Daily News : Computer Hardware

The Cray XT5, which comes in at number one in the 500 top supercomputers in the world, is getting a performance bump. The supercomputer's 37,376 processors are being upgraded from quad-core to six-core AMD Istanbul processors. The $20 million upgrade resulted in performance of 1.759 petaflops, or the equivalent of 1,759 trillion calculations per second.

"The most interesting thing about the Jaguar is that they have actually upgraded an existing supercomputer," says John Fruehe, director of Opteron product marketing for AMD. "And they have managed to double its speed."

Intel has agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion to settle several anti-trust lawsuits pending in Delaware and Japan. The lawsuits alleged Intel had paid several companies to limit their use of AMD processors in the companies' products. As a result of the deal, previous disputes of processor patent rights will be resolved by an extended, five-year cross-licensing agreement, and AMD will drop any litigation against Intel.

Intel has already been ordered to pay a €1.06bn fine over its anti-competitive practices this year, when the European Commission found the chipmaker had illegally tried to dissuade PC manufacturers and retailers from using AMD's rival products.

The guys over at [H]ard|OCP got a sneak preview of AMD's new Eyefinity technology and their upcoming GPU lineup. While there's not a whole lot of information about GPU power, the Eyefinity tech demoed seems like it has potential, especially in the high-end market. You will be able to seamlessly play your computer games across a total of six monitors per graphics card. I'm not sure how much I'm into the whole multi-monitor gaming setup, but apparently the sneak-peak was quite impressive.

It has been a good long while since I walked into a GPU demo that truly gave me a "Wow!" feeling. In fact the experience even surpassed "Wow!" It was more like, "Holy sheepdip Batman, that kicks ass!" I was simply blown away by the Eyefinity experience.

HP is showing off the Photosmart A640 and Photosmart Premium All-in-One, which are wireless and touchscreen printers. The printers will let you sync up with your desktop and laptop computers, as well as with mobile devices that have Bluetooth support. You can edit your pictures right on the printers' touchscreens. That sounds pretty cool as long as everything works. I haven't had much success with printers in the past.

The additions round out the line that includes the much-touted Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web -- for which today HP announced the opening of its "App Studio" and the HP Photosmart C4700 All-in-One Series and HP Photosmart Plus All-in-One, also previously announced.

PC World gives us an in-depth look at Intel's latest processors. The new entry-level and mid-range processors appear to be neutered versions of the Core i7-900 series, which was launched last fall. Improvements include an additional boost to "Turbo Boost," which will automatically bump your CPU up either four or five processor steps during heavy lifting, and an obvious help to your wallet.

Intel's full processor breakdown--including the axing of its Core i7 940 processor--includes some potentially confusing differences between the chips. So here's what you need to know.

The upcoming EEE book reader by Asus is apparently going to open much like a book. Why would you want such a feature? You could use one "page" as a virtual keyboard, or you could read a book while simultaneously surfing the web. Personally, if I want a book "interface" I'll get a physical paper copy, but this could come in handy if you like the virtual book concept. The new product will come with the premium version (all the cool stuff) and a lesser version that is still jam-packed with features.

As for price, we don't have hard numbers for you yet, but Asus is known for low-cost products like the ultraportable Eee PC, and speculation has the budget e-reader going for around $163.

The company WiTricity thinks that, in a few years, we won't have a need for certain types of power cables thanks to wireless power. Although not a new idea, the practice of wirelessly charging devices has just started to come about. I get tired of plugging in and unplugging my devices as they need to be charged. This technology could really come in handy.

Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity says that power transmission over several feet is an obtainable feat. He states, "Five years from now, this will seem completely normal."