Joseph Henry Condon

Joseph Henry 'Joe' Condon (born February 15, 1935 January 2, 2012) was an American computer scientist, engineer and physicist, who spent most of his career at Bell Labs. The son of Edward Condon (a distinguished American nuclear physicist, pioneer in quantum mechanics and a participant in the development of radar and nuclear weapons during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project) and Emilie Honzik Condon, he was named after the 19th-century American physicist Joseph Henry.
Education.
Condon developed an interest in physics and electronics at an early age and credited his introduction to analytical thinking to an anonymous instrument maker. He attended Johns Hopkins University and received his BS degree in physics in 1958, and Northwestern University where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1963.
Career.
After graduate school, Condon joined the Metallurgy Research Division of AT&T Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey. He arrived about the same time that the division split. Formerly physics, metallurgy, and chemistry were under one executive director. After the split, physics had its own director, and chemistry and metallurgy were under another. He worked for five years on solid-state physics and metals at low temperatures electronic band structure of metals by means of the oscillatory diamagnetic susceptibility (the De Haas–van Alphen effect). His studies in beryllium and silver (19661968) showed that magnetic domains (later called 'Condon domains') form in non-ferromagnetic metals when the oscillating differential magnetic susceptibility is greater than unity. He developed the theory and verified it experimentally.
Condon then became interested more in electronics engineering, moving out of physics. He was exposed to UNIX on the Honeywell 516 machines in the early 1970s.
In the 1960s, Condon contributed to the development of local area network digital telephone switching.
Condon and Ken Thompson promoted the use of the C programming language for AT&T's switching system control programs. Condon acquired a small AT&T PBX (telephone switch) that handled about 50 phones; he made the necessary hardware changes and Thompson wrote the necessary software programs. The PBX code rewrite in C was a success and hastened the adoption of C for all switching system software within AT&T.
Circa 19681969, Condon was the head of department 13 which owned a PDP-7 computer. The computer was loaned to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, who used it to create the famous early computer game "Space Travel" and to port various features of the recently cancelled Multics project, developments which directly led to the development of the Unix operating system and all of its modern derivatives.
In 1975 Condon joined the Computer Research Center at Bell Labs where the C programming language and the UNIX operating system were created. Condon and his colleagues automated the laborious and error-prone task of manually converting drawings to fabricate circuit boards through their system, the Unix Circuit Design System (UCDS), enabling rapid prototyping.
In collaboration with Thompson, Condon created the chess-playing machine "Belle". Condon designed custom hardware while Ken designed software.
In 1982 Condon collaborated with Andrew Ogielski to create the spin glass machine, a single-purpose computer "5-10 times faster than the Cray-1" designed to facilitate Monte Carlo calculations for theoretical physicists to determine the properties of a class of recently discovered complex magnetic materials such as spin glasses and various random antiferromagnets, thus combining his interests in digital systems and physics. In Condon's obituary, "Physics Today" called his work on the spin-glass machine a "classic" that "remain[s] accurate to this day, despite immense increases in computing power".
Condon retired in 1989 but continued to consult with Bell Labs for another 10 years.
Death.
Condon died on January 2, 2012.
Personal character.
Joe is said to have been a "natural teacher" who "drew on his deep understanding of physics when explaining a problem in either basic physics or digital design", in addition to having unlimited curiosity, extensive knowledge, and a delightful sense of humor. His designs were said to be parsimonious. His personal interests included American Indian crafts, classical music, the theater and to travel with his wife Carol in their RV. He was very Quaker and a frequent volunteer in the FISH Hospitality Program, a local charity providing shelter for homeless people and single mothers.


Keith Diefendorff

Keith Diefendorff is a computer architect and veteran in the microprocessor industry.
Diefendorff is one of the persons that has led the industry in developing RISC processors, both for embedded systems and superscalar high performance systems. He is one of the main designers of the PowerPC family of processors.
Background.
Keith Diefendorff started at Texas Instruments, designing integrated circuits processors and systems. Later Diefendorff joined Motorola and was the chief architect of a second-generation implementation of the 88000 instruction set architecture, the 88110. The 88110 was not a commercial success, and when Motorola shifted focus to creating a new RISC architecture with IBM, Diefendorff was assigned as chief architect for the PowerPC.
After his work at Motorola Diefendorrf moved to NexGen as director of technical x86-strategy. Diefendorff joined AMD when NexGen was acquired by AMD.
From AMD Diefendorrf then moved to Apple as architect for the AltiVec media extensions developed for the PowerPC processors used by Apple.
Keith Diefendorff has been working in the embedded processor space. First at the embedded processor IP-core company ARC International. After ARC Diefendorrf moved to MIPS Technologies.
Diefendorrf has also worked as processor analyst, and editor in chief (1998–2001) for the industry magazine "Microprocessor Report".


Nokia phone series

Nokia's strategic nomenclature can be traced back in 2005 when the Nseries line was launched, offering devices with flagship specifications and premium hardware at various price points. These devices were considered the "bread and butter" of the company and were often positioned to showcase their latest technologies. Thanks to the newfound consumer and enterprise interest in smartphones at the time, the company introduced four additional collections to diversify their product portfolio and meet demands in most market segments. These new phone series were named Eseries, targeting small business and enterprise customers; Xseries, providing consumer-grade multimedia-focused devices; Cseries, which Nokia used to target both the low-end and mid-range market segments; and Tseries, for devices exclusive to the Chinese market.
Nokia Nseries.
Nokia Nseries was a multimedia smartphone and tablet product family that served as the company's flagship portfolio. It was aimed at users looking to pack as many features as possible into one device.
List of Eseries devices.
The Nokia Eseries (stands for "Executive") consists of business-oriented smartphones, with emphasis on enhanced connectivity and support for corporate e-mail push services. These phones are for the enterprise market.
The list may also include upcoming devices or others that are previously intended to be a part of the series, but was scrapped or renamed due to Nokia's number-only naming change. These are the phones included in the series:
List of Xseries devices.
Nokia Xseries (stands for "Xpress") is more for younger users. Most of the phones included in the line are feature phones and smartphones that include features focusing social entertainment and music with special dedicated keys, inbuilt storage and other facilities. It succeeded the Nokia XpressMusic brand of phones.
The list may also include upcoming devices or others that are previously intended to be a part of the series, but was scrapped or renamed due to Nokia's number-only naming change. These are the phones included in the series:
List of Cseries devices.
Nokia Cseries (stands for "Core") is what Nokia calls their "core" range of products, offering different phones from low-end to high-end for various markets.
The list may also include upcoming devices or others that are previously intended to be a part of the series, but was scrapped or renamed due to Nokia's number-only naming change. These are the phones included in the series:
List of Zseries devices.
Nokia Zseries (stands for "Zuper") is supposed to be Nokia's MeeGo tablet series. Originally intended to be released in 2010 and early 2011, the tablets were cancelled for unknown reasons. Only a product name has been revealed from the Ovi Store in November 2010.
The list may also include upcoming devices or others that are previously intended to be a part of the series, but was scrapped or renamed due to Nokia's number-only naming change. These are the tablets included in the series:
List of Tseries devices.
Nokia Tseries (stands for "Time") is a China-specific line of phones, made to cater services offered in China where most technologies and Web features are disabled or replaced by the country's proprietary inventions. For instance, most of the phones offered in this series would include the TD-SCDMA and EV-DO networks which are dominant in that marketplace. The line was launched on 13 June 2011 in the Chinese version of the Nokia Conversations blog.
The list may also include upcoming devices. These are the phones included in the series:
List of Aseries devices.
The Nokia Aseries (stands for "Asha", which means "hope"), is a feature-phone line introduced by Nokia during Nokia World 2011. The phones in the series are for developing markets, and more for younger users, for messaging and connectivity.
The list may also include upcoming devices. These are the phones included in the series:
List of Lseries devices.
The Nokia Lseries (stands for "Lumia", which means "light") is a series of smartphones, originally made by Nokia and using the Windows Phone operating system, and officially unveiled at Nokia World 2011. This was created through an exclusive partnership in February of that year, that will allow Nokia to use and modify Microsoft's mobile operating system. These devices come with a host of Nokia-exclusive services.
Microsoft purchased Nokia's Devices and Services division in April 2014, and since then the Lumia series has been manufactured exclusively by Microsoft's subsidiary Microsoft Mobile, initially retaining Nokia branding but later dropped in favor of that of Microsoft.
The first generation of phones in the series include the Nokia Lumia 510, Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800, and Nokia Lumia 900, all of which run Windows Phone 7. Subsequent generations use Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1. A full list of devices can be found at Microsoft Lumia#List of Lumia devices.


GeForce 9 series

The GeForce 9 series is the ninth generation of Nvidia's GeForce series of graphics processing units, the first of which was released on February 21, 2008. Products are based on a slightly repolished Tesla microarchitecture, adding PCIe 2.0 support, improved color and z-compression, and built on a 65 nm process, later using 55 nm process to reduce power consumption and die size (GeForce 8 G8x GPUs only supported PCIe 1.1 and were built on 90 nm process or 80 nm process).
GeForce 9300 Series.
Geforce 9300 GS.
On May 1, 2008, the GeForce 9300 GS was officially launched.
GeForce 9400 Series.
GeForce 9400 GT.
On August 27, 2008, the GeForce 9400 GT was officially launched.
GeForce 9500 Series.
GeForce 9500 GT.
On July 29, 2008, the GeForce 9500 GT was officially launched.
GeForce 9500 GS.
The 9500 GS is an OEM card that is based on the 9500 GT but geared towards the mainstream audience.
GeForce 9600 series.
GeForce 9600 GT.
On February 21, 2008, the GeForce 9600 GT was officially launched. It was an upgrade of 8600 GTS.
GeForce 9600 GS.
The GeForce 9600GS is a Hewlett Packard OEM card. It is based on a G94a core clocked at 500 MHz. It features 768 MB of DDR2 memory on a 192-bit bus.
GeForce 9600 GSO.
The GeForce 9600 GSO was essentially a renamed 8800 GS. This tactic has been seen before in products such as the GeForce 7900 GTO to clear unsold stock when it is made obsolete by the next generation. Just like the 8800 GS, the 9600 GSO features 96 stream processors, a 550 MHz core clock with shaders clocked at 1,375 MHz, and either 384 or 768 MB of memory clocked at 800 MHz on a 192-bit memory bus. Some manufacturers have mistakenly listed some of their 768 MB models that have 96 stream processors as being based on the G94 chip, rather than the G92.
GeForce 9600 GSO 512.
After clearing the old 8800 GS stock, Nvidia revised the specification with a new core, and 512 MB of memory clocked at 900 MHz on a 256-bit bus. For these cards, the number of stream processors is halved to 48, with the core frequency increased to 650 MHz and the shader frequency increased to 1625 MHz. Some of these cards have 1024 megabytes of memory while still being a 512 model. The revised version is considered inferior in performance to the old version.
GeForce 9600 GTX.
XFX released a 9600 GTX based on the G92 chip featuring 96 stream processors, a 580 MHz core clock, 1450 MHz shaders and 512 MB of GDDR3 running at 1400 MHz on a 256-bit bus. Other than clock speeds, it is functionally the desktop equivalent version of the 9800M GT.
GeForce 9800 Series.
The GeForce 9800 series contains the GX2 (dual GPU), GTX, GTX+ and GT variants.
GeForce 9800 GX2.
On March 18, 2008, the GeForce 9800 GX2 was officially launched.
The GeForce 9800 GX2 has the following specifications:
GeForce 9800 GTX.
On April 1, 2008, the GeForce 9800 GTX was officially launched.
Taken from an eVGA specification sheet:
In July 2008 Nvidia released a refresh of the 9800 GTX: the 9800 GTX+ (55 nm manufacturing process). It has faster core (738 MHz) and shader (1836 MHz) clocks. Since March 2009 this design is manufactured as GeForce GTS 250.
GeForce 9800 GT.
The 9800GT is identical to an 8800GT, although some were manufactured using a 55 nm technology instead of the 65 nm technology debuted on the 8800GT. The newer (55 nm) version supports HybridPower while the 65 nm version does not.
ASUSTeK have released a 9800GT with Tri-SLI support.
Taken from the Nvidia product detail page.
GeForce 9M Series.
All graphical processing units in the GeForce 9M series feature:
Discontinued support.
NVIDIA has ceased driver support for GeForce 9 series on April 1, 2016.


List of Sony Ericsson products

The following is a list of products manufactured under the Sony Ericsson brand. Most of the models have been released under multiple names, depending on region of release, currently usually indicated by a letter added to the end of the model number ('i' for international, 'a' for North America, and 'c' for mainland China), but indicated on some (mostly older) models by a slightly differing model number. Typically, there is one version for the European and US market, and another for the Asian market. However, some models have yet more versions. Most "Walkman" branded models are also released as a non-Walkman version; such as Sony Ericsson W580 and the S500. These versions usually differ only slightly.
International phones.
Phones in boldface indicates that the phone is a smartphone.
S = Status, where P indicates "under production", D is "discontinued" and U indicates "upcoming" .
C series: Cyber-shot.
C902.
The Sony Ericsson C902 was released during the second quarter of 2008. It is a java based feature device running on Sony Ericsson's proprietary A200 platform. A special feature was the presence of 8 touch sensitive keys using capacitive technology for the camera mode. The camera technology includes face detection and the music player is similar to the system used on the company's "Walkman" series handsets. The phone is the first in Sony Ericsson's new 'Cyber-shot' C-series of phones, designed to be a successor to the popular K800i and the K850. The C902 is featured in the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace", and has been praised for its user interface design and its build quality. Although the device received favorable reviews, analysts did not expect it to reach the same level of popularity or sales as its predecessor, the K800i, because it was not intended to be a "flagship model."
G series: Generation web phones.
G700.
The Sony Ericsson G700 was announced at the Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM congress) February 2008 and is based on the Symbian OS 9.1 UIQ 3.0 platform. The handset has had below average reviews, with a lot of reviewers criticizing the phone for being priced too high as the better equipped G900 is in the same price bracket while others have lamented the fact that Sony Ericsson chose to implement the same technology that had been presented in late 2006 in the P1. A "business edition" also exists for the Sony Ericsson G700, which has no camera.
G900.
Announced at the 2008 Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM congress) in February of that year, G900 is a mid-to-high-end smartphone based on the Symbian 9.1 UIQ 3.0 platform. The phone sports high quality sound, 3G, Wi-Fi, and a clear 5.0-megapixel camera.
K series: Camera phones.
Some phones have Cyber-shot branding.
T series: Tela phones.
NOTE: Sony Ericsson may release cell phones in one variants, indicated with a letter after the model number. For example Sony Ericsson t303 released in China was released as Sony Ericsson t303c.
W series: Walkman phones.
NOTE: Sony Ericsson may release cell phones in three variants, indicated with a letter after the model number. Example: W200 was released as W200a (for the Americas), W200c (for China) and W200i (rest of the world). The default release letter for most models is "i" which means international.
Entertainment Unlimited series: Entertainment phones.
The first Entertainment Unlimited phones were announced and launched in 2009, creating a new category where the benefits of audio and images were "combined in smart, good-looking and high-performing devices." Apart from first-rate audio-visual strength, what these products have in common are differentiating factors in the user interface, borrowing from the wider Sony Group UI-developments. Aino is the first product that connects into the world of the Sony PlayStation remotely via remote media play. Vivaz is the first Sony Ericsson phone supporting high-definition (HD) video capture.
Overview.
"Note: These lists are not intended to be all inclusive. Some information may be missing, or out of date."
Accessories.
"Note: Lists are incomplete. Some information may be missing."
Car-kits (handsfree).
sun visor handsfree (bluetooth)
HCH-"xx" phone holder
Speakers.
Non-bluetooth speakers.
"the following speaker drain their power from fastport (no batteries or wall socked needed):"
"newer products without fastport:"
Handsfree headsets (cabled).
fastport models:
trrs 4-pole 3.5 mm jack (omtp only?) models:


Hercules InColor Card

The Hercules InColor Card (GB222) is an IBM PC compatible graphics controller card released in April 1987 by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. Besides color it supports software redefinable fonts.
After the success of the monochrome Hercules Graphics Card (HGC) and Hercules Graphics Card Plus (HGC+) which gained wide developer support, the market was changing with the release of new colour cards which were becoming increasingly affordable. So Hercules released the "InColor" to compete primarily with IBM's new high-end VGA card, and also the many existing EGA compatible cards on the market. The "InColor" did not bring the success that Hercules had hoped for, and revenue slowly declined until Hercules was eventually acquired by ELSA in August 1998 for $8.5m USD.
Some compatible games with this card included Karateka, Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator 4, and 3-D Helicopter Simulator.


MAXIMOP


Replay system

The replay system is a subsystem within the Intel Pentium 4 processor. Its primary function is to catch operations that have been mistakenly sent for execution by the processor's scheduler. Operations caught by the replay system are then re-executed in a loop until the conditions necessary for their proper execution have been fulfilled.
Overview.
The replay system came about as a result of Intel's quest for ever-increasing clock speeds. These higher clock speeds necessitated very lengthy pipelines (up to 31 stages in the Prescott core). Because of this, there are six stages between the scheduler and the execution units in the Prescott core. In an attempt to maintain acceptable performance, Intel engineers had to design the scheduler to be very optimistic.
The scheduler in a Pentium 4 processor is so aggressive that it will send operations for execution without a guarantee that they can be successfully executed. (Among other things, the scheduler assumes all data is in level 1 "trace cache" CPU cache.) The most common reason execution fails is that the requisite data is not available, which itself is most likely due to a cache miss. When this happens, the replay system signals the scheduler to stop, then repeatedly executes the failed string of dependent operations until they have completed successfully.
Performance considerations.
Not surprisingly, in some cases the replay system can have a very bad impact on performance. Under normal circumstances, the execution units in the Pentium 4 are in use roughly 33% of the time. When the replay system is invoked, it will occupy execution units nearly every available cycle. This wastes power, which is an increasingly important architectural design metric, but poses no performance penalty because the execution units would be sitting idle anyway. However, if hyper-threading is in use, the replay system will prevent the other thread from utilizing the execution units. This is the true cause of any performance degradation concerning hyper-threading. In Prescott, the Pentium 4 gained a replay queue, which reduces the time the replay system will occupy the execution units.
In other cases, where each thread is processing different types of operations, the replay system will not interfere, and a performance increase can appear. This explains why performance with hyper-threading is application-dependent.


Crazy Balloon

Crazy Balloon is an arcade game released by Taito in 1980. "Crazy Balloon" requires the player to maneuver a balloon through a maze full of thorns in order to reach the goal.
Gameplay.
The player controls a box tied to a floating balloon, which swings left and right continually, within a maze filled with spikes. Any contact with the spikes, either with the balloon or the box, destroys the balloon. Using a four-way joystick, the player moves the box through the maze and toward the goal, ensuring that the swinging balloon avoids the spikes.
The player collects points as the box moves closer to the goal (backtracking earns no points). Certain areas of the maze are colored green and purple, and the player will earn more points if the balloon and box pass through the area safely. While there is no time limit, the player cannot wait for a long time; otherwise, a face will appear and blow the balloon into the spikes.
As the player completes mazes, individual spikes, or even the entire maze, may begin moving or scrolling.
Music.
"Crazy Balloon" sports relatively basic sound effects. The speaker beeps whenever the balloon gets closer to the goal. When the player starts a new maze, a portion of the melody from "Oh! Susanna" is played. Similarly, when the player loses a balloon, a portion of the chorus from the "Toreador Song" from the opera "Carmen" is played.
Legacy.
The original arcade version has been included in emulated compilations such as "Taito Legends 2" (PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows) and "Taito Legends Power-Up" (PlayStation Portable) in 2006. An updated version of the game, named "Crazy Balloon 2005", was included alongside the original arcade release on "Taito Legends Power-Up".
There were no official contemporary home ports, but there were clones, including "Crazy Balloon" for the Commodore 64 (Software Projects, 1983) and "Crazy Balloons" for the ZX Spectrum (A&F Software, 1983). A version for the BBC Micro was developed by Acornsoft but was never released.


GP32

The GP32 (GamePark 32) is a handheld game console developed by the South Korean company Game Park. It was released on November 23, 2001 in South Korea and distributed in some parts of Europe.
Features.
The overall design is not unlike the original version of the Game Boy Advance. The GP32 is based on a 133 MHz ARM CPU and 8 MB of RAM. Unlike other handheld gaming systems, which tend to be proprietary cartridge-based, the GP32 uses SmartMedia cards (SMC) for storing programs and data, making it accessible for amateur developers as no further development hardware is required.
The console has a four-way mini-joystick controller, two main buttons ('A' and 'B'), two shoulder buttons on each side of the SMC slot ('L' and 'R') and two other menu buttons on each side of the screen ('SELECT' and 'START'), made from a softer, translucent rubber. The console also has a USB 1.1 port for connection with a host computer, a serial expansion port, a 3.3 V power adapter input, a headphone connector and a rear compartment which holds two AA sized batteries.
Variants.
There are three main commercial versions of the unit characterized by different display types. Commercial units are white in color with either grey or white buttons and trim. There are also a number of differently colored promotional units, and several prototype units with different designs.
GP32 NLU.
The original GP32 was the no-light unit (NLU) which relied on an external light source to view the screen.
GP32 FLU.
In late 2002, Game Park introduced the frontlight unit (FLU) as a factory modified (by Hahotech) version of the NLU. It provides its own illumination via a transparent panel between the LCD display and the plastic screen cover. The extra hardware resulted in a slightly raised display frame when compared to the NLU and BLU variants. The frontlight could be turned off with a switch mounted on the back of the GP32 case (to save battery).
The GP32 FLU's name was derived from a sticker added to the front of the GP32 packaging differentiating it from the standard non-light versions.
GP32 BLU.
In mid-2004, Game Park introduced the backlight unit (BLU). The new BLU LCD was compatible with the NLU (and FLU) and provided superior screen display in poor lighting conditions. At the end of 2004, Game Park also released a second version of the BLU, which had a different LCD to the first version BLU units. The new BLU+ LCD was not 100% compatible with the original LCD screen and so software required special handling to support both LCD versions.
The backlight could be disabled by holding the SELECT button for 5 seconds. The BLU models also had a slightly different USB port connector and better quality micro switches for the controller.
BLU+ Compatibility.
A back lit GP32 (released in December 2004) was given the name BLU+ by the community. The back lit unit featured a different LCD display (Taiwanese manufactured instead of Samsung), which led to some compatibility problems with certain applications, and problems such as white lines across the screen. However, nearly all applications were fixed once it was found that the new screens had better contrast than the old ones. The back lit GP32's were commercially named "BLU". The BLU+ was, as stated, a name that the community gave it to notice the difference between the two models.
There were many applications that worked with the BLU+ and other models.
Mirko's SDK could autodetect which version one had. All the applications such as emulators, movie players, and the like worked as well on the BLU+, as on other models.
Software.
Built In.
The original Game Park firmware had three main functions: to launch applications, provide a means of linking to a host computer and to play music in MP3 format.
Later versions of the Game Park firmware removed the MP3 music capability.
Homebrew.
Game Park planned their system to be powerful and useful, but they also wanted users to be able to create homebrew software. GP32 users could register the unit on the official website and get a free suite of development tools to create their own programs. Game Park also allowed (under certain restrictions) the publishing of such homebrew games on their website.
The GP32's original firmware only supported running encrypted games and tools. Users had to register and use an encrypted "Free Launcher" to run unsigned software. Alternative firmware removed the necessity of using the "Free Launcher" software and provided many extra functions that were lacking in the original firmware.
Through this strategy, the GP32 was the host of multiple homebrew applications and games. The various applications made for it ranged from alternative firmware, file managers, games, emulators, game generators (such as RPG Maker), a DivX player and image slideshows.
Commercial.
Commercial games could be acquired via internet download (encrypted to the GP32's ID) or in a retail box. The retail boxes contained SmartMedia Cards with the games which were encrypted to run only from these cards (SMC ID). They could alternatively be downloaded from a Korean portal after submitting the GP32's ID, they were then encrypted to run only on that GP32. Downloading the games effectively reduced the cost to the consumer, who was no longer paying for the manufacture of the cartridge. Downloading a game online could range from US$10 to US$30.
Games.
Five games in a variety of genres were released at the system's launch on November 23, 2001. About 28 commercial games were eventually released. The last commercial game to be released was the platformer/RPG Blue Angelo, which was released on December 16, 2004. Most commercial GP32 games could be bought in two ways: boxed or downloaded through the internet through Gamepark's online JoyGP store (typically for a much lower price). JoyGP was the international version of the MegaGP store, which existed earlier and was limited to South Korea. Although most games were sold in both formats, there were a few exceptions: for example, "Blue Angelo" was (and is) only sold as a boxed copy made in France, and "Gloop Deluxe" was only sold online, but not through JoyGP.
Although the number of official games available for the GP32 system is limited, many open source/free software developers worked on various emulators and ported PC games. In addition to this, a wide range of free, public domain games were created by amateur developers. Game Park did not ask any royalties to release games for its device, which made it easier for small editors or independent developers to release software for the GP32.
The modification of Ericsson Chatboard micro-keyboards to work with the system has seen a new flourish of software development, including countless attempts at ports of Linux, and keyboard support being added to many emulators.
Emulators.
The GP32's relatively powerful ARM 920T CPU and freely available 'C'-based SDK have allowed many emulators to be specifically developed or ported from other platforms. Emulated systems that run on the GP32 include 16-bit era and earlier console and computer platforms. These emulators allow users to experience a large variety of games on their GP32 system, largely compensating for the relatively small library of commercially available games.
There is also a Windows-based GP32 emulator, which allows users to run GP32 software on a Windows-based PC.
Commercial availability.
Commercially, the system can be found mostly in Korea, and some other parts of Asia, although the GP32 BLU model was released in three European markets, including Portugal, Spain, and Italy, being distributed by Virgin Play on June 15, 2004 with a price point of €199. There are official distributors in the United Kingdom and Sweden as well. Game Park, however, did not release the console in America. Since the GP32 is no longer in production, the console can commonly be found on eBay, forums, or other used video game vendors or websites.
Despite the GP32 not being released worldwide, it has a large international community of users and developers. About 30,000 units were sold by the end of 2007.


JLIVECD

JLIVECD is an open source CLI (command line interface) based live CD/DVD customization tool for Debian, Arch Linux, Ubuntu family distributions and Linux Mint and some of their derivatives. The host system is not restricted to be the same as the live CD/DVD system (e.g Arch Linux live CD can be modified on a Ubuntu host, Ubuntu live CD can be modified on a Debian host etc.).
This tool is released under GPL-2 and primarily intended for non-commercial use.
History.
It was developed with the help of the documentation found on LiveCDCustomization written by the Ubuntu community, Debian/Modify/CD from Debian wiki and Remastering the install ISO from Arch Linux wiki.
Uses.
One needs to know the customization methods to make use of this tool because it does no customization itself at all; It only prepares the environment for customization and automates the task of creating a customized live CD/DVD ISO image. A base ISO image is needed on which customization will be brought upon. The resulting ISO image can then be burnt into a CD or DVD or a bootable live USB can also be prepared to use it.


Doomtrooper

Doomtrooper, also known as Doom Trooper, is an out-of-print collectible card game designed by Bryan Winter and was released in January 1995. It was originally published by Target Games and Heartbreaker Hobbies.
It is based on concepts from the "Mutant Chronicles" franchise. Players use warriors to attack and gain either Promotion Points or Destiny Points. Promotion points can be used to win; Destiny Points are used to purchase more warriors and equipment. There are 13 different card types and over 1100 different cards available.
The game was later migrated to a digital version that was successfully funded on Kickstarter.
Video game.
Doom Troopers (also called Mutant Chronicles: Doom Troopers) is a video game released in 1995 by Adrenalin Entertainment for the Super NES and Sega Genesis gaming systems. It is a platform shooter.
The player assumes the role of one of two commandos, Mitch Hunter and Max Steiner, fighting an evil horde of invading zombies and mutants. The game features eight different levels and a cooperative multiplayer mode for two players.
Air Hendrix of "GamePro" panned the Genesis version, criticizing the small selection of attacks, generally simplistic action, lack of color and detail, and unintentionally humorous death screams.


Driver Verifier

Driver Verifier is a tool included in Microsoft Windows that replaces the default operating system subroutines with ones that are specifically developed to catch device driver bugs. Once enabled, it monitors and stresses drivers to detect illegal function calls or actions that may be causing system corruption. It acts within the kernel mode and can target specific device drivers for continual checking or make driver verifier functionality multithreaded, so that several device drivers can be stressed at the same time. It can simulate certain conditions such as low memory, I/O verification, pool tracking, IRQL checking, deadlock detection, DMA checks, IRP logging, etc. The verifier works by forcing drivers to work with minimal resources, making potential errors that might happen only rarely in a working system manifest immediately. Typically fatal system errors are generated by the stressed drivers in the test environment, producing core dumps that can be analysed and debugged immediately; without stressing, intermittent faults would occur in the field, without proper troubleshooting facilities or personnel.
Driver Verifier (Verifier.exe) was first introduced as a "command-line" utility in Windows 2000; in Windows XP, it gained an easy-to-use graphical user interface, called "Driver Verifier Manager", that makes it possible to enable a standard or custom set of settings to select which drivers to test and verify. Each new Windows version has since introduced several new, more stringent checks for testing and verifying drivers and detecting new classes of driver defects.
Driver Verifier is not normally used on machines used in productive work. It can cause undetected and relatively harmless errors in drivers to manifest, especially ones not digitally signed by Windows Hardware Quality Labs, causing blue screen fatal system errors. It also causes resource-starved drivers to underperform and slow general operation if the constraints imposed by Verifier are not reversed after debugging. Microsoft recommends against verifying all drivers at the same time.


SPARC T5

SPARC T5 is the fifth generation multicore microprocessor of Oracle's SPARC T-Series family. It was first presented at Hot Chips 24 in August 2012, and was officially introduced with the Oracle SPARC T5 servers in March 2013. The processor is designed to offer high multithreaded performance (16 cores per chip, with 8 threads per core), as well as high single threaded performance from the same chip.
The processor uses the same SPARC S3 core design as its predecessor, the SPARC T4 processor, but is implemented in a 28 nm process and runs at 3.6 GHz. The S3 core is a dual-issue core that uses dynamic threading and out-of-order execution, incorporates one floating point unit, one dedicated cryptographic unit per core.
The 64-bit SPARC Version 9 based processor has 16 cores supporting up to 128 threads per processor, and scales up to 1,024 threads in an 8 socket system. Other changes include the support of PCIe version 3.0 and a new cache coherence protocol.
SPARC T4, T5 and T7/M7 compared.
This chart shows some differences between the T5 and T4 processor chips.
The SPARC T5 also introduces a new power management feature that consists of hardware support in the processor, and the software that allows system administrator to use the feature. Users select the policy how the system responds to over-temperature and over-current events. The dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (aka DVFS) policy can be set to maintain peak frequency, or to trade off between performance and power consumption.
SPARC T5 in systems.
The SPARC T5 processor is used in Oracle's entry and mid-size SPARC T5-2, T5-4, and T5-8 servers. All servers use the same processor frequency, number of cores per chip and cache configuration.
The T5 processor includes a crossbar network that connects the 16 cores with the L2 caches to the shared L3 cache. Multiprocessor cache coherence is maintained using a directory-based protocol. The design scales up to eight sockets without additional silicon (glueless). The snoopy based protocol used in SPARC T4 systems was replaced in order to reduce memory latency and reduce coherency bandwidth consumption.


ARM9

ARM9 is a group of older 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM9 core family consists of ARM9TDMI, ARM940T, ARM9E-S, ARM966E-S, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM946E-S, ARM9EJ-S, ARM926EJ-S, ARM968E-S, ARM996HS. Since ARM9 cores were released from 1998 to 2006, they are no longer recommended for new IC designs, instead ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R cores are preferred.
Overview.
With this design generation, ARM moved from a von Neumann architecture (Princeton architecture) to a (modified; meaning split cache) Harvard architecture with separate instruction and data buses (and caches), significantly increasing its potential speed. Most silicon chips integrating these cores will package them as modified Harvard architecture chips, combining the two address buses on the other side of separated CPU caches and tightly coupled memories.
There are two subfamilies, implementing different ARM architecture versions.
Differences from ARM7 cores.
Key improvements over ARM7 cores, enabled by spending more transistors, include:
Additionally, some ARM9 cores incorporate "Enhanced DSP" instructions, such as a multiply-accumulate, to support more efficient implementations of digital signal processing algorithms.
Switching from a von Neumann architecture entailed using a non-unified cache, so that instruction fetches do not evict data (and vice versa). ARM9 cores have separate data and address bus signals, which chip designers use in various ways. In most cases they connect at least part of the address space in von Neumann style, used for both instructions and data, usually to an AHB interconnect connecting to a DRAM interface and an External Bus Interface usable with NOR flash memory. Such hybrids are no longer pure Harvard architecture processors.
ARM license.
ARM Holdings neither manufactures nor sells CPU devices based on its own designs, but rather licenses the processor architecture to interested parties. ARM offers a variety of licensing terms, varying in cost and deliverables. To all licensees, ARM provides an integratable hardware description of the ARM core, as well as complete software development toolset and the right to sell manufactured silicon containing the ARM CPU.
Silicon customization.
Integrated device manufacturers (IDM) receive the ARM Processor IP as synthesizable RTL (written in Verilog). In this form, they have the ability to perform architectural level optimizations and extensions. This allows the manufacturer to achieve custom design goals, such as higher clock speed, very low power consumption, instruction set extensions, optimizations for size, debug support, etc. To determine which components have been included in a particular ARM CPU chip, consult the manufacturer datasheet and related documentation.
Cores.
The ARM MPCore family of multicore processors support software written using either the asymmetric (AMP) or symmetric (SMP) multiprocessor programming paradigms. For AMP development, each central processing unit within the MPCore may be viewed as an independent processor and as such can follow traditional single processor development strategies.
ARM9TDMI.
ARM9TDMI is a successor to the popular ARM7TDMI core, and is also based on the ARMv4T architecture. Cores based on it support both 32-bit ARM and 16-bit Thumb instruction sets and include:
ARM9E-S and ARM9EJ-S.
ARM9E, and its ARM9EJ sibling, implement the basic ARM9TDMI pipeline, but add support for the ARMv5TE architecture, which includes some DSP-esque instruction set extensions. In addition, the multiplier unit width has been doubled, halving the time required for most multiplication operations. They support 32-bit, 16-bit, and sometimes 8-bit instruction sets.
Documentation.
The amount of documentation for all ARM chips is daunting, especially for newcomers. The documentation for microcontrollers from past decades would easily be inclusive in a single document, but as chips have evolved so has the documentation grown. The total documentation is especially hard to grasp for all ARM chips since it consists of documents from the IC manufacturer and documents from CPU core vendor (ARM Holdings).
A typical top-down documentation tree is: high-level marketing slides, datasheet for the exact physical chip, a detailed reference manual that describes common peripherals and other aspects of physical chips within the same series, reference manual for the exact ARM core processor within the chip, reference manual for the ARM architecture of the core which includes detailed description of all instruction sets.
IC manufacturer has additional documents, including: evaluation board user manuals, application notes, getting started with development software, software library documents, errata, and more.


Radeon R200 series

The R200 is the second generation of GPUs used in Radeon graphics cards and developed by ATI Technologies. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design. The GPU also includes 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R200" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.
Architecture.
R200's 3D hardware consists of 4 pixel pipelines, each with 2 texture sampling units. It has 2 vertex shader units and a legacy Direct3D 7 TCL unit, marketed as "Charisma Engine II". It is ATI's first GPU with programmable pixel and vertex processors, called "Pixel Tapestry II" and compliant with Direct3D 8.1. R200 has advanced memory bandwidth saving and overdraw reduction hardware called "HyperZ II" that consists of occlusion culling (hierarchical Z), fast z-buffer clear, and z-buffer compression. The GPU is capable of dual display output ("HydraVision") and is equipped with a video decoding engine ("Video Immersion II") with adaptive hardware deinterlacing, temporal filtering, motion compensation, and iDCT.
R200 introduced pixel shader version 1.4 (PS1.4), a significant enhancement to prior PS1.x specifications. Notable instructions include "phase", "texcrd", and "texld". The phase instruction allows a shader program to operate on two separate "phases" (2 passes through the hardware), effectively doubling the maximum number of texture addressing and arithmetic instructions, and potentially allowing the number of passes required for an effect to be reduced. This allows not only more complicated effects, but can also provide a speed boost by utilizing the hardware more efficiently. The "texcrd" instruction moves the texture coordinate values of a texture into the destination register, while the "texld" instruction will load the texture at the coordinates specified in the source register to the destination register.
Compared to R100's 2x3 pixel pipeline architecture, R200's 4x2 design is more robust despite losing one texture unit per pipeline. Each pipeline can now address a total of 6 texture layers per pass. The chip achieves this by using a method known as 'loop-back'. Increasing the number of textures accessed per pass reduces the number of times the card is forced into multi-pass rendering.
The texture filtering capabilities of R200 are also improved over its predecessor. For anisotropic filtering, Radeon 8500 uses a technique similar to that used in R100, but improved with trilinear filtering and some other refinements. However, it is still highly angle-dependent and the driver sometimes forces bilinear filtering for speed. NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti series offered a more accurate anisotropic implementation, but with a greater performance impact.
R200 has ATI's first implementation of a hardware-accelerated tessellation engine (a.k.a. higher order surfaces), called Truform, which can automatically increase the geometric complexity of 3D models. The technology requires developer support and is not practical for all scenarios. It can undesirably round-out models. As a result of very limited adoption, ATI dropped TruForm support from its future hardware.
Performance.
Radeon 8500's biggest initial disappointment was its early driver releases. At launch, the card's performance was below expectations and it had numerous software flaws that caused problems with games. The chip's anti-aliasing support was only functional in Direct3D and was very slow. To dampen excitement for 8500, competitor nVidia released their Detonator4 driver package on the same day as most web sites previewed the Radeon 8500. nVidia's drivers were of better quality, and they also further boosted the GeForce3's performance.
Several hardware review sites noted anomalies in actual game tests with the Radeon 8500. For example, ATI was detecting the executable "Quake3.exe" and forcing the texture filtering quality to a much lower level than normally produced by the card, presumably in order to improve performance. HardOCP was the first hardware review web site to bring the issue to the community, and proved its existence by renaming all instances of "Quake" in the executable to "Quack." The result was improved image quality, but lower performance.
However, even with the Detonator4 drivers, the Radeon 8500 was able to outperform the GeForce3 (which the 8500 was intended to compete against) and in some circumstances its faster revision, the Ti500, the higher clocked derivative Nvidia had rolled out in response to the R200 project. Later, driver updates helped to further close the performance gap between the 8500 and the Ti500, while the 8500 was also significantly less expensive and offered additional multimedia features such as dual-monitor support. Though the GeForce3 Ti200 did become the first DirectX 8.0 card to offer 128 MB of video memory, instead of the common 64 MB norm for high-end cards of the time, it turned out that the GeForce3's limitations prevented it from taking full advantage of it, while the Radeon 8500 was able to more successfully exploit that potential.
In early 2002, to compete with the cheaper GeForce3 Ti200 and GeForce4 MX 460, ATI launched the slower-clocked 8500 LE (later re-released as the 9100) which became popular with OEMs and enthusiasts due to its lower price, and overclockability to 8500 levels. Though the GeForce4 Ti4600 took the performance crown, it was a top line solution that was priced almost double that of the Radeon 8500 (MSRP of $350–399 versus US$199), so it didn't offer direct competition. With the delayed release of the potentially competitive GeForce4 Ti4200, plus ATI's initiative in rolling out 128 MB versions of the 8500/LE kept the R200 line popular among the mid-high performance niche market. The greater features of the All-In-Wonder (AIW) Radeon 8500 DV and the AIW Radeon 8500 128 MB proved superior to Nvidia's Personal Cinema equivalents which used the faster GeForce 3 Ti500 and GeForce4 Ti4200.
Over the years the dominant market position of GeForce 3/4 meant that not many games targeted the superior DX8.1 PS 1.4 feature level of the R200, but those that did could see significant performance gains over DX8, as certain operations could be processed in one instead of multiple passes. In these cases the Radeon 8500 may even compete with the newer GeForce4 series running a DX8 codepath. An example for such a game with multiple codepaths is Half-Life 2.
Radeon 8500 came with support for TruForm, an early implementation of Tessellation.
Implementations.
Radeon 8500/8500 LE/9100.
ATI's first R200-based card was the "Radeon 8500", launched in October 2001. In early 2002, ATI launched the "Radeon 8500 LE" (re-released later as the "Radeon 9100"), an identical chip with a lower clock speed and slower memory. Whereas the full 8500 was clocked at 275 MHz core and 275 MHz RAM, the 8500LE was clocked more conservatively at 250 MHz for the core and 200 or 250 MHz for the RAM. Both video cards were first released in 64 MB DDR SDRAM configurations; the later 128 MB Radeon 8500 boards received a small performance boost resulting from a memory interleave mode.
In November 2001 was the release of the "All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV", with 64 MB and a slower clock speed like the 8500 LE. In 2002, three 128 MB cards were rolled out, the Radeon 8500, 8500 LE, and the "All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128 MB", which was clocked at full 8500 speeds but had fewer video-related features than the AIW 8500 DV. ATI claimed that the lower clock speed for the 8500DV was due to the FireWire interface.
In late 2002, the "Radeon 9100" was announced to satisfy strong market demand for products based on the R200 architecture.
Radeon 8500 XT (canceled).
An updated chip, the "Radeon 8500 XT" (R250) was planned for a mid-2002 release, to compete against the GeForce4 Ti line, particularly the top line Ti4600 (which retailed for an MSRP of $350–399 USD). Prerelease information touted a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the "R250" chip.
A Radeon 8500 running at 300 MHz clock speeds would have hardly defeated the GeForce4 Ti4600, let alone a newer card from NVIDIA. At best it could have been a better performing mid-range solution than the lower-complexity Radeon 9000 (RV250, see below), but it would also have cost more to produce and would have been poorly suited to the Radeon 9000's dual laptop/desktop roles due to die size and power draw. Notably, overclockers found that Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 could not reliably overclock to 300 MHz without additional voltage, so undoubtedly R250 would have had similar issues because of its greater complexity and equivalent manufacturing technology, and this would have resulted in poor chip yields, and thus, higher costs.
ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx when they took focus off their "Rampage" processor, abandoned the R250 refresh in favor of finishing off their next-generation DirectX 9.0 card which was released as the Radeon 9700. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The new Radeon 9700 flagship, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh, and it easily took the performance crown from the Ti4600.
Radeon 9000.
The "Radeon 9000" (RV250) was launched alongside the Radeon 9700. The 9000 succeeded the Radeon 7500 (RV200) in the mainstream market segment, with the latter being moved to the budget segment. This chip was a significant redesign of R200 to reduce cost and power usage. Among hardware removed is one of the two texture units, the "TruForm" function, Hierarchical-Z, the DirectX 7 TCL unit and one of the two vertex shaders. In games, the Radeon 9000 performs similarly to the GeForce4 MX 440. Its main advantage over the MX 440 was that it had a full DirectX 8.1 vertex and pixel shader implementation. While the 9000 was not quite as fast as the 8500LE or the Nvidia GeForce3 Ti200, the 8500LE and Ti200 were to be discontinued, though the former was reintroduced due to strong market demand.
Radeon 9200.
A later revision of the 9000 was the "Radeon 9200" (RV280) released April 16, 2003, which aside from supporting AGP 8X, was identical. There was also a cheaper version, the "9200SE", which had a 20% lower clock speed and only had a 64-bit memory bus. Another board, called the "Radeon 9250" was launched in July 2004, being simply a slightly lower-clocked RV280.
ATI had re-branded its products in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.1, and so on. However, in naming the Radeon 9000/9200, which only had DirectX 8.1 rendering features, ATI advertised them as "DirectX 9.0 compatible" while the truly DirectX 9.0-spec Radeon 9700 was "DirectX 9.0 compliant".
Laptop versions.
The "Mobility Radeon 9000" was launched in early summer 2002 and was the first DirectX 8 laptop chip. It outperformed the DirectX 7-based nVidia GeForce 2 Go and was more feature-rich than the GeForce 4 Go.
A "Mobility Radeon 9200" later followed as well, derived from the desktop 9200. The "Mobility Radeon 9200" was also used in many Apple laptops, including the Apple iBook G4.
Drivers.
Unix-related operating systems.
The open source drivers from X.org/Mesa support almost all features provided by the R200 hardware. They are shipped by default on most BSDs and Linux systems. Newer ATI Catalyst drivers do not offer support for any R500 or older architecture product.
The PowerPC-based Mac mini and iBook G4, which run on Mac OS X, were supplied with Radeon 9200 GPUs; the final Power Mac G4 "Mirrored Drive Door" systems had the 9000 and 9000 Pro cards available as a BTO option.
Windows drivers.
This series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by AMD under Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows XP (except x64), Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows 98. Other operating systems may have support in the form of a generic driver that lacks complete support for the hardware. Driver development for the R200 line ended with the Catalyst 6.11 drivers for Windows XP.
Classic Mac OS.
The Radeon 9250 was the final ATI card to officially support Mac OS 9.
AmigaOS.
The R200 series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by the Amiga operating system, Release 4 and higher. 2D graphics are fully supported by all cards in the family, with 3D acceleration support for the 9000, 9200, and 9250-series of cards.
MorphOS.
The R200 series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by MorphOS


MacOS High Sierra

macOS High Sierra (version 10.13) is the fourteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. macOS High Sierra was announced at the WWDC 2017 on June 5, 2017 and was released on September 25, 2017. The name "High Sierra" refers to the High Sierra region in California. Like with Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and El Capitan, the name also alludes to its status as a refinement of its predecessor, focused on performance improvements and technical updates rather than user features. Among the apps with notable changes are Photos and Safari.
System requirements.
macOS High Sierra is supported on the following Macintosh computers:
macOS High Sierra requires at least 2 GB of RAM and 14.3 GB of available disk space.
HEVC hardware acceleration requires a Mac with a sixth-generation Intel processor or newer:
External graphics processor support requires a Thunderbolt 3-enabled Mac:
It is possible to install High Sierra on many older Macintosh computers that are not officially supported by Apple. This requires using a patch to modify the install image.
Changes.
System.
Apple File System.
Apple File System (APFS) replaces HFS Plus as the default file system in macOS for the first time with High Sierra. It supports 64‑bit inode numbers, is designed for flash memory, and is designed to speed up common tasks like duplicating a file and finding the size of a folder's contents. It also has built‑in encryption, crash‑safe protections, and simplified data backup on the go.
Metal 2.
Metal, Apple's low-level graphics API, has been updated to Metal 2. It includes virtual-reality and machine-learning features, as well as support for external GPUs. The system's windowing system, Quartz Compositor, supports Metal 2.
Media.
macOS High Sierra adds support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), with hardware acceleration where available, as well as support for High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF). Macs with the Intel Kaby Lake processor offer hardware support for Main 10 profile 10-bit hardware decoding, those with the Intel Skylake processor support Main profile 8-bit hardware decoding, and those with AMD Radeon 400 series graphics also support full HEVC decoding. However, whenever an Intel IGP is present, the frameworks will only direct requests to Intel IGP. In addition, audio codecs FLAC and Opus are also supported, but not in iTunes.
Other.
Kernel extensions ("kexts") will require explicit approval by the user before being able to run.
The Low Battery notification and its icon were replaced by a flatter modern look.
The time service ntpd was replaced with timed for the time synchronisation.
The FTP and telnet command line programs were removed.
Caching Server, File Sharing Server, and Time Machine Server, features that were previously part of macOS Server, are now provided as part of the OS.
The screen can now be locked using the shortcut Cmd+Ctrl+Q. The ability to lock screen using a menu bar shortcut activated in Keychain Access preferences has now been removed.
The 10.13.4 update added support for external graphics processors for Macs equipped with Thunderbolt 3 ports. The update discontinued support for external graphics processors in 2015 or older Macs, equipped with Thunderbolt 1 and 2 ports.
Starting with 10.13.4, when a 32-bit app is opened, users get a one-time warning about its future incompatibility with the macOS operating system.
Applications.
Final Cut Pro 7.
Apple announced the original Final Cut Studio suite of programs will not work on High Sierra. Media professionals that depend on any of those programs were advised to create a double boot drive to their computer.
Photos.
macOS High Sierra gives Photos an updated sidebar and new editing tools.
Photos synchronizes tagged People with iOS 11.
Mail.
Mail has improved Spotlight search with Top Hits. Mail also uses 35% less storage space due to optimizations, and Mail's compose window can now be used in split-screen mode.
Safari.
macOS High Sierra includes Safari 11. Safari 11 has a new "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" feature that uses machine learning to block third parties from tracking the user's actions. Safari can also block autoplaying videos from playing. The "Reader Mode" can be set to always-on. Safari 11 also supports WebAssembly. The last version of Safari that High Sierra supports is 13.1.2. This version has known security issues.
Notes.
The Notes app allows the user to add tables to a note. A note can be pinned to the top of the list.
Siri.
Siri now uses a more natural and expressive voice. It also uses machine learning to understand the user better. Siri synchronizes information across iOS and Mac devices so the Siri experience is the same regardless of the product being used.
Messages.
The release of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 (and iOS 11.4) introduced support for Messages in iCloud. This feature allows messages to sync across all devices using the same iCloud account. When messages are deleted they are deleted on each device as well, and messages stored in the cloud do not take up local storage on the device anymore. In order to use the feature, the user has to enable two-factor authentication for their Apple ID.
Reception.
In his September 2017 review of High Sierra, Roman Loyola, the senior editor of "Macworld", gave it a provisionally positive review, calling it an "incremental update worthy of your time, eventually." Loyola expressed that the product's most significant draw was its security features, and that beyond this, the most beneficial changes lay in its future potential, saying it "doesn't have a lot of new features that will widen your eyes in excitement. But a lot of the changes are in the background and under the hood, and they lay a foundation for better things to come."
Problems.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.0 and 10.13.1 have a critical vulnerability that allowed an attacker to become a root user by typing root in the username of the password prompt and not entering the password. This was fixed in the Security Update 2017-001 macOS High Sierra v10.13.1.
When it was first launched, it was discovered that the WindowServer process had a memory leak, leading to much slower graphics performance and lagging animations, probably due to some last-minute changes in Metal 2. This was fixed in macOS 10.13.1.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 had an error that caused DisplayLink to stop working for external monitors, allowing only one monitor to be extended. When using two external monitors, they could only be mirrored. Alban Rampon, the Senior Product Manager for DisplayLink, stated on December 24, 2018 that the company was working with Apple to resolve the issue.


Athlon X4

AMD Athlon X4 is a series of budget AMD microprocessors for personal computers. These processors are distinct from A-Series APUs of the same era due to the lack of iGPUs.


List of Xbox Wireless Controller special editions

This is a list of all the special editions of the Xbox Wireless Controller, the primary controller of the Xbox One and Xbox Series X and Series S home video game consoles. Besides standard colors, "special" and "limited edition" Xbox Wireless Controllers have also been sold by Microsoft with special color and design schemes, sometimes tying into specific games.


Gecos field

The gecos field, or GECOS field is a field of each record in the /etc/passwd file on Unix, and similar operating systems. On UNIX, it is the 5th of 7 fields in a record.
It is typically used to record general information about the account or its user(s) such as their real name and phone number.
Format.
The typical format for the GECOS field is a comma-delimited list with this order:
In most UNIX systems non-root users can change their own information using the "chfn" or "chsh" command.
History.
Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GECOS machines for print spooling and various other services, so this field was added to carry information on a user's GECOS identity.
Other uses.
On Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the real name field is sometimes referred to as the gecos field. IRC clients are required to supply this field when connecting. Hexchat, an X-Chat fork, defaults to 'realname', TalkSoup.app on GNUstep defaults to 'John Doe', and irssi reads the operating system user's full name, replacing it with 'unknown' if not defined. Some IRC clients use this field for advertising; for example, ZNC defaulted to "Got ZNC?", but changed it to "RealName = " to match its configuration syntax in 2015.


OS X El Capitan

OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Following the Northern California landmark-based naming scheme introduced with OS X Mavericks, El Capitan was named after a rock formation in Yosemite National Park, signifying its goal to be a refined version of Yosemite. El Capitan is the final version to be released under the name OS X. El Capitan received far superior reviews when compared to Yosemite.
The first beta of OS X El Capitan was released to developers shortly following the WWDC keynote on June 8, 2015. The first public beta was made available on July 9, 2015. There were multiple betas released after the keynote. OS X El Capitan was released to end users on September 30, 2015, as a free upgrade through the Mac App Store.
System requirements.
All Macintosh computers that can run Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or Yosemite can run El Capitan, although not all of its features will work on older computers. For example, Apple notes that the newly available Metal API is available on "all Macs since 2012".
These computers can run El Capitan, provided they have at least 2GB of RAM:
Of these computers, the following models were equipped with 1GB RAM as the standard option on the base model when they were shipped originally. They can only run OS X El Capitan if they have at least 2GB of RAM.
The following computers support features such as Handoff, Instant Hotspot, AirDrop between Mac computers and iOS devices, as well as the new Metal API:
The upgrade varies in size depending upon which Apple Mac computer it is being installed on; in most scenarios, it will require about 6 GB of disk space.
Features.
OS X El Capitan includes features to improve the security, performance, design and usability of OS X. Compared to OS X Yosemite, Apple says that opening PDFs is four times faster, app switching and viewing messages in Mail is twice as fast and launching apps is 40% faster. The maximum amount of memory that could be allocated to the graphics processor has been increased from 1024 MB to 1536 MB on Macs with an Intel HD 4000 GPU. OS X El Capitan supports Metal, Apple's graphics API introduced in iOS 8 to speed up performance in games and professional applications. Apple's typeface San Francisco replaces Helvetica Neue as the system typeface. OS X El Capitan also adopts LibreSSL in replacement of OpenSSL used in previous versions.
Window management.
OS X El Capitan introduces new window management features such as creating a full-screen split screen limited to two app windows side by side in full screen by pressing the green button on left upper corner of the window or Control+Cmd+F keyboard shortcut, then snapping any supported other window to that full screen application. This feature is slightly similar to, although less extensive than, the snap-assist feature in Windows 7 (and later) and several Linux desktop environments, such as GNOME. OS X El Capitan improves Mission Control to incorporate this feature across multiple spaces. It also enables users to spot the pointer more easily by enlarging it by shaking the mouse or swiping a finger back and forth on the trackpad.
Applications.
Messages and Mail.
OS X El Capitan adds multi-touch gestures to applications like Mail and Messages that allow a user to delete or mark emails or conversations by swiping a finger on a multi-touch device, such as a trackpad. OS X also analyzes the contents of individual emails in Mail and uses the gathered information in other applications, such as Calendar. For example, an invitation in Mail can automatically be added as a Calendar event.
Maps.
Apple Maps in El Capitan shows public transit information similar to Maps in iOS 9. This feature was limited to a handful of cities upon launch: Baltimore, Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Shanghai, Toronto and Washington D.C.
Notes.
The Notes application receives an overhaul, similar to Notes in iOS 9. Both applications have more powerful text-processing capabilities, such as to-do lists (like in the Reminders application), inline webpage previews, photos and videos, digital sketches, map locations and other documents and media types. Notes replaces traditional IMAP-based syncing with iCloud, which offers better end-to-end encryption and faster syncing.
Safari.
Safari in El Capitan lets users pin tabs for frequently accessed websites to the tab bar, similar to Firefox and Google Chrome. Users are able to quickly identify and mute tabs that play audio without having to search for individual tabs. Safari supports AirPlay video streaming to an Apple TV without the need to broadcast the entire webpage. Safari extensions are now hosted and signed by Apple as part of the updated Apple Developer program and they received native support for content blocking, allowing developers to block website components (such as advertisements) without JavaScript injection. The app also allows the user to customize the font and background of the Reader mode.
Spotlight.
Spotlight is improved with more contextual information such as the weather, stocks, news and sports scores. It is also able to process queries in natural language. For example, users can type "Show me pictures that I took in Yosemite National Park in July 2014" and Spotlight will use that request to bring up the corresponding info. The app can now be resized and moved across the screen.
Photos.
Photos introduced editing extensions, which allow Photos to use editing tools from other apps.
System Integrity Protection.
OS X El Capitan has a new security feature called System Integrity Protection (SIP, sometimes referred to as "rootless") that protects certain system processes, files and folders from being modified or tampered with by other processes even when executed by the root user or by a user with root privileges (sudo). Apple says that the root user can be a significant risk factor to the system's security, especially on systems with a single user account on which that user is also the administrator. System Integrity Protection is enabled by default, but can be disabled.
Reception.
Upon release, OS X El Capitan was met with positive reception from both users and critics, with praise mostly going towards the overall functionality of the new features and improved stability. Dieter Bohn of "The Verge" awarded the operating system a score of 8.5 out of 10; while Jason Snell of "Macworld" was also positive, rating it 4.5 out of 5. Many people criticized Apple's native apps for not having improved beyond third-party applications.
Issues.
After the 10.11.4 update, many users started reporting that their MacBooks were freezing, requiring a hard reboot. This issue mostly affects Early 2015 MacBook Pro computers, although many others have reported freezes in other models. Several users created videos on YouTube which showed the freezes. Soon after this, Apple released the 10.11.5 update, which contained stability improvements. Apple later acknowledged these problems, recommending their users to update to the last point release.
After the December 13, 2016, release of Security Update 2016–003, users reported problems with the WindowServer process becoming unresponsive, causing the GUI to freeze and sometimes necessitating a hard reboot to fix. In response, on January 17, 2017, Apple released Security Update 2016-003 Supplemental (10.11.6) to fix "a kernel issue that may cause your Mac to occasionally become unresponsive" and at the same time released an updated version of Security Update 2016-003 which includes the fix released in the supplemental. Users who have not previously installed Security Update 2016-003 are advised to install the updated version to reach build 15G1217, while users who have already installed the December 13, 2016 Security Update 2016-003 only need to install the supplemental update.


TME (operating system)


Alder Lake (microprocessor)

Alder Lake is Intel's codename for the upcoming 12th-generation of Intel Core processors based on a hybrid architecture utilizing Golden Cove high-performance cores and Gracemont power-saving cores. Intel expects to launch Alder Lake in the second half of 2021. It is expected to be fabricated using Intel's 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin (ESF) process.
Features.
Alder Lake was confirmed by Intel during the company's Architecture Day 2020.
Alder Lake processors are based on a new hybrid architecture that utilizes two core types: high-performance and high-efficiency. According to Intel, Alder Lake is a "performance hybrid" in their portfolio as it focuses on performance. Intel also claims that Alder Lake will have their best performance per watt.


A.out

a.out is a file format used in older versions of Unix-like computer operating systems for executables, object code, and, in later systems, shared libraries. This is an abbreviated form of "assembler output", the filename of the output of Ken Thompson's PDP-7 assembler. The term was subsequently applied to the format of the resulting file to contrast with other formats for object code.
"a.out" remains the default output file name for executables created by certain compilers and linkers when no output name is specified, even though the created files actually are not in the a.out format.
History.
An "a.out" format for the PDP-7, similar to the "a.out" format used on the PDP-11, appeared in the first edition of UNIX.
It was superseded by the COFF format in AT&T Unix System V, which was in turn superseded by the ELF format in System V Release 4.
Though Berkeley Unix continued using the "a.out" format for some time, modern BSD-systems have since switched to ELF. NetBSD/i386 switched formally from "a.out" to ELF in its 1.5 release (Dec 2000). FreeBSD/i386 switched to ELF during the 2.2 to 3.0 transition (Oct 1998).
MINIX 3 switched to ELF in the 3.2.0 release.
Linux also used "a.out" until kernel 1.2 (March 1995), when it was superseded by ELF for that platform as well.
(ELF support was added in the experimental 1.1.52 kernel.) Linux's transition to ELF was more or less forced due to the complex nature of building "a.out" shared libraries on that platform, which included the need to register the virtual address space at which the library was located with a central authority, as the "a.out" ld.so in Linux was unable to relocate shared libraries.
The various BSD flavors were able to continue using "a.out" binaries long after Linux was forced to switch to ELF, due to the somewhat more flexible nature of the BSD "a.out" format compared to that of Linux. The a.out file format on Linux was deprecated with the release of the 5.1 Linux kernel.
Use.
Debugging.
The "a.out" support for debug information is done through the use of special entries in the symbol table called stabs. The stabs format has also been used in many COFF and ELF variations.


James Duncan Davidson

James Duncan Davidson is an American photographer and a software developer. He's currently the Technical Advisor to the CEO of Shopify.
While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems (1997–2001), Davidson created Tomcat, a Java-based webserver application and the Ant Java-based build tool. Davidson is the author or co-author of several books on both using and writing software, including "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C", "Cocoa in a Nutshell", "Running Mac OS X Panther", and "Mac OS X Panther Hacks", all published by O’Reilly Media. He also contributed to "Agile Web Development with Rails", published by The Pragmatic Programmers.
He was raised in Oklahoma and Texas, and is a resident of Berlin. Before he joined Shopify, he was a Principal Software Engineer and CTO in Residence at Microsoft for Startups. His work was to provide advice for startup founders and CTOs and help them prioritize, focus, and think through their work.
Starting in 2005, Duncan added photography to his other professional focuses.
He has served as the primary event photographer at several high-profile technology conferences. From 2009 to 2016 he was the main stage photographer for TED conferences, photographing every TED and TEDGlobal event. In 2010, Duncan was the photographer for the Mission Blue Voyage in the Galapagos Islands and led the TEDxOilSpill Expedition in the Gulf of Mexico. Davidson is also known for his artistic travel photos, often with an eye for architectural details, a clear reference to his university studies in architecture.
He was the co-founder and co-owner (along with Greg Koenig) of Luma Labs, a small company based in Portland, OR focused on making high quality camera accessories.


Kan Balam

Kan Balam (Spanish pronunciation:kan' balaːm, Tzotzil Maya pronunciation: 'kʱaŋ βalɒm) is a computer cluster located in Mexico City, on the main campus of the UNAM. With a rated capacity of 7.1 teraFLOPS, 3.02 TB of RAM and 160 TB of storage. It started working on January 16, 2007 and was ranked as the number one in Latin America until June 2008. The current best supercomputer in Latin America is run by Brazil.
Among the objectives of this super computer is to allow Mexican researchers to work with highly modern infrastructure without the necessity of leaving the country, thus helping to stop the brain drain that the country has had in the last years.
The principal subjects aided by this computer are astrophysics, particle physics, quantum physics, geology and is mainly devoted towards seismic engineering. It will also be used for weather measurements and it will be available for public and private companies.
Characteristics.
Processing.
The computer has 1368 AMD Opteron 2.6 GHz processors and 3016 GB RAM, distributed in 337 calculation nodes, each with 8 GB RAM and two DUO processors and in five specialized nodes with 64 GB RAM each.
Storage.
KanBalam has a storage system of 768 hard disks, with 200 GB each.
Interconnection.
The processing nodes communicate with the storage system in a high-speed network. It connects 576 ports with 2 switches infiniband, reaching a speed of the order of 10 Gbyte/s.
Control.
The computer has 4 HP service nodes.
OS.
Kan Balam runs in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Operative System.
Issues.
At the very beginning the computer was unable to run at optimal speed or make use of the full power of the processors, a problem which DGSCA was already well aware of (it was inaugurated before its final installation was completed). Technically a whole 1/3 of the nodes were unable to run due to temperature issues in the work room (when running all nodes at 100% their capacity). In recent dates, the computer's performance has been stabilized (with the addition of two more cooling units) and is near optimal condition.
This prompted an alarmist reaction among the first users which provoked a local periodical to falsely publish and fabricate a supposed "meltdown" of the nodes in early June 2007.
In 2011, UNAM acquired the Miztli supercomputer, an HP cluster with 5320 Cores, speed of 118 Tflops, 13 Tbytes RAM, 344 HP Proliant servers.


VIEWMAX.EXE


GeForce 8 series

The GeForce 8 series is the eighth generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units. The third major GPU architecture developed by Nvidia, Tesla represents the company's first unified shader architecture.
GeForce 8 Series overview.
All GeForce 8 Series products are based on Tesla (microarchitecture).
Max resolution.
Dual Dual-link DVI Support:
Able to drive two flat-panel displays up to 2560×1600 resolution. Available on select GeForce 8800 and 8600 GPUs.
One Dual-link DVI Support:
Able to drive one flat-panel display up to 2560×1600 resolution. Available on select GeForce 8500 GPUs and GeForce 8400 GS cards based on the G98.
One Single-link DVI Support:
Able to drive one flat-panel display up to 1920×1200 resolution. Available on select GeForce 8400 GPUs. GeForce 8400 GS cards based on the G86 only support single-link DVI.
Display capabilities.
The GeForce 8 series supports 10-bit per channel display output, up from 8-bit on previous NVIDIA cards. This potentially allows higher fidelity color representation and separation on capable displays. The GeForce 8 series, like its recent predecessors, also supports Scalable Link Interface (SLI) for multiple installed cards to act as one via an SLI Bridge, so long as they are of similar architecture.
NVIDIA's PureVideo HD video rendering technology is an improved version of the original PureVideo introduced with GeForce 6. It now includes GPU-based hardware acceleration for decoding HD movie formats, post-processing of HD video for enhanced images, and optional High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support at the card level.
GeForce 8300 and 8400 Series.
In the summer of 2007 NVIDIA released the entry-level GeForce 8300GS and 8400GS graphics cards, based on the G86 core. The GeForce 8300 was only available in the OEM market, and as the GeForce 8300 mGPU motherboard GPU. These graphics cards were not intended for intense 3D applications such as fast, high-resolution video games. They were originally designed to replace the 7200 and 7300 models, but could not due to their poor game performance. It was able to play modern games at playable framerates at low settings and low resolutions making it popular among casual gamers and HTPC (Media Center) builders without a PCI Express or AGP motherboard.
At the end of 2007 NVIDIA released a new GeForce 8400 GS based on the G98 (D8M) chip. It is quite different from the G86 used for the "first" 8400 GS, as the G98 features VC-1 and MPEG2 video decoding completely in hardware, lower power consumption, lowered 3D-performance and a smaller fabrication process. The G98 also features dual-link DVI support and PCI Express 2.0. G86 and G98 cards were both sold as "8400 GS", the difference showing only in the technical specifications. Sometimes this card is called "GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2".
During mid-2010 NVidia released another revision of the GeForce 8400 GS based on the GT218 chip. It has a larger amount of RAM, is capable of DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3 and Shader 4.1. This card is also known as "GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 3".
GeForce 8500 and 8600 Series.
On April 17, 2007, NVIDIA released the GeForce 8500 GT for the entry-level market, and the GeForce 8600 GT and 8600 GTS for the mid-range market. As with many GPUs, the larger number these parts carry does not guarantee superior performance over previous generation parts with a lower number.
NVIDIA introduced 2nd-generation PureVideo with this series. As the first major update to PureVideo since the GeForce 6's launch, 2nd-gen PureVideo offered much improved hardware-decoding for H.264.
GeForce 8800 Series.
The 8800 series, codenamed G80, was launched on November 8, 2006 with the release of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS for the high-end market. A 320 MB GTS was released on February 12 and the Ultra was released on May 2, 2007. The cards are larger than their predecessors, with the 8800 GTX measuring 10.6 in (~26.9 cm) in length and the 8800 GTS measuring 9 in (~23 cm). Both cards have two dual-link DVI connectors and a HDTV/S-Video out connector. The 8800 GTX requires 2 PCIe power inputs to keep within the PCIe standard, while the GTS requires just one.
8800 GS.
The 8800 GS is a trimmed-down 8800 GT with 96 stream processors and either 384 or 768 MB of RAM on a 192-bit bus. In May 2008, it was rebranded as the 9600 GSO in an attempt to spur sales.
On April 28, 2008, Apple announced an updated iMac line featuring an 8800 GS. However, the GPU is actually a rebranded NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS. It features up to 512 MB of 800 MHz GDDR3 video memory, 64 unified stream processors, a 500 MHz core speed, a 256-bit memory bus width, and a 1250 MHz shader clock.
8800 GTX / 8800 Ultra.
The 8800 GTX is equipped with 768 MB GDDR3 RAM. The 8800 series replaced the GeForce 7950 Series as NVIDIA's top-performing consumer GPU. GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS use identical GPU cores, but the GTS model disables parts of the GPU and reduces RAM size and bus width to lower production cost.
At the time, the G80 was the largest commercial GPU ever constructed. It consists of 681 million transistors covering a 480 mm² die surface area built on a 90 nm process. (In fact the G80's total transistor count is ~686 million, but since the chip was made on a 90 nm process and due to process limitations and yield feasibility, NVIDIA had to break the main design into two chips: Main shader core at 681 million transistors and NV I/O core of about ~5 million transistors making the entire G80 design standing at ~686 million transistors).
A minor manufacturing defect related to a resistor of improper value caused a recall of the 8800 GTX models just two days before the product launch, though the launch itself was unaffected.
The GeForce 8800 GTX was by far the fastest GPU when first released, and 13 months after its initial debut it still remained one of the fastest. The GTX has 128 stream processors clocked at 1.35 GHz, a core clock of 575 MHz, and 768 MB of 384-bit GDDR3 memory at 1.8 GHz, giving it a memory bandwidth of 86.4 GB/s. The card performs faster than a single Radeon HD 2900 XT, and faster than 2 Radeon X1950 XTXs in Crossfire or 2 GeForce 7900 GTXs in SLI. The 8800 GTX also supports HDCP, but one major flaw is its older NVIDIA PureVideo processor that uses more CPU resources. Originally retailing for around US$600, prices came down to under US$400 before it was discontinued. The 8800 GTX was also very power hungry for its time, demanding up to 185 watts of power and requiring two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors to operate. The 8800 GTX also has 2 SLI connector ports, allowing it to support NVIDIA 3-way SLI for users who run demanding games at extreme resolutions such as 2560x1600.
The 8800 Ultra, retailing at a higher price, is identical to the GTX architecturally, but features higher clocked shaders, core and memory. Nvidia later told the media the 8800 Ultra was a new stepping, creating less heat therefore clocking higher. Originally retailing from $800 to $1000, most users thought the card to be a poor value, offering only 10% more performance than the GTX but costing hundreds of dollars more. Prices dropped to as low as $200 before being discontinued on January 23, 2008. The core clock of the Ultra runs at 612 MHz, the shaders at 1.5 GHz, and finally the memory at 2.16 GHz, giving the Ultra a theoretical memory bandwidth of 103.7 GB/s. It has 2 SLI connector ports, allowing it to support NVIDIA 3-way SLI. An updated dual slot cooler was also implemented, allowing for quieter and cooler operation at higher clock speeds.
8800 GT.
The 8800 GT, codenamed G92, was released on October 29, 2007. The card is the first to transition to 65 nm process, and supports PCI-Express 2.0. It has a single-slot cooler as opposed to the double slot cooler on the 8800 GTS and GTX, and uses less power than GTS and GTX due to its 65 nm process. While its core processing power is comparable to that of the GTX, the 256-bit memory interface and the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory often hinders its performance at very high resolutions and graphics settings. The 8800 GT, unlike other 8800 cards, is equipped with the PureVideo HD VP2 engine for GPU assisted decoding of the H.264 and VC-1 codecs. Performance benchmarks at stock speeds place it above the 8800 GTS (640 MB and 320 MB versions) and slightly below the 8800 GTX. A 256 MB version of the 8800 GT with lower stock memory speeds (1.4 GHz as opposed to 1.8 GHz) but the same core is also available. Performance benchmarks have shown that the 256 MB version of the 8800 GT has a considerable performance disadvantage when compared to its 512 MB counterpart, especially in newer games such as Crysis. Some manufacturers also make models with 1 GB of memory; and with large resolutions and big textures one can perceive a performance difference in the benchmarks. These models are more likely to take up to 2 slots of the computer.
The release of this card presents an odd dynamic to the graphics processing industry. At an NVIDIA projected initial street price of around $300, this card outperforms the ATI flagship HD2900XT in most situations, and even NVIDIA's own 8800 GTS 640 MB (previously priced at an MSRP of $400). The card, only marginally slower in synthetic and gaming benchmarks than the 8800 GTX, also takes much of the value away from NVIDIA's own high-end card.
Compatibility issue with PCI-E 1.0a.
Shortly after the release, an incompatibility issue with older PCI Express 1.0a motherboards was unmasked. When using the PCI Express 2.0 compliant 8800 GT or 8800 GTS 512 in some motherboards with PCI Express 1.0a slots, the card would not produce any display image, but the computer would often boot (with the fan on the video card spinning at a constant 100%). The incompatibility has been confirmed on motherboards with VIA PT880Pro/Ultra, Intel 925 and Intel 5000P PCI-E 1.0a chipsets.
Some graphics cards had a workaround, which was to re-flash the graphics card's BIOS with an older GEN1 BIOS. However this effectively made it into a PCI Express 1.0 card, not being able to utilize the PCIE 2.0 functions. This could be considered a non-issue however since the card itself could not even utilize the full capacity of the regular PCIE 1.0 slots, there was no noticeable performance reduction. Also flashing of the video card BIOS voided the warranties of most video card manufacturers (if not all) thus making it a less-than-optimum way of getting the card to work properly. A workaround to this is to flash the BIOS of the motherboard to the latest version, which depending on the manufacturer of the motherboard, may contain a fix. In relation to this compatibility issue, the high numbers of cards reported as DOA (as much as 13–15%) were believed to be inaccurate. When it was revealed that the G92 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512 MB were going to be designed with PCI Express 2.0 connections, NVIDIA claimed that all cards would have full backwards-compatibility, but failed to mention that this was only true for PCI Express 1.1 motherboards. The source for the BIOS-flash did not come from NVIDIA or any of their partners, but rather ASRock, a mainboard producer, who mentioned the fix in one of their motherboard FAQs. ASUSTek, sells the 8800 GT with their sticker, posted a newer version of their 8800 GT BIOS on their website, but did not mention that it fixed this issue. EVGA also posted a new bios to fix this issue.
The performance (at the time) and popularity of this card is demonstrated by the fact that even as late as 2014, the 8800 GT was often listed as the minimum requirement for modern games developed for much more powerful hardware.
8800 GTS.
The first releases of the 8800 GTS line, in November 2006, came in 640 MB and 320 MB configurations of GDDR3 RAM and utilized NVIDIA's G80 GPU. While the 8800 GTX has 128 stream processors and a 384-bit memory bus, these versions of 8800 GTS feature 96 stream processors and a 320-bit bus. With respect to features, however, they are identical because they use the same GPU.
Around the same release date as the 8800 GT, NVIDIA released a new 320 MB version of the 8800 GTS. While still based on the 90 nm G80 core, this version has 7 out of the 8 clusters of 16 stream processors enabled (as opposed to 6 out 8 on the older GTSs), giving it a total of 112 stream processors instead of 96. Most other aspects of the card remain unchanged. However, because the only 2 add-in partners producing this card (BFG and EVGA) decided to overclock it, this version of the 8800 GTS actually ran slightly faster than a stock GTX in most scenarios, especially at higher resolutions, due to the increased clock speeds.
NVIDIA released a new 8800 GTS 512 MB based on the 65 nm G92 GPU on December 10, 2007. This 8800 GTS has 128 stream processors, compared to the 96 processors of the original GTS models. It is equipped with 512 MB GDDR3 on a 256-bit bus. Combined with a 650 MHz core clock and architectural enhancements, this gives the card raw GPU performance exceeding that of 8800 GTX, but it is constrained by the narrower 256-bit memory bus. Its performance can match the 8800 GTX in some situations, and it outperforms the older GTS cards in all situations.
GeForce 8M Series.
On May 10, 2007, NVIDIA announced the availability of their GeForce 8 notebook GPUs through select OEMs. So far the lineup consists of the 8200M, 8400M, 8600M, 8700M and 8800M series chips. It was announced by nVidia that some of their graphics chips have a higher than expected rate of failure due to overheating when used in particular notebook configurations. Some major laptop manufacturers made adjustments to fan setting and firmware updates to help delay the occurrence of any potential GPU failure. In late July 2008, Dell released a set of BIOS updates that made the laptop fans spin more frequently. As of mid-August 2008, nVidia had yet to give further details publicly, though it had been heavily rumored that all or most of the 8400 and 8600 cards had this issue.
GeForce 8400M Series.
The GeForce 8400M is the entry level series for the GeForce 8M chipset. Normally found on midrange laptops as an alternative solution to integrated graphics, the 8400M was designed for watching high definition video content rather than gaming. Versions include the 8400M G, 8400M GS, and 8400M GT. While these GPUs are not oriented for high-end gaming, the GDDR3-equipped 8400M-GT can handle most games of its time at medium settings, and was suitable for occasional gaming.
GeForce 8600M Series.
The GeForce 8600M was offered in midrange laptops as a mid-range performance solution for enthusiasts who want to watch high-definition content such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD movies and play then-current and some future games with decent settings. Versions include the 8600M GS and 8600M GT(GT being the more powerful one), and provided decent gaming performance (due to the implementation of GDDR3 memory in the higher-end 8600M models) for then-current games. It is currently on the Dell XPS M1530 portable, Asus G1S, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ21Z, in selected Lenovo Ideapad models, some models of the Acer Aspire 5920, Acer Aspire 9920G and BenQ Joybook S41, also available on the MacBook Pro, and some models of Fujitsu Siemens. The common failure of this chip in, amongst others, MacBook Pro's purchased between May 2007 and September 2008 were part of a class-action suit against nVidia which resulted in Apple providing an extended 4 year warranty related to the issue after confirming that the issue was caused by the nVidia chip themselves. This warranty replacement service was expected to cost nVidia around $150 to $200 million and knocked over $3 billion off their market capitalisation after being sued by their own shareholders for attempting to cover the issue up.
GeForce 8700M Series.
The GeForce 8700M was developed for the mid-range market. Currently the only version is the 8700M GT. This chipset is available on high-end laptops such as the Dell XPS M1730, Sager NP5793, and Toshiba Satellite X205. While this card is considered by most in the field to be a decent mid-range card, it is hard to classify the 8700M-GT as a high-end card due to its 128-bit memory bus, and is essentially an overclocked 8600M GT GDDR3 mid-range card. However, it shows strong performance when in a dual-card SLI configuration, and provides decent gaming performance in a single-card configuration.
GeForce 8800M Series.
The GeForce 8800M was developed to succeed the 8700M in the high-end market, and can be found in high-end gaming notebook computers.
Versions include the 8800M GTS and 8800M GTX. These were released as the first truly high-end mobile GeForce 8 Series GPUs, each with a 256-bit memory bus and a standard 512 megabytes of GDDR3 memory, and provide high-end gaming performance equivalent to many desktop GPUs. In SLI, these can produce 3DMark06 results in the high thousands.
Laptop models which include the 8800M GPUs are: Sager NP5793, Sager NP9262, Alienware m15x and m17x, HP HDX9494NR and Dell M1730. Clevo also manufactures similar laptop models for CyberPower, Rock, and Sager (among others) - all with the 8800M GTX, while including the 8800M GTS in the Gateway P-6831 FX and P-6860 FX models.
Problems.
Some chips of the GeForce 8 series (concretely those from the G84 [for example, G84-600-A2] and G86 series) suffer from an overheating problem. NVIDIA states this issue should not affect many chips, whereas others assert that all of the chips in these series are potentially affected. NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett were involved in a lawsuit filed on September 9, 2008 alleging their knowledge of the flaw, and their intent to hide it.
End-of-life driver support.
NVIDIA has ceased Windows driver support for GeForce 8 series on April 1, 2016.