Where's Alviso?

DMOS writes "Intel's 'Dothan' processor for moblile computers has finally seen the light of day, but where is the rest of the 'Sonoma' platform? Specifically, the 'Alviso' chipset that is replacing the current i855 and ICH4m. So far it appears to be MIA, and Devhardware looks into why with their 'Where's Alviso?' article."

Alviso's location

[Anonymous Coward]

Alviso's just north of San Jose, but legally speaking is part of San Jose. Silicon Valley tried to grow north of hwy237 during the .BOOM years, but didn't quite make it, and the predicted swamping of alviso by outsiders didn't quite happen.

Alviso is where TiVO is headquartered.

http://www.alviso.com/ [alviso.com]

It's one of the most miserable places

[ramakant]

Alviso [alviso.org] is right on the Southern tip of the San Francisco Bay. It's mostly abandoned but for a few hold outs like Vahl's [sanjose.com] Restaurant. There's an bartender named Frank there who's straight out of a Rat Pack movie. Ask him to do some magic tricks for you.
Most of Alviso is now a briney marsh due to redirection of Bay water, dikes, and nearby salt evaporation pools. On summer evenings, the sound of crickets and frogs in the reeds can be deafening.
For those brave enough to visit, it's off the 237 next to Tivo [tivo.com]'s office.

Alviso is a dump and a waste treatment plant

[t0qer]

Seriously.

I've seen many posts on "where's alviso" but lets take a moment to talk about what alviso really is.

Alviso used to be a boat landing for "The Valley of Hearts Delights" elite long before it became the foul smelling place that it is today. Santa Clara County built a sewage treatment plant there, and coincidentally, the elite did not like mooring up to a dock that constantly smelled like human excrement.

Later the alviso landfill was built, to even further add to the cornicopia of smells that arose from that stinky marsh.

Eventually alviso was populated by low income families (GANG BANGERS) and the SJ Norte's. The whole town fell into complete disrepair and despite the cities best efforts to convert it into a low lease technology park, it still remains what it is.

The armpit of silicon valley.

Intel already upgraded to 802.11g

[SynKKnyS]

From the article:

Next in the Centrino is its Wi-Fi ability. Currently, Centrino makes use of the 802.11b standard. In Sonoma, that's being upgraded to 802.11g.

The author fails to note that Intel has already released the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG (802.11g) and that it is a Centrino component.

My laptop has one from the factory and is badged "Centrino."

Dothans, et al

[jd]

The Dothan system is very interesting. I've been developing for it, for about 4 months now, as part of some contract work I was doing for Intel.

(Btw, cheap plug: If you know anyone hiring programmers, system admins, network admins or Linux coders in the Portland, Oregon region, I have plenty of experience in all of the above, and am looking for work. Here endeth the cheap plug.)

I won't mention any specifics, but I had a number of problems coaxing Fedora to run on a Dothan board, under stress. The Linux 2.4 kernel was the worst for just locking up solid, but I locked up the 2.6 kernel on a daily basis under conditions I would have expected it to work.

It's hard to tell if the problems were with the Dothan board or with Fedora, or with some combination of the two. Also, I was using an early development board, so there's no certainty (without testing) that the problems exist in the released system.

If you're wanting to use Dothan with Linux for development, I would advise against using the Linux 2.4 kernel at all, and would suggest testing a little more thoroughly than you might otherwise do to make sure everything is working as you'd expect.