MaximumPC 2005 10

quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

OCTOBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 11

Microsoft Unveils IE7–Now with Tabs!

Beta 1 arrives with improved phishing protection, tabs, and integrated RSS feeds

Wanna Stick

it to The Man?

The nation’s color laser print-

ers are still secretly marking

every single print job with a

hidden code to help The Man

track down counterfeiters

(as we reported in our March

issue). Now the Electronic

Frontier Foundation has initi-

ated a campaign to gather

more information about this

tricky technology, in order to

protect citizens from authori-

ties who might abuse it.

Long hours spent under a

blue LED light have helped the

EFF establish a small database

of the types of patterns cre-

ated by certain printers. You

can aid this grass roots project

by printing the test sheets

available at http://www.eff.org on

your own color laser printer

and sending them to the EFF

for analysis. You can also

send pages printed at a local

printing center. The EFF asks

that you print a confi guration

page that details the model

and serial number of your

printer in order to match up

that information with the

encoded pattern.

Could 2006 be the BIOS’ swan song? The folks

behind EFI would like it to be.

IE7’s ad-

dress bar

is locked

in place at

the top of

the browser

to prevent

a phishing

attack that

spoofs a

site’s URL

in a fake

address bar.

BIOS Replacement

Not Dead

Intel has passed the task off to a trade group, but

work continues on the fledgling hardware interface

I

t’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything about

Intel’s project to replace the decrepit BIOS with a

more effi cient, standardized interface, but the latest

word is that Intel has passed off the task to a trade

group to complete the spec. The trade group, named

the United EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Forum,

includes representatives from PC makers such as

Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and others. The group’s

goal is to write a standardized interface for PC hard-

ware that will replace the cornucopia of BIOSes cur-

rently in use. The EFI is also being touted as a way

to reduce boot times. One ominous RaiSoN DÐTRE for

EFI is to allow tighter PC security and to help protect

intellectual property. We all know what that means.

I

was recently embroiled in controversy after

writing a technical report about a new Chinese-

designed microprocessor. The controversy

was inflamed by dodgy Internet news sites, and

it obscured the most important conclusion of my

article: that China is capable of designing micropro-

cessors as sophisticated as any in the world.

Of course, companies have been assem-

bling PC clones in China for some time now,

but they’ve never used Chinese-designed and

-manufactured processors. Such a move would

signal a whole new ball game—not just for the

Chinese, but for the entire industry.

My 6,400-word analysis for Microprocessor

Report found many similarities between the new

Chinese Godson-2 processor and the MIPS R10000,

introduced by MIPS Technologies in 1995. But

because my data didn’t support a conclusion of

patent infringement, I didn’t accuse China of steal-

ing MIPS’ intellectual property. Unfortunately, some

news outlets recklessly made this charge, even

though their writers hadn’t read my article or gath-

ered their own data.

What’s important is that the Godson-2 is a

powerful design: a 64-bit processor with four-way

superscalar pipelines, out-of-order execution,

dynamic branch prediction, media extensions, and

other goodies. Top speed is only 500MHz, but that’s

mainly because it’s intended for low-cost applica-

tions, and the fabrication technology is two genera-

tions behind (0.18 micron). A faster 0.13-micron

version is coming soon.

A Chinese processor similar to the 10-year-old

MIPS R10000 might not seem earthshaking, but

microarchitectures have evolved little since 1995.

Indeed, AMD and Intel are stepping back from

increasingly complex microarchitectures in favor

of simpler, dual-processor cores integrated on one

chip. Today’s Godson-2 design isn’t far behind a

Pentium 4 or Athlon 64, and the Chinese want to

integrate four cores in the future Godson-3.

The Godson-2 is mostly MIPS compatible,

so it runs Linux and other operating systems,

but not Windows. To crack the worldwide PC

market, China needs an x86. Interestingly, a

Chinese company recently licensed Transmeta’s

x86-compatible Crusoe and Efficeon processors.

That deal gives the Chinese a legal doorway into

PCs, at least at the low end. While AMD and Intel

squabble with each other, a formidable new com-

petitor is rising in the east.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine

and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

China:

The Next Intel?

FAST FORWARD

TOM

HALFHILL