AMD Jumps to 12-core Chip, Skips 8-core Chip Plans

Advanced Micro Devices plans to release processors with 12 cores, which changes its product road map and kills earlier plans to release 8-core chips.

The 12-core processor, code-named Magny-Cours, will be targeted at servers and is due for release in the first half of 2010, according to the company’s updated road map announced Wednesday.

The chip will include 12M bytes of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM, according to the road map.

AMD is jumping from a 6-core chip code-named Istanbul, due for release in the second half of 2009, straight to a 12-core chip the following year, an AMD spokesman said.

Until last month, AMD officials repeated plans to ship the 8-core server chip, code-named Barcelona, in 2009. Montreal has now been replaced by Istanbul, followed by a 12-core product in 2010, the spokesman said

Twelve-core chips will handle larger workloads better than 8-core chips and are easier to manufacture, said Randy Allen, vice president and general manager at AMD, during a conference call.

AMD is also planning to release a 6-core chip code-named Sao Paulo in 2010. The chip will include 6M bytes of L3 cache and support for DDR3 RAM. Sao Paulo chips could meet the need of systems that don’t require 12 cores, Allen said.

The new chips will be more power efficient as they will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, an upgrade from the 65-nm process currently used to manufacture Barcelona.

AMD, which is struggling financially, is making financial and technical considerations in jumping from 6-core to 12-core chips. said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. That should allow the company to dump more cores on chips while delivering better product margins and lowering manufacturing costs.

AMD’s 12-core chip will include two 6-core processors on separate chips in a single processor package, McCarron said. That is a more realistic goal than including 12 cores on a single chip, which can be expensive to manufacture, McCarron said.

The shift also allows AMD to avoid competition with Intel in 8-core chips, McCarron said. Intel is shipping a 6-core Xeon server processor, Dunnington, in the second half this year, after which it plans to jump to 8-core processors.

Even with AMD’s altered road map, Intel will remain formidable. Intel shipped 78.5 percent of chips in the first quarter of 2008, while AMD held a 20.6 percent market share, a slight gain from the 18.7 percent market share it held in the first quarter of 2007.

The new product road map is a way for AMD to bounce back from recent chip and supply issues, said Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor at Illuminata.

AMD’s most recent server chips, the quad-core Opteron processors code-named Barcelona, started shipping late last month after multiple delays and bugs.

“Obviously, AMD had some missteps over the past year, but they have a staple of OEMs and routes to markets with their processors. What you’re seeing is much more public focus on what’s going to happen in the next 18 to 24 months rather than longer term,” Haff said.

AMD has had a string of recent problems. The company last month reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss and plans to lay off 1,650 jobs by the third quarter.

Mozilla: Firefox Plugin Shipped With Malicious Code

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. “Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy,” she wrote. “Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload.”

Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.

The malware in the language pack is from the Xorer Trojan, according to discussion on Mozilla’s Bugzilla developer Web site, which indicates that Mozilla developers first discovered the issue on Tuesday.

“I think it (happened) just because the author’s local network was infected with the virus, so it modified HTML files,” wrote developer Hai-Nam Nguyen. “The infected code just display(s) annoying banner but it can’t propagate.”

The open-source browser maker does not know how many people were infected with the adware, but the plugin was downloaded more than 1,200 times in the past week and has been downloaded 16,667 times since November.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Web page for the plugin was off-line as Mozilla scrambled to come up with a new, adware-free version of the language pack. In the meantime, users of the software should disable the plugin, Snyder said.

Papa John’s surpasses $1 billion in online pizza sales

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Sometimes during peak hours, the phones are silent in Andy Freitas’ pizza restaurants, yet the cooks are busy keeping pace with hungry customers.

That’s because orders are rolling in through the Internet.

“It’s pretty amazing not to hear a phone ring on a busy night,” said Freitas, an operating partner with the largest Papa John’s franchisee in the Washington, D.C., market.

In the past seven years, Louisville-based Papa John’s International Inc. has made a lot of dough from online ordering — more than $1 billion to be exact.

The nation’s third-largest pizza delivery chain trumpeted the $1 billion milestone Wednesday, noting that its U.S. online sales have been growing at an average clip of more than 50 percent per year. In 2001, the chain’s online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sales approached $400 million.

“It took us seven years to reach our first billion in online sales, and at our current pace and growth rate it will take us less than three years to hit our next billion,” said Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications at Papa John’s.

Other chains in the fiercely competitive pizza industry are tapping into the technology craze to give customers ways to order pies other than through the standard phone call or trip to a restaurant.

Dominos Pizza Inc. put its own twist on online ordering early this year by introducing a “Pizza Tracker,” which lets customers keep tabs on the progress of their orders. Consumers can find out when their pies are in the oven, when they’re on the way, and even the first name of their delivery person.

The tracking system has given a “big bump” to the growing online business, said Jenny Fouracre, a spokeswoman for Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s. She declined to disclose specific online sales numbers.

Domino’s also lets customers place orders from Web-enabled mobile devices.

Pizza Hut said it’s online orders have grown sixfold in the last three years. Company spokesman Chris Fuller said the online segment is a significant part of the overall business, but he wouldn’t give specifics.

Pizza Hut, the nation’s biggest pizza chain, also allows customers to order via text messaging and mobile Web. The unit of Yum Brands Inc. soon will unveil a new method for ordering pizzas, dubbed “Pizza Hut Shortcut,” that it says will be the fastest in the industry. Customers will be able to download a “widget” onto their computers that will let them place their favorite pizza orders with just one click.

Since launching its Web-based ordering in 2001, Papa John’s said it has invested more than $15 million in online ordering technology. Customers can place online orders up to 21 days in advance. Another function lets consumers repeat their most recent orders with just one click.

Papa John’s said more than 20 percent of its sales come from online or through text messaging, an option it introduced last year. The company said text sales are meeting expectations, but it didn’t provide specifics.

Freitas said online business is driving higher overall sales at his more than 50 Washington-area stores. Online orders account for about half of overall sales at a couple of his restaurants, he said.

“I knew it would be a big part of our business, but this has blown my expectations away, and I think it’s even going to go higher,” Freitas said.

The concept is tailored for customers like Emily Goatcher of Raleigh, N.C.

“I’m so into the Internet and the ease of doing things that way,” she said in a phone interview.

The online option lets her scan the menu and look up specials. She also thinks there’s less of a chance of getting the wrong order. But the mother of two young children said the main attraction is convenience.

“Being able to log in and do it versus trying to talk over a baby crying or a 2 1/2-year-old that’s running around the house is probably one of the main reasons I like to order that way,” Goatcher said.

Not everyone in her family has made the Web-based conversion — her husband still places orders to Papa John’s the old-fashioned way by phone, she said.

Ensign wouldn’t tip the company’s hand on future tech-driven ordering, but he said Papa John’s plans to roll out new methods in coming months to make it even easier for customers to place orders.

He predicted the ordering options will multiply as technology advances.

“We’re just going to maybe have five or six or seven or eight or nine or 10 different ways the consumers can order,” he said, seemingly conjuring up new options as he spoke.

Studios win $111 million judgment against TorrentSpy.com

LOS ANGELES – The six major Hollywood studios have won a $111 million judgment for copyright infringement against the shut-down file-sharing Web site TorrentSpy.com.

The judgment, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, fined the operators of the Web site, Valence Media LLC, $30,000 per violation for nearly 3,700 illegal movie and TV show downloads.

The Motion Picture Association of America said the judgment sends a strong message to copyright violators.

The site shut down in March, saying the legal climate was too hostile to continue.

Its lawyers filed a document in court Monday saying Valence had sought bankruptcy protection in a United Kingdom court and requesting that the judgment be stayed.

Id Software confirms Doom 4

Developer id Software today confirmed what has been long expected, it has begun developing the fourth game in the long-running Doom franchise. The announcement comes nearly 4 years after id released Doom 3, the last internally developed game from the studio.

It’s unknown what platforms Doom 4 will appear on, but considering that id is developing Rage – a new franchise that blends vehicular combat with first-person action in a sci-fi setting – for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, it’s likely that Doom 4 will appear on those platforms as well. No details were given on the content of the game or its expected release period, though.

Microsoft not interested in Yahoo deal, says Gates

Even though Yahoo is still open to the idea of a Microsoft bid after silently rejecting them for so long, it seems that Microsoft now has a bitter taste in their mouth and doesn’t want anything to do with the deal. Infamous Chairman Bill Gates said in a recent press release that Microsoft has no plans to pursue another deal, at least in the short term. Gates stated that Microsoft is focused on an independent strategy, seeking to boost their search advertising and online services without the help of Yahoo. His phrasing makes it sound that it was mostly Ballmer that pushed for a merge.

Yahoo shareholders have been upset at the board for continued rejection of Microsoft’s deal, but Microsoft seems to be just as divided as to whether or not the deal was sound. Yahoo isn’t struggling as Microsoft is in the search market, but Microsoft has a much larger capital to work with and a lot of other services to rely on.

Yahoo still open to higher Microsoft bid

Amid shareholder ire and a plunging stock price, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang recently hinted he would be prepared to re-open talks with Microsoft or another suitor as long as the company is not “undervalued” by any potential bidders.

In case you haven’t been following the Microsoft / Yahoo acquisition news, the deal went sour over the weekend after failing to agree to a price – even after Microsoft raised its bid to about $5 billion more than the original offer. As a result, Yahoo’s stock fell by as much as 15 percent amid fears that the company was foolish to pass on the offer. Yang, who was reportedly against the deal from the start, now seems to be backtracking on his position. But is it too late for a deal or is the Microsoft / Yahoo drama far from over?

In any case, now that the deal is no longer on the table, Yahoo must convince investors it can turn the company around and deliver on promises that it can grow its revenue – or else expect more suits filed against the company alleging they failed to act in the best interest of shareholders.

AMD’s Intel lawsuit reveals worrying situation

With AMD posting its six consecutive quarterly net loss last month amid continued market share losses to Intel, it’s no secret that the company has quite a rough path ahead of themselves. Now, AMD is revealing further details about the dismal state of its finances as part of a court filing that will be used in an antitrust suit that the struggling chipmaker is mounting against Intel.

The brief says that AMD had 13 percent of the processor market by the end of 2007 and that it needs to double its market share in order to “operate long term as a sustainable business.” The company points its finger at Intel as to why it might be nearer to bankruptcy than ever before, alleging the chip giant gave special treatments and monetary incentives to computer manufacturers to use their chips.

The lawsuit, if sustained in court, could potentially allow AMD to demand substantial monetary damages from Intel. Such claims, however, could also backfire and further spook corporate customers already wary of the company’s financial troubles.

Microsoft resumes XP SP3 rollout after delay

The wait for Windows XP Service Pack 3 is officially over, again. Following the stoppage of automatic updates for the third and last XP service pack due to an incompatibility problem with its point-of-sale application, Dynamics Retail Management System, Microsoft has decided to give the update another go making it available through Windows Update and also on their Download Center website.

The issue which resulted in the update being delayed has yet to be fixed, though. Microsoft is not offering the service pack to Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers, having put in place a filter on Windows Update to prevent distribution to those running the conflicting software. Apparently, the company is still working on a fix which is expected to be available later this month.