Intel releases new tools

Intel is expected to release software development tools today to enable software companies to take advantage of the added computing power available on computer systems with multicore processors, reports News.com.

The report says the new Intel Threading Building Blocks is an extension to the C++ programming language that is aimed at simplifying the process of writing parallel routines, or threads, within an application.

Two of Intel`s existing multithreading tools, called Intel Thread Checker 3.0 and Intel Thread Profiler 3.0, are intended to add support for 64-bit processors and the Linux operating system.

Sony has teamed up with US biologists running the folding@home (FAH) distributed computing project to harness the spare processing power of Sony`s PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help understand the cause of diseases like Alzheimer`s.

BBC News says the FAH project already uses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shapes of proteins affect disease. According to FAH, a network of 10 000 PS3s could provide capacity to do a thousand trillion calculations a second, which is nearly four times as fast as the world`s most powerful supercomputer.

Volunteers will need to download a piece of software that uses their PC or PS3`s processing power when it is idle. In this way, small packets of data can be processed by individual machines before being automatically fed back over the Internet to a central computer.

Amazon.com is renting online computing resources on demand to developers requiring computing power without having the capital to pay for it up front, reports IT Wire.

The new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service is aimed at enabling Web application developers to buy hosted server processing services at an hourly rate plus pay a fee for each GB of traffic and a monthly fee for each GB of storage.

Amazon says the service is designed to make Web-scale computing easier for developers by enabling them to pay only for the computing capacity they actually use.

NEC Electronics has unveiled its first system-on-chip image processor for automotive applications that will enable drivers to detect specific objects on roads such as pedestrians, reports EE Times.

The new Imapcar processor, which can handle 100 giga-operations per second, which is about five times higher than existing chips, was developed in partnership with Toyota in Japan. The company plans to use the chip for new pre-crash safety systems to be used in Toyota`s coming Lexus LS460 vehicles.

NEC says image processing systems have just started entering cars, but the company expects automotive image recognition systems market will actually take off around 2010. The market is expected to grow rapidly to nearly 20 million units in 2015, appearing in 20% of the world`s cars.

Microsoft`s Zune digital music player is expected allow users to create mobile social networks and stream music to people nearby, according to wireless licensing applications filed by its makers.

News.com says Toshiba`s applications indicate that Zune users will be able to stream music content to up to four other devices. With the device`s wireless networking abilities turned on, users can also send and receive photos as well as promotional copies of songs, albums and playlists.

Microsoft confirmed last month that it was developing a device and music service to rival Apple Computer`s iTunes and iPod combination. The company revealed that Zune would have built-in WiFi abilities, but did not say what it planned to allow users to do with their wireless connection.