I hereby patent sitting at a computer

I have recently been awarded a US patent that gives me exclusive rights to anyone who SITS while using a computer. If you sit while using your computer, I would respectfully suggest that you send me royalties in the amount of $1 US every time you take your seat to use your computer. If I don't start receiving the checks, the US trial lawyers association has offered to take the case to sue you and anyone else who infringes on my innovation.

Regards,
Jim

This is getting ridiculous... hopefully our patent office wouldn't allow a patent like this... what's next? Patenting lists?

Sure, patent the specific software they have come up with... but patenting having overlapping categorys to sort through music is absurd!

Oh, let me look at my music collection. Notice i have song A, which is on album 1 and in music genre alpha. Did i just violate a patent?

It's the bleeding obvious!

Name supplied

Letter about a Bladecenter letter

You obviously have a gripe against IBM blades, but before you verbalize your opinion, get your facts straight.

If you bothered to cache the entire IBM article, you will note that this power issue is ONLY when you have a power supply failure. Throttling power to the blades is a design point until the power supply is replaced. When both power supplies are functional, you have no concerns.

The reason it has not made the trade rags as you say, is because others have done their homework and realized that. Needless to say, you are the one that looks foolish here, not IBM.

Surely with world-leading market share in blades, don't you think this issue would have been noted by now since there are in excess of 200,000 of these blades installed?

You are obviously listening to HP propaganda, who can't give away their blades. You wanna pick on blades, go beat up HP, now there is a pile of junk if I have ever seen one. More than happy to send a list as a past HP blade user - now a very happy IBM Blade user.

Name, email address supplied

Intel sews multicore threads together

I've been writing multi-threaded applications for over twenty years and I cannot see how general applications can leverage multiple cores by adding more threads.

Threads have a very important role to play, of course. Most workstations run a few hundred threads yet processor bottlenecks are usually associated with atomic actions, i.e. those not transmutable to a multi-thread design. Most threads execute with minimal processor usage. Very many threads just sit around idly waiting for the call to do work. If the thread queue length is sustained above two threads per processor then the processor has become a bottleneck but not because there are too many threads, just that the odd one is compute-bound. Such conditions usually persist for short periods and are helped by a faster processing core or by just one extra core.

Servers will always benefit from multiple execution units, as will graphics and scientific systems. Most other applications are, however, inherently sequential and when they use multiple threads it is to achieve asynchronous actions that would stall the application if executed sequentially. Such asynchronous actions typically do not incur much processor use; they simply involve threads waiting on some form of i/o to complete, such as a server response.

Anyone who has used a dual-processor workstation knows the benefits of having two processing cores but four or more cores looks like a waste.

It looks like processor designers are looking at 65 nm and 45 nm and wondering what to do with that real estate. The obvious answer is to use it for memory cache. I've no doubt that people with more imagination will conceive entirely new architectures. Then we will see AMD and Intel abandoning core preponderance while they scramble to jump onto that bandwagon!

Warmest regards,
Jeff Lawson

Vanderpool: a Paradise on Earth

Vanderpool is a fine little town, just up the road from Utopia, another fine little Texas town. It's right on the clear springs of the Sabinal River and just a hop, skip and a jump from the fabulous Frio river. Vanderpool is also right near the Lost Maples State Natural Area, a fine little park for hiking and camping.

When you come out to Central Texas for an article on AMD, be sure to take a spin through this area?

Gumbo

Charlie,

Vanderpool is a bit of paradise in more ways than one. If you search for Garner State Park, which is a CCC era camp along the river near Vanderpool, you'll find a great place.

The drive out there sucks though

Danny Johns

Dell puts logo pressure on Microsoft, Intel

The issue of stickers on notebooks has always been a sore one for me. I can understand Dell's frustration--or the frustration of any other notebook manufacturer. In my opinion, it goes beyond manufacturing costs and bottlenecks.

Manufacturers spend (or pay someone else) large amounts of money to research and design a package that is functional and aesthetically pleasing. It's a piece of artwork. Then along comes the Big Bad Wolf, and they have to plaster "Designed for Windows xxx" and "Intel Inside" advertisements on their work.

It's certainly not something Dell, or Lenovo, or Gateway, or HP/Compaq want to do--for the aforementioned manufacturing and aesthetic reasons. How do you know the manufacturers don't like the stickers?

Look on their websites. You won't see a single sticker in *any* of the pictures of their notebooks and desktops.

Name supplied