X-bit labs

Monday, February 7, 2005

Foxconn Enters PC Barebone Market. Foxconn's e-Bot Reviewed

Foxconn has always been one of the world’s largest makers of mainboards, but was little known by general public, as it mostly concentrated on dealing with large OEMs. In 2004 the company decided to shift its business model towards retail channels and began to offer products that may interest actual end-users. Following the general trends, the company could not pass by the growing market of small form-factor systems with an attractive e-bot product. But is the company’s first PC barebone really good?

“Honestly, the Foxconn e-bot does so many things well, that it’s a shame that its performance isn’t up at the same levels as other Small Form Factor PCs that are in the same price range.  It’s quite clear that Foxconn knows how to build a unique device, and there are design ideas used with the e-bot that will undoubtedly find their way into other manufacturer’s plans,” reports HotHardware web-site, who has reviewed Foxconn’s e-bot.

• HotHardware: Foxconn e-bot Small Form-Factor PC.

A Key Intel P6 Architect Returns to Intel Corp. AMD’s K10 Architect Goes Back to Intel

Andrew F. Glew, who was one of the key architects behind the Intel P6 architecture that was introduced commercially in 1995 as Intel Pentium Pro chip for servers and is currently used in the high-performance low-power Intel Pentium M processors, is reportedly back at Intel Corp. after some time at Advanced Micro Devices.

At AMD Mr. Glew proposed advanced microarchitecture: multithreaded, multicluster, with multilevel everything: multilevel schedulers, multilevel instruction window, multilevel store buffers, multilevel register file, and multilevel branch predictors; supporting Implicit Multithreading/Speculative Multithreading/Skipahead Multithreading (IMT/SpMT/SkMT) and lightweight user level forking, according to his CV.

Ace’s Hardware web-site reports that his architecture was rejected by AMD, but perhaps a return to Intel will give him the opportunity to explore some of the ideas. But even before joining AMD, he was an Intel man who worked on a cancelled project which was meant to extend the IA32/x86 instruction set to 64-bits, The Inquirer web-site reckons.

• Ace’s Hardware: Andy Glew Returing to Intel?
• The Inquirer: Intel Man Shows He’s Sticky, Sticky Glew.
• Andrew F. Glew CV.

AMD and Microsoft to Explain Enterprises Benefits of 64-bit Chips. AMD, Microsoft Partner to Move Enterprise Customers to 64-bit Computing

Advanced Micro Devices announced that it will partner with Microsoft to bring the first x86-based 64-bit servers to Microsoft Technology Centers (MTC) worldwide. Microsoft plans to deploy and use enterprise-class HP ProLiant DL145 and DL585 servers powered by the AMD Opteron processor at MTC locations in North America, Europe and Asia. These systems will enable MTC customers to migrate, test and validate 64-bit applications while preserving their investment in 32-bit applications.

“Working with Microsoft in the MTC is a key step in supporting our enterprise customers as they continue to optimize their IT infrastructures on AMD64 platforms,” said Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and general manager, Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD.

“The impressive combination of the AMD Opteron processor and Microsoft’s 64-bit operating systems brings the flexibility and scalability needed for enterprises to realize the full benefits of 64-bit computing,” Mr. Seyer added.

“Using AMD Opteron processor-powered servers in Microsoft Technology Centers was an obvious choice since the centers were created to bring the best hardware, software and expertise together to solve customers’ problems. With AMD64 technology in the MTC, our teams will have the ability to help optimize customers’ 32- and 64-bit .NET applications all on a single platform,” said Adam Hecktman, director Microsoft Technology Centers-Chicago.

• Enterprise IT Planet: Microsoft, AMD Evangelize 64-bit.
• AMD’s Press-Release: AMD and Microsoft Partner to Move Enterprise Customers to 64-bit Computing.