the body of a very slow loop
Yep, the rumors have turned out to be true.
The new company will retain the AMD name and Hector Ruiz as CEO. Cool. Welcome to the company, ATI’ers! I can hardly wait to put our collective heads together and build some killer products. The possibilities are endless.
Yes, it’s really true this time! Woohoo!
In this interview, Ilfak Guilfanov (author of the IDA Pro disassembler and the unofficial WMF patch) indicates that x86 systems with a per-page no-execute flag were protected from the recent WMF vulnerability.
If this is true, I hope the AMD marketing department issues a press release. This was possibly the most dangerous security threat all year, yet anyone who bought an AMD system in the past year was completely safe.
The first x86 processor with a per-page no-execute flag was the AMD Opteron. We called it the NX-Bit (and later, EVP). Subsequently, Intel implemented the execute-disable or XD-Bit (which is, of course, the exact same thing). Eventually Microsoft stepped in and further complicated clarified things by choosing the neutral moniker DEP (data execution prevention).
Last week AMD launched the Athlon 64 FX-57, which is currently our fastest shipping 8th-generation core at 2.8GHz. It’s also a “rev. E” core, which means it has a better memory controller, support for SSE3, and process improvements that reduce operating temperature.
I finally got around to reading some of the tech reviews and stumbled across this gem on HardOCP:
Why did we not take the time to compare an Intel CPU in our comparison? The simple fact of the matter is that while Intel would have you believe that they do make “gaming” processors, the AMD Athlon FX-57 simply kicks the crap out of anything Intel makes in the realm of gaming.
If you read HardOCP, you know that Kyle is anything but an “AMD fanboy”. Coming from him, the above carries some serious weight.
Well it’s official: AMD has filed a Federal antitrust lawsuit against Intel in US District court. I’ve had anecdotal evidence of Intel’s anticompetitive behavior for years, but this complaint contains a whole bunch of new details. Here’s one gem of a quote:
In 2002, when AMD set out to earn a place in HP’s commercial desktop product roadmap, HP demanded a $25 million quarterly fund to compensate it for Intel’s expected retaliation. Eager to break into the commercial market, and to earn a place in HP’s successful “Evo†product line, AMD agreed instead to provide HP with the first million microprocessors for free in an effort to overcome Intel’s financial hold over HP. On the eve of the launch, HP disclosed its plan to Intel, which told HP it considered AMD’s entry into HP’s commercial line a “Richter 10†event. It immediately pressured HP into (1) withdrawing the AMD offering from its premier “Evo†brand and (2) withholding the AMD-powered computer from HP’s network of independent value-added resellers, the HP’s principal point of access to small business users for whom the computer was designed in the first place. Intel went so far as to pressure HP’s senior management to consider firing the HP executive who spearheaded the AMD commercial desktop proposal. As a result of Intel’s coercion, the HP-AMD desktop offering was dead on arrival. HP ended up taking only 160,000 of the million microprocessors AMD offered for free. As of today, HP’s AMD-equipped commercial desktops remain channel-restricted, and AMD’s share of this business remains insignificant.
Woah.
If anyone’s interested, the complaint is quite readable and pretty interesting. Highly recommended.
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