IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 01/10/2011

Samsung Gives Portability Another Try with Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus

The original 7-inch Galaxy Tab wasn't all that impressive. It was a premature release with an inadequate SoC running a version of Android intended for smartphones, not tablets. Since then Samsung has put forth some of the most impressive Honeycomb based tablet designs with its Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9. Today, Samsung is expanding the lineup to include a new 7-inch tablet: the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.
A bit thicker than the 10.1 and 8.9, the 7.0 Plus measures 9.96mm compared to 8.6mm for the bigger tabs. Weight is significantly lower at 345g, and obviously the overall footprint is smaller. Samsung continues to use its own PLS display technology although the resolution of the 7.0 Plus drops to 1024 x 600.

Samsung 2011 Tablet Comparison
	Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus	Galaxy Tab 8.9	Galaxy Tab 10.1
SoC	Dual ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.2GHz	NVIDIA Tegra 2 (Dual ARM Cortex A9 @ 1GHz)	NVIDIA Tegra 2 (Dual ARM Cortex A9 @ 1GHz)
GPU	?	NVIDIA GeForce	NVIDIA GeForce
RAM	1GB	1GB	1GB
Display	1024 x 600 PLS	1280 x 800 PLS	1280 x 800 PLS
NAND	16GB	16GB	16GB
Dimensions	193.65 x 122.37 x 9.96	230.9 x 157.8 x 8.6mm	256.6 x 172.9 x 8.6mm
Weight	345g	447g	565g
Price	?	$469	$499

No word on the SoC, but it is a dual-core solution (thus most likely making it a dual-core A9) running at 1.2GHz. The options include NVIDIA's Tegra 2 (like the 10.1 and 8.9), Samsung's own Exynos or Qualcomm's MSM8660.
The 7.0 Plus features an integrated HSPA+ (21Mbps) baseband capable of working 900, 1900 and 2100MHz networks. EDGE/GPRS are supported on 850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz bands.
The tablet features two cameras: a 3MP rear facing unit with LED flash and a 2MP front facing sensor. Samsung will also integrate its TouchWiz UX into Android for the 7.0 Plus. Battery capacity is listed as 4000 mAh.
The 7.0 Plus will begin is life in Indonesia and Austria at the end of next month, with a gradual global rollout afterwards.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus

Game Review: The Binding of Isaac

There is some special alchemy at the heart of The Binding of Isaac. Developer Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) has combined biblical monsters, scatological humor, and tense twin-stick shooting into a thrilling and, at times, disturbing game about a boy and his troubled relationship with his mother.
A pregame Flash animation shows Isaac’s mother, who likes to watch Christian television programming, being told by God that Isaac is a creature of immense sin. To prove that she loves her deity above all else, she attempts to kill Isaac, who escapes into a cavernous basement of hideous monsters and terrible trials. After his fall, Isaac awakes, ready to seek revenge.
To reinvent one of the oldest stories in Western theology (Abraham almost killing his son Isaac at God’s behest) as a videogame, McMillen drew inspiration from venerable entries in gaming canon. Isaac, who cannot stop crying, shoots his tears in a manner reminscent of Robotron and Smash TV. Some enemies harken back to arcade classics like Asteroids and Centipede. The UI and environment design smack of The Legend of Zelda on NES, replete with hearts, bombs, shops and grid-based dungeon maps.

But Isaac owes the most to Rogue and its many descendants. Roguelikes – loosely defined as dungeon crawlers with randomized elements and permadeath – have seen somewhat of a renaissance in the indie community, and Isaac rides that wave. The game can be beaten in about an hour (if you make it that far, for death is permanent and means starting anew). But no two playthroughs of Isaac are the same. I was on my tenth or eleventh session before I saw a room I even vaguely recognized and have yet to see a sequence of rooms repeat.
All of Isaac’s demented loot drops with similar randomness, and none of it is explained. Upgrades come in many forms: trinkets, pills, tarot cards, blood pacts with the devil. They each change Isaac cosmetically, reflecting the shame and punishment inflicted by his mother (lipstick, heels, and a coat hanger are a few choice examples). There is no manual to tell you what they do, and if a guide crops up on the Internet, I urge you to avoid it. The whimsy and danger lurking behind each item pickup make Isaac’s journey all the more precarious and exciting.
The uncertainty and randomness breed resourcefulness. Sometimes the game will hand you powerful items early on, only to withhold heart and bombs in the later levels. Other times you will receive plenty of bombs and keys but few meaningful upgrades to Isaac’s skills. To succeed, you must adapt your play style to what the game gives you. Unless you have issues with the core gameplay, it could take ages to become bored with Isaac’s breadth of game-changing content.
So about that core gameplay: it’s purposefully loose and imprecise. Isaac can only fire his tears in the cardinal directions, and they don’t always travel in perfectly straight lines. Moving while shooting allows you to angle the shots a bit, but it isn’t an exact science. Movement’s controlled with WASD, and Isaac glides a bit, especially after a few speed upgrades. Navigating some of the spike-filled rooms is difficult when your protagonist can’t stop on a dime.
Despite this, I love how Isaac handles. The controls enhance the overall tension while still feeling fun. You need to be mindful of the environment, how Isaac moves within that environment, how the enemies move in reaction to Isaac, and how and when you can harm them. Fighting a bit of imprecision fits in well with the rest of the game’s randomness and adds to the challenge.

Isaac’s crude Flash aesthetic suits McMillen’s twisted take on Scripture yet keeps the possible severity of the subject matter at an adolescent arm’s length. The design of Isaac and his enemies feels like the result of McMillen regularly daring himself to a gross-out contest. Upgrades permitting, you can shoot poison tears at piles of poop (see above). When Isaac enters a room with a single heart remaining, he will urinate on the floor in fear. Most boss fights leave the room dripping with blood and entrails. You will find many horrible things in the dungeons below Isaac’s house. Subtlety isn’t one of them.
While guiding Isaac through the depths, stop and give a listen to the delightful soundtrack by composer Danny Baranowsky (Canabalt, Super Meat Boy). Baranowsky consistently finds ways to channel retro game music without resorting to composing on a Game Boy. I’m particularly taken with the surprising warmth of the “Caves” theme. He also admirably meets the challenge of writing his own riff on the “You Found A Secret” chime from Zelda.
At just $5, The Binding of Isaac is priced as an entertaining distraction, but it offers much more. McMillen and his programmer Florian Himsl have packed this retro hybrid with loads of secrets and unlockables. After six hours I'm still discovering new items, new enemies, new endings. Nothing about a boy being tortured by his mother should be this fun, but it is. And it’ll likely stay fun and fresh for a while.
A copy was provided for the purposes of this review. The Binding of Isaac is currently available on Steam for $4.99. You can find the hardware requirements below:

	PC Requirements	Mac Requirements
OS	Windows XP/Vista/7,	OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Snow Leopard 10.6.3
Processor	2.5 GHz	Intel Mac 2.5 GHz
Memory	1 GB	1 GB
Hard Disk Space	50 MB	50 MB
Video Card	DirectX 9.0c Compatible Card	--

Rendering and HPC Benchmark Session Using Our Best Servers
Each time we publish a new server platform review, several of our readers inquire about HPC and rendering benchmarks. We're always willing to accommodate reasonable requests, so we're going to start expanding beyond our usual labor intensive virtualization benchmarks. This article is our first attempt. It was a bumpy ride, but this first attempt produced some very interesting insights.

The increasing core counts on modern servers makes finding useful benchmarks difficult, and given how many businesses have chosen to use virtualization that has been our major focus. For this article, we decided to run the latest version of Cinebench and Stars Euler 3D CFD, as both seemed like they would be fairly easy to work with. That didn't end up being the case, but at least our testing results are a lot more interesting than we imagined they would be.

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AMD Releases Catalyst 11.9 Drivers

Following up yesterday's release of the Catalyst 11.10 beta package, AMD has made the final version of the Catalyst 11.9 package available for users of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7, Vista, and XP. As with the previous version of the package, most desktop and laptop DirectX 10 and 11 GPUs are supported, but Windows 7 users should note that this package requires Service Pack 1 to be installed.
The new drivers enable 3D support via DisplayPort - AMD specifically mentions the Samsung 750 and 950 displays as being supported. There are no particular performance enhancements listed for any games, though hanging and crashing issues in several games have been resolved (especially under Windows 7).
The new drivers can be downloaded from AMD's web site, through the Catalyst software's automatic updater, or via Steam. The final version of the 11.10 drivers will replace the 11.9 drivers when they're made available next month.
Source: AMD

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Samsung Talks About 32nm 1.5GHz Exynos SoC

In our Galaxy S 2 review we highlighted an extremely unique aspect of Samsung's latest: its Exynos 4210 SoC. The 4210 features two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at 1.2GHz and an ARM Mali-400 MP4 GPU. The A9 implementation is equal to that of TI's and a bit better than NVIDIA's Tegra 2 (MPE + dual-channel memory controller), and the Mali-400 MP4 is the fastest GPU we've benchmarked in a smartphone. The SoC is built on Samsung's own 45nm process.
Today Samsung announced a 32nm addition to the family: the Exynos 4212. CPU clocks jump up to 1.5GHz, while GPU clocks are unknown. Samsung claims GPU performance improves by up to 50% "over the previous processor generation" but that is a bit too ambiguous for me to extract anything real from. The move to 32nm could have simply enabled a 50% increase in GPU clock speed.
Samsung's 32nm process uses high-K + metal gate transistors, similar to a transition Intel made at 45nm. According to Samsung, these new transistors allow for either a > 40% increase in performance at the same leakage or a 10x reduction in leakage current at the same speed. Density also improves by 2x enabling even more complex chip designs (more cores, bigger GPUs, more integration) or smaller die with the same feature set (eventually improving supply and profit).
Specific to the Exynos 4212, Samsung is claiming a 30% reduction in power compared to its predecessor (presumably the 45nm LP Exynos 4210?).
Exynos 4212 will be sampling in Q4. I'd expect to see it in handsets sometime in 2012.

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Oracle Circles HP Like a Shark, Ellison Lashes Out With War of Words
Some believe Oracle could be trying to depress HP's stock price to buy it

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DOE Review: EVs, Grid Modernization to be Focus of 2013 Spending
The Quadrennial Technology Review will be used to steer spending for fiscal 2013, and a budget proposal will be released in 2012

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New Galaxy Tab 7.0 "Plus" is Thinner, Lighter, and More Powerful
Samsung smaller tablet finally gets a referesh

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Quick Note: BMW Announces ActiveHybrid 5, Sets March '12 Launch Date
One BMW hybrid dies, another springs into action

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The End of Big Science: America's Top Particle Accelerator to Shut Down
The world loses its second largest particle accelerator, America loses its ambition

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GM Beefs Up Vehicle Safety With New Airbag, Collision Avoidance
New systems to debut on select models in 2012, 2013, slowly roll out to rest of the lineup

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Glowing Bacteria Reveal Coded Messages
Seven strains of bacteria have been genetically engineered to express varied fluorescent proteins

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Available Tags:Galaxy Tab , Samsung , Galaxy , AMD , Catalyst , Oracle , HP , Galaxy Tab , BMW , GM ,

Saturday, October 1, 2011

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 01/10/2011

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