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Intel said Monday that its upcoming chip microarchitecture, Nehalem, will first be targeted at servers and high-end desktops but later will be scaled down for laptops.

The Nehalem architecture, a substantial upgrade to Intel's current Core 2 microarchitecture, will pack between two and eight cores, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of the digital enterprise group at Intel, during a press briefing on today. He did not talk about plans for Nehalem laptops. Intel plans to touch on the subject at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai in early April, a company spokesman said.

Each core in Nehalem chips will be able to execute two software threads simultaneously, so a server could potentially run 16 threads at the same time. Each core will have 256K bytes of L2 cache and a shared 8M-byte L3 cache, so local cores can better execute threads, Gelsinger said. The QuickPath Interconnect will provide improved communication between system components.

The Nehalem architecture will include an integrated DDR3 memory controller that delivers three times the memory performance of today's highest-performance Xeon processor, Gelsinger said. Nehalem chips will come with an optional integrated graphics controller, Gelsinger said.

Overall, Nehalem chips are designed to deliver better performance-per-watt and improved system performance, Gelsinger said. The chips are due for release in late 2008 and will be made with a 45-nanometer manufacturing process.

The company will follow up Nehalem with the Westmere microarchitecture in 2009 and Sandy Bridge in 2010. Work has begun on microarchitectures to succeed Sandy Bridge, but code-names have not been assigned to those. Intel has said chips will be manufactured using a 22-nm manufacturing process by 2011.

Intel is also working on the Larrabee platform, which will combine lots of cores, lots of threads and graphics capabilities to deliver high speed for the high-performance computing segment, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said at an investor conference in early March. It may bundle a graphics processing unit with the CPU on a single chip, Gelsinger said. Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices plans to launch the Fusion chip, which will combine a graphics processing unit and CPU on one chip, in the second half of 2009.

Intel also said it would ship its first six-core Xeon processor, code-named Dunnington, in the second half of this year. The Dunnington chip will be part of Intel's Xeon MP 7300 series of processors and will allow a four-processor server to have as many as 24 cores. The chip will have 1.9 billion transistors and include a 16M-byte L3 cache. It will be part of the Caneland server platform, which also includes the Clarksboro chipset.

SEATTLE - A major package of updates and security fixes for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system will be available for download Tuesday, according to Amazon.com Inc.’s Web site.

The retailer is selling copies of Vista without the service pack and advising customers that they can download the free SP1 upgrade starting Tuesday.

Amazon is also taking pre-orders for boxed copies of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which it said it will start shipping Wednesday.

In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft said it is on track to release SP1 in mid-March. The software maker acknowledged Amazon’s claim that the upgrade would be available Tuesday online, but didn’t confirm the date.

Microsoft previously announced plans to post SP1 to its Windows Update site and to its download center in mid-March, then push out the upgrades in mid-April to computer users who have set their PCs to receive automatic updates.

Many of the fixes in Vista SP1 have already been released as part of regular monthly updates in the year since the operating system went on sale to consumers. Microsoft has said SP1 improves Vista’s reliability, security and performance. Some early testers of the service pack have noticed improvement in performance when copying files over a network and playing video games that weren’t designed for Vista.

So far, the software maker has determined that only a handful of programs will break down in some way after SP1 is installed.

Microsoft said SP1 will block several applications from running for “reliability reasons.” The list includes BitDefender Antivirus and Internet Security, version 10; Fujitsu’s Shock Sensor hard drive protection for rugged laptops; two versions of Jiangmin KV Antivirus software and Check Point Technologies’ Zone Alarm Security Suite.

The company said a few programs won’t run on SP1, such as Web application design program Iron Speed Designer, while others will stop working well, like The New York Times Reader application.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Dish Network Corp. on Monday asked a federal appeals court to rehear a patent dispute with TiVo Inc., saying the court’s earlier ruling in TiVo’s favor relied on inaccurate testimony from a TiVo witness.

In January, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that digital video recorders distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., violated the software elements of TiVo’s patent.

That ruling overturned the lower court’s finding that Dish infringed on the hardware elements of the patent.

At stake is $94 million in damages the lower court awarded digital video recorder maker TiVo.

In a petition filed Monday, Dish said an expert witness who testified for TiVo contradicted himself and that means the software infringement verdict wasn’t “supported by substantial evidence.”

A third win for TiVo will boost the DVR pioneer’s negotiating power in licensing deals with cable and satellite TV providers. TiVo already has signed agreements with Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications Inc.

Satellite TV providerDirecTV Group Inc. will pay TiVo royalties through 2010, though it no longer sells TiVo-based boxes, having opted for its own DVR.

The suit comes as management at Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo struggles to turn the company toward profitability. TiVo has been in the red for most of its 11-year existence, but quarterly losses shrank in the fourth quarter, which ended January 31.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - A popular video on Youtube shows a 'concept phone' that could — literally — bend to fit your wrist. Called Nokia Morph, it's also an image of how the world's largest mobile phone maker wants to change.

As the Internet goes mobile and companies like Apple and Google find cool ways to embrace the trend, the mobile market leader is rewriting its product development rulebook. Instead of working in secrecy and isolation, it wants to start sharing.

“For Nokia this is probably the biggest throw of the dice since they entered the cellphone business,” said Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight, who has followed the Finnish firm since 1994.

Besides putting up futuristic ideas on video-sharing sites — like the Morph concept, which imagines a stretchable, flexible, solar-powered, self-cleaning device which also has a sense of smell — Nokia has invited bloggers and tech-savvy media specialists to brainstorm on future mobile products.

“We realized in early 2005 that if we only focused on innovation from within, we were limiting our scope for real breakthroughs,” Chief Technology Officer Bob Iannucci told Reuters in an interview. “We want more wild ideas.”

At stake is a share of the next phase of Internet growth, to offset the commoditization of Nokia's signature product. Forrester Research expects the number of mobile Internet users to triple over next five years to 125 million in Western Europe alone, while Nokia knows its double-digit margins on handsets will shrink.

To make its move in Internet services, Nokia plans to use its base of one billion customers — one-sixth of humanity — to consult on what works, what wows, and what doesn't. Compared with Apple's much-hyped iPhone, which has sales of just 5 million so far, its customers put Nokia in a strong position.

The market for Internet services is approaching 100 billion euros, and Nokia is the first big cellphone manufacturer to embrace the Internet media business. Close rivals Samsung and Sony Ericsson could follow, but are a couple of years behind.

Already the world's largest non-U.S. technology firm by market capitalization, controlling 40 percent of the world market for mobile devices, Nokia is still chasing growth.

Technology shares are valued on sales growth expectations and Nokia trades at around 1.4 times 2008 sales, a deep discount to Google's 6.1 times and Apple's 4.4 times, Reuters Estimates data show. Shares in Research in Motion, which makes the Blackberry that rules the mobile email niche, trade at 10 times 2008 revenues.

CHANGE AGAIN

Change may be in Nokia's genes. Founded in 1865 as a timber company, its brand — now ranked fifth globally by Interbrand and valued at $33.7 billion — was stamped on paper goods, wellington boots and television sets before the company focused on the mobile market 16 years ago.

But the process of developing and testing new phone models was once like a state secret, and the results haphazard.

Wood of CCS Insight said that in the past Nokia would develop products “behind closed doors in a room with no windows. With some products I asked them: had they shown them to anyone?”

In 2003 reviewers and customers laughed at Nokia's gaming phone, which had to be held awkwardly, sideways, to make calls. The same year Nokia introduced its first media phone, the bulky 7700, but withdrew production plans after heavy criticism.

Although its conservative designs had mass appeal, Nokia has also missed many big design trends in recent years — clamshells, thin phones, touch screens, for instance.

The Morph concept, which Nokia is exploring with researchers in nanoscience at Cambridge University, is one example of a more consultative approach: combining know-how about tiny particles and electronics to see, for example, if a stretchy circuit could be made. Another was the way Nokia in February floated the notion of a phone made almost entirely from recycled materials.

“The ability to include large numbers of users into the development cycle means you can have a much more collaborative approach to development and you can try ideas out, refine them and move forward — or fail fast and get out,” said Nokia's Iannucci.

Blogger Oliver Thylmann (http://blog.thylmann.net/), who took part in a Nokia product development workshop this month, believes many European companies are set to follow the more open model, leveraging customer input to grow.

“Working with your customer is something where the world is going to,” said Thylmann, who has been writing about technology since 2001.

“As a company you cannot close yourself off from the world anymore. If you're locked in your ivory tower and there is discussion about you going on, it makes sense to get out there and take part in that conversation.”

FAIL FAST

In its bid to direct users to its Internet services instead of Google's, or to its music stores instead of Apple's iTunes, Nokia is not the first tech firm to turn from hardware to software and services. As the personal computer has been commoditized, IBM and HP have similarly sought new business.

But while Nokia experiments, its profit margin on phones, which rose to 23.6 percent in the quarter to December, is a cushion. Margins at Nokia's best-performing rivals — Samsung and Sony Ericsson — are at half that level.

The shift to services means Nokia must get nimble.

“In services it is hugely important to be on the market as early as possible,” said Niklas Savander, head of Nokia's Internet services unit. “You will see a lot of beta launches, or limited-function launches, or limited-geography launches from us.” Betas are public product tests.

The company is looking to copy Google's approach to new business: try as many as you can, quickly.

Its Beta Labs Web site www.nokia.com/betalabs, where it puts up software for testing to public, has more than a million visitors a month. The internal mantra is “Fail fast, learn fast, scale fast.”

The company's online music stores are in test mode and it is about to launch a global gaming service. Millions of people have downloaded programs or media from Nokia's new mobile activities site Mosh, also still in beta.

However, there are limits to all this openness. Writing before he attended the Nokia development workshop, Thylman said: “Sadly I will not be able to blog about the contents.”

(For a video report on Nokia Morph, go to:

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=77681)

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; editing by Sara Ledwith)

San Francisco - Microsoft and Intel will unveil on Tuesday a plan to fund university research into new ways to program software for multi-core processors, Microsoft confirmed Monday.

The companies will unveil funding for research at the University of California at Berkeley to tackle the challenges of programming for processors that have more than one core and so can carry out more than one set of program instructions at a time, a scenario known as parallel computing.

UC Berkeley quietly opened a Parallel Computing Lab in January, according to a UC Berkeley Web site, and the companies are expected to reveal that they will be funding research there.

In 2006, researchers at Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department published a white paper sharing their views on parallel computing, which spurred the creation of the lab. In the paper, they said the current evolution of programming models from single-core to the dual-core and quad-core processors available today from Intel and AMD won't work for a future where processors could have as many as 16, 32, or hundreds of processors. They set out to find a better way to develop programming models to meet the challenges of multi-core chips.

Intel plans to release a six-core processor, code-named Dunnington, in the second half of this year, and an eight-core processor, called Nehalem, at some point in the future. AMD has not publicly discussed its plans for chips beyond its current quad-core offerings.

Microsoft and Intel plan to hold a press conference on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. PST to discuss the news, which was revealed in The Wall Street Journal and other published reports on Monday. A spokeswoman from Microsoft's public relations firm confirmed the WSJ report but said it was only part of what will be revealed Tuesday.

Those expected to unveil the research on the conference call Tuesday are Andrew Chien, director and vice president at Intel Research, and Tony Hey, a corporate vice president at Microsoft Research.

Agam Shah in San Francisco contributed to this story.

(Reuters) - Online media company CNET Networks Inc said it will appeal to Delaware Supreme Court a ruling that allowed a group of investors affiliated to a hedge fund to nominate seven directors to its board.

CNET said it is pursuing the appeal because a “costly and disruptive” proxy contest initiated by Jana Partners is not in the best interests of its stockholders.

In a statement, it also added that Jana Partners should not be allowed to seek to secure control of the company without providing any premium.

A Delaware court on March 13 ruled that hedge fund Jana Partners, which is leading a group of investors trying to take control of CNET's board, could nominate directors without violating the company's corporate bylaws.

CNET said its bylaw provisions, approved by stockholders, are fully applicable to Jana Partners' proposals and are valid and in the interests of stockholders.

Separately, Jana managing partner Barry Rosenstein asked the company not to appeal the ruling and said it is time for fundamental strategic and operational change at CNET.

(Reporting by Purwa Naveen Raman in Bangalore; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

Apple is keeping up with the wireless times. On Monday, the company updated its AirPort Express mobile base station with 802.11n, the latest standard approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

The new model delivers up to five times the performance and twice the range of the previous model, according to the company. Priced at $99, the AirPort Express can be plugged directly into the wall for wireless Internet connectivity and USB printing at home, or it can be taken on the road and used wherever there is an Internet connection. The AirPort Express features AirTunes, which works with iTunes to let users wirelessly stream iTunes music from a PC or Mac to any room in the house.

No big surprises with this Apple product release, according to Michael Gartenberg, a wireless analyst at JupiterResearch. “Apple has migrated almost all of its wireless efforts over to 802.11n. It makes sense that the AirPort Express would to go there [too], as the ultra-mobile wireless device with the ability to stream music and content using AirTunes,” he said. “It made sense for Apple to get that device over to the n specification to match up with the rest of the product line.”

A Portable AirPort

The AirPort Express features a single-piece design with portability in mind. The unit weighs 6.7 ounces. PC and Mac users alike can use AirPort Express to share a single DSL or cable broadband connection with up to 10 simultaneous users.

Users can also wirelessly share a printer that is connected to the USB port. The product's advanced security features are designed to safeguard data on networked computers with support for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2), 128-bit WEP encryption and a built-in firewall.

Apple now includes 802.11n as standard in its entire line of AirPort base stations and Mac notebooks, as well as its iMac, Apple TV and Time Capsule products.

The AirTunes Advantage

The AirPort Express includes a built-in combination digital and analog audio connector that lets users connect to a home stereo or powered speakers. iTunes automatically detects remote speakers and displays them in a simple pop-up list for the user to select.

Here's how it works: Once the remote speakers are selected, AirTunes wirelessly streams iTunes music from the computer to the AirPort Express base station. Multiple AirPort Express base stations can be set up around a home, each connected to a set of powered speakers for a whole-home music experience. The AirPort Express can also extend the range of an existing AirPort Extreme wireless network.

“The big difference with the n standard is more speed, less interference and, of course, the fact that it maps with the rest of Apple's line,” Gartenberg said. “Apple is really the only company that has taken responsibility for the whole wireless ecosystem, everything from the stuff that's built into the computers to the routers to ancillary devices like Apple TV. Apple wants to make the experience as smooth and compatible as possible.”

NEW YORK - In a March 14 story about “Second Life” creator Linden Lab, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Multiverse Network Inc. is a virtual world. The company builds technology for developing the online communities.

PORTLAND, Maine - A security breach at an East Coast supermarket chain exposed 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers and led to 1,800 cases of fraud, the Hannaford Bros. grocery chain announced Monday.

Hannaford said credit and debit card numbers were stolen during the card authorization process and about 4.2 million unique account numbers were exposed.

The breach affected all of its 165 stores in the Northeast, 106 Sweetbay stores in Florida and a smaller number of independent groceries that sell Hannaford products.

The company is aware of about 1,800 cases of fraud reported so far relating to the breach.

No personal data such as names, addresses or telephone numbers were divulged — just account numbers.

Hannaford became aware of the breach Feb. 27. Investigators later discovered that the data breach began on Dec. 7; it wasn’t contained until March 10, said Carol Eleazer, Hannaford’s vice president of marketing in Scarborough.

“We have taken aggressive steps to augment our network security capabilities,” Hannaford president and CEO Ronald C. Hodge said in a statement released Monday. “Hannaford doesn’t collect, know or keep any personally identifiable customer information from transactions.”

The company urged its customers to monitor their credit and debit cards for unusual transactions and report any problems to authorities.

The U.S. Secret Service, whose duties include investigating electronic crimes such as data breaches, confirmed it’s investigating but declined to comment on the scope of the crime.

“The company did contact us, and we are investigating,” said agency spokesman Malcolm Wiley.

MasterCard, the second-biggest U.S. credit card association after Visa, issued a statement before Hannaford’s disclosure: “Because this incident is the subject of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, we cannot disclose additional details regarding the incident or otherwise comment at this time.”

Calls to Visa were not returned.

Mark Walker, an attorney for the Maine Bankers Association, said his organization sent an advisory to member banks Friday after learning of the breach. Only a few had reported suspicious activity involving the credit and debit cards they had issued customers, Walker said.

“I had expected there would be more than we’ve heard of,” Walker said. “But it’s still too early for us to tell.”

Bruce Spitzer, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Bankers Association, criticized the delay in public notification of the source of the breach.

“Visa and MasterCard have stipulated in their contracts with retailers that they will not divulge who the source is when a data breach occurs,” Spitzer said. “We’ve been engaged in a dialogue for a couple years now about changing this rule…. Without knowing who the retailer is that caused the breach, it’s hard for banks to conduct a good investigation on behalf of their consumers. And it’s a problem for consumers as well, because if they know which retailer is responsible, they can rule themselves out for being at risk if they don’t shop at that retailer.”

Paul Stephens, of the San Diego-based consumer advocacy organization Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said the delay in disclosure “puts consumers in a difficult position because they have no way of knowing whether their accounts may have been impacted or not.”

Eleazer defended Hannaford’s actions.

“We moved with all deliberate speed to get out to customers with information that we could have confidence in,” she said. “This is a complex undertaking.”

___

Associated Press Writer Mark Jewell in Boston contributed to this report.

Despite years of hype about the impact of bloggers and the so-called Long Tail on the news business, traditional media sources are increasingly popular online even as their offline businesses continue to go south.

The idea of “The Long Tail” was that a great multiplicity of blogs and citizen journalism sites could match or exceed the value of traditional news gathering. But the reality is “more complex,” says the Project for Excellence in Journalism's new report, State of the News Media 2008.

“Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make,” the report said. “Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old-media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before.”

Advertising Woes

Indeed, traditional media, derided by some as “mainstream media,” represents more of an oligarchy online than in print. According to researcher Matthew Hindman, the top 10 news sites represent 29 percent of all Web traffic but only 19 percent of newspaper circulation.

In the newspaper sector, circulation fell 2.5 percent and overall advertising revenue fell 7 percent in 2007. Even online advertising grew just 20 percent, compared to 30 percent growth in previous years.

“For 2008, the hope is that a collaboration of more than 400 daily papers with Yahoo will generate a kick of as much as 10 percent to 20 percent in online advertising because it will be much easier to buy and place ads under the new arrangement,” the report said.

Hope in Innovation

Newspaper Web sites are much improved — with “a 24/7 diet of breaking news, an array of multimedia features and a wave of redesigns” — but they have yet to figure out how to adequately monetize the efforts, the report said. The New York Times killed its online paid subscription service, which had 200,000 subscribers, and Rupert Murdoch announced plans to unleash much of The Wall Street Journal's paid-subscriber content.

Indeed, it is now within the realm of discussion for news companies to think about jettisoning print entirely, the report said.

It added, “Were print advertising losses to accelerate, it might even make sense three to five years hence to look at pulling the plug on print and rolling the dice on getting readers and advertisers to follow to a Web-only format. That would eliminate, in one swoop, the cost of paper, pressmen and circulation delivery — perhaps as much as 35 percent of a typical newspaper's expense base.”

Media companies have tried to transition online by cutting deals and buying up online properties. But, the report said, it's not clear that those deals have been valuable.

“The most promising element heading into 2008 may be innovation. The news industry now appears to be taking to new technology in earnest. Sites are evolving quickly and, in a new development, the mainstream media are now among the more experimental players,” the report said.