P67 Roundup Part Two
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Windows 8 To Deliver Fast Boot Times
Want Windows to boot faster but can't afford an expensive SSD? Microsoft might have a Windows 8 solution to that. The software giant reports that Windows 8 boot times are 30 to 70 faster compared to Windows 7, without the need for a cold boot. This new method of a fast startup appears to be something of a cross between a state of hibernation and a cold boot.
Windows 8 does this by ending all the open sessions when you turn off your PC, similar to what Windows 7 does. However, Windows 8 goes on further by selecting just the kernel session into hibernation. According to Microsoft, this speeds up the boot times because the method takes up less time to write the data to the hard disk. The current state and memory of the PC is copied on to a disk file, which in turn, is recovered when the computer is turned back on. Windows 8 also uses a multi-phase resume feature, which utilizes all cores of a CPU in parallel, to delegate the chores of content decompression and hiberfile analysis during the boot process. Complete shutdowns can also be done through the Windows 8 UI, for tasks that require a cold boot(such as hardware upgrades).
Head on to the MSDN blog for a more in-depth look at how Windows 8 enables a much faster boot time.
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Graphene Inverters Bring Us a Step Closer to Graphene Transistors
Researchers at Purdue University have created a key part of a transistor out of graphene. Graphene is a single-atom thick sheet of carbon with extraordinary conduction capabilities that researchers want to use in future electronics. Graphene inverters, or NOT gates, have been constructed before but required a temperature of 77 K to operate. This new design is functional at room temperature. The researchers also found a way to electrostatically dope the graphene. Doping silicon involves adding impurities to the material, which is harder to accomplish with graphene. With the technique the researchers developed, the graphene inverters can mimic silicon inverters by controlling the voltage to metal gates located near graphene channels.
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Mind Controlled Robots Helping You
Occasionally in science fiction devices to connect a human brain to a machine are used. In reality such devices are being developed for people who have lost the ability to use some or all of their appendages. Such devices often use a brain implant or a cap to record readings from the brain for transmission to a machine. The focus required for controlling a computer or robot can be quite extreme though, so scientists have created a partially-autonomous robot to help out. Instead of requiring a patient to continually focus on the robot following a person, avoiding a wall, or some other subconscious action, the robot itself will perform these actions. This allows the patient to stop concentrating on the tasks, except when they wish to override the robots artificial intelligence. Eventually the researchers would like to see this tested in wheel chairs and even prosthetics.
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The Quantum Mind of a Robotic Bartender
The envisioned future of robotics describes humanoid robots interacting with us in a very human way. How this could be accomplished though may only exist in the envisioned future. Programming a robot gives it a set of rules for responding to situations but real situations can be complex to the point of making the programmed rules incorrect or inappropriate. To explain this, researchers created a “science fiction prototype” to consider a robotic bartender. A customer orders multiple drinks, all the same, but never touches one of them. The rules of a bartender are to serve, so soon the customer has a collection of untouched drinks before him, but a human bartender would have stopped at some point and asked why the man is ordering without drinking. The proposed solution to enable a robotic bartender to ask the same question is to utilize quantum logic instead of simple linear and Boolean logic. Quantum logic is more comparable to the logic of humans as options beyond yes and no are possible and randomness can occur by changing from one set of rules to another, similar to changing personalities. The researchers plan to hold a competition for other teams to show off and compare their own virtual bartenders using quantum logic.
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US Patent Reform Bill Passes Senate; Goes to President
In June the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1249, also called the America Invents Act. Now the bill has passed the Senate with an 89-9 vote and is on its way to the President’s desk.
Among the changes in the bill are how the fees are used and a new means to award patents to speed up the process and reduce litigation. Previously fees collected by the Patent Office would not be kept by them but go to other projects outside the office. If the bill passes, the fees will be kept in-house and be used to more quickly review patents. The review process will also be sped up because patents will not be awarded to who made the design first but who properly applied for it first.
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AMD Rumored to Release Unlocked Multipliers for A-Series Llano APUs
An Xbitlabs news article indicates that AMD is gearing up to provide customers with A-series Fusion Llano APUs that have unlocked multipliers. Designated with the familiar "K" moniker, AMD's lineup will consist of the A8-3870K(clocked at 3.0GHz) expected in Q4 2011, and the A6-3670K(2.7Ghz). These are evidently targeted at performance users and overclockers, although by design the Llano series wasn't intended for such a market.
As these Llano K chips are scheduled with the same release window as the high-end Zambezi FX line of processors in Q4 2011, these two might find themselves inadvertently competing against each other. Although performance-wise, the FX CPUs should have no problem differentiating its Bulldozer-enhanced architecture against the more mainstream Llano offering.
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JET Running Again
The Joint European Torus (JET) is running again after 18 months offline for upgrades. JET is the largest magnetic fusion device in the world and was receiving upgrades not only to improve performance but to test materials for future reactors, such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Nuclear fusion has the potential to solve many issues with electrical power sources. The fuel can be gotten from seawater and the “waste” is only unusable heat and helium, an inert gas needed for science experiments amongst other things. Also, in the event of a catastrophic failure, the worst case scenario is a physical explosion without lingering side effects. Nuclear fission reactors use radioactive fuel with long half-lifes while the only radioactive isotope in a fusion reactor has a half-life of just over 12 years and, being an isotope of hydrogen, would actually escape our atmosphere, posing no threat to humans.
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Carbon Nanotubes Power Light Bulb
Somebody left a light on at a Rice University laboratory for days. This was part of an experiment though, and not because someone left for the weekend forgetting to flip the switch. The light was not the interest of the experiment, but the cables used to deliver electricity to it. Only centimeters long but made of carbon nanotubes, the cable powered the bulb at standard line voltage without showing any signs of degradation. This is an important step to replacing metal wires with carbon-based cables, as the cable showed a specific conductivity (conductivity-weight-ratio) surpassing all but a single metal. This means the cables are much lighter to use while working just as well; something of great importance for wiring in airplanes, automobiles, and future space craft. The cable also showed strength and toughness similar to a typical metal wire. The next step is to create longer, thicker cables for greater currents, while maintaining low weight.
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Smart Windows for Climate Control
More than 40% off the United States’ carbon emissions is to provide power to buildings, so naturally researchers are targeting homes and larger structures with ways to increase efficiency. Coming from Berkeley Lab is a window with a special film made of a transparent semiconductor. By passing a current through the film it will tint, to block out some light. There are other electrochromic materials, but this one stands out for being very efficient with its tinting, and, more importantly, what it will block. Other electrochromic materials will block out visible and near-infrared light, which causes heating. This new one will block out the near-infrared exclusively, allowing visible light to shine in. This has the potential to greatly impact climate control and illumination systems, by offsetting as much as 50% of their energy requirements.
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Flat Funhouse Mirrors make Designer Reflections
Everyone somehow learns about the reflection and refraction of light, either by looking in a mirror or seeing something ‘bend’ when placed in water or being taught in school. When covered in science classes, students are taught the basic rules of how this occurs when light goes from one medium to another, but those rules may be too basic. Researchers at Harvard University investigated the possibility have causing the layer between the two mediums to act as a third. With nanoscale gold antennas the team was able to cause a flat mirror to bend light as though it were a curved mirror at a funhouse. This happens because the antennas act as resonators that hold the light for a short period of time. With a gradient along the differently sized antennas across the mirror’s surface, a designer reflection can be created. The frequency and amplitude of the light can also be modified this way, so the reflected light itself can be, in essence, a designer beam.
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Activision Expects Blizzard to Release Six Titles Over Next Three Years
Blizzard is a studio that typically has a "it'll be done when it's done" mantra to the games it creates, much like id Software. However, unlike id, Blizzard is owned by Activision, which typically likes to have a set schedule for when games are released. As such, Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl said that over the next three years, it expects Blizzard to release six games from its "proven properties." Those properties, of course, are Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. Blizzard has not made any indication of its future plans with World of Warcraft beyond Cataclysm, while we do know that StarCraft II still has two more games/expansions to go. Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg-centric part, will be out in the middle of 2012, while Legacy of the Void, the Protoss part, will be out sometime after. That just leaves Diablo III and its expansions to round out the rest of the "proven properties." Tippl's wording also leaves hope for an unproven property from Blizzard, like perhaps the new MMORPG Titan. Whatever the case may be, it looks like we can expect at least two releases from Blizzard a year (if all goes to plan) over the next three years for the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises.
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New RAGE Trailer Shows Off Co-Op Mode
We keep edging closer and closer to the release of RAGE, the latest game from id Software. By now I'm sure you're well aware of the premise of RAGE, that you're a survivor from an Ark who has to wander out into the wasteland of Earth to figure out what happened after the asteriod Apophis impacted. The game makes use of id Tech 5, the latest graphics engine from the creators of Doom and Quake. The system requirements were revealed just the other day, and aside from the staggering required hard drive space, it seems plenty of computers will be able to handle the game. Today, a new trailer has been revealed that gives us our first glimpse of the game's co-op mode. Yes, RAGE has a co-op mode so you don't have to wander the wasteland all by your lonesome. In the video, the Shrouded clan has come to the town of Wellspring to destroy the water supply. It is up to you and a buddy to team up and repel the bandit attack, disarm bombs, and save the town of Wellspring once again. I have to say, seeing the co-op mode in RAGE makes me even more eager to get my hands on the game, since it is fairly rare to see co-op in recent games.
RAGE launches on October 4th for the PC, PS3, and 360.
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Deus Ex: HR DLC: The Missing Link Trailer is Out
Hot on the heels of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's success, The Missing Link DLC continues Adam Jensen's quest to unravel even more conspiracies. In the beginning of the DLC, Jensen finds himself being tortured by Belltower agents, stripped of his augmentations, and initially forced to rely on his basic capabilities as he progresses throughout the game. The story is tied closely to DX:HR, pitting Jensen against new enemies and forging alliances inside a freighter, headed for an unknown destination. Setting out to explain Jensen's mysterious disappearance for three days, The Missing Link is primed for an October 2011 release.
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Dead Island Patched, Still Broken
Dead Island released this past Tuesday on both PC and consoles, but the PC version was not what many were expecting. It seems that the Steam version of Dead Island was released as a developer version, with it somehow being uploaded to Steam as the final copy. Techland rushed to correct this issue by offering a patch that very night, but it seems that patch did not help out as much as originally hoped. It seems that Dead Island is still broken, with an editor from Ars Technica relating his experiences. He tried to get the game set up in co-op so he could play with his friends, yet changing the game's resolution resulted in crash after crash until it finally held. The colors are still over saturated throughout much of the game, plus the graphical glitch when walking over water is still present. It also looks like the multiplayer component of the PC version is completely dead, with no players being found and LAN mode not working. It seems that Dead Island is made for co-op, but sadly, that is broken for the time being. The console version appears to be unaffected, it is just the PC version that has so many problems. Hopefully those can be fixed soon, as the game seems to be a wild good time when working.
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