Remember when I told you that THX buried Blu-Ray? Back then, I mentioned this was only a personal opinion of a THX scientist, and it seems I was right in thinking that its company may not have exactly the same opinion. How did I conclude that? Well, it's very simple - on Friday, THX said they are fully supporting the blue discs, and it was all a misunderstanding...


I know I will say again what I said in the article above, but I must do it - Mr. Fincham, the scientist interviewed about the Blu-Ray, is absolutely right. To be honest, I am tired of handling optical discs, and replacing my CD/DVD collection with one of SD cards or something like that in the near future sounds interesting, but let's get back to THX now, shall we?

Graham McKenna, senior manager of global public relations at THX, said "Neither THX nor Mr. Fincham have ever stated that “Blu ray has no chance” or is on the demise. Quite the contrary, THX is dedicated to supporting Blu-ray with many new technologies, certification programs and other initiatives. Mr. Fincham was simply discussing the future of movies on downloads, optical discs and other emerging media."

In the end, the Blu-Ray will probably have a shorter life than the DVD or the CD, and it won't ever reach their popularity, and it may also be the last widespread optical disc format, but I am sure some time will pass until we get to say "RIP, Blu-Ray..."

History is usually written by those that won, but when it comes to the IT industry, there are also losers that should be remembered. For example, think about 3dfx and their innovations in the 3D graphics field - they lost, they are gone, but they won't ever be forgotten. Unfortunately, I don't think the same can be said about the HD DVD format, which finally got its last rites less than 2 days ago...


Last week, the HD DVD Promotion Group formally dissolved itself, following Toshiba's decision to end HD DVD hardware production, which was announced last month. Anyway, despite the fact that some people still have HD DVD-capable players, Microsoft, Paramount Studio or Universal Studios already announced they are pushing aside this format, so HD DVD may be forgotten earlier than expected.

The funny part of the whole story is that, while HD DVD lost the war, Blu-Ray, the winner, lost it too - the way of the future seems to lead away from "spinning storage" methods, and it's all a matter of time - while the classic HDD will be slowly replaced by SSDs, the Blu-Ray format will probably lose the battle with digital movie downloads and flash memory.

Who said silicon transistors are half-past dead and graphene is the alleged successor? I guess somebody likes silicon too much, and I’m not referring to lady power-ups, though that kind of silicon is going to be around for some more time, no doubt. Silicon transistors are on their way to be resurrected with the aid of new scientific breakthroughs.

A bunch of scientists have discovered a cool way to bring that sexy silicon back: it can now be made into bendy chips. We’ve seen that stiff silicon devices are pretty powerful and already reached their highest potential, but they might not be the best fit for some situations such as advanced medical sensors. A team of scientists from University of Illinois has worked out a way to stick 1.5 micron-thick layers of silicon onto rubbery plastic in a way that actually makes it stretchable.

It’s a cool idea, but do we actually see some practical applications for bendy silicon integrates? Well, stretchiness allows the material to be used in more places than simple "flexible" circuits. Think about it this way: once it's scaled up into real devices it could be used to make wearable computers, or to dot the exterior of aircraft with sensors. The Illinois team also predict it would be perfect for making sensors that wrap around the brain, making a powerful detector for seizures and other brain activity. I rekon a body-suit computer could prove useful.

One of the factors that lead to a bad view of their microprocessors in early to mid 1990s was the fact that AMD allowed virtually anyone to manufacture mainboards for them, while chipsets were also designed and manufactured without being closely supervised by AMD engineers, and this lead to the existence on the market of a lot of instable boards that lead people into thinking AMD processors were the problem. Now, it seems AMD and Intel are pushing their own processors and chipsets, sometimes assorted with their own integrated graphics processors too, and in less than two years we'll have full AMD or full Intel platforms, this leaving NVIDIA outside the chipset market...


Well, since NVIDIA can't simply let go, they made a very smart move, deciding to offer core-logic for VIA's processors. According to various reports, NVIDIA is set to offer chipsets for VIA's Isaiah processors, but while this hasn't been officially confirmed yet, we can't bet on it.

The tricky part of the whole deal is that, if the rumors are true, VIA will stop producing chipsets for its own processors, while S3, wholly-owned VIA subsidiary, will continue to design and manufacture discrete graphics chips (anyway, as long as they are not going to sell them in any other place than the official page, I don't see S3 grabbing back the market share lost, unless they are going to release a killer card with perfect drivers and low price...).

For now, NVIDIA and VIA are quiet regarding this matter, so I can't really say what's going to happen, but with the desktop and mobile market in AMD and Intel's hands, moving in the low cost area may be a wise decision for NVIDIA.

AMD’s Phenom X4 desktop CPU’s can’t really keep up with Intel’s Penryn quad-cores, though they aren’t far behind. I don’t understand why AMD keeps releasing CPUs that aren’t at least on par with Intel’s array. Yes, they might be a tad cheaper but, they are also a tad behind, so what’s the idea AMD?

However, let’s not forget about the triple-core Phenoms. These could cut it with a nice price/performance factor, if AMD knows how to handle the price war. Speaking of whitch, the Phenom X3 8x00 tri-core CPUs have been officially released and should be available shortly. AMD kept their promise with the Q1 release, launch them in the second to the last day of the quarter.

The good news about the triple-core Phenoms is that they perform almost as well as a quad-core and they clearly cost less. In this sense, Phenom X3 is nothing more than K10 with one core disabled, but AMD believes that this CPU has a great future, especially when paired with the latest AMD 780G chipset.

The Phenom X3 family debuts with the 8400 and 8600 models. 8400 is clocked at 2.1 GHZ, while 8600 works at 2.3GHz and both of them are clearly B2 revision. Anyhow, at these clocks, there is no bug that can affect the CPUs.

ZT Systems already announced that they will be the first to launch a Phenom X3 8400 powered system - ZT Affinity 5202Zi. Actual prices for these CPUs remain to be seen when they become widely available.