AMD unveils dual-processor graphics card

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has introduced a high-end graphics card whose core will also be part of its next-generation Fusion processors, reports PC World.

The ATI Radeon 3870 X2 graphics card combines two chips from its predecessor, ATI Radeon 3870, on one board, doubling its performance, said Patrick Moorhead, VP of advanced marketing at AMD. The ATI Radeon 3870 had one chip on the card.

The chips, manufactured using the 55nm process, are more power-efficient and deliver better performance than the previous graphics processors, Moorhead said.

eBay's online payments division, PayPal, will pay $169 million for an Israeli security company specialising in detecting online fraud, the companies said yesterday. The deal should close within 30 days, according to The New York Times.

Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions. That technology will be folded into PayPal's anti-fraud systems, which will be "significantly" improved this year, eBay said.

Fraud Sciences COO Yossi Barak and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf will move to PayPal's technology and fraud management teams.

Cisco Systems has revealed a major offensive in its ongoing assault on the data centre market. More than ever, it proposes a vision in which data centres are defined not by a computer architecture, be it mainframe or PC server farm, but around the network itself, says BusinessWeek.

That makes sense. After all, almost every kind of software is evolving from something that was written for a particular computing platform, into something that is written to be delivered as a service via the Internet.

And not static services, either, but ones that can be adapted at a moment's notice on a users' whim - say, by adding a new widget to Facebook, or a new customer order on Salesforce.com.

Music fans who indulge in widespread illegal file-sharing should have their Web connections cut off by Internet service providers (ISPs), the manager of U2 said, reports Times Online.

Paul McGuinness, who has guided the Irish group to 150 million album sales during their 30-year career, said companies such as Yahoo and AOL should be prosecuted if they fail to prevent illegal file-sharing.

Speaking at the Midem music industry convention, in Cannes, McGuinness said: "A simple three strikes and you are out enforcement process will see all serial illegal uploaders who resist the law face a stark choice: change or lose your ISP subscription."