According to VR-Zone, Nvidia may launch the GeForce 9800 GT starting in June. At least two versions are planned: NVIDIA_G92.DEV_0605.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT"NVIDIA_G92.DEV_0614.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT" The first will be equipped with a 55nm revision of the G92 while the second will use the current version produced in 65nm. In terms of frequencies, they will be 600/1500/900 MHz for the GPU, shader core and memory, respectively, or in other words, the exact same ones as those of the GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB which is also equipped with the G92. The only thing is that with the latter, Nvidia had only activated 112 scalar processors of the 128 which are found on the chip. We can therefore hope that the firm with the green chameleon will have the good idea of using what already exists and activate all of the units available in order to differentiate the two " GeForce x800 GT "generations other than just by their names.

	In a 54 page PDF document titled "Strategies for Growth: 2008", Toshiba presents in black and white its intention of integrating the SpursEngine SE1000 in certain "media center" type laptop PCs. You may recall that the desktop version of this card in PCI Express x1 format has 128 MB of XDR DRAM and a processor derived from the Cell (which equips the Sony PS3)set at 1.5 GHz which enables it to encode and decode MPEG-2 and H.264 in Full HD in hardware. While this may seem like a risky bet, Toshiba should have its reasons for believing there is a market for such a laptop, and if it is the case, big industry names such as Corel and CyberLink should help them to break into it.

	Yesterday, AMD announced the arrival of five new quad core Opteron HE. They set themselves apart with an ACP (Average CPU Power) of 55W, which according to the latest information corresponds to a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 79W for AMD. There is therefore a large difference between these two measurements, but unfortunately this distinction seems to be rather poorly understood. The Opteron 2344 HE (1.7 GHz - $209), 2346 HE (1.8GHz - $255) and 2347 HE (1.9 GHz -$377) are destined to dual processors while the 8346 HE (1.8GHz -$698) and 8347 HE (1.9 GHz -$873) fit onto motherboards with 4 or 8 sockets.

	It’s no secret that AMD is currently resolving "executive" type problems and is in the process of re-architecting (sic!). At any rate, this is what Dirk Meyer, the current president and CEO of the firm, has been saying for weeks now. AMD is currently going through (profound?) changes and departures, promotions and nominations at the top of the hierarchy have been multiple. Yesterday, it was Randy Allen, up until now in charge of Server & Workstation, that was named head of the Computing Solutions Group. However, there was especially the announcement by the Sunnyvale company of the creation of a Central Engineering organization that will be co-directed by Jeff VerHeul, vice-president of design engineering, and Chekib Akrout who arrived straight from Freescale after a successful stint at IBM where he worked on the Cell and PowerPC,. Allen Sockwell was promoted senior vice-president of human resources and Chief Talent Officer. Finally, Mario Rivas and Michel Cadieux, respectively executive vice-president of the Computing Solutions Group and former senior vice-president and Chief Talent Officer, have left the company. All of this probably isn’t unrelated to the rumors circulating which mention a restructuring plan that should soon be announced. You may recall, this will involve separating the company into 2 or 3 entities, one handling manufacturing and the other(s) design. Today Digitimes affirmed that AMD may sub-contract out some of its CPU production starting in the second half of the year to TSMC, which already produces ATI GPUs. This will enable AMD to sell off some of its equipment and lower operational costs.

	We seem to be witnessing an interesting race of information "leaks" on the GeForce 9900 GTX and its GPU, the GT200, these past few days. Information proliferates, it’s matched up and overall it sounds credible. 3D files have notably been leaked on the XtremeSystems forum and an extract of these files corresponds to the following: You may have noted the presence of a companion chip, the NVIO (on the left), like on the first GeForce 8s and which manages the video inputs and outputs. We don’t really know why Nvidia opted for this solution which theoretically is more costly than integration to the GPU. Very weakly resembling some tubing on the upper left hand side is the diode cable like we find on the 9800 GTX. Otherwise, the size of the two cards are identical both measuring 27cm. There are also 8 memory chips on the back of the PCB corresponding to a 512 bit memory bus (sixteen 32 bit chips). However, note that sixteen 32 bit chips can also be used to put more memory on a 256 bit bus by pairing 2 chips, although this seems highly unlikely in this case. PCOnline has published photos of the card’s cooling system: All details concerning the chip are not yet known, but it should be the first derived from GeForce 8 architecture which introduces some real differences. This will probably be in the form of 64 bit support in floating points for CUDA and slightly modified architecture to increase calculation power more than anything else. Moreover, VR-Zone, which also adds to the pool of information, goes in this direction by publishing details that correspond to the same rumors we’ve heard. According to their inside source, the GT200 will have 10 partitions (versus 8 in the G92) for a total of 240 scalar processors. This suggests that each partition has 24 scalar processors (3x8) while up until now this number was at 16 (2x8). This enables significantly increasing calculation power by leaving other parts (i.e. notably those that handle texturing) on a similar level. In short, the only things left are the frequencies, price and especially performances. However, for this we will have to wait for the beginning of summer.

	Intel has announced the retirement of the Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and QX6850. Former flagship CPUs in the Core 2 family, they have lost their entire reason for being with the arrival of the Penryn core. The last orders can be place until September 5th of this year and deliveries can be made until May 8th, 2009. The Celeron 220 is also at the end of its product life with retirement planned at practically the same time, deliveries will be carried out until May 15th, 2009. The D201GLY2 motherboard in µATX format, upon which this CPU is soldered will also disappear. This is bad news for SiS which supplies the main components, the 662+964 duo, and with which it could thus boast about selling chipsets to the Santa Clara giant.

	Expreview and OCWorkbench have published some information on the X58 "Tylersburg", the chipset for the Bloomfield, the high end version of the Nehalem processor. Similar to what has been done at AMD since the K8, the Northbridge will have a much less important role than in the past because the memory controller will be integrated to the CPU. Say goodbye to the FSB (Front Side Bus) as it will be replaced by Quickpath interconnect (QPI). One important detail is that Intel has generously planned for what is necessary for the GPU(s); with 32 PCI Express 2.0 lanes we can hope that future multi-GPU solutions from ATI will function optimally...and the time it will take the Larrabee and its successors to be perfected.