Kingston launches SSDNow V+ 180 1.8-inch SSDs in Europe :: Posted by THRASHER2
Kingston Technology has now expanded its solid state drive offering through the EU introduction of the SSDNow V+ 180 line of SSDs which feature a 1.8-inch form factor and target both consumer and enterprise applications.
The new drives utilize MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory, have 128MB of cache, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, TRIM support, a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1 million hours, and are capable of read and write speeds of up to 230 MB/s and 180 MB/s, respectively.
The SSDNow V+ 180 SSDs are backed by a three-year warranty and will be available very soon in 64GB (€180), 128GB (€312) and 256GB (€737) capacities.
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Panasonic debuts the Toughbook U1 Ultra rugged tablet PC :: Posted by THRASHER2
Mobile workers in need of a solid computing machine that can withstand less than friendly environments are now being offered by Panasonic a new Toughbook tablet PC, the Toughbook U1 Ultra model which is based on an Intel platform and runs Windows 7 (you can downgrade to Windows XP if you want).
Able to easily survive falls of up to 6 feet, the U1 Ultra makes use of a magnesium alloy chassis and has a 5.6-inch WSVGA touchscreen with up to 6000 nit viewability, a 1.6 GHz Atom Z530 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB solid state drive, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, optional GPS, fingerprint reader and 2.0 megapixel camera, and twin hot-swappable batteries enabling up to 9 hours of operation.
The Toughbook U1 Ultra is shipping in the US ans has a starting price tag of $2,799.
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KFA2 reveals the GeForce GTX 480 'Anarchy' graphics card :: Posted by THRASHER2
Europe's own KFA2 is readying the release of a hot new GeForce GTX 480 model which is not 'only' factory overclocked, but comes equipped with Arctic's Accelero Extreme Plus VGA cooler that packs three 92mm fans and five copper heatpipes.
Dubbed GeForce GTX 480 LTD OC Anarchy, the DirectX 11 card in question has 480 CUDA Cores, a GPU clock of 760 MHz, a shader frequency of 1520 MHz, a 384-bit memory interface, 1.5GB of VRAM @ 3800 MHz, and dual-DVI, plus HDMI outputs. No word on pricing yet.
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Kindle for Android added voice search, Wikipedia lookup and :: Posted by THRASHER2
Amazon today released an updated version of the Kindle app for Android devices, bringing more features to users of the mobile e-reader software. Among the additions made are full, in-book text search, voice search, the ability to make notes and highlights, plus word/phase Wikipedia lookup.
The update also brings an orientation lock that keeps the screen in landscape or portrait mode even if you flip the phone, and the possibility of getting more info about a book (a description, synopsis, summary, cast of characters) from social networking site Shelfari.
The Kindle app is available for free on the Android Market and can be installed on Android 1.6+ devices.
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SteelSeries presents the Shift gaming keyboard :: Posted by THRASHER2
Denmark-based peripheral maker SteelSeries has today unveiled its newest gaming keyboard, the Shift model which provides users with great customization options thanks to its support for high-grade interchangeable keysets made out of premium plastic.
SteelSeries' gaming-ready keyboard has a USB interface and features three height levels, extra wide feet, and a wrist rest with rubber that prevent slipping, gold-plated audio-out and microphone-in 3.5mm ports, two USB 2.0 connectors, media keys on top and on one side, onboard memory for storing up to 3 layers of on-the-fly macros, and an anti-ghosting capability enabling up to simultaneous 7 keystrokes.
"With the introduction of the SteelSeries Shift, we're able to bring another unique and powerful gaming tool to consumers," said SteelSeries CEO, Bruce Hawver. "The Shift greatly expands the functionality and concept of the original Zboard, which joined our product line in 2008 as a result of our acquisition of Ideazon, with new SteelSeries features that will provide gamers with a keyboard experience that can be customized for all types of games. As we bring the SteelSeries Shift to market, we are continuing to work with the best developers and publishers in the games industry to offer player's unique layouts and functionalities that will enhance their entire gaming experience."
Set to become available 'soon', the Shift keyboard costs $89.99 / €89.99 while replacement keysets are priced at $24.99 / €24.99.
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Toshiba and Best Buy team up to offer 13.3-inch laptop :: Posted by THRASHER2
Showing their support for the consumers of tomorrow, Toshiba and Best Buy have collaborated on building a more serious mobile computing solution for children. The result of this endeavor is the Satellite L635 Kids' PC, a 13.3-inch laptop which is set to be sold exclusively though Best Buy.
Priced at $499, the ' dedicated for the kids ' laptop has a no-gloss Dura-cross textured finish that helps resist fingerprints, a wipeable keyboard, a 2 GHz Celeron P4600 processor, 2GB of RAM, a DVD drive, a 250GB HDD, and is pre-loaded with NetNanny parental controls, various games, including Lego Batman, and more.
The Satellite L635 Kids' PC will start selling on September 26.
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T-Mobile G2 pre-orders to start today, no delay in sight :: Posted by THRASHER2
T-Mobile's Android 'revolution' will be reaching another milestone later today when pre-orders for the HTC G2 smartphone will finally kick off. The new device, which runs Android 2.2, is set to become available in less than two weeks, on October 6th.
As mentioned in previous posts, the successor to the first Android phone features a 3.7-inch S-TFT touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 800 MHz Snapdragon MSM7230 chipset, 4GB of built-in storage, a microSD slot (8GB card will be bundled), a 5 megapixel camera (capable of 720p recording) with LED flash and autofocus, Bluetooth, and a 3.5mm jack.
- Update - 24/9/10 - T-Mobile customers can now pre-order the G2, the phone costing $200 after a $50 mail-in rebate. A two-year contract also has to be signed.
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Samsung starts mass production of 8GB DDR3 SoDIMMs :: Posted by THRASHER2
Samsung Electronics is answering the call for 'moar' memory by announcing that it started volume production of 8GB DDR3 SoDIMMs (small outline dual inline memory modules). These high-density solutions can be used in laptops and workstations and will surely please professionals in need of RAM.
The 8GB module utilizes 40nm-class DDR3 DRAMs in a 1G x64 configuration, is runs at 1333 MHz, and requires 1.5V, the standard for DDR3 memory.
Dell is the first PC maker to adopt Samsung's 8GB DDR3 SoDIMMs and is using them for its 15-inch Precision M4500 mobile workstation which can pack up to 32GB of RAM.
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Ricoh G700SE water-resistant camera coming with Bluetooth in :: Posted by THRASHER2
For 2011 Ricoh is promising the release of the G700SE, the successor of its G700 water and dust resistant digital camera introduced just one month ago. The upcoming model will add to the G700 mix wireless LAN and Bluetooth support, plus extras like GPS and a barcode reader.
Ricoh's new camera measures 118.8 (W) x 71 x (H) x 41 (D) mm, and has a 12 megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom, 720p video recording capabilities, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and an SD card slot.
The G700SE is expected to become available in early 2011 priced at €799.
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Patriot Xporter Rage flash drives make their European debut :: Posted by THRASHER2
Announced last month, Patriot Memory's Xporter Rage flash drive have now been officially introduced in Europe in four capacities. These drives can brag with a quad-channel architecture and maximum read and write speeds of 27 MB/s and 25 MB/s, respectively.
Patriot's newest Xporter has a capless design with a retractable USB connector, a USB 2.0 interface, a rubberized housing, and is backed by a lifetime warranty.
The 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 32GB Xporter Rage can now be found priced at €17.50, €32.39, €62.14 and €126.93, respectively.
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AVADirect starts selling the Clevo X7200 gaming laptop :: Posted by THRASHER2
Catering to the needs of gamers with money to burn/spend, AVADirect has added to its product offer the Clevo X7200 17.3-inch laptop based on an Intel platform that can be equipped with one or two GeForce GTX 480M DirectX 11 cards, each boasting 2GB of on-board memory.
The new gaming laptop has a glossy Full HD (1920 x 1080) display, a desktop Core i7 LGA 1366 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, a maximum of three SATA drives - HDDs or SSDs, a DVD or Blu-ray drive, a 9-in-1 card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a built-in webcam.
The Clevo X7200 starts at $2,700 and can be found here .
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Nvidia adding OpenCV support to CUDA :: Posted by THRASHER2
Beside providing a glimpse at Fermi's successors, Nvidia has announced at the GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in San Jose that its parallel computing architecture, CUDA, is being added support for the OpenCV library.
OpenCV is used to develop computational-intensive applications for the robotics, automotive, medical, consumer, security, manufacturing, and research fields.
"Computational power in Computer Vision has been a limiting factor not only for the use of recent powerful algorithms in object recognition, tracking and 3D reconstruction, but also has limited the creativity of algorithms people are willing to invent," said Gary Bradski, senior researcher at Willow Garage, and founder of OpenCV. "With CUDA GPU acceleration, many OpenCV algorithms will run five to ten times faster, making current algorithms more practical for application developers and allowing the invention and combination of more capable applications in the future."
An OpenCV release with CUDA GPU support is expected to become available in the spring of 2011 but developers can already test out some GPU-accelerated functions with the current OpenCV source code repository.
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Full specs of HTC 7 Trophy smartphone exposed :: Posted by THRASHER2
As the launch of Windows Phone 7 closes in more info about phones based on it are hitting the web, and the latest provides an almost full description of the HTC 7 Trophy, an European-centric model that should be released in Q4, possibly next month.
According to the leaked spec sheet, the incoming smartphone comes pre-loaded with HTC Widgets for extra functionality, and has a 3.8-inch (480 x 800) capacitive LCD touchscreen, a 1 GHz Qualcomm QSD 8250 chipset, 576 MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, GPS, an FM radio, a digital compass, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, a micro USB port, and a 1,300 mAh battery. Camera details are missing unfortunately.
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Acer Aspire G5900 Predator gaming PC to reach Europe :: Posted by THRASHER2
Acer today launched in Europe its newest gaming-oriented desktop, the Aspire G5900 Predator model which is based on an Intel LGA 1156 platform, runs Windows 7 Home Premium and makes use of an black/orange chassis design that combines straight lines with curves to ensure an eye-catching look.
In terms of specs, the gaming rig features a Core i5 or i7 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, a maximum of 8TB of storage space via four SATA HDDs, a DVD writer, plus, optionally a Blu-ray combo drive, and a Nvidia DirectX 11 graphics card (at least a GeForce GTX 460). The system also comes pre-loaded with the Arcade Deluxe 4.0 software for accessing and managing multimedia content (movies, photos, music).
The Aspire G5900 Predator has a starting price of €999 and will start shipping on October 15.
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Club3D enters PSU market :: Posted by THRASHER2
With five new PSU models
Graphics card maker Club3D has decided to enter the PSU market and has released a total of five new modular power supply units that will be a part of its Switching Power Supply series.
The new series will be available as a 400, 600, 700, 850 and 1000W model and are seperated in three groups, depending on how much power do you actually need. All five models are ATX 12V v2.3 and EPS 12V compliant and feature all the need protections like Over Current, Under Voltage, Over Voltage, Over Power and Short Circuit.
The 400 and 600W models are made for single VGA configurations, the 700 and 850W for dual and 1000W is for those that run three graphics cards. These are also separated in three groups by the color of their fan, so you have yellow for 400 and 600W, green for 700 and 850W and blue for the 1000W model.
The yellow ones are rated with 80Plus (over 80% efficiency) and feature two 12V rails with 16 and 22Amps. The rest of the pack is 80Plus Bronze certified (85% efficiency) and these feature a quad 12V rail design with 32, 34 and 38Amps per rail. The yellow ones are cooled by a 120mm fan while the rest of the lineup is cooled by a 135mm one.
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Tesla gets to 9 OEMs with 19 SKUs :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: It was just one in 2009
NvidiaÂ’s Tesla seems to be doing some good for the company. Despite the fact that Nvidia still has to earn some serious money from Tesla, it now has 9 OEMs and 16 SKUs.
This is way better than it was in 2009 when the company only had one OEM carrying it, and if we remember correctly, it was Super Micro that had them. We do know that they were not too happy with Tesla sales but letÂ’s hope that the other eight partners can improve sales and make more of it.
These 9 OEMs are carrying 19 SKUs and different systems, so this diversity might lead to better sales and help Nvidia make some money on its rocky CUDA strategy.
Jensen tells us that almost everyone who matters in the OEM server world is carrying Tesla. We are not sure what the great Nikola Tesla would say if he knew a GPU computing card and a car were named after him.
Update: Jesen just announced IBM Blade center, T-Platform TB2 some Russian HTC provider and Cray XE6 Tesla powered system. We dont know who the other five.
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Nvidia powers MATLAB and Amber GPU acceleration :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: Massive advances in computational biology
During the Nvidia GTC 2010 Keynote, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that MATLAB and Amber (PMEMD) are capable of receiving CUDA acceleration using the power of Fermi-based GPUs.
“MATLAB is used by millions, as a general purpose numerical computation package,” said Huang. “It has stats tool kits, image-processing toolkits, data-acquisition toolkits, informatic toolkits. MATLAB will support CUDA-accelerated GPUs with the parallel computing toolkit.
In the field of computational biology, some of the simulations are enormously complex. Many computational simulations include walking and gene sequencing. Researchers have begun to simulate molecules at the atomic level using quantum chemistry. Amber (PMEMD) is among the most popular molecular simulation packages available.
“Amber is one of the leading nanomolecular dynamic simulators.” said Huang The team at University of California, San Diego recently took the Amber simulator and made it Multi-GPU capable. The speed-up is really, really impressive.”
He showed off the JAC Benchmark, where 192 quad-core CPUs can simulate 46ns/day. In contrast, just 8 Fermi-based GPUs can run the same simulation at 52n/s per day.
“But graphs don’t tell the whole picture. The KRAKEN is a massive supercomputer. With an 8-GPU cluster running Amber for GPUs they’re able to achieve the same level of performance with something that is just a fraction of its size.”
GPU-accelerated Amber (PMEMD) has been implemented using CUDA and can only run on Nvidia GPUs at present. Due to accuracy concerns in the scientific field with single-precision computations, the code makes use of double-precision computation and places high hardware requirements on GPUs that can compute double-precision with high efficiency. As a result, Nvidia is emphasizing its Tesla S2050/S2060/C2050/C2070 and GTX 470/480 graphics cards as the perfect candidates for this computationally intense simulation software.
In perspective, Jen-Hsun is highlighting the computational power differences between CUDA-accelerated GPU versus massive clusters of CPUs. “Now GPU computing is instantaneously available to millions of users around the world doing in work in high productivity, analysis and development.”
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Nvidia details performance improvements of new GPU :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: Kepler in 2011, Maxwell in 2013
During the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang surprised hardware journalists with a very surprising announcement regarding the lineup of next-generation Nvidia GPU architectures.
"For the very first time in the history of our company, we are going to tell you the codenames and the direction of our next several generations of processors," said Jen-Hsun Huang. WeÂ’re shipping Fermi today, which brought to the world very high-performance double precision. Fermi is rated at 768GFLOPS peak."
Jen-Hsun presented a keynote slide to the audience revealing two upcoming GPU architecture codenames, Kepler 28nm (2011) and Maxwell (2013).
"Our next-generation GPU, Kepler, also named after a scientist, is expected to deliver 3-4x the performance-per-watt of Fermi. Kepler is based on 28nm and we expect to go into production next year. By the time that we’re done with the Kepler family, we wil have probably invested a couple billion dollars in R&D for it. Kepler will achieve a big step up in comparison to Fermi in the area of performance-per-watt”
Jen-Hsun went on to explain the major design problem that faces parallel computing architectures. In perspective - "transistors are free, but power is not. If we are conscious about the use of performance-per-watt architectural ideas, then we'll continue to expand performance along with the number of transistors in new architectures."
Nvidia's CEO continued by announcing Maxwell, an even more futuristic architecture expected to be delivered in 2013. "Maxwell is going to be 16x performance improvement relative to our last GTC (2009). In just a few more years, we’re going to see a 16x improvement in performance for parallel computing applications. Between now and Maxwell, we’re going to introduce features like virtual memory. We’re going to enhance the GPU’s ability to autonomously process, so it’s less dependent on the CPU, along with a very large improvement in performance.”
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Nvidia Maxwell is 22nm part :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: 40 times faster than Fermi
In 2013 Nvidia plans to launch a Maxwell chip and Jensen just told at the press conference that the new chip is 40 times faster than Fermi and that it will get up to 10 to twelve times faster than Kepler.
The manufacturing process of choice is 22nm, something that TSMC hopes to have in 2013 but it still leaves quite a gap in 2012 when there wonÂ’t be anything really new, just maybe a tweak in Kepler.
This is a long time to wait for a new architecture, but at the same time it's all about the FABS that simply wonÂ’t be ready. 28nm only comes in 2011 and until 2013 we will be stuck with it.
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Sony rolls out 3.50 PS3 firmware :: Posted by THRASHER2
Update adds Blu-ray 3D support
The Blu-ray 3D upgrade is finally starting to be rolled out by Sony for the PlayStation 3. The firmware version, known as 3.50, adds a few other new things beyond the addition of 3D support.
Total Facebook integration makes its way to the PS3. The big draw here is for PS3 developers that will make a way for games to interact with Facebook, to do things such as post scores and upload screenshots to your Facebook page, for example. Apparently, the version of the Sony Facebook application has some hooks in it that developers can use to do a variety of things; and actually right now, we donÂ’t know what all they might dream up.
The Grief Reporting functionality has been enhanced and now allows for the ability to send reports directly from the XMB about any inappropriate message that they might get from other users on the PSN. Users are also able to access this functionality by going to the options menu of the message list in the friends category.
The release of SonyÂ’s 3D Blu-ray support is being seen right now as a major release for the 3D market space, which is in need of a boost. Sales of 3D televisions have continued to be flat and many hope that this firmware upgrade adding 3D support might get those considering a new set to make it a 3D-capable set. Still, we believe that the lack of 3D software for Blu-ray, gaming, and (of course) traditional TV channels offering 3D content is much of the reason that 3D sales have been flat.
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Invasion! comes to Toy Soldiers next week :: Posted by THRASHER2
New DLC pack to add new life to poplar XBLA title
The surprise Xbox Live Arcade hit, Toy Soldiers, by Signal Studios which combined elements of RTS and tower defense with a World War I toy soldiers theme is getting some additional content. The downloadable content pack is to be called “Invasion!” and it will arrive next week.
In the “Invasion!” mode, players will control the Germans against the British who apparently have some new weapons that have been discovered. The DLC pack will add a number of new units, including knights, fire trucks, space tanks, flying saucers, space-infantrymen, and RoboBob, which is a new boss unit. The DLC pack will include three new single player game modes, as well as two new multiplayer maps. In addition, the DLC will add an additional Survival level to try your hand at.
The DLC content packs quite a lot of content into the 400 Microsoft Points that it will cost to acquire it. Of course, those who do opt to purchase the DLC pack will have the chance to earn an additional 50 achievement points that are related to the Invasion! DLC pack.
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Ericsson sues Acer and Dlink :: Posted by THRASHER2
Patent row
Ericsson seems to be suing the world and its dog for infringement of its WLAN patents.
The suit which was filed with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas charges Acer, D-Link, Netgear and Gateway and othters for breaching its patent which covers IEEE802.11a, g, n and e.
Acer and D-Link products are WLAN devices equipped with WLAN chips developed Atheros Communications, Marvell, Realtek Semiconductor and Ralink Technology.
So far there has been no comment from those involved in the case.
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Thermaltake Jing CPU cooler tested :: Posted by THRASHER2
Review: CPU cooling in style @ fudzilla.com
Today we’ll talk about Thermaltake’s new CPU cooler called simply Jing, which stands for silence in Chinese. Thermaltake describes it with three words – comfort, excellence and exquisiteness, and the fan was, as the name suggests, designed to provide a quiet environment together with efficient operation. We’re talking about a tower side-flow design with two silent fans that should be good for up to 200W of dissipated heat from the CPU. Jing is currently available at €60, here.
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Jensen thinks Tablet will get big :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: Tegra 2 tab this year, early next year
Yesterday, Nvidia's CEO said the following. "You cannot bring a Tablet device without an operating system, application and services. We need to work with our partners to make the full product. " This is how he started.
He also mentioned that Apple has all it needs to make a great tablet in house. For the rest of us, he continues it takes a few companies to do that but once the first investment is made, all the sudden focus comes from PC market and gets faster and easier to new markets, such as Tablet.
Its all about the software it seems, and once you get a good operating system for tablets, you should see more and more tablets, many of them based on Tegra.
Jensen hopes to have tablets in late 2010 and early 2011 he said that at this point at least he is playing with them.
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Tegra 2 tablet developers also late due to Windows 7 issues :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: Poor performance
A year ago, Jensen held the first Tegra 2 powered tablet high in the air, and everyone expected to see them shipping very shortly. Q1 came, and CES and later in Q1 2010 CEBIT, a few Taiwanese companies showed prototypes some on Windows 7 and we expected to see them shipping by late Q2 2010, or Computex time how we like to call it.
Computex happens in June 2010 and not a single company launches a Tablet especially not the one based on Tablet edition of Windows 7. At this time most Tegra 2 powered devices simply moved to Android 1.6, than later to Android 2.2 and again Tablets donÂ’t perform that well.
The key thing for a delay is a fact that most companies lost too many time developing for Windows 7 tablet edition, learning months after they started working on it, that the performance wonÂ’t be that good.
Therefore they moved to Android and we still have to see Google powered OS that will solve the Tablet performance and experience problem, most likely at some point in 2011.
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Radeon HD 6000 launch in late October :: Posted by THRASHER2
Still faster than 5000 series
We have heard from several sources that the next generation Radeon HD 6000 series, also known under the Northern Islands codename is about to launch in late October time.
This means that this time ATI plans to launch in Q4 2010 which is closer to actually shipping time. Last year AMD launched Radeon HD 5000 series in last days of Q3 2009, but it started shipping in Q4 2009.
All the reports indicate that the new generation is actually a tweaked up design of Radeon HD 5000 and as far as we know, ATI didnÂ’t dramatically improve the tessellation performance. As you probably know by now tessellation is the only big advantage that Nvidia has over DirectX 11 Radeons. The whole generation is naturally faster than the Radeon HD 5000.
The main press event is supposed to take place in glorious Los Angeles in week 43, that starts October 18th, but this is something that we have yet to confirm
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Take-Two next to deal with used copies :: Posted by THRASHER2
No details yet, but likely to follow EAÂ’s lead
As we have suspected previously, publisher Take-Two Interactive is likely to be the next publisher to follow the lead of Electronic Arts and THQ by dealing with the used market space. The news didnÂ’t actually reveal exactly what strategy Take-Two will follow, but it is likely that they will use a code/voucher system to activate additional game features for those that purchase new copies of a title, while those who buy used copies will have to buy a DLC unlock online to access the additional features.
Speaking at the recent Think Equity conference, the CEO of Take-Two, Ben Feder, held his cards close and would not reveal any specifics on how or when the move would take place. It stands to reason that it could be done with the upcoming titles that Take-Two has on the slate for the remainder of this year, but sources suggest that it could be early next year before the company puts this move into action.
Although they have admitted evaluating it, both Ubisoft and Atari are expected to move in this direction, as well. It seems that despite the outcry from used game buyers over losing online play, it has not yet been severe enough to motivate publishers to rethink their strategy going forward.
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Number of Halo releases to go up :: Posted by THRASHER2
Three years between releases is too long
Could it be that Microsoft has finally realized that three years between Halo releases is too long? It looks like more frequent releases in the Halo franchise are going to be in store for the post-Halo franchise after Bungie.
The company does not apparently have a strategy yet on how often we will see new offerings in the Halo franchise, but they are looking at it. Although Microsoft released Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST, the last previous Halo release was Halo 3 way back in 2007. It does seem that players want more Halo titles on a more regular basis.
Sources says that while Microsoft has not ruled it out, it is unlikely that we will see yearly Halo releases; but a move to every other year might be in the cards, as there is a lot of ground still to be covered in the Halo universe.
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3DS likely using two ARM11 CPUs :: Posted by THRASHER2
Should offer good performance
A number of sources are reporting that Nintendo will be using two ARM11 CPUs to power the upcoming Nintendo 3DS. The choice of the ARM11 isnÂ’t actually that surprising, as it was the same CPU that powered early generations of the iPhone/iPod Touch as well as some smartphones and music players.
In addition to the ARM11 CPUs, the 3DS is said to also use a graphics chip from Digital Foundry. It is likely an evolution of the PICA-200 chip that is estimated to be able to deliver in the neighborhood of 10 million polygons per second and 533 million pixels per second, with an estimated clock speed of 133MHz. IGN is confirming these estimates to be fairly accurate.
Reports suggest that Nintendo will be making major increases to the memory as well as the flash memory on the 3DS. Sources are telling us that we should expect the 3DS to pack 64MB of multi-use RAM, as well as 4MB of dedicated video memory. To top it off, it is said that the 3DS will pack a whopping 1.5MB of flash memory on board which is a very significant boost over the 256MB that the DSi offers.
While it could be said that the specs are not exactly what some might have expected, the fact of the matter is that comparing the 3DS to the typical smartphone isnÂ’t really a fair comparison, due to the fact that smartphones are typically bogged down by the phone software that is always running in the background, which slows down the device.
The choice of the ARM11 could be a blessing for Nintendo, as the cost is actually below the majority of the processors that are being used in other devices. This is why Nintendo can afford to actually use two of them in the 3DS. The cost of the ARM11 will continue to decline over time, which should continue to make the 3DS even more profitable over the long haul.
DonÂ’t expect Nintendo to confirm these specs officially. In the past, Nintendo has been pretty shy about discussing the specifics of what is actually under the hood of their products. In addition, since the 3DS isnÂ’t officially released yet, no one can tear one apart to confirm it. Expect to hear more in January at CES from Nintendo.
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Microsoft boss becomes top chef :: Posted by THRASHER2
Creating a $625 cookbook
Microsoft's former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold seems to be make a bit of a splash away from his computer.
Having become a renown culinary expert, and he has a much-anticipated cookbook due to debut soon. The title "Modernist Cuisine," which will be sold in six volumes, is suffering the sorts of delays that Myhrvold would have expected from his last place of employment.
The books have been delayed until March while it is proofread and packaged. He said that proofreading becomes a bit more time consuming when you're editing 2,400 pages that retail for $625. A bit like QA on software we guess.
Myhrvold has earned a name for himself as culinary scientist of sorts.
He combines science experiments with cooking in his Bellevue lab. Writing on his blog, Myhrvold wrote that the delay means that he will miss the 2010 holiday season, which is a traditional time to give gifts. Myhrvold quit Microsoft in 1999 to start Intellectual Ventures. He has Ph.D.s in mathematical economics and theoretical physics from Princeton , and his postdoctorate work included studying quantum theories of gravity with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge.
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Aussie teen confesses to Twitter hack :: Posted by THRASHER2
Likes Japanese porn apparently
An Aussie teen has fessed up to sending thousands of Twitter users to Japanese porn sites.
The 17 year old Pearce Delphin said admitted exposing a security flaw which was then pounced upon by hackers, affecting thousands of users and causing havoc on the microblogging site for about five hours. Delphin, who lives with his mum and dad in Melbourne, said he tweeted a piece of "mouseover" JavaScript code which brings up a pop-up window when the user hovers their cursor over the message.
The idea was taken up by hackers who tweaked the code to redirect users to pornographic sites. Delphin said he did it to see if JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet.
He told AFP that at the time of posting the tweet, he had no idea it was going to take off how it did. The teen still has not yet told his parents about it all and clearly they don't read the papers.
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Marvell launches tri-core ARM chip :: Posted by THRASHER2
Armada overkill
Marvell has announced the worldÂ’s first ARM tri-core processor, the Armada 628.
The 1.5GHz part should deliver excellent performance for high end smartphones and tablets, but there is a twist. Only two of its cores are clocked at 1.5GHz, while the third one runs at 624MHz. Marvell claims the third, low power core handles routine tasks and takes some of the load off the 1.5GHz cores. So basically itÂ’s something like an intern or an office temp.
The Armada 628 supports 1080p playback, which isnÂ’t surprising considering the specs. Marvell also claims the new chip will allow vendors to integrate HDMI and USB 3.0 ports into their designs. ItÂ’s even got a rudimentary 3D engine with four unified shaders, but donÂ’t expect youÂ’ll do much gaming on it.
The Armada 628 should start shipping sometime next year and thereÂ’s no word on design wins yet.
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AMD intros four low-power Athlons :: Posted by THRASHER2
25W to 45W
In addition to several high-end Phenoms introduce a couple of days back, AMD has also refreshed its low-power lineup with four new Athlon II parts.
The dual-core Athlon II X2 270u is the most impressive of the lot, as it has a 25W TDP, which is less than many mobile CPUs. Of course, AMD had to cut some corners to achieve such a low TDP, so the 270u is clocked at just 2GHz, but itÂ’s still a very interesting processor.
AMD has also refreshed its “e” series lineup. At 45W, these parts are somewhat hotter than the “u” series, but they are also quite a bit cheaper. The Athlon II X2 250e is a 3GHz part with 2MB of L2 cache and it should sell around the €75 mark. The triple-core Athlon II X3 420e runs at 2.6GHz and it is listed at around €100, depending on the market. The 2.5GHz X4 615e has been listed for a while and it should sell for €130, give or take a few euro.
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Nvidia working on wireless display technology :: Posted by THRASHER2
GTC 2010: It wonÂ’t be Intel only
Nvidia has confirmed that they are playing with wireless display technology and that they will be happy to see it happening.
For Nvidia's GPUs that already communicate with the chipset via the PCIe notebook slot, it would be the same to talk to wireless and send the frame buffer somewhere else, so this can give you a good idea that Nvidia will end up having its own version of wireless display.
You can see a good use of this for notebooks and netbooks powered with Nvidia GPUs and it would be cool to see this with tablets, but we can only confirm that this should work on some future Geforce based notebooks.
We donÂ’t have a date on this but it is something that should be possible next year. We believe it will come with Nvidia Sandy Bridge notebooks, but most of them will have Sandy bridge wireless already. LetÂ’s see if Nvidia can make a better one.
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3.50 PS3 firmware adds more than 3D :: Posted by THRASHER2
Reports of disabled USB devices trickle in
Apparently, the new 3.50 firmware update does more than add 3D Blu-ray support for the PlayStation 3. Word is starting to trickle in that apparently a number of USB adapters, controller converters, and non-Sony licensed devices are now disabled and no longer work after the update.
This seems to coincide with Sony’s consumer alert a while back warning users of unlicensed or “counterfeit” PlayStation 3 wireless controllers. Sony claimed that the warning was being sent because apparently some of these controllers could “ignite” or even “explode,” and these devices had not passed Sony’s rigorous testing requirements. The alert went on to suggest that such unlicensed devices might no longer function after future system updates. Apparently, this future time has come.
Reports from a variety of sources suggest that some of the products that are now disabled include controller adapters, including the Yobo PS3 JoyBox and the XCM Cross Battle Plus Adapter. The SplitFish FragFX, which is a mouse controller for the PS3, appears to no longer work as well, according to reports. While there are claims of some PS2 to PS3 adapters that still work, it is hard to tell at this point exactly which ones these are.
The best news is, of course, that no Sony controller is apparently affected and neither are any controllers that are officially licensed by Sony for the PlayStation 3. While a number of vendors are reporting problems, none of the vendors that have been disabled have a fix or work around to get their devices working again, and it is unclear yet if this is even a possibility. It just goes to show the risk that you are taking if you purchase a non-licensed product. At this point, Sony has had no direct comment about the situation, but if and when they do we suspect that they will advise buying an officially licensed device.
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Spanish judge backs Google :: Posted by THRASHER2
Tells content industry to sling its hook
A Spanish judge has told the entertainment business to leave YouTube alone.
Lately the site has been hit with all sorts of law suits from various big content types who want to call it a pirate. The Entertainment industry lead by the Milan Cathedral magnet Silvio Berlusconi have been claiming that YouTube must screen every video before it goes live to make sure that it does not break any copyright claims.
However, according to the New York Times a Spanish court has told the broadcaster Telecinco, to sling its hook. The decision by the commercial court in Madrid is identical to one in the United States in June, when a judge told Viacom to shove off. The judge in Madrid said YouTube was not liable as long as it removed copyrighted material when notified. Commenting on the case, Google has said that it has always operated within the law. It is probably wishing that the Germans had the same attitude. This month, in a case involving videos of the singer Sarah Brightman, a German court said YouTube must pay compensation to musical rights holders when their work is uploaded without their permission.
However the Germans are not big fans of Google at the moment after the Street View fiasco where it was revealed that the search giant was snooping on punters. Google also faces copyright claims in other YouTube-related cases in Italy, France, Belgium and other European countries. The one in Italy will be tricky because You Tube is taking on Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi telly empire directly. In the Spanish case Google was taking on a subsidiary of Mediaset which the Berlusconi, owns. It has said it will appeal against the Spanish case.
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AMD readying at least two Zacate parts :: Posted by THRASHER2
E350 and E240
X-bit labs has managed to score a few more details on AMDÂ’s upcoming Zacate processors and the news keeps getting better.
AMD plans to launch two parts aimed at the low-power market, mainly desktops and thin clients. The Zacate E350 is dual-core part, while the E240 will feature a single core. Both pack DirectX 11 graphics with UVD 3.0 and a single channel DDR3 1333MHz memory controller.
As we reported earlier, the TDP of one of AMDÂ’s prototypes shown off in to the press last week is 18W. The processor in question was clocked at 1.6GHz, while the integrated graphics are clocked at 500MHz.
Interestingly, X-bit is reporting that the Brazos platform will consist of a Zacate APU and Hudson D1 controller hub and it will feature a singly PCI Express 2.0 x4 and four PCIe x1 ports, along with a plain PCI bus, six SATA-300 ports and 14 USBs. There is no RAID or Gigabit Ethernet support.
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Pegatron claims to have CDMA iPhone 4 contract :: Posted by THRASHER2
Coming on in November
Pegatron Technology has won the contract to make Apple's iPhone 4.
According to Digitimes it will begin volume production of a CDMA-version iPhone 4 in November with total shipments likely to reach 3-4 million in just three months. It adds that it will be flogging a total of 10 million by mid-2011.
Pegatron has been doing well this year. It also had orders from Asustek Computer, Acer, Toshiba and Sony as well as tablet PC orders from HTC.
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Google Chrome notebooks coming this year :: Posted by THRASHER2
Empire expands
Search engine Google's Chrome operating system will be in the shops by Christmas, according to one of its Aussie developers.
Glen Murphy, the Australian lead designer on Google's Chrome operating system (OS) and web browser projects, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the first Chrome computers would go on sale later this year.
Samsung, Acer, Asus, Toshiba and HP have all signed up to release products with the OS. Chrome OS is a souped up version of the Chrome web browser and will aim to shove more stuff onto the web. Murphy said the focus was on laptops but soon work would begin on adapting the OS for tablets.
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AMD working on new Phenom II X6 CPUs :: Posted by THRASHER2
Phenom II X6 1100T BE
According to a report over at Xbitlabs, AMD is working on several new Phenom II X6 CPUs including the new flagship Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition. Of course, we are still just talking about clock bumps as the flagship is still based on the 45nm Thuban die and is pretty much the same as it predecessor, the Phenom II X6 1090T BE.
So, the new Phenom II X6 1100T is based on the 45nm Thuban die, has a 3.30GHz clock and 3.7GHz Turbo Core frequency and retains the old 125W TDP. To give you a clear picture, this one is pretty much a Phenom II X6 1090T BE clocked 100MHz higher. It features 128KB of L1, 512KB of L2 and 6MB of L3 cache.
In addition to the Phenom II X6 1100T BE flagship, AMD will also roll out the Phenom II X6 1065T clocked at 2.9GHz, Phenom II X6 1045T clocked at 2.5GHz as well as the Deneb quad-core Phenom II X4 976 which is clocked at 3.6GHz.
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XFX Secret Weapon tested - HD 5970 Black Edition :: Posted by THRASHER2
Review: Eyefinity 6 and 4GB memory @ fudzilla.com
XFX HD 5970 4GB Black Edition graphics card is a limited quantity graphics card that comes at a pretty penny but in turn offers equally pretty performance levels. This naturally means that the card is not quite aimed at the general masses, and this kind of performance is surely not for the faint of heart. We know that Radeon HD 5970 is currently the fastest graphics card around, but XFX pushed the bar even further with its Black Edition card. So, for the price of US$1000/€1000, you’ll get XFX’s HD 5970 4GB Black Edition cards with six video outs, meaning Eyefinity 6.
The reference HD 5970 runs at 725MHz and the memory at 1000 (4000MHz effectively). Many expected the reference dual GPU HD 5970 to end up running at single-GPU HD 5870Â’s clocks (850MHz core, 1200MHz memory), but XFX offered that with its HD 5970 4GB Black Edition card. Naturally, this managed to give it the upper hand in the fight with the reference card.
XFX used non-reference cooling to make sure that the card will handle higher clocks. Furthermore, the card comes with 6 video outs and as much as 4GB of memory. While the reference cardÂ’s GPU has 1GB at its disposal, this time around itÂ’s 2GB.
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