As the release of AMD's 45 nm processors Shanghai and, more importantly, Deneb is drawing closer, we are getting a better idea of what to expect from AMD’s next generation of CPUs. The HyperTransport Consortium just released details of the HyperTransport 3.1 specification, which increases the clock speed from 2.6 to 3.2 GHz (6.4 GTransfers/s).

More than a third of all new Windows PCs recently bought by large businesses have deliberately been setup to run an operating system other than Windows Vista, InfoWorld says in a new study of a user network. Although Microsoft officially cut off most Windows XP sales on June 30th, the publication notes that 35 percent of all the systems brought online at enterprises since then either take advantage of a downgrade loophole that allows vendors to preinstall XP on normally Vista-based systems or else have installed another operating system of their own, whether it involves XP or an alternative such as Windows Server 2003 or 2008.

A little over a year ago, I wrote an article about the IPv4 address consumption with the subtitle IPv4 Address Space: 2.46 Billion Down, 1.25 Billion to Go. A week ago, we reached the magic number of 2.7 billion IPv4 addresses used. With 3.7 billion possible addresses,¹ this means we now have less than a billion unused IPv4 addresses left. There are 39 blocks of 16.78 million addresses in the IANA global pool and another 339 million addresses that have been given out by IANA to the five Regional Internet Registries, but not yet delegated to ISPs or end-users.

AMD today announced immediate availability of four new high-performance AMD Phenom™ X4 processors for PC users in search of the Ultimate Visual Experience. Led by the AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition processor, each CPU features true quad-core design, and when matched to AMD 790 series chipsets supports up to four award-winning ATI Radeon™ HD 3800 series graphics cards. This enthusiast PC platform, codenamed “Spider,” energizes the latest PC gaming titles, speeds high-definition video playback, and delivers amazing performance for advanced productivity and multi-tasking.