Editorials

After the leak (and subsequent removal) of an alleged set of documents showing Microsoft’s plans for the next generation of Xbox (the Xbox 720?) complete with a 2013 launch timeframe we have started to try and piece together what is going on and if there is any credibility to the original posting. The original presentation appears to have been prepared in 2010 (again if they are real) and outline some very interesting inclusions for the gaming console. Some of these have actually appeared recently (like Smart Glass) while others are things we already know Microsoft to be working on. We should probably start off by saying that we do think the posted documents are real, but that they represent a direction that Microsoft has probably changed since these were produced.

We have talked at length about Facebook and some of the ways they take advantage of their user base. One of the last ones we talked about directly was the paid promotions idea that they came up with. For a few dollars you can promote your advertising to reach more of the people that like your page. We have called this idea a lot of things (some not suitable for printing) and likened it to paid spam.

There is a nice news story going around showing Linus Torvalds giving nVidia the finger over their support (or lack of support) for Linux. After watching the video and reading a few of the articles we have to say this about the whole story…. It is spot on, but it was not always that way. I can remember in the early days of the Opteron and Athlon 64 when nVidia (and AMD) had a pretty healthy Linux driver program.

When Lynnfield launched with its built in PCIe controller the motherboard makers of the world collectively groaned. They began to wonder how in the world they were going to run everything they want to put onto their motherboards with the limited number of PCIe lanes that were provided. The answer to this solution was simple, use a bridge chip… the problem was that there were not many that were up to the job. One of these companies that quickly became synonymous with high-performance motherboards was PLX. We first saw these on Asus motherboards (the P55 motherboards) and the system simply worked. Since then many more motherboard makers have adopted them and come to reply on PLX to keep things moving.