As GeForce4 comes onstream the graphics chip maker will drop GeForce3 from its range, using an older product for its budget line. Sources say the next generation will use a fully programmable architecture
Nvidia is to phase out its GeForce3 line of graphics chips entirely as it makes room for the the Geforce 4, the company said on Wednesday. Instead, its low-end product will become the GeForce2 MX, complementing the midrange GeForce4 MX and the high-end GeForce4 Ti.
Sources close to the company have also suggested that Nvidia will move to a fully programmable architecture with its next chip design. Such a move could mean a much shorter lag time between when new features are introduced into a graphics chip and when they appear in new games. Current chips have their functions fixed in hardware.
The GeForce4 is much faster than its predecessor, last year's GeForce3 Ti, offering more than double the speed on certain features. Nvidia excecutives said GeForce chips are improving at a rate of "Moore's Law cubed", with power doubling every six months. Moore's Law states that the power of a processor doubles every eighteen months. The downside of this, however, is that other components such as memory may end up forming a bottleneck within the graphics card itself, Nvidia said.
Even so, Nvidia estimates that 3D moving images rendered on consumer graphics cards will not reach the same quality as filmed images for another 10 years.
News source: ZDnet UK
Palm OS 5 is being hailed by PalmSource executives as the version of the company's operating system that will "fuse personal and professional users." For network executives, the new operating system promises vastly improved security and built-in support for IEEE 802.11b wireless LANs. A doubling of screen resolution, to 320 by 320 pixels, will make the Palm more suitable for an array of enterprise applications.
But many of the advanced features will be missing from the first release of OS 5, due this [northern] summer. They'll be included later, possibly by the end of 2002.
For example, the OS 5 security enhancements include support for certificate management and software code signing, which allows software to run only if it has been digitally signed by a known and trusted entity. The technology is designed to prevent rogue software from running. But neither of these changes will be available until some time in the next two years, explained Sakoman.
The initial OS 5 release will offer a VPN option for licensees. Using this option, enterprises could create a secure, encrypted connection between a Palm OS 5 client and a corporate net. This option will be included in a distribution to licensees early in the summer.
Support for the Java Virtual Machine, which will let Palm OS 5 handhelds natively run any Java application, will be available in the operating system later in 2002.
Also missing will be support for the emerging IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN standard, up to 54M bytes/sec over 5 GHz bandwidth, because of a lack of demand from users, said Sakoman. "Almost all product deployment [now] is on 802.11b, which is support by a lot of established chips," he said. PalmSource will wait for market demand for 802.11a before it is included in a later version of the platform.
The new operating system will feature a built-in emulator, so users can run current Palm OS 4 applications on new OS 5 devices. If developers have followed Palm's published set of application programming interfaces for OS 4, applications should run unmodified, said Sakoman. Palm executives estimated 80 percent of existing programs will run on devices using the new operating system.
Some developers have applauded the new operating system. "Moving to OS 5 will be a quantum leap in functionality," said Jeff Musa, president of Cutting Edge Software, which makes a range of office productivity tools. "I expect the first version to be directed toward compatibility with existing apps - so for users, OS 5 will not be hugely different from OS 4. But once the operating system is out there, we will be in a better position to enhance our software."
Cutting Edge Software has had an OS 5 simulator running on a PC for two months and has converted its software to be compatible with OS 5. Based on the experience, Musa said that users initially "will see a hybrid operating system with an updated look and feel, with the added advantage of running existing applications."
After that, users can expect to see changes that will have a more noticeable impact, such as multimedia support. PalmSource is adding these features in OS 5 by drawing from multimedia functionality offered from Palm's acquisition of Be OS software from Be, Inc. But, again, some users expect these to arrive later rather than sooner, in what's coming to be known as version 5.5.
"You have to get to OS 5.5 before the OS really takes off," said Michael Ashby, director of the International Palm Users Group. "5.0 is more of a transition stage - moving from chip to chip... I believe 5.5 will be out later this year."
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