MaximumPC 2007 09

HTTP Traffic Overtakes P2P

Thanks to video-streaming sites like YouTube, more Internet bandwidth is

consumed by web surfing than by the exchange of music and movie data

packets—for the first time in four years

Kiosk Confessionals

Dell overreacts to a former employee’s ‘tell all’—

and then backpedals

T

he surest way to call attention to yourself is

to try to force someone to stop talking about

you. At least that’s the lesson Dell learned when it

attempted to quash an article listing 22 consumer

tips written by a former Dell kiosk manager that was

posted on The Consumerist (http://tinyurl.com/2lw67e).

The tips are fairly straightforward, many of them

even common knowledge, and the former employ-

ee’s intent was not malicious. But the insider infor-

mation—such as a detailed description of Dell’s

promotional calendar—rubbed the company the

wrong way.

Dell offi cials demanded that The Consumerist

remove the post but succeeded only in creating

more interest in the story. Within a couple days, Dell

admitted defeat. “OK, we goofed,” read the fi rst

item in a “23 Confessions” post on Direct2dell.com.

The post went on to list the many ways Dell is trying

to improve its customer relations.

AT&T to Push

Pirates Offline

In a move that has the acronyms

of the entertainment industry

grinning from ear to ear, AT&T is

making a commitment to keep

pirated content off its network

by adopting a yet-to-be-detailed

technological solution. But it’s this

very vagueness that has indus-

try critics lobbing their biggest

complaints, as combating piracy

across such a large network

seems too Herculean a task not to

run afoul of privacy concerns.

AT&T appears poised to go

after its biggest bandwidth hogs,

users who run servers of pirated

content that clog the upstream

of the nation’s largest Internet

service provider. AT&T hasn’t said

yet whether its antipiracy technol-

ogy will focus on protocols—like

BitTorrent—or actually analyze

the contents of every packet.

The telecom faces large

hurdles in its approach. Pirates

could just as quickly adapt

to the interference with a

new transfer mechanism, à la

Napster to BitTorrent—assum-

ing, of course, that users are

willing to subscribe to a service

that snoops on them.

Communications equip-

ment company Ellacoya

Networks compiled the

data from a study of

1 million North American

broadband users.

Pirates Offline

In a move that has the acronyms In a move that has the acronyms

grinning from ear to ear, AT&T is grinning from ear to ear, AT&T is grinning from ear to ear, AT&T is

by adopting a yet-to-be-detailed

technological solution. But it’s this

complaints, as combating piracy

seems too Herculean a task not to

after its biggest bandwidth hogs,

users who run servers of pirated

service provider. AT&T hasn’t said

yet whether its antipiracy technol-

ogy will focus on protocols—like

hurdles in its approach. Pirates

Napster to BitTorrent—assum-

willing to subscribe to a service

SEPTEMBER 2007 MAXIMUMPC 09

T

he first electronic digital computers had thou-

sands of vacuum tubes, but within 20 years,

the bulky glass tubes were superseded by

cool-running transistors. Now vacuums are making a

surprising comeback. Eventually, I think all micropro-

cessors will adopt this new technology.

IBM has announced that some of its future pro-

cessors will use tiny “air gaps”—actually, vacuum

cavities—to insulate their internal copper wiring.

Today, all microprocessors use solid dielectric mate-

rials for this purpose. These conventional materials

are easier to deposit during the chip-fabrication

process, and they also provide physical rigidity and

help conduct heat away from the circuits. However,

as circuits keep shrinking, chip manufacturers are

struggling to invent new solid dielectrics with good

insulating properties. Denser circuitry leaves less

room for the dielectric. Inadequate insulation causes

short circuits that can be fatal to the chip.

IBM, Intel, and other companies are already intro-

ducing low-k dielectrics, which are advanced solid

materials with improved insulating properties. Now

IBM is going an important step further. By adding

some innovative processes to an otherwise conven-

tional fabrication line, IBM is creating microscopic

gaps around the chip’s internal copper-wire traces.

These sealed cavities contain near-perfect vacuums.

A vacuum is the ideal insulator because it has the

lowest possible dielectric constant, 1.0.

In practice, IBM’s vacuum dielectrics don’t

quite reach the ideal dielectric constant because

some solid dielectric material remains. IBM hasn’t

perfected a manufacturing technique that removes

all the solid material. However, removing all the

material isn’t necessarily desirable at this point

because it provides structural support and helps

wick away the heat.

Vacuum dielectrics are a significant improvement,

even when compared with low-k solid dielectrics.

IBM says the vacuums can reduce the chip’s resis-

tance-capacitance delay by as much as 35 percent.

Designers can make processors that run faster with-

out using additional power, or that use less power

without sacrificing speed, or that achieve some com-

bination of those improvements.

One part of IBM’s vacuum-gap technology is self-

assembly nanotechnology, which has been widely

misreported as tantamount to self-assembling chips.

In reality, this technique is only one small step in the

manufacturing process, in which a liquid material

rearranges its molecular structure after deposition.

It’s clever, but the tiny vacuums are the real story.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine

and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

Vacuums

Make a

Comeback

FAST FORWARD

TOM

HALFHILL

Newsgroups: 9%

HTTP: 46%

P2P: 37%

Non-HTTP video

streaming: 3%

Gaming: 2%

VoIP: 1%

Other: 2%