Embedded IT journalists will soon be on the loose

Hi,

During the last Iraq war the U.S. forces had a great number of embedded "media people" calling themselves journalists.

Intel & other corporations seems to have a bunch of "media people", to reformat & print their press releases. They also have this bad habit of calling themselves journalists.

Embedded seems for be a good way of describing these . Or perhaps something based on this to "get in bed" with the corporations. Perhaps something GULAG related. Since we already have the "GULAG of chips" worked in as a good metaphor.

Dissident is perhaps a good way to describe "proper jounalists" today. In the coming war between Intel and AMD it's probably going to be very important to expose the various types of journalists. When Intel realise what AMD's Opteron is capable of doing, they are going to overclock their FUD-machine.

I see a lot of "sponsored benchmarketing" in the future, if AMD can overtake Intel again.

Vegar

Windows for AMD 64 needs to be out, and now

Someone is missing the point here. This OS needs to get out so that the chicken can hatch the egg, because that is where this is all stuck. Which came first? Without an OS, not many can begin to take stock of the situation, and when the OS finally does arrive, it will take yet more time to get software support. True, the 32bit apps stuff is having its teething difficulty too, but it's the same chicken & egg ballgame. Ditto for the 3rd party hardware drivers. Microsoft has enough for software development to at least get started.

Every day its delayed pushes back software development. This is not just another OS. This is the very first 64 bit Windows for the masses. Even in its form right now, it is better for all concerned to have it available in a crude form than not available at all, and that is simply because too much time has already passed. If another 64 bit XP were already in existence, then this delay would be understandable, but there is not. IA-64 does not count here.

Bill Gates: Clean this thing up best you can and get it out in an albeit rough form. Get an IDE together and let the mini-app folks do what they do best...create. You want something to sell that no one else has, here it is.

AMD: Wake up and smell the coffee. You are getting vapored here, and your promise of 64 bit computing for the masses is only half-delivered. Bottom line: You can't sail a half a ship that is stuck in dry dock.

Name withheld

Bias Holes

"As for anti-Intel bias, you're quite wrong. For every email I get accusing the INQUIRER of anti-Intel bias, I have another accusing us of anti-AMD bias."

Well, it's obvious then - you're both anti-Intel and anti-AMD!!

Tai

AMD is being Honest

Dear Mike,

Only a newbie to this site, but been in computers for many years. I currently use Athlon 2600XP and MSI K7N2 M/B. I have 2 computers with almost the same configuration and neither runs any hotter than 42 degrees C. So why the hell would I switch to Intel? For many years I have seen Intel's ads on TV, heard all the hype and watched with keen interest what happens between AMD and Intel's 64 bit CPU. The only ads I ever saw for AMD were in the form of bill boards dotted around the place about a year ago, no dirty tricks, no "Our product is definately superior", no scams and no real problems in recent times. It's exactly like Microsoft and Linux, or OS9 /OS10, it's no wonder that people are starting to shy away from Microsoft and go with a cheaper and fingers crossed, less buggy operating system.

The fat cats had it too good for too long.

Paul

The Borg

Kick the "BORG" ass off Intel boyz!

Make em pay for every inch of space they invade,

we will not be assimailated...damn you!

By Go AMD

Peltiers

Just thought I'd comment on the bottom one of your letters, about Peltiers and P4 heatsinks. It intrigued me to investigate why Intel & AMD doesn't do this.

The very simple answer is that the Peltier+heatsink actually makes things worse than just a heatsink.

It's easy to think that a peltier device simply is cooler on one side, and that's it. But if you look further into it, it's actually also so that the OTHER side of the peltier is HOTTER than the ambient temperature. If you look at it from another perspective, it's fairly obvious: the peltier device is fed with electricity. This electricity is what generates the "coolness". But as we all (should) know from our physics lessons, all energy remains, it can not be destroyed, only converted. In the end, all electric energy will become heat somewhere and somehow.

Peltier devices are quite power-hungry, they can easily draw some 50-100W. So, add that 50-100W to your existing 100W, and you suddenly have a much bigger heatsink to cope with the extra heat. Or a bigger/faster fan, of course...

The whole point of a Peltier device is to CONCENTRATE a cool-spot in one place, but with the cost of adding more total heat.

Another problem with cooling with a peltier device is that it tends to cause condensation, similar to air-conditioning systems. This may not be a problem in most offices that have a relatively low humidity indoors, but in same peoples homes, humidity can be quite high. Condensation causing water on the top of the CPU would not be a nice thing in the long run. If Intel (or AMD) supplied these devices.

And finally, we have the problem that a regular heatsink is a few dollars (if you buy millions at a time), and peltier devices add cost to this, however little this may be. When you sell millions of something every penny on each is worth tens of thousands on the bottom line.

Name supplied

More Peltiers

Hello,

I'm responding to the letter quoted below.

Peltier coolers were in vogue several years ago as a means of extreme cooling. Unfortunately, they have since fallen out of grace as surface temperatures have risen and die sizes have shrunk. This is mainly do to how peltiers work.

First off, even an 'efficient' peltier isn't a cooler. The heatsink/fan assembly attached to the peltier is, but the peltier itself is just a type of solid state heat pump. Now, being limited by the laws of thermodynamics, peltiers actually give off extra heat - just at one end. That extra heat is proportional to how much heat is being 'moved' by the peltier, and thus how much power is actually flowing through it. This whole situation makes peltiers very inefficient. On newer systems where case temperature is a factor, the extra heat output by a peltier can be very damaging: what good does it do you to cool your processor better if the whole machine (chipset, GPU, hard drives) overheat?

Jon Franz

Yet More Peltiers

Hi Mike:

Having a quiet read of the Inq today when I spied the letter page - http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13435 - and the nice letter about Peltier devices and how the chipsters should use them.

"Top end peltiers can get about 55°C difference between the two ends....put a fan on that hot end and just keep it below 130°C and you'd have a comfortable processor -- probably alot more designs possible w/less fan power, though I don't know what the energy efficiency of the peltier is, itself, but I thought it was fairly efficient -- no fan necessary, no pump, no moving parts....

Surprised some process manufacturer hasn't patented the idea yet..."

The energy efficiency, well, isn't.

The Peltier device is a semiconductor junction that causes a temperature difference between its sides when current is passed through the junction, or (irrelevantly here) displays a voltage potential when the two sides are presented with a temperature differential. It is not a magical icon forged in some mysterious mountain that can defy thermodynamic laws. To transport a watt of heat across a peltier junction takes about 1.5 watts of electrical power. This electrical energy does not conveniently disappear, it gets turned into heat like usual. The inconvenient result is that the hot side of a peltier needs a heatsink more than twice as effective as the one needed to cool the device under the peltier to the same temperature it would have been without the peltier. Getting it colder requires even more effective heatsinking. The cold side temperature is kept at a temperature directly proportional to the hot side - if you have a 25C differential you must keep the hot side cooler than 25C above your target cool side temperature... and heatsink performance is proportional to the temperature differential between it and the cooling air...

Peltiers were popular with overclockers when processors made about 50W - the PIII was a good candidate. Even then the most practical cooling solution that didn't involve hearing protection was water cooling with a large surface area radiator and a (still far from quiet) fan.

Peltier cooling on a 150W chip is possible. One would need a heatsink sized for about 500W, plus about 350W of good clean DC power for the peltier device alone. This can't be quieter or smaller than the thermal solution for the naked chip.

Dave Macaulay