Windows 7 will mark a dramatic improvement in the way the Windows operating system takes advantage of the graphics processing unit (GPU) to provide a more compelling user experience. And so, in conjunction with the release candidate of Windows 7, NVIDIA announced that it is the first hardware vendor to release a new Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified graphics driver for PC desktops and notebooks, offering all of the latest NVIDIA exclusive performance, features, and technology for its ION, GeForce and Quadro products.

Anandtech’s Ryan Smith and Gary Key put the new driver through a full test and reported that “NVIDIA promised performance gains with Windows 7 over Vista and they delivered.” They went on to add “…performance was rock solid and the compatibility/stability aspects of the driver far exceeded our expectations… they pretty much nailed their first full driver set for Windows 7 with all features working.” As a result, Anandtech asserted that “Windows 7 will be a very solid
gaming platform.”

By taking advantage of the GPU for both graphics rendering and parallel computing, Windows 7 with DirectX Compute will not only ensure that greater clarity and focus are inherent in the look, feel, and functionality of the desktop experience, but it will also provide the speed and responsiveness to delight customers.

“Windows 7 users now have the absolute latest in performance and support for features including SLI, PhysX, 3D Vision, and DirectX Compute,” said Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA. “For gaming, video transcoding, and an overall better computing experience on Windows 7, users now have the peace of mind knowing that we have the official
Microsoft WHQL stamp of approval.”

Version 185.85 WHQL drivers support Microsoft’s new Windows 7 display driver model WDDM v1.1. Powered by NVIDIA’s DirectX 10 GPUs, WDDM v1.1 drivers provide a premium visual experience in Windows 7.

To download the new Windows 7 WHQL drivers for NVIDIA GPUs, please visit: www.nvidia.com/drivers. For more information on Windows 7 and the release candidate, please visit: www.microsoft.com/windows7.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® products, the professional design and visualisation market with its Quadro® products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas

AMD has announced that its top-to-bottom line of industry-leading ATI FirePro graphics accelerators are now featured in the new HP Z Workstations. Graphics professionals who use and demand interactivity with complex 3D models in engineering, digital content creation and scientific fields now can take advantage of the new ATI FirePro  V7750, as well as the ATI FirePro V3700 and ATI FirePro V5700 graphics accelerators in the new HP Z400, Z600 and Z800 Workstations.

Designed and engineered to operate in a wide range of professional operating environments, including Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux, ATI FirePro 3D graphics accelerators are thoroughly tested and certified based on industry standards at AMD test labs. HP Z Workstations with ATI FirePro graphics already have more than 35 application certifications by major applications such as SolidWorks 2009, 3ds Max 2009, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and previous versions with many more certifications pending.

“AMD and HP together offer the workstation market exceptional tools for creative, scientific and engineering professionals,” said Janet Matsuda, senior director, Professional Graphics, AMD. “We are excited to pair our ATI FirePro graphics accelerators with HP Z Workstations to deliver flexibility and reliability backed by certified application performance.”

“HP Z Workstations provide customers with unprecedented performance, value and serviceability in a sleek new design,” said Jeff Wood, director of worldwide marketing, Workstations, HP.  “We look forward to working with AMD and using its ATI FirePro graphics accelerators to bring customers powerful solutions for their demanding graphics-intensive applications.”

The ATI FirePro V3700, ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V7750 graphics accelerators are immediately available with new HP Z Workstations. Professionals can choose the right HP Z Workstation and the right ATI FirePro card to best meet their performance, expandability and affordability needs.

·         ATI FirePro V7750 delivers 1GB of frame buffer memory to handle large CAD models and complex animations with ease. Consuming a maximum of 76 watts, power users will appreciate the energy efficiency of this high performance accelerator.

·         ATI FirePro V5700 graphics accelerator delivers the perfect balance of price and application performance for CAD and DCC professionals. With the new card, users will experience increased performance for shader-intensive applications, up to two times more than the previous generation.

·         ATI FirePro V3700 establishes a new, low entry price for professional 3D graphics. For CAD professionals migrating from 2D, the ATI FirePro V3700 graphics card delivers the 3D performance and application certification these professionals deserve at an affordable price.

To hear what it takes to succeed in the workstation business, check out the testimonial video from Jon Peddie, Founder and President of Jon Peddie Research.

To hear more about the optimizations AMD and its ISV partners are making, check out new testimonial videos from Redway3d, MSC Software,Dassault Systèmes Solidworks, CEI and PTC.

Thomson Reuters, one of the leading providers of intelligent information, has received their Certificate of Registration from the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) for their Mckinley Hill facility. The new facility will accommodate Thomson Reuters’ customer support, knowledge process outsourcing and other IT-enabled support services.

Photo shows (front, from left) Raoul Teh, Thomson Reuters senior site officer; Lilia B. De Lima, PEZA director general (back, from left) Roel Roque, Thomson Reuters legal content operations site officer; Zayber Protacio, PricewaterhouseCoopers Principal; Peter Buenaseda, Thomson Reuters HR director; Benidict Supan, Thomson Reuters business planning manager; Socorro Clemente, Thomson Reuters program manager; Jason Hair, Thomson Reuters regional head of Customer Support – Asia and Dennis Caronan, PricewaterhouseCoopers manager.

Underlining the company’s leadership in developing hardware and drivers to support the Windows 7 operating system, AMD announced that its Windows 7 driver has received Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) certification on the first day of the certifying program. WHQL certification sets a high bar for quality and reliability, and is considered essential by many home and business users.

·         WHQL certification sets a high bar for quality and reliability, and is considered essential by many home and business users.

·         WHQL certification demonstrates AMD’s ability to deliver the stability, incredible 3D game performance and smooth multimedia playback needed in order to help bring th

e new features of Windows 7 to life.

·         As a testament to its ongoing commitment to reliability and stability, AMD is the only graphics hardware company in the world delivering monthly WHQL-certified graphics driver updates.

For users of ATI Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000 series products, the ATI Catalyst software suite delivers:

·         Industry-leading driver stability and reliability.

·         Full WDDM 1.1 WHQL certified support under Windows 7. 

·         Scheduled performance and new feature innovation every month.

·         Enablement of ATI Stream technology for general purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing on supported graphics cards.

“By delivering a WHQL certified driver for the Windows 7 operating system at the earliest possible opportunity, AMD has once again demonstrated its driver leadership,” said Ben Bar-Haim, corporate VP, Software Engineering, AMD. “AMD is working closely with Microsoft to ensure superior performance and a reliable Windows 7 experience throughout our line of graphics processors.” 

Microsoft WHQL certified graphics drivers for Windows 7 are scheduled for release on the AMD site on May 5, 2009, and a fully unified WHQL-certified driver supporting Windows Vista and Windows 7 is planned for the release of ATI Catalyst 9.5 later in May. 

To learn more about the first AMD WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows 7, please visit www.amd.com.

SINGAPORE — MAY 5, 2009 — NVIDIA and its partners today announced the immediate availability of the Tesla GPU Preconfigured Cluster, a ready-to-power-up, off-the-shelf solution that enables researchers and IT managers to easily add GPU computing capabilities to their existing datacenter systems.

Tesla GPU Preconfigured Clusters provide up to 30 times the performance of CPU-only solutions,enabling IT managers to deploy smaller, more computationally dense systems. These consume

substantially less power – which creates substantially lower costs – while still meeting the increasing demands of such applications as computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, seismic processing, and financial computing.

French banking giant BNP Paribas’ Corporate and Investment Banking division recently replaced 500 traditional CPU cores, consuming 25 kW, with a smaller cluster consisting of CPU servers and two Tesla S1070 1U systems, which consume only 2kW. Taking into account the dramatic acceleration achieved using Tesla GPUs, the lower power cluster enabled BNP Paribas to consume 190-times less electricity than before.

The increasing momentum being experienced by GPUs in the high performance computing segment today demonstrates a clear industry need for accessible computing solutions.

“There are 15 to 20 million engineers, scientists and researchers around the world struggling for time on supercomputers, which has led to a huge pent-up demand for computation,” said Andy Keane, general manager of the Tesla business at NVIDIA. “With the launch of the Tesla Preconfigured Cluster, every one of them can easily deploy a GPU-powered supercomputing cluster that dramatically reduces their power consumption while still advancing the pace of their work.”

”Time on a supercomputer can be extremely difficult to get, especially since some of our computations run for weeks to months. Also, buying a supercomputer is expensive for every university research group,” said Axel Kohlmeyer, associate director at the Center for Molecular Modeling at the University of Pennsylvania. “Since we got access to a Tesla GPU enabled cluster, we can run our molecular dynamics algorithms up to 100X faster and more importantly run bigger and more complex simulations and do research that was impossible to do before – this is game changing for us.”

Tesla Preconfigured Clusters consist of x86 CPU servers coupled with Tesla S1070 1U GPU systems. Configurations start at 16 Teraflops of performance, delivered by four Tesla S1070s, each containing four Tesla 10-series GPUs. All systems include host servers, infiniband switches, cabling, and are fully customisable to suit individual customer needs.

Tesla GPU Preferred Partners around the world including AMAX, Appro, CADNetwork, Colfax, Cray, Dep, FluiDyna, HPC Technologies, Inspur, JRTI, Megware, Microway, NetWeb, PCPC, Penguin, Silicon Mechanics, Sprinx, T-Platforms, Viglen, and Xenon are offering Tesla Preconfigured Clusters today. For more information on their products and services, please visit: www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_wtb.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® graphics products, the professional design and visualisation market with its Quadro® graphics products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.

The first Top Twenty is based on data collected by Kaspersky Lab’s version 2009 antivirus product. The ranking is made up of the malicious programs, adware and potentially unwanted programs most frequently detected on users’ computers.

Position / Name
1 Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ih
2 Virus.Win32.Sality.aa
3 Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Flystud.ko
4 Trojan.Win32.Chifrax.a
5 Trojan.Win32.Autoit.ci
6 Trojan-Downloader.Win32.VB.eql
7 Packed.Win32.Krap.b
8 Worm.Win32.AutoRun.dui
9 Exploit.HTML.CodeBaseExec
10 Packed.Win32.Black.a
11 Virus.Win32.Sality.z
12 Virus.Win32.Virut.ce
13 Trojan.JS.Agent.xy
14 Worm.Win32.Mabezat.b
15 Virus.Win32.Alman.b
16 Packed.Win32.Krap.g
17 Packed.Win32.Klone.bj
18 Worm.Win32.AutoIt.ar
19 Exploit.JS.Agent.agc
20 Email-Worm.Win32.Brontok.q

Making an impression this month were two newcomers, Virus.Win32.Virut.ce and Exploit.HTML.CodeBaseExec.
Virut.ce entered near the top of our second ranking in February and now looks set to dominate the first ranking as well. New versions of the virus are appearing every day, which suggests that cybercriminals are monitoring how and when the malware is detected by antivirus programs and trying to increase the size of the botnet made up of infected machines. The epidemic caused by this virus is gaining momentum and May could well see Virut.ce moving several places up the rankings.

The second newcomer is a little piece of malware history – the first version of this program was detected by Kaspersky Lab way back in 2004. It featured regularly in our malware rankings in 2006, but is now flagged as a newcomer because the format and methods used to compile our Top Twenty rankings have changed. The malware exploits a simple vulnerability in versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 of Internet Explorer. It seems that the cybercriminals are hoping that there will still be a significant number of people who have not installed the relevant security updates or who still use older versions of Internet Explorer.

Trojan.Win32.Chifrax.a dropped out of our ranking last October but has now returned and gone straight in at number four. This Trojan, like RaMag.a, is a modified WinRAR archive, which in this instance is a self-extracting archive.

The April ranking includes two script downloaders – Trojan.JS.Agent.xy and Exploit.JS.Agent.agc – that are perfect examples of the type of programs used in drive-by downloads, a topic they recently published a paper on (http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/analysis?pubid=204792056).

All malicious, advertising and potentially unwanted programs in the first Top Twenty can be grouped according to the main classes of threat detected. In the past few months, the changes in the balance between these classes have not exceeded 5%.
TrojWare – 25%
VirWare – 45%
MalWare – 30%
A total of 45190 unique malicious, advertising, and potentially unwanted programs were detected on users’ computers in April. This figure is almost exactly the same as last month’s.

The second Top Twenty presents data on which malicious programs most commonly infected objects detected on users’ computers. Malicious programs capable of infecting files make up the majority of this ranking.

Position / Name
1 Virus.Win32.Sality.aa
2 Worm.Win32.Mabezat.b
3 Virus.Win32.Virut.ce
4 Net-Worm.Win32.Nimda
5 Virus.Win32.Xorer.du
6 Virus.Win32.Sality.z
7 Virus.Win32.Parite.b
8 Virus.Win32.Virut.q
9 Virus.Win32.Alman.b
10 Virus.Win32.Small.l
11 Email-Worm.Win32.Runouce.b
12 Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ih
13 Trojan-Downloader.HTML.Agent.ml
14 Virus.Win32.Virut.n
15 Virus.Win32.Parite.a
16 Virus.Win32.Hidrag.a
17 Worm.Win32.Fujack.k
18 P2P-Worm.Win32.Bacteraloh.h
19 Trojan-Clicker.HTML.IFrame.acy
20 Virus.Win32.Virut.av

There was little change to the second Top Twenty ranking in April. The only real activity of note was the appearance of another Virut modification in the ranking – Virus.Win32.Virut.av. This virus was first detected by Kaspersky Lab in 2007 and is still active.

It means the Virut family claims four places in this Top Twenty, which amounts to 20% of the self-replicating programs in our second ranking.

About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab delivers the world’s most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and the industry’s fastest outbreak response time for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry’s leading IT security solution providers. For further information, please visit www.kaspersky.com. For the latest on anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other IT security issues and trends, please visit www.viruslist.com.

Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions provider Cyberoam today announced the Q1 2009 email threat report, in collaboration with partner Commtouch. While Conficker worm took the limelight, a key highlight is that attackers have reached new levels of sophistication in their social engineering techniques, using fear, emotion and security loopholes to perpetuate attacks.

Spammers tricked users on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter into divulging personal information. Exploiting users’ fear of finding scandalous images of themselves online, spammers sent wall posts proclaiming that such pictures have surfaced on Facebook. Also used on Facebook were desperate messages from friends supposedly in a financial bind. Users clicking on the link were taken to what looked like the Facebook login page, but actually it was an imposter site collecting usernames and passwords of unknowing users.

Spammers sent direct Twitter messages to users of blog posts and funny photos related to them. Security loopholes on Twitter like the use of TinyURL to replace long URLs with short ones to fit into Twitter’s 140 character limit meant that users did not know where the link led before they clicked.

Vice President-Product Management, Cyberoam, Abhilash Sonwane, said, “Attackers have confirmed once more that they work on both sides of the equation – user and the platform. They play on the emotions of users while exploiting loopholes on the platform being used. Used in combination, it is an effective way to propagate malware. While Cyberoam offers protection from evolving threats, we also recommend user education to effectively contain threats,” he added.

Blended threats created near perfect mirror sites and official looking emails from CNN and the US tax departments. While Google Docs was used to compromise ZDNet, spammers used “borrowed” images from legitimate sites like CBS and Pizza Hut in addition to masking their email addresses to bypass spam filters.

Loan spam jumped from 3% of all spam messages in Q4 2008 to first place, with 28% of all spam messages this quarter, reflecting the global economic situation.

Cyberoam uses the Commtouch RPDTM technology to analyse large volumes of Internet traffic in real-time. Unlike traditional spam filters, it relies not on email content, but on message pattern enabling it to detect spam in any language and message format. Its language and content agnostic nature enables it to provide effective spam blocking capabilities. Cyberoam incorporates RPDTM within its unique Identity-based UTM appliances which show who is doing what in the network and enable the creation of policies based on the username rather than just IP addresses.

About Cyberoam
Cyberoam Identity-based UTM appliances offer comprehensive protection against existing and emerging Internet threats, including viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, pharming and more. Cyberoam delivers the complete range of security features such as stateful inspection firewall, VPN – SSL & IPSec, gateway anti-virus and anti-spyware, gateway anti-spam, intrusion prevention system, content filtering in addition to bandwidth management and multiple link management over a single platform. Cyberoam is certified by the West Coast Labs with CheckMark UTM Level 5 Certification, ICSA Lab, an independent division of Verizon Business, and the Virtual Private Network Consortium. Cyberoam has received the 2008 Emerging Vendor of the Year award by Frost & Sullivan, ZDNet Asia IT Leader of the Year award for 2008-09, 2007 Global Excellence Awards for Integrated Security Appliance, Security Solution for Education and Unified Security, the 2007 Tomorrow’s Technology Today Award for Unified Security and was rated Positive by Gartner in its Marketscope for SMB multi-function firewalls. Cyberoam has offices in the Woburn, MA, USA and India. For more information, please visit www.cyberoam.com.

About Elitecore Technologies Limited
Elitecore Technologies Limited is the global provider of Cyberoam UTM appliances. Elitecore’s other divisions include Crestel Convergent Billing Solution that meets the voice, data, video billing and customer care requirements of Tier-1 service providers and 24online Billing and Bandwidth Management Solution for hotels, hotspots and Internet service providers. Elitecore has a strong R&D base and support center in India; it has sustained a healthy growth rate of over 75% since inception. For more information, please visit www.elitecore.com

www.AyosDito.ph is the latest online classified website to make its presence in the Philippines to serve the local and expatriate community. Since its public launch on 2 March 2009, it has attracted more than 27,000 visitors per day and 16,000 live advertisements. Its growth is poised to make it the leading general classified portal in the country.

The adoption of the commonly used term “Ayosdito” which means “Ok Here” reflects the company’s confidence that users will have a positive experience with the website to help them with their online classifieds needs.

Ayosdito.ph is managed by 701Search Inc, incorporated in November 2008 as a subsidiary of 701 Search Pte Ltd, which was established in Sept 2006 as a joint venture between Southeast Asia’s leading media organization Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Norwegian media group Schibsted ASA.

In line with its thrust to be the most preferred general classified portal, www.AyosDito.ph launches its promotional activity entitled “Post And Win”. The promo starts on May 8 and will run until June 31, 2009. To get a chance to win, advertisers must post an ad within the promo period to earn a ticket. There will be seven weekly draws and one grand draw which will be held on July 1. All draws will be done electronically. The ad placement is for free and advertisers will also get a chance to win iPods, an HP Mini notebook, a digital camera for the weekly draws. Grand prize winners can choose an iPhone or a three-day, two-night trip for two to any of the following destinations: Singapore, Hongkong, Boracay or Palawan.

Unlike many of the online classified sites that are available to the local Filipino populace, AyosDito.ph offers four distinct advantages over the other industry players.

1.       Clean and concise user-friendly interface. Buyers and sellers can easily search for items of their choice via the search fields of either product category or region. Because of the ease in navigation, AyosDito.ph has received positive reviews and support from users and advertisers.

2.       Nationwide scope and Regional clustering. This offers a convenient reference for buyers and sellers to target the relevant populace within their same locality. The website has the map of the Philippines on its home page, with its 16 regions and provinces marked out for ease of use.

3.       Moderated advertisement postings. All product listings are reviewed and moderated to ensure that only bona-fide high-quality product and service advertisements are listed. Advertisements offering prohibited and pirated items and unwholesome services will not be published. Currently, AyosDito.ph offers eight broad categories of popular items – Vehicles, Properties, Electronics, Home and Personal Items, Leisure/Sports/Hobbies, Business-to- Business, Jobs and Services, and others.

4.       No membership or signing-up fees. AyosDito.ph was created as a hassle-free and effective platform for users to buy and sell at their convenience and to encourage more Filipinos in particular to buy and sell online.

“AyosDito.ph offers a compelling platform for the sellers with a far-reaching e-marketplace of ready buyers and in turn, gives buyers access to an extensive listings of products and services. We are committed to grow this website to be the premier one-stop shop for Filipinos to conveniently buy and sell anytime and anywhere within the Philippines.” said Jose Manuel Pabalan, general manager of 701Search (Philippines) Inc.

Smart Communications Inc., the country’s leading wireless services provider, became the first Philippine customer to receive SAP certification as a Customer Center of Expertise (Customer COE) for SAP Solutions.  SMART’s certification followed a successful completion of SAP’s skills auditing process in December 2008.  This is a significant milestone for SMART and affirms their ERP systems standards organization-wide.  SMART’s certification also means that the Philippines can be included in the list of countries with an SAP-certified Customer COE.

“Given that SMART is a very dynamic organization, having an IT system which can adapt to the changing needs of the various business units is a must.  The system and solutions must also be simple and easy to use by our employees.  As a Certified Customer COE, the company’s IT Group has instilled the discipline and has grown in maturity as a result of using SAP solutions in its operations.  The team has honed its skill to evolve the SAP solution, making it continuously relevant to the business environment, while maintaining the stability of the systems used in daily operations,” said SMART chief wireless advisor Orlando B. Vea.

SMART COE team, called the IT Corporate Systems Department, spearheaded the integration of various stand-alone systems within the company, and delivered enabling solutions. The team handles ERP-related implementation, maintenance and continuous improvements in support of business requirements.

SMART chief information officer and IT Group head Wilma Cruz said “With SAP, the database of ERP-related transactions has been centralized, simplifying the solution landscape not only for SMART, but also for the PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.) Group.”  For instance, the Finance teams of the PLDT Group are now utilizing the SAP business consolidation system quite extensively to support the continuing expansion of the Group, as well as the need for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.  Furthermore, the Human Resource Management and Development, Logistics, Purchasing and Properties Facilities Equipment departments are benefiting from the system. Aside from SMART, parent company PLDT, ePLDT, Inc. and other subsidiaries also use SAP.

A Customer Center of Expertise can serve as the single source of truth – and hub – for functional collaboration between the business and IT units, and between the organization and SAP, with SAP Solution Manager providing the necessary infrastructure. “The Customer COE can help increase the transparency of business processes, and limit downtime to boost system and process availability,” said Jennifer Ligones, Country Manager, SAP Philippines.

In order to achieve primary certification under the Customer COE, there were five key areas that were reviewed, namely contract management, support desk, information management, coordination of innovation requests and service planning. “Customers should really leverage the Customer Center of Expertise as this ensures business continuity, innovation and protection of investment, business process improvement, and the reduction of total cost of operations,” said Juergen Reinhardt, Vice President of SAP Active Global Support in South East Asia.

“SAP is truly proud to count SMART as the first Customer COE certified customer in the Philippines.  This is a milestone for both SAP and SMART because it affirms our commitment in pursuing excellence in the implementation and ongoing use of SAP. We hope more companies follow this lead moving forward,” Ligones added.