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Next Intel processor will hit 64bits
INTEL expects to activate security features and 64bit extensions within the Prescott core when it ships PC and server processors based on Prescott and the Grantsdale chipset in the second half of the year, Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini said during Intel’s spring analyst meeting in New York.
Prescott supports the NX (no execute) feature that will prevent worms and viruses from executing dangerous code through the exploitation of buffer overflows, Otellini said during a Webcast of the event. AMD’s Athlon 64 and Opteron processors also come with this feature, which requires software support from the Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, expected later this year.
Intel has built technologies into other processors that it disabled at launch and turned on over time as software became available to support those features. Hyperthreading is a recent example.
Extensions technology was disabled in current Prescott processors but will be activated in forthcoming CPUs. Intel’s first server and workstation processors with 64bit extensions to the x86 instruction set will launch in June with products expected in July from server vendors, Otellini says.
The chips based on Intel’s Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) will include chips for dual-processor servers based on the Nocona core and single-processor servers and workstations based on the Prescott core. The Nocona core is virtually the same as the Prescott core, but Nocona comes with additional reliability features and is subject to tougher validation testing.
Multicore processors enable software developers to develop more powerful applications, Otellini said. For instance, the software developer could dedicate one core to a specific application task, and run the rest of the application on another, he said.
The shift toward dual-core processors will get under way in 2005 for desktop, notebook, and server processors. By 2006, all of Intel’s IA-32 server processors, more than 90 per cent of its Itanium processors and more than half of its processors for performance clients will be dual-core chips, Otellini said.
Yahoo boosts email storage
Not to be outdone by Google’s recent bold email offering, Yahoo says that it plans to dramatically raise the storage limit given to its free email users while at the same time bumping its premium subscribers up to a “virtually unlimited” capacity.
It was not revealed as to exactly how much storage capacity premium subscribers will receive but the spokesperson confirms that it is “on par” with Gmail’s 1GB limit.
“Basically it will be hard for users to perceive that there is a limit,” the spokesperson says.
Worm worries
Despite the arrest of an 18-year-old German who confessed to releasing the Sasser worm, antivirus companies discovered a fifth version of the Sasser variant. That variant, Sasser.E, attempts to warn people whose computers are vulnerable that their systems have not been patched for a widespread Microsoft Windows vulnerability exploited by the program.
While antivirus experts are not positive whether Sasser.E started spreading before or after the arrest, Microsoft said it believes that the fifth version of the worm was already released before the teenager was arrested.
The worm — dubbed Dabber — has started spreading to Microsoft Windows systems but likely won’t have a large impact.
Dabber may be the first worm to attack systems, using a flaw in a previous malicious program. In this case, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server installed by Sasser to enable the worm to transfer itself to new hosts has a buffer overflow vulnerability.
Red Hat updating OS versions
Red Hat, the top-ranked seller of the Linux OS, has expanded chip support for its corporate version of the open-source operating system and plans a major change to Fedora, its hobbyist product, in coming days.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Update 2, already released now, the Linux seller added support for Intel’s 64-bit “x86” processors and IBM’s Power processor-based JS20 blade servers.
In addition, the update adds 64bit versions of developer tools for Intel’s Itanium and Xeon chips and AMD’s Opteron.
The new version will be free to those who meet qualifications and to existing subscribers. — Sci-tech World Report
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