We discovered that the company’s high-end ALX line of PCs may
boost performance by as much as 70 percent!W
as it found among the debris at Roswell? Alienware, the company
that likes to shroud its products in hushed conspiratorial tones,
recently told us it’s preparing to introduce a breakthrough in PC
technology that will increase the performance of gaming and graphics-intensive
applications by an unheard of 70 percent. The technology will be implemented
exclusively in a new line of customized PCs bearing the brand-new, “high-end”
Alienware moniker of ALX.
The company said it will show off the technology in Los Angeles this May
at the E3 game conference in Los Angeles. Alienware officials are keeping
tight wraps on what exactly the technology is, but did promise that the new
technology will be a combination of hardware and software, and that the speed
increase will not come at the expense of visual quality.
While it’s unusual for PC makers to dabble in proprietary graphics hardware,
Alienware has a history of tinkering with its wares to give gamers an edge. In the
late 1990s, the company dabbled with technology from Metabyte called Parallel
Graphics Configuration (PGC) that combined two graphic cards together in a
Voodoo2-style Scan Line Interleave mode. Alienware officials told us
the company’s latest technology is not PGC, but the details remain
classified. We'll bring you more details next month.iPOD MINI=FLAWED?
iPodlounge ( http://www.ipodlounge.com ) is reporting that some iPod Mini owners
are experiencing audio distortion after 30 to 45 days of use, which one user
attributes to a “weak connection between the headphone port and the main circuit board.”
We didn’t experience this problem in our own tests (see the review on page 91), but we’re
pleased that Apple is being uncharacteristically undefensive about the issue, saying that it's
looking into the reports and reminding users that the product carries a one-year warranty—if
you can find a replacement for the notoriously out-of-stock item, that is.MICROSOFT XNA: EASIER GAME DEVOLOPMENT
Facing brutal competition from console systems (including its own Xbox), Microsoft has
unveiled an initiative called XNA that aims to make it easier than ever to develop games for
Windows. XNA is comprised of three components: middleware that makes it easier to generate
the massive amount of art required by today’s games; new specs to standardize PC gamepad
button and stick placement; and an Xbox Live-like matchmaking service for Windows games.GOOGLE’S GMAIL
Because it was announced on the eve of April Fool’s Day, we initially questioned its validity, but
Google’s “Gmail” service, which includes one free gigabyte of storage, is no joke. According
to Google, message exchanges will be threaded in what appears to be a newsgroup-style
format and won’t contain any banner ads. Privacy watchdogs are on high alert however, as
the content of incoming messages will be scanned and “relevant text ads” will be appended to
them. There’s no set date for a public launch at press time, but check for updates at
http://gmail.google.com.FUN-SIZE NEWS
Quick Start
We crossed razor-wire and
miles of desert to learn the
truth about ALX, and all we
got was this damn logo.My recent comparison of the 64-bit x86 architectures
from AMD and Intel sparked some press coverage, but
I was surprised when reporters focused on my less
important conclusion: that Intel reverse-engineered its
EM64T architecture from AMD64. (My full 5,000-word
analysis, summarized here last month, appeared in the
newsletter Microprocessor Report .) What I considered
my most important conclusion—99 percent software
compatibility—earned fewer headlines.
Users in some Internet discussion groups focused on
the reverse-engineering angle, too. Some claimed that
EM64T wasn’t really the product of reverse-engineering
because Intel didn’t have to uncover any secret
technology—AMD64 is well-documented in AMD’s freely
available technical manuals. Others noted that AMD and
Intel have a patent cross-licensing agreement and must
have shared technology or must have collaborated on the
64-bit extensions.
In fact, Intel developed EM64T independently by
working backward from AMD64, without help from
AMD. Indeed, this caused at least one incompatibility.
EM64T doesn’t support two 64-bit instructions found in
AMD64 because Intel’s engineers began working with
early copies of AMD64 manuals, which listed those
instructions as invalid. Later, AMD decided to support the
instructions and revised the manuals.
Unfortunately, Intel didn’t learn about AMD’s
switcheroo until seeing a draft of my analysis. Not
believing me, the chipmaker even tested some AMD
processors and verified that those two instructions
won’t execute in 64-bit mode. But we later learned
that current AMD64s don’t support the instructions,
but future chips will.
There was no collaboration, despite the companies’
patent cross-licensing agreement. That license—the
outgrowth of a long legal battle between AMD and Intel
in the 1990s—merely prevents the companies from filing
patent lawsuits against each other.
Intel’s effort to duplicate AMD64 fits my definition of
reverse-engineering: designing something by starting
with someone else’s finished design and making it
work like the original—without the cooperation of the
original designers. Even when a published specification
is available, the reverse engineers still have to look for
undocumented features and for inconsistencies between
the specification and the implementation.
Certainly, the role-reversal of Intel copying AMD’s x
technology is newsworthy. Typically, AMD has reverse-
engineered Intel’s technology. But, what’s ultimately
more important is that Intel has created a 64-bit
architecture that’s almost fully compatible with AMD64.Be Thankful for
Reverse-
Engineering
14 MAXIMUMPC JUNE 2004
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and
now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.FAST FORWARD BY^ TOM R. HALFHILL
We crossed razor-wire andattributes to a “weak connection between the headphone port and the main circuit board.”Alienware Hints at
Powerful, Top-Secret
Graphics Weapon