Intel announces new manufacturing plant with Obama on hand
U.S. President Barack Obama wrapped up his week of mingling with leaders in the tech industry with a tour of Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon manufacturing facility. While a large portion of many tech manufacturing jobs remain based in other countries, Intel remains steadfastly dedicated to being a U.S company from start to finish. Intel plans on creating over 4,000 jobs this year outside other future endeavors.
Obama seemed very impressed by the facility. "We just had an amazing tour. One of my staff said it's like magic. I had a chance to see everything from an electron microscope, to the inside of the microprocessor plant--the clean room. Of all the gadgets you got here, what actually most impressed me is the students and science projects here."
Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, was on hand as host and also made the announcement of Intel's new facility coming to Arizona. It is going to be named Fab 42 and will be a $5 billion facility dedicated to 14 nanometer development and manufacturing as well as future projects. This is on top of the plans for a 14 nanometer facility that will be added on to the existing Oregon complex.
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Apollo 18 trailer - a sci-fi horror thriller
Apollo 18 is a movie filmed in the "found footage" documentary style which involves the story of the Apollo 18 undocumented and covert mission to the moon which reveals other life forms which are quite disturbing.
The movie is produced by Night Watch/Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov with the movie poster teasing "There's a Reason We've Never Gone Back To The Moon." It's like the love child of Paranormal Activity and Alien and actually looks quite good.
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Bulletstorm beta get leaked - elaborate marketing stunts for leaked games?
Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 have each been leaked out to the internet and now Bulletstorm has joined them. Elaborate marketing stunt or behind the scenes leaks? Are leaked games the new cheap marketing stunt? These AAA titles will still sell in the millions so a few leaks isn't going to hurt them, right?
EA has taken another hit with Bulletstorm making its way to torrent sites, with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions popping up online with only the former being confirmed to work. The PC version has not made its way out. 2011 has started with quite a few leaks, is it a coincidence? Or is it a different form of marketing? Instead of spending $30 million on an advertising campaign, maybe having 1 million people download your game is less of a hit? It gets the game into peoples hands and lets them brag about it to friends who might in turn not want to risk getting hit by the ban hammer for their consoles and rushing out to buy it?
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Fantasia (1940) Blu-ray Movie Review
Despite early mainstream hits such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney chose to pursue his avant garde sensibilities when he selected Fantasia as the third full length feature film to be made under the Disney label.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of Fantasia, essentially the film is made up of seven classical music segments which have been translated to the animated artform. The most famous however is the films centerpiece; 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', which finds Mickey Mouse in the titular role of the apprentice who despite his sorcerer talents, manages to manufacture a disaster.
Despite my growing age, I've always been a Disney fan and whilst nothing will ever top The Little Mermaid for me, I've always enjoyed the experience of Fantasia and how perfectly the Disney animators managed to capture the essence of these classical pieces, and translate them for the viewer. It's probably worth noting that allegedly many of the Disney animators were high on LSD at the time of production, which no doubt helped. Keep in mind also that Fantasia is now 70 years old, made and released during World War II. It just goes to show how timeless the film is.
For those reading that don't immediately feel this is something they'd be interested in seeing; I'd strongly suggest to attempt a viewing before passing up the opportunity to see one of the most experimental, yet pleasing animated films yet made.
Video
Fantasia is presented in a full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (its original aspect ratio), encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.
The last time that Fantasia was released on home video was 10 years ago for the 60th anniversary DVD set. It featured a decent but now very aged transfer, rife with noise and grain. Now with the passing of digital restoration, rather than celluloid restoration, Fantasia looks better than ever with the significant restoration performed by Lowry Digital. Colour balance is very good; the image is relatively sharp and detailed. Due to the Lowry grain removal algorithm, the film looks a bit soft and more pastel like, but I find this far less objectionable than the noise filled previous release.
Overall, fans will be most pleased with the image on offer here. It's never been bettered.
Audio
The main audio track is encoded in lossless DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, at 24 bits.
A lot rides on the soundtrack for Fantasia and unfortunately it's not all good news. The soundtrack was re-recorded for a theatrical re-release in the early 1980's, but I can't confirm whether the Blu-ray features this score, or the original 1941 score. Regardless, the soundtrack is pretty aged, with some pretty strangled high frequency response, and some muddied and hollow bass response.
With all the effort that went into the video transfer, it would have been nice to have the soundtrack re-recorded by a competent orchestra - not as a replacement, but as an alternative audio track. Maybe for the next release?
Overall, a pleasing effort and likely the best that could be extracted from the original sound elements.
Extras
Unfortunately, Disney Home Entertainment has failed to port over almost any of the fantastic extras that were produced for the 60th anniversary DVD. It's extremely weird too, because it seems that those original extras are meant to work in tandem with these new ones. I strongly suspect that a second disc was cut during production. So if you still have the original disc I'd suggest holding onto it, because there's some gold there. At any rate, what do we have? Let's jump in.
First up are the two Audio Commentaries; one provided by Walt's nephew Roy E Disney, animation historian John Canemaker and Disney film restorer Scott McQueen. Roy Disney, whom passed away last year, was always a joy to listen to. He took the Disney legacy very seriously and his presence was always noteworthy through some trying times for the company, and he's always a joy to listen to. The second commentary features a cobbled together commentary from recordings left by Walt Disney, and 'hosted' by Disney historian Brian Sibley. It's a compelling experience and it's nice to hear Disney from beyond the grave.
Next up are two featurettes. First is a virtual tour of the Disney Family Museum, which features Walt Disney's daughter Diane Disney-Miller taking us to the San Fransisco based museum filled with some amazing concept artwork and priceless other works. This would be a simply amazing place to visit and certainly I hope to some day. Next up is a featurette on a specific piece from the museum; the Shultheis Notebook: A Disney treasure which takes a look at the Fantasia special effects bible created by engineer Herman Schultheis, spilling secrets that have been covered for decades. Pretty fascinating stuff, but the history behind it, and what happened to Shultheis himself is even more so.
Finally, the Interactive Art Gallery shows a lot of original concept art and stills from the production of the film, but I grew tired of watching these on screen. Give me a beautiful coffee table book any day.
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Quick Review: Mach Xtreme MX-FX USB 3.0 Thumb Drive
Last month Mach Xtreme celebrated their first anniversary. As a company starting business in the middle of a global recession, the hill is high from the start, but once you take a look at the companies Mach Xtreme is dog fighting against, the odds don't look all that good.
Mach Xtreme is taking on the industry big boys, OCZ Technology, Kingston and the rest of the well known companies making SSDs, flash drives and memory modules. In order to survive, Mach Xtreme has to do things differently and that is what they have done from the starting block.
Mach Xtreme offers 'urban' themed products and recruits inner city graffiti artists to design logos and product graphics. The result is a different form of technology, one that offers a unique style while still retaining function.
Today we are looking at the Mach Xtreme MX-FX USB 3.0 thumb drive. Physically the MX-FX looks a lot like the Patriot Magnum; they share the same external aluminium housing, but the Magnum is a USB 2.0 drive and the MX-FX makes use of USB 3.0 technology. Mach Xtreme is offering the MX-FX in 16, 32, 64 and 128GB capacity sizes.
Our 32GB sample has a claimed read speed of 125MB/s and a claimed write speed of up to 80MB/s. All of the drives in the MX-FX Series have different read and write speeds, but today we are focusing on the 32GB drive since that is what we have on hand.
When it comes to price, we found the 32GB model available in the US for 120.73 USD. This is right around the same price of the Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0 Flash Drive we reviewed just the other day. The MX-FX has a higher rated read and write speed than the Patriot Supersonic, although the availability is much lower since Mach Xtreme doesn't have the same number of distribution and e-tail outlets as Patriot has built. This is something that will come with time as the company builds their reputation.
Let's take a look at some benchmarks to get this review kicked into high gear.
ATTO gives us a taste of what to expect from the Mach Xtreme MX-FX 32GB thumb drive. In our testing we achieved read speeds of up to 127MB/s and write speeds of up to 80MB/s. This is far faster than the USB 2.0 limits of 35MB/s.
Using our standard testing methodology, we did find one area where things weren't so glamorous, and that is the write access times.
In the write access time chart at the bottom of the previous column the Mach Xtreme MX-FX showed signs of JMicron cache style patterns. This is where the drive writes data very quickly until the cache fills and then the time it takes to write increases rapidly.
For a storage device this isn't much of an issue, but if you are planning on running an operating system or virtual desktop like Ceedo, then having a high write access time is not an ideal situation.
In Crystal Disk Mark we get to see the 4K read and write performance of the Mach Xtreme MX-FX 32GB thumb drive. The 4K read speed stays between 4 and 5 MB/s which is very good for a dual channel thumb drive.
The Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0 that we reviewed a few days ago achieved between 7 and 8MB/s, but it uses a quad channel design. Let's take a look and see what this means to the real world file transfer tests.
AS SSD Copy Benchmark was used to determine the real world file transfer speeds of the thumb drives. Three tests are ran; ISO, Program and Game. The ISO file is a large file, Program is a series of small files and Game is a mix of several large and small files.
The ISO test on the Patriot was conducted in 24.07 seconds, a 44.61MB/s rating, while the MX-FX took 28.01 seconds, a rating of 38.35MB/s. The Mach Xtreme was just a little slower in this large file test.
The Program test went a little different and the Mach Xtreme MX-FX outperformed the Supersonic by 27 seconds and 9MB/s.
The Game test, the mix between large and small files also favoured the Mach Xtreme MX-FX. In this test the Mach Xtreme outperformed the Supersonic by 4MB/s, around 4 seconds faster.
The Mach Xtreme MX-FX is a very fast USB 3.0 thumb drive; it's actually one of the fastest we've tested to date, but the MX-FX is not perfect. The only area we didn't like is how the drive handles access times when writing data. But as long as you are not running an operating system on the drive you won't be affected.
As intended, the MX-FX is a portable storage drive and it excels at this function. The price is in line with other USB 3.0 Super Speed thumb drives and the performance is higher.
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Stacking Xbox Live Arcade Review
Most people reading this would either have seen or know someone who owns a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. For those of you who don't know, they are the dolls that come in different sizes and stack into each other. Looking at these dolls on paper, you wouldn't think they would turn into a fantastic game concept, but the team at Double Fine have managed to produce one of the most unique and interesting games on the Xbox Live Arcade service by using these very dolls. Stacking is an adventure puzzle game that reminds us that in a world dominated by shooting games, there is still room for creativity.
In Stacking you play as Charlie Blackmore, the smallest child of a family living in the depression era where industrialists ruled and child labor was rife. Charlie's dad is offered a promotion at his workplace, but is never heard from again until the Barons cronies come and take the rest of the family to work to pay off a debt. All except Charlie who is deemed too small to be useful and is left alone.
You as Charlie set out to find your family and also to end the Barons rule over the land. To do this you must solve a number of increasingly complex puzzles and to solve puzzles you use the unique abilities of the dolls in the game to perform actions such as fart or unlock a door. However, there is a rhyme and reason to this. Charlie can only stack into dolls which are just a little bit taller than him and then those dolls can stack into others. Using the matryoshka formula, you stack the dolls up which allows you to seem bigger than Charlie and solve more puzzles.
When you are in a large matryoshka doll you are transporting a number of others inside you. Often in the game this becomes a necessity and you need to stack the dolls in a certain order. For example, in one puzzle you have to scare a rather large doll by pouring water on them and then freezing them with a cool breeze. These two functions can be performed by two dolls of different size. So you stack into the cool breeze doll before the water pouring doll which allows you to transport them both at once.
It's a unique concept that is made all the more interesting by the artwork and setting of the game.
For those of you who may not be the biggest fans of puzzle games, Stacking can also be recommended. The reason being there is a full hint system in the game which eventually will tell you what to do if you hold out. There is also many different ways to solve each puzzle adding replay value to the game. This is important because it is possible to breeze through the game in around three to four hours without breaking a sweat.
What makes the game, however, is the artwork and style. Set in the 1930s depression era as mentioned before, all the dolls are either quite poor or very rich in look. There is no voice acting in the game with the style coming across very much as a silent movie, where the story is explained in silent cut scenes with classical music in the background. Very fitting of the era displayed.
Stacking is one of those games that comes every so often and makes you remember why you like to play video games. It's a unique and interesting concept that the team at Double Fine have managed to put together very well. The use of matryoshka dolls and their stacking to solve puzzles is a great concept and with replay value coming from multiple solutions it's hard not to recommend Stacking.
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Corsair Announces Transition Plan for Force Series Solid-state Drives
Corsair Announces Transition Plan for Force Series Solid-state Drives
FREMONT, California — February 18, 2011 — Corsair®, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced its plans for the upcoming transition from 34 nanometer to 25 nanometer flash chips used on its solid-state drives.
"There is a lot of confusion in the market about the impact the move from 34 to 25nm flash will have on both the price and the performance of solid-state drives," said John Beekley, VP of Technical Marketing at Corsair. "We've been working closely with SandForce to ensure the smoothest possible transition and we're sharing the details today."
Flash memory manufacturers are transitioning to using 25nm process for fabrication, allowing them to boost capacity and reduce costs, which in turn will allow SSD suppliers to pass those savings to the consumer. The downside is that SSDs built using 25nm flash ICs may require more over-provisioning (a technique used to ensure reliability) which lowers the capacity of the SSD and may also see a reduction in performance.
"The Corsair and SandForce engineering teams have been working closely with the key flash memory suppliers to profile and qualify 25nm parts," continued Beekley, "and we've been running our Force drives through performance and reliability testing alongside them. We're pleased with the progress that's been made in getting the Force Series 25nm drives ready to ship to customers."
In the Corsair Labs, using the ATTO synthetic benchmark, only a small reduction in performance (roughly 3-4%) was seen when testing Force Series SSDs built with 25nm flash. Real-world tests, such as copying groups of files or measuring Windows boot times, support the ATTO results and show little to no performance loss. However, the over-provisioning needed means that in some cases the capacity of the drives will be reduced.
"So that our customers are perfectly clear about what they are getting, we will be changing the model numbers on all 25nm based drives and transitioning the drive capacities we offer where necessary. For example, a drive that would have been sold as 120GB when built with 34nm flash will be launched as a 115GB version," said Jared Peck, Global Product Marketing Manager for SSDs at Corsair, "All Force Series drives built with 25nm flash will also have a '-A' suffix on the part and/or model number, making it easy to determine exactly what you're getting."
Force Series 115GB and 80GB 25nm drives will be available by the end of February from Corsair's worldwide network of resellers and distributors. The F115-A has a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $215 and the F80-A has an MSRP of $169 in the U.S. For comparison the current Force Series F120 has an MSRP of $249 and the F80 has an MSRP of $199.
You can read more about the transition plan, including the full set of results from our Corsair Lab performance testing, on the Corsair Blog.
Images of the Force Series can be found in the SSD section of the web site.
About Corsair
Founded in 1994, Corsair supplies high performance products purchased primarily by PC gaming enthusiasts who build their own PCs or buy pre-assembled customized systems. The company's award-winning products include DRAM memory modules, USB flash drives, power supply units, solid-state drives, cooling systems, computer cases, and headset and speakers systems.
Copyright© 2011 Corsair. All rights reserved. Corsair, and the Sails logo are registered trademarks, andForce Series are trademarks of Corsair in the United States and/or other countries. All other company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.
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