is powered by the Android operating system. Researchers at ISE posted an advisory warning users of the potential security threat that would allow their mobile devices to be compromised or exposed if they visited a malicious Web page.
“These phones will currently ship with the vulnerability present and may pose a security risk to their users until and update becomes available,” said Miller in his posting. According to the advisory, Google Android relies on more than 80 different open source packages. And the security error stems from a buffer overflow vulnerability in some of the older, more vulnerable versions of the open source software. Subsequently, an unsuspecting user could be successfully exploited simply by accessing an infected Web page using with a vulnerable operating system, experts say. Once a user in infected, attackers could then obtain access to any personal information accessible from the victim’s browser — including cookies, information entered into Web application and saved passwords — in order to steal a bank account numbers, Social Security information and other sensitive data.

New Flying Lens Could Save Optical Lithography,Replace Blu-ray

With the never-ending quest for greater processor power, the hardware industry's sharpest minds and biggest companies are pouring money, time, and effort at the challenge of extending the life of Moore's Law. Moore's Law, which states that the maximum number of transistors on a given chip area doubles every one and a half years, is close to reaching its limit due to the problems with controlling light at ultra low nanometer resolution. While Intel, AMD, IBM, and others race to 32 nm and beyond, this wall looms ahead.Now new research from the University of California Berkeley could buy Moore's Law some more time, and could pave the way for the next generation of ultra-tiny transistors. It could also pave the way for an optical drive replacement for Blu-ray. The research was led by Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and David Bogy, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering. Its new approach uses a metal arm similar to that on a record turntable or in a hard drive. It also utilizes a tiny lens that literally flies above the surface of the chip wafer. With the new design, the chip makers were able to form chip designs 80 nm wide, which could easily be made much smaller. Better yet, the wafer was spun at a rate of 12 meters per second, meaning that production would be very fast. Professor Zhang explains an overview of the process, stating, "Utilizing this plasmonic nanolithography, we will be able to make current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful. This technology could also lead to ultra-high density disks that can hold 10 to 100 times more data than disks today."The basic concept of photolithography is similar to film development for photography -- light triggers a reaction in a chemical layer. In photolithography this reaction is typically a hardening. Caustic baths such as acid can then wash away areas of semiconductor that are not protected by the hardened photolithographic mask. Through multiple steps a circuit is built, which can contain various metal and semiconductor components."With optical lithography, or photolithography, you can instantly project a complex circuit design onto a silicon wafer. However, the resolution possible with this technique is limited by the fundamental nature of light,” explained Liang Pan, a UC Berkeley graduate student working with Zhang and Bogy, and one of three co-lead authors on the associated paper. “To get a smaller feature size, you must use shorter and shorter light wavelengths, which dramatically increases the cost of manufacturing. Also, light has a diffraction limit restricting how small it can be focused. Currently, the minimum feature size with conventional photolithography is about 35 nanometers, but our technique is capable of a much higher resolution at a relatively low cost."The new method uses a phenomenon where metal electrons vibrate when exposed to light. These tiny vibrations are smaller than light's normal wavelength and are known as evanescent waves. By exploiting these, light can be concentrated into patterns theoretically as small as 5 to 10 nanometers. The test lens was 100 nm, and used a silver plasmonic lens with a concentric ring pattern.During photolithography the lens flies above the surface of the substrate. Similar to flying lenses developed by UC Berkeley's Computer Mechanics Laboratory, the flying lens contacts the surface similar to the needle on a record player arm. However, unlike a record player the lens is not physically touching -- it uses light instead to "touch" the surface. The tiny lens uses the same lift mechanics used by aircraft, except on a microscopic scale to stay at a constant 20 nm above the surface.Professor Zhang added,”The speed and distances we're talking about here are equivalent to a Boeing 747 flying 2 millimeters above the ground. Moreover, this distance is kept constant, even when the surface is not perfectly flat."The scan speed is very fast -- approximately 4 to 12 m/s in the testing. Further, up to 100,000 tiny patterned lenses could be packed into the arm, allowing many parallel writes.Best of all the new process is extremely cheap compared to conventional methods. Technologies such as 45-nm lithography equipment are extremely expensive due to complex lens and mirror setups needed to concentrate the light. With the new method less expensive slightly larger wavelength UV light can be used to excite the plasmonic lens. With the only price component being the plasmonic lens setup, costs for shrinks would drop dramatically.Professor Zhang is hoping the technology is put to use in commercial scale production within 3 to 5 years. He states, "I expect in three to five years we could see industrial implementation of this technology. This could be used in microelectronics manufacturing or for optical data storage and provide resolution that is 10 to 20 times higher than current Blu-ray technology."The research will be reported in the December issue of Nature Nanotechnology.Coauthors on the study are Werayut Srituravanich, a former Ph.D. student in Zhang's lab and currently a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, and Yuan Wang, a UC Berkeley graduate student in mechanical engineering, and Cheng Sun, a former graduate student in Zhang's lab and currently an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Northwestern University.The research was funded in part by a National Science Foundation Center for Scalable and Integrated Nano-Manufacturing grant.

HP Previews its All-In-One Multi-Touch PC

HP has been showing off its latest creation, the Touchsmart IQ518, an all-in-one PC with a 22" widescreen multi-touch panel. The expected launch price is to be around $1800 (US) and HP has said Pegatron Technology will be handling its manufacture. There have been no other details in terms of specification as yet but it is likely that systems such as this are preparing for the launch of Windows 7, as it has already been said that Microsoft will be implementing touchscreen technology as a key aspect of the upcoming OS.