Nvidia has reported that Curtis R. Priem, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, has been named the recipient of the 2000 William F. Glaser '53 Rensselaer Entrepreneur of the Year. Mr. Priem has been Nvidia's chief technical officer since the company's inception in April 1993. This award follows up on a series of outstanding achievements for Nvidia, including receiving the highest ranking for semiconductor companies in Business Week's "Information Technology Annual Report-the Info Tech 100" cover story dated June 19, 2000.
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Ricoh's Disc Media and Systems Center division (DMS-C) will begin shipping the fastest new CD-R/RW/DVD-ROM combination drive on the market at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the company announced today. Priced at $349 (MAP) the MP9120A (atapi) has 12X CD-R and 10X CD-RW recording speed, 32X CD-ROM and 8X DVD-ROM read speeds. Ricoh is one of only three companies manufacturing combination drives; the remainder of units on the market are from OEMs. Targeted toward mid-to high end audio, multimedia and other users with drive speed concerns, the MP9120A has other characteristics, such as error prevention.

As the first manufacturer to deliver a drive with newly developed error prevention technology, called JustLink, Ricoh will provide other drive makers with the new technology and include it in future Ricoh-brand CD-R/RW drives. JustLink automatically prevents buffer under-run errors by predicting them before they occur. Stable writing is especially difficult with high-speed writing, recording simultaneously while performing other computer operations, writing files to a CD-R/RW drive from a CD-ROM drive, and recording directly from a network.

This intelligent JustLink technology suspends writing when an error detection is predicted and automatically resumes when enough data has accumulated to prevent an under-run. "The MP9120A was developed in response to the earlier demand created by the first generation combo drive, which begin shipping in January 2000," said Takayuki Kuroshima, marketing and business development manager for Ricoh DMS-C. The critically acclaimed MP9060 is no longer available due to rapid inventory sell out. The new MP9120A drive also features a 2 Laser Diode / 1 lens pickup system incorporating both the CD and DVD laser diodes (LDs) into a single pickup that provides the combo drive functionality; a 2MB buffer, and unprecedented 100 m/sec. average access speed due to improvements in Ricoh's 'seek algorithm.'
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Samsung Electronics said it would invest $3.47 billion to expand output, and forecast sales of chips and flat screens to hit $30 billion by 2005. The firm said the 3.84 trillion won would be invested by the end of 2003 in building and operating three new fabrication operations (fabs) to meet growing demand in Korea and overseas. They added that Samsung would build two fabs to make memory chips and one for non-memory chips, including system LSI and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips. Samsung said its sales in the non-memory sector would increase from this year's expected $1.7 billion to reach $3 billion in 2002 and $5 billion in 2005.
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Seagate has announced its new Barracuda ATA III, the industry's only fourth-generation 7,200-rpm ATA disc drive. As the world's fastest desktop drive, Barracuda ATA III is ideally suited for mainstream and high-performance commercial desktop PCs and economical ATA RAID systems. With Seagate's 3D Defense System, Barracuda ATA III is still the toughest and most reliable 7,200-rpm drive and can withstand 350 Gs non-operating shock -- higher than any other 7,200-rpm drive.

Barracuda ATA III ships with the industry's only tested, mature, third-generation Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor as an option, for improved acoustics, reduced vibration, longer life and increased shock resistance. For performance-oriented users, Barracuda ATA III offers the fastest internal transfer rate available on any ATA disc drive, at 500 Mb/sec. This is a 37 percent increase over earlier drives. Barracuda ATA III also features a new 80-MHz processor for a 25 percent increase in processing speed. With its Ultra ATA/100 Interface, 8.9-msec seek, and 2-Mbyte buffer, it's the drive of choice for ATA RAID subsystems. The drive is available in capacities up to 40 Gbytes.
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Linux Games sends word that NVIDIA has released version 0.9-5 of their unified Linux drivers for XFree86 4.0.1. Changes in this version include:

• Improve XFree86 4.0.1 support
• re-fixed console switch lockup
• fix some AGP regressions. Better detection/support for AGPGART
• fix color palette problems (xgamma, direct color visuals
• add bios posting override to help with some card problems(M64)
• update included 2.4 support to newest test kernels

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Our Weekly CPU Prices is a listing of the best prices we can dig up on most types of mainstream CPUs and who the vendors are who listed these prices. This week, AMD prices have remained static after their massive drop a several weeks ago and Intel prices are starting to level off. You can check out the Sharky Extreme Weekly CPU Pricesfor the full list of CPU prices from both companies.
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One of the first Voodoo 5 6000s to hit European shores was at ECTS this week. Our Games Editor, Pete Closs, was lucky enough to get a quick peek at it. Here is his quick take on it:

Firstly, as has been said before, it's huge, but you can't truly fully grasp just how big it is until you see it. What counts though is the frame rates and from the demo I saw they're pretty huge too. At 1024x768 with 4 sample AA, Quake 3 Arena was just as playable as it is on my GeForce 2 on an Athlon 8000 (although I didn't find out what the CPU in the Voodoo 5 6000 test machine was). I also enjoyed some hands on Quake 3 Arena at 1600x1200 which seemed just as slick in the frame rates department. Judging from the time demo that was shown I'd guess that the card was hitting around 50-60 FPS at 1600x1400 as well as 1024x768 with 4 sample AA, but that's only an estimate. 3dfx were also keen to point out that drivers weren't complete and they apparently haven't even yet decided on the core and memory clock speed, so better than figures is the simple statement that it's plenty fast indeed. It won't be cheap at all but with such evident polygon pushing power that isn't going to deter the hardcore 3D gamers from picking this up when it's finally released (and no, no exact release date was mentioned). For now, here are a few more shots of the card so you can gawp at the power supply and how almost unfeasibly immense the card is.

Watch out Intel, AMD is in the passing lane. Yes, the Duron is forging ahead! In their normal style, AMD has pumped the Duron clock up 50MHz in order to reach 750MHz. A 750MHz value CPU? Life is good. SharkyExtreme has taken a Duron 750MHz, put it through a battery of tests, bent it to our will, and analyzed how it performed to bring you this review.

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Guillemot has announced their latest addition to its range of sound cards - the Maxi Sound Muse. The new 4-channel PCI soundboard is the unbeatable solution for today's price-conscious multimedia user. The MUSE will be available in major retailers across the country beginning this week. Maxi Sound Muse's attractive software bundle comes with Media Station, a multi-function graphic interface with mixing panel, WAV file player & recorder, MIDI player and audio CD player. Users will be able to create, play and listen to MP3s, WAV and WMA files with the Sonic Foundry ACID Xpress and Siren Jukebox* Xpress applications.

Included in the bundle is the world's first universal player/burner, the Earjam Internet Music Player. It is equipped to burn on all popular hardware devices and can play all popular music formats. Two other bundled features are guaranteed to give users hours of fun and entertainment. The Kool Karaoke Lite software allows users to organize karaoke contests with friends, while GameLoft opens up the thrilling world of online multiplayer gaming. The Maxi Sound Muse supports Central Research Laboratories HRTF 3D positional audio functions, a user-friendly standard for both the computer gaming and music industries. This technology allows for compatibility with several open gaming standards including Microsoft® DirectSound® 3D, EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0.
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Back in May, SharkyExtreme brought you an article telling about Matrox's upcoming Millennium G450. Well, the upcoming card has arrived at the Sharky Extreme compound and we have put it through a series of benchmarks as well as some general usage to tell you how it looks. Check out the full preview here.

In new technology developments, Philips Electronics researchers have created a soft plastic computer display that could result in floppy electronic newspapers. Using a plastic-based semiconductor rather than a conventional silicon chip, researchers constructed a stamp-sized plastic screen, the company said. In the end, this results in a tiny 64 pixel by 64 pixel screen, but since plastic chips are easier to make than silicon semiconductors there may be room to develop for large and flexible display screens.
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