Twitter announced they were hacked this week, up to 250,000 accounts could have been compromised
Just over 24 hours ago
we reported that Twitter was experiencing a global outage, but more information has been released by Twitter where they've announced that they were actually victims of some attacks this week.
Twitter took to their company blog where they said during the week they had detected "unusual access patterns" that led them to see that unauthorized attempts to access users' data was made. Twitter actually discovered one attack as it was happening, where they were able to quickly shut it down shortly after.
The social networking site said that the attackers may have had access to information for close to 250,000 different users. Twitter added
"usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords" would have been available.
Twitter have since reset the passwords and revoked session token for all affected accounts, with affected users to expect an email notifying them of the reset. Because of the hack, Twitter have taken the time to "echo" the recent advisory by the Department of Homeland Security, who have told users to disable Java on their systems for the best security.
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Samsung's Super Bowl 2013 advertisement pokes fun at trademarks, features Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad
America's biggest sporting event of the year is nearly here, and Samsung are going front and center for their latest ad which features some big Hollywood talent in Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd.
The two actors are called in to pitch their ideas for Samsung's Big Game ad for The Next Big Thing. They talk to Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad (I can't see him as anyone else, he's awesome in that role). They get suspiciously close to saying "Super Bowl", but can't because it has been trademarked and they don't want to get sued.
It really takes a lighthearted poke at
Apple trademarking their retail store design recently, which is great.
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Google have pushed Chromebooks into 2000 schools, adoption rate is up 100% in three months
Mountain View-based everything giant Google announced on Friday that there are now 2000 schools using Chromebooks for Education all around the world. Rewinding three months there were only 1000 schools, which shows that the adoption rate over the last three months has been a very nice 100%.
Once the milestone was reached, Google showed off a list of schools that recently joined the Chromebook world:
Transylvania County Schools in rural North Carolina deploying 900 devices.
St.Thomas Aquinas High School in Florida going one-to-one with 2,200 devices.
Rocketship Education in the Bay Area of California using 1,100 Chromebooks.
It shouldn't be long before more and more schools take advantage of the Chromebooks, but this list would be a bit biased toward Google as those schools most likely ordered the most Chromebook's out of all of the additional 1000 schools from the past three months.
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4K UHD over HDMI is now possible thanks to VESA updating DisplayPort Dual-Mode
VESA have officially updated their DisplayPort Dual-Mode 1.1 standard which paves the way for better performance, higher resolutions and increased interoperability when using HDMI and DVI ports through a cable or an adapter.
When using Dual-Mode, DisplayPort will be capable of outputting an additional HDMI/DVI-compatible signal alongside its expected DisplayPort link. What this will allow is connectivity for HDMI and DVI-capable devices without the need for cables or converters featuring active electronics. Current DisplayPort Dual-Mode converters/adapters are limited by an output maximum of 1080p @ 60Hz with 24-bit color.
This update to DisplayPort Dual-Mode would allow HDMI 1.4 to be quite versatile, handling deep-color, 3D 1080p @ 60Hz and 4K UHD (2160p) @ 30Hz, all through a single cable. These improvements are thanks to a near doubling in the Transitional-Minimized Differential Signal (TMDS) rate, which has been ramped up from 165MHz to 300MHz.
The new standard for DisplayPort adapters and cables will be known as "Type 2", while previous-generation devices, cables and adapters will be labeled as "Type 1". Type 2 adapters will be backwards compatible, but the performance of these adapters would be locked at 165MHz for compatibility reasons. There will be some cases where a software update might be available which would allow Type 1 devices to take advantage of Type 2 features and performance.
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Google stock continues to increase while Apple's falters
It's a good day to be an owner of Google stock. The price of Google shares continues to rise and has reached a new all-time high. The previous all-time high was $774.38, which was set during October of last year. The current stock price is at $775.60 in after-hours trading.
Apple's stock, meanwhile, is at $453.62. The difference in performance shows how Google's Android is making gains against iOS, along with a more bullish outlook for Google after the company released better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter.
Apple still leads the charge in terms of market capitalization, though that could change if current trends continue the way they have been. Apple currently has a market cap of around $425 billion, with Google only have $255 billion.
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LeakedTT: Looks like Android Key Lime Pie will launch this spring
According to a document posted up by Android Police, which has since been removed, Android's next major operating system, known as Key Lime Pie, will be launching this spring. The document, which apparently belonged to Qualcomm, had details that suggested just this. The removal request could indicate the details were accurate.
Google's I/O conference is scheduled for May 15-17, which would be a great place for the next version of Android to debut. Who knows, maybe they'll hand out upgraded Nexus 7's running Key Lime Pie. We'll be sure to keep looking around for details regarding the next version of Android, including features that will be included or possible release dates.
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'House of Cards' now available on Netflix, first episode available to all
Netflix's original series, House of Cards, has been uploaded to Netflix in all of its 13-episode glory. This means users can sit down and watch the entire first season in one sitting. If you aren't a Netflix subscriber, you can watch the
first episode of the series for free. Netflix hopes this will encourage you to sign up for the service.
House of Cards is the second of Netflix's original series to be released. In May, Netflix will be releasing 14 episodes of Arrested Development all at one time. A show called "Hemlock Grove" will be making an appearance in April, and a few other series are also coming this year.
Netflix's chief content officer would like for Netflix to make at least five original series per year, though Netflix has to bring in profit to do this. They are doing their best to promote the series, such as offering the first episode free, to hopefully attract more paying customers. We should know how well this is working by the end of the year.
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Amazon pulls 'Downton Abbey' as an exclusive
Amazon has managed to keep Downton Abbey away from its competitors Hulu and Netflix by signing the show exclusively for their Amazon Prime streaming service. Downton Abbey is the wildly popular show that can be seen on PBS in the United States. The agreement also maintains exclusivity for season 4 and 5, if the latter is produced.
"
The series is consistently in our top most watched TV shows each week, making it the most popular TV series with Prime Instant Video customers, ever," Brad Beale, Amazon's director of digital video content acquisition, said in a press release.
Season 1 and 2 is available for streaming currently, and you can watch season 3, even though some episodes have aired in the US yet, if you buy Amazon's TV pass for $9.45.
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iOS 6/6.1 jailbreak enters private beta testing stage, not much longer before it's released
If you're like me, you're probably really excited about the prospect of an iOS6 and 6.1 untethered jailbreak. The Evasi0n website has been updated to say that the tool has entered private beta for the Windows and Mac versions, with a Linux version "still in the works." The website advises users to "come back soon!"
We're getting awfully close to the rumored Sunday launch and it appears that a launch on Super Bowl Sunday isn't out of the question. The jailbreak is said to work with every iOS 6 device, so you'll be able to jailbreak your 3GS all the way up to your brand new iPhone 5. Let's hope nothing delays the jailbreak.
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SpaceTT: NASA will launch largest solar sail ever in 2014
Sunjammer, NASA's codename for the largest solar sail ever constructed, should leave the launch pad in 2014 and head into space to demonstrate "propellant-less propulsion."
The giant solar sail measures about 124 feet per side and boast a whopping total surface area of nearly 13,000 square feet. The project is being contracted by L'Garde Inc., and is being supervised under NASA's Space Technology Program within the agency's Office of the Chief Technologist.
Sunjammer will launch into space on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will be testing several of the technologies features in the following months. These include successful deployment of the sails, vector control of the sail-tipped vanes, navigational accuracy, and ease of maintenance at a gravitationally stable orbit location of Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1, which lies about 200,000 miles from the Earth's surface.
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Live video streaming website Stickam shuts down over night
Stickam, the live video streaming website that gained notoriety in the alternative teen culture took itself offline last night in what appears to be a permanent decision. This shocked many of its users who had no idea the service was closing.
It's service let users "Stick" a live video stream on their website, or blog and could also be accessed from Stickam's website. It grew in popularity with the scene, emo and alternative youth demographics, but it also attracted more adult content related "performers" which Stickam quickly banned in an effort to keep things family friendly.
Stickam launched in 2005 and it quickly grew to 10 million registered users with about 6 million monthly unique visitors. With other services like YouTube, Google+ Hangouts and Ustream, gaining in popularity, the service just could not keep up.
"After seven wonderful years we are incredibly sad to have to say goodbye. We did everything we could to keep this dream alive, but unfortunately you are reading this message. When Stickam launched in 2005 we were the very first website devoted to live streaming, user generated video and chat. There was no blueprint, no roadmap to follow. We didn't know where you would take us. Thank you all. We will miss the Stickam community." Stickam's team said
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PlayJam wraps up successful GameStick Kickstarter campaign to the tune of $650k
When PlayJam first launched its Kickstarter campaign, they were only hoping to receive about $100k in funding to get the GameStick, a small yet powerful Android based gaming device, enough funds into production. Today they wrapped up that campaign to the tune of $647,658.
With the Kickstarter campaign over, all PlayJam has to do is deliver on its promise to ship about 5,500 GameStick's by April including additional docking stations and special editions of the device itself. While that may seem like a tall order, we are sure that the manufacturing process has already begun.
"We are overwhelmed, excited, grateful, thrilled and everything in between." says Anthony Johnson, CMO, PlayJam. "The campaign has been an incredible success with support from thousands of backers worldwide but this is just the beginning. The feedback from the Kickstarter community has been invaluable in shaping the final product and we will continue to seek input from those that supported us to ensure continued innovation ahead of a global retail launch."
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Kim Dotcom to Mega search engines: Play by the rules or else
Kim Dotcom says that Mega is behind the shutdown of Search-Mega.me after mountains of DMCA takedown notices for thousands of files stored on MEGA were issued yesterday. Dotcom says that the search engine did not have a takedown policy which offended some copyright holders.
Dotcom said that all search engines wishing to crawl Mega will have to play by the rules or lose access to the service. He pointed out Filestube as the golden standard of Mega search engines. In an interview with TorrentFreak, Dotcom said that Mega was concerned about the enormous amount of attention the search engine received, with articles mostly focusing on the many copyrighted files that were indexed.
"
We have had some emails from rights holders that said 'these guys don't even have a takedown procedure, what are you doing about that? When we are faced with a situation like this, then we have to act" Dotcom told TorrentFreak. "
If it's right in front of our face and it's put to us so prominently, we have to do something about it. Then we are in a state of knowledge and legally required to act."
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Outlook.com and Office 365 services experience outages for some users
In what seems to be the great internet outage week of 2013, even more services are experiencing server outages and downtime today. Reports are coming in that Microsoft's Outlook.com appears to be down as well as the Office 365 subscription service.
Engadget is reporting that they are getting reports from users that the Outlook.com site has been unreachable for some of the morning and that subscribers to the Office 365 service are unable to reach their accounts.
From my testing, Outlook.com is down and my attempt to visit Office 365 was unsuccessful as well. No statement has been released from Microsoft at this point and we have no ETA on when the services will be back online.
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RumorTT: Dell could go private with the help of Michael Dell, Microsoft and Silverlake
We have been hearing rumors that Dell wants to remove itself from the publicly traded market and once again become a private entity. If the recent rumors are true, Dell may just get its wish thanks to Michel Dell himself, Microsoft and Silverlake.
Michael Dell reportedly contributed his stake of $3.6 billion yesterday along with an additional $500 million to $1 billion investment, which gains him the majority share of the company's stock. That puts him owning over half the company's $9 billion equity check. Microsoft is said to be investing $1 - $2 billion, with Silverlake following suit. The company itself could contribute some funds to its buyout as well.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft will have more than just a stake in the PC manufacturing company. They are said to have a say in Dell's operations, and could shape the future of the once king of the personal computer market. Dell still holds the title of third largest PC manufacturer, but is losing market share.
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Sony will end it's MiniDisc payer production in March
Some of you may remember the MiniDisc; it looked like a weird mash-up of a CD-ROM and a 3.5-inch floppy disk and was originally designed by Sony to replace the audio cassette. Much like the PlayStation 2, Sony kept the MiniDisc production alive to appease a loyal fan-base in Japan.
In a statement made to the Japanese website Ashashi, Sony says that it will cease production of the MiniDisc this March. The storage format used a magneto-optical disc that was kept safe inside a plastic case that featured a sliding mechanism that protected the disc when not in use.
It was able to store 74 minutes of audio in the ATRAC format with the linear PCM format and 80 minutes of record time developed later. Sony sold over 27 million MiniDisc players over its 20 year run despite being overtaken by the CD and much more popular Walkman portable CD player. We at TweakTown say sayonara to the MiniDisc and wish it a happy retirement.
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RumorTT: Google Glass to come with bone-conduction speakers
With Google saying that their "Explorer Edition" of their augmented reality headset would arrive early in 2013, it looks like they're finally here as they're sliding through the FCC.
Now that they're hitting the FCC, we can see some specs - 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and the latest Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy technology. The charging method appears to be a USB charger, but another listing tells a story of a "barrel" connector.
Something else that has been spotted is that Glass looks to feature a "vibrating element" that would provide the wearer audio "via contact with the user's head". We don't know exactly what this is, but it does sound like bone conduction technology, which would suit Glass quite well.
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Battlefield 3: End Game DLC receives new 'Capture the Flag' mode, shown off on video
The last Battlefield 3 DLC is nearly here, "End Game". But, it looks like this is going to be one of the most exhilarating DLC packs for Battlefield 3, with End Game introducing a new Capture the Flag mode.
The video above shows it off, as well as the all-new dirt bikes. There's also new dog tags, a new dropship, 4 new huge maps, new assignments and air superiority mode. End Game will be released in March, but will reach the PlayStation 3 one week before the other platforms.
What do you think? I'm just getting back into Battlefield 3 after nearly a year off, and I'm loving it. I can't believe this is the last DLC we'll receive before we begin playing Battlefield 4, which I'm like a little kid on Christmas over.
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Intel to unveil some dual-core Android-powered smartphones at Mobile World Congress
The supreme leader in CPUs, Intel, is set to show off some new Android-based smartphones at Mobile World Congress. These devices will be powered by the company's new Atom Z2420 SoCs that are "targeted at emerging markets".
Intel will also be displaying their latest smartphone technologies and devices running on Google's Android OS, including their dual-core processor and dual graphics platform, as well as some OEM- and service provider-supported devices.
Let's hope Intel show off a device that we'll all want, to really get them a running sprint into the runaway train that is the mobile devices market.
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Nokia receives $1.35 billion grant, will use the funds to develop the "strongest material ever tested"
Finnish smartphone maker Nokia have received a tidy $1.35 billion grant which will see them attempt to develop the strongest material ever constructed - how incredibly exciting! Currently, graphene is a class 2D structure measuring just a single atom thick.
This is an incredible feat, and it is currently the strongest material ever produced. Graphene is 300 times tougher than steel and is also one of the lightest conductors available. Nokia is leading the pack of the Graphene Flagship Consortium, which includes 73 other companies and academic institutions from a number of mediums.
Nokia's grant will see them research and develop graphene for practical applications, where the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) the ones behind the $1.35 billion grant. Research Leader at Nokia Research Center, Jani Kivioja, says:
Not only does creating a graphene research consortium open up new research possibilities, it will also create work and jobs across all of Europe. This kind of research is also an investment to the people that live within the EU, from an economy perspective. When we talk about graphene, we've reached a tipping point. We're now looking at the beginning of a graphene revolution. Before this point in time, we figured out a way to manufacture cheap iron that led to the Industrial Revolution. Then there was silicon. Now, it's time for graphene.
Graphene should lead to some pretty incredible developments over the coming years, where I'm sure we'll see it spread into other areas - such as cars, houses, and more.
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European Space Agency is looking into 3D-printed moon bases
We've previous reported about entire 3D-printed buildings, but now we're looking at taking one small step for man, one giant leap for 3D printing with the idea of 3D-printed moon bases. Yes, that's not an error - 3D-printed moon bases.
The European Space Agency and partners from London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners are currently scribbling down some ideas on how they would get 3D-printed moon bases onto the surface of our moon. Lunar dust creates a difficult a problem in terms of building materials, which has forced those involved to think outside of the box, big time.
Simulated moon dust has been combined with magnesium oxide and a "binding salt", which helps to mixture stick together, with the entire process capable of working within the vacuum of space thanks to a new approach to extruding liquids on the moon. The first concept designs from Foster + Partners used a large weight-bearing dome with a "cellular structured wall" in order to keep the people who would be inside of these structures safe from ambient radiation and micrometeroid strikes.
Enrico Dini, founder of UK-based 3D printing coming, Monolite, he said that
our current printer builds at a rate of around 2m per hour, while our next-generation design should attain 3.5m per hour". Dini elaborated, stating that an entire building would take around one week, but whether this meant one week building on the moon itself, or here on Earth is the question.
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Kim Dotcom offers $13,500 for the first person to break into Mega
We hope you're brushed up on your hacking skills, as
Mega founder (we can't really keep saying MegaUpload founder now, can we?) is offering up a bounty for the first person to break into Mega.
Dotcom is offering a very tidy 10,000 euros (or roughly $13,580) for the first person to break into Mega, where he has offered up the prize for enterprising hackers after the site was criticized for the way it handles security. Mega launched just under two weeks ago now and has since taken 50 million files from users.
Dotcom's bounty offer is a good way to get hackers to break through their security so that they know what to patch up, but we should expect this from a 'beta' of a cloud storage site.
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Samsung eats more of Apple's tablet market share away
Research firm IDC and their latest numbers are showing that current market leader Apple with their iPad are losing tablet market share. Apple's tablet market share dropped from 51.7% to 43.6%, where in the last three months of 2012 Samsung jumped up to 15.1%.
When taking in consideration the year-over-year numbers, Samsung's growth has been huge where a year ago they sold just 2.2 million tablets, and twelve months later they're seeing sales of 7.9 million units.
The tablet market is expected to get much more serious this year, with multiple Nexus tablets from Google, as well as Microsoft's upcoming Surface Pro slate.
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Nexus 4 charging orb spotted online for $60, is sold out
One thing I'm really missing from my Nexus 4 is the charging orb, but it looks like retailer Pure Mobile has it listed in their online catalog as the "LG Mobile WCP400 Wireless Charging Orb Nexus 4" for $59.99.
The retailer has it listed as "out of stock", but it does come with free shipping - so when it comes back into better stock numbers, at least free shipping is offered. The picture included on their site definitely shows that this is no troll, as it features the Nexus logo.
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ZOTAC unveils new GeForce GTX 660 Thunderbolt GPUs, have nothing to do with Thunderbolt technology
ZOTAC have just launched a new GPU, named the GeForce GTX 660 Thunderbolt Edition. With 'Thunderbolt' in the name, most people would expect that ZOTAC have baked in some Thunderbolt interface support, but nope - it has nothing to do with the high-speed connectivity called Thunderbolt.
The new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 660 Thunderbolt Edition, does however, arrive with a high-grade non-reference design PCB, and a very cool new cooling solution. The cooling solution sports a massive aluminum heatsink with heat-transfer helps by three copper heat pipes. This gives us a hybrid-type device, somewhere between heatsinks and fin-stacks. The pictures below show off how a hybrid heatsink is better than fin-stacks.
ZOTAC calls the cooler features "EClean", which is a mechanism that allows owners of the GPU to easily detach the cooler shroud on which the fans are mounted by simply pressing a retention notch, and sliding out the shroud that's suspended on rails on the main heatsink. All of this provides the ability to clean the heatsink, very, very nice.
Spec-wise, we're looking at NVIDIA reference clock speeds of 980MHz core, 1033MHz GPU boost and 6GHz memory. Overclocking will be left to users, even with this nifty heatsink design - I'll just scratch my head in total wonder. Filling out the new GTX 660 Thunderbolt Edition from ZOTAC, we find 2GB of GDDR5 RAM spread across a 192-bit memory interface, a single 6-pin power connector, two DVI ports, one HDMI and one DisplayPort connector.
This particular GPU will be exclusive to China, unfortunately.
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Blu-ray Movie Review
Regular readers of my TweakTown reviews will be quite aware of my love for animation (especially Disney), but I definitely have a soft spot for Japan's Studio Ghibli animation company, often referred to as "The Disney of the East". 25 years on it's impossible to ignore their first international breakthrough hit
My Neighbor Totoro, nor the impact it had on the company - a Totoro adorns the studios logo. My 2010 trip to Japan and the Studio Ghibli museum just confirms how far the film has penetrated the popular culture and continues to define it after all this time.
When young Mei, Satsuki and their father moves to a derelict home on the countryside in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, they quickly discover that gentle spirits inhabit the area, confirmed by the presence of a small creature that bobs up above the rolling hills. When Mei follows the creature through to the inside of a camphor tree, she discovers a huge fluffy creature she names 'Totoro', beginning a friendship which unveils the true nature of their new home - including the magical denizens that inhabit it.
My Neighbor Totoro is a relatively simple story, beautifully told. Cynics need not apply, but those willing to open their hearts to a moving and genuinely fun animated adventure should definitely give this one a look.
Video
My Neighbor Totoro is presented in the film's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.
Similar to previous Studio Ghibli catalogue releases,
My Neighbor Totoro has received a full high definition restoration which shows off the film like never before, with a sharp and detailed transfer which even reveals some of the shortcuts inherent in the animation process. Pleasingly, there has been little (if any) fake telecine wobble added to the new digital master, an issue which has plagued other Ghibli catalogue releases.
Color balance is very good, but compared to western animated features will appear slightly muted. This is not a fault of the transfer, but a reflection of the original production.
Overall, this is a really nice remaster which will please fans and cause many DVD copies to suddenly appear on eBay.
Audio
My Neighbor Totoro is presented in both English and Japanese PCM stereo audio tracks at 24 bits.
It's a bit of a head scratcher why the film hasn't been extended a more involving 5.1 surround mix, even from Disney who was responsible for the production of the English dub track for the American market. Confined to just two channels, naturally the audio experience won't be as involving as many film buffs are accustomed to, but I'm happy to report that the track does respond quite well to Dolby Pro Logic amplification if you are so equipped.
For review purposes I listened to the entirety of the film in its English dub and sampled the original Japanese audio. Both tracks are quite reasonable, within their aforementioned limitations. Audio fidelity is quite good and there are no problems with dialogue intelligibility.
The score by Ghibli regular Joe Hisaishi is truly wonderful and a great accompaniment. Again, it's a shame it isn't given room to breathe over surround channels, but for now at least, it is what it is.
Extras
In a significant improvement over the previous DVD release, Madman has included not only all of the previous supplements, but also a few new extra features. Let's take a look.
First up is
Picture in Picture Storyboards which presents the film in 1080p with a window in the bottom right hand corner of the screen showcasing the entire run of original production storyboards. Animation buffs might get a kick out of this, but others might be a tad bored after a while.
Next up are a bunch of production featurettes including
Creating My Neighbor Totoro and
Creating the Characters which over the span of seven minutes combined give a brief look at the genesis of the project.
The Locations of Totoro is by far the lengthiest of the featurettes at nearly 30 minutes in length, which looks at the real world locations from Director Miyazaki's youth which inspired the locations in the film.
The Totoro Experience discusses the interest in merchandising which simply wasn't available when the film was originally released, and
Producers Perspective: Creating Studio Ghibli which reveals how the studio got its curious name. The five minute
Beyond the Microphone featurette looks at the casting and recording of the English audio dub, and the
Textless Opening and Closing shows clean templates before the sequence text is dropped in.
Finally, we have two
Japanese trailers and
additional trailers for
Ponyo,
Laputa and
Arrietty.
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Cooler Master Seidon 240M Water AIO CPU Cooler Review
Introduction
Cooler Master has made it this long in the aftermarket PC parts game because of one major thing, and that is the ability to adapt to what is new in the rest of the world. What I mean to say is that if you look back at what they started with as something like the Cosmos 2 in cases, they have definitely learned a trick or two. Even with cooling, they were the first to hand me a TEC assisted air cooler, they were also the first to hand me a successful version of a vertical vapor chamber designed CPU cooler. Now as the market had sort of left them behind with every company and their mothers going to an Asetek or CoolIT AIO system, Cooler Master rolled with the punches for a while, then has succumbed to the desires and trends of today and are introducing their very own design of what an AIO water cooler should be.
With all the variations on the market today, along with about three pump revisions if I have my count right, you can really get lost in what brand and what style of radiator to use. While I was given a Corsair H100 a long time ago to test, it is no longer around for comparative testing, all we can go by today is how this unit fares against coolers that Thermaltake had released on the third gen pumps, and of course the various full custom water cooling solutions. I mean I fully expect this AIO to fall right in the middle of the two anyways, so if it does that, I think Cooler Master is well on their way to success with these new units.
As I searched around for a bit of the company's interpretation of this cooler I seemed to be coming up blank. It is very easy to find the product page for the smaller version, the Seidon 120M AIO, but today we are going to be testing the larger version of this AIO, the Seidon 240M from Cooler Master. Of course it isn't a huge stretch to get that the naming comes from the Greek deity Poseidon; God of the Sea.
With a name so engrained in minds as someone who could bring tidal waves and whirlpools on a whim, it seems that these units have a lot to live up to. I say we get right into things and see just how well the Seidon 240M handles this Intel 2600K processor.
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ADATA XPG Gaming Series V2.0 PC3-19200 16GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Review
It's been a while since we've seen a kit of RAM from ADATA with the last one being seen back in October. The
8GB PC3-17000 XPG Gaming Series kit did a good job of impressing us with strong out of the box performance thanks to a default 2133MHz DDR clock along with a decent overclock, which saw the kit achieve 2580MHz DDR.
Today we're looking at a kit that again is part of the XPG Gaming Series, and this particular one is part of the V2.0 series, which has more of a focus on higher clock speeds and overall a higher end heatsink.
Looking at the kit the first thing we notice is the decision of ADATA to go down the path of a black PCB, which we love. Like we always say, it's only a cosmetic thing, but it's the decision for companies to put these great looking heatsinks on modules that is against a green PCB, and it is something that never looks great.
You can see above the black PCB against the black and green heatsink makes for a really good looking module. Along with that, though, one of the great things about the Gaming Series V2.0 is the quality of the heatsink. While most companies just opt for the heatsink to be placed together with a clip like setup, this type has two screws that help keep the heatsink together. This just makes for an overall better quality feel.
Taking a closer look at the modules you can see both sides are fairly similar. We've got the same black and green sticker on both sides with the ADATA logo on the left and the Gaming Series logo sitting just next to that. We can see on the right side we've got a sticker that gives us a run down on some of the main information.
Moving closer in we're able to see exactly what we're dealing with today. Starting from the top we've got the model that gives us a fair idea of what exactly we've got, but below that you can see we're dealing with a 2400MHz DDR kit of PC3-19200. Next to that you can see we've got two 8GB modules which makes helps make up a 16GB kit.
Below that you can see the timings. Coming in at 2400MHz DDR it comes as no surprise that the timings are a little loose with an 11-13-13-35 setup that requires 1.65v to get up and running.
With the modules looked at it's time to install them into our testbed and check out the performance. Heading into the BIOS and firing up the XMP profile we get straight into Windows with no problem just as we'd expect. We fire up AIDA64 and check out the CPU ID information to make sure everything is looking right.
As you can see above we're running at 2400MHz DDR and here we also discover that we're dealing with a 1T Command Rate instead of the typical 2T rate we see on these higher speed kits. Of course when it comes to Command Rate lower is better so the 1T number is a nice surprise.
With everything looking good it's time to get into the numbers. Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of
22,562 MB/s / 20,686 MB/s, Copy speed of
24,833 MB/s and latency of
34.2ns.
Looking above you can see our numbers line up just as you'd expect. There are no real surprises so we headed back into the BIOS and got into some overclocking. Since we're at 2400MHz DDR already the first thing we did was change the memory divider to 2600MHz DDR and let the ASRock Z77 OC Formula take care of the timings. This resulted in our test system booting up straight away.
In Windows we headed over to the CPUID area to see the timings, and with no surprise, we see the timings became looser. We weren't too worried about that at the moment, though, as we want to see if there's any more headroom in the overclocking side of things.
Heading back into the BIOS we jumped up to the 2666MHz DDR divider and with no real surprise we couldn't get our machine to boot. We know that our CPU maxes out around the mid 2600MHz DDR mark so this didn't come as a shock to us. Heading back to the 2600MHz DDR divider, we then messed around with the BCLK to see if we could get anything out of it. Starting at a 103 BCLK our machine didn't boot. We moved down to 102 and 101, and both times our machine wouldn't boot. It seems that the kit didn't want to move past the 2600MHz DDR clock, even with relaxed timings.
Since 2600MHz DDR was working with no problems we moved to see if we could make the timings slightly more aggressive and move back to the 1T Command Rate. Looking below you can see we got the timings back to the default 11-13-13-35-1T clocks at 2600MHz DDR, which is nice.
We tried to go slightly more aggressive, but like the aforementioned BCLK adjustments, we didn't have any luck. Still this is a solid 200MHz DDR overclock with fairly good timings. With that done we headed back into AIDA64 and had a look at the numbers. Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of
22,759 MB/s / 20,821 MB/s, Copy speed of
23,757 MB/s and latency of
32.5ns.
You can see performance jumps slightly in the read and write areas while latency is also improved. When it comes to the Copy speed you can see it's dropped back a little, which is due more to fluctuation than anything else. Still, overall, we see a slight boost in performance.
The last task was to head back into the BIOS and adjust the CPU multiplier to give a boost in CPU speed. Jumping straight up to a 47x multiplier we end up in Windows at 4.7GHz, and you can see below with the RAM still running at a very solid 2600MHz DDR 11-13-13-35-1T.
Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of
24,896 MB/s / 23,070 MB/s, Copy speed of
24,539 MB/s and latency of
30.6ns. You can see across the board we see a nice boost in performance with decent jumps in the read and write speeds along with improved latency, once again.
Overall ADATA put together a really nice looking kit that ticks pretty much all the right boxes. The black PCB looks great against the heatsink that ADATA use here. Along with that, though, the heatsink quality is just awesome and definitely stands out against a number of competitors thanks to the screw setup that helps make it extremely strong.
At $164.99 pricing is fairly typical for a 16GB kit that comes in at 2400MHz DDR. The value becomes even better, though, when you consider we're dealing with a 1T Command Rate kit that manages to keep that setting when overclocked to 2600MHz DDR. If you're looking for a strong kit of RAM that looks great, performs well and just overall does an excellent job in all areas, then the ADATA Gaming Series V2.0 2400MHz DDR kit should be one that you check out for sure.
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SilverStone SUGO SST-SG09B SFF Chassis Review
Introduction
SilverStone is a company that I may have not given a completely fair shake to over the last year or so. I tend to look at most cases in the mindset of what I think people are going to want, what I enjoyed working in, and may have cut them off at the ankles not looking deep enough into what is truly being offered in their SFF chassis lineup. I usually come to the basic conclusion that while a tad bit pricey at times, and of course it was a strong and well-built case, but I never really gave props to the engineers for what they were actually trying to accomplish with each design.
As I try to improve things this year for my readers, I want to try to put myself in the shoes of both the engineer trying to solve all of the
#firstworldproblems in SFF cases, and try to develop things that are new and eye catching, while redesigning things, that puts the average offerings to shame. At the same time I will still be playing devil's advocate and pointing out any issues or things I believe will warrant your attention.
Anyone who is interested in a SFF chassis has to have seen the various releases on the SUGO series chassis line. What started out as more of a generic cube, moved into taller mini-tower status even sprouting a handle at one point, and for the past four versions SilverStone has returned to the cube design with many improvements made to the series along the way. Things that made the SUGO series so popular since its inception was stylish looks and a very well ventilated chassis. This is something that was never lost through the years, but as things got better for the company, they kept adding new developments and improving the series into the 23 liter capacity chassis we are going to be looking at soon enough.
A new addition to the SUGO series has arrived for me to test and that is the SST-SG09B. The basic concept was to see just how well the engineers at SilverStone were at offering the most ability from this chassis in such confined quarters. While doing this, they still want to offer room for full length video cards, full sized Strider PSUs up to 1000W, and even have room for huge air coolers like the SST-HE02. The issue with this on paper is that the conventional layout won't allow for such things to work out very well.
That in mind, be prepared for a layout that is a bit unusual, but as you install parts and begin to use this tiny SFF chassis, you do find a better appreciation for where the money is going, and why you should have a SilverStone chassis on your desk over some other SFF chassis offerings.
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Australian Blu-ray Importing: January 2013 Buying Guide
Since last time we looked at the 'Guide to Buying Blu-rays from Overseas', the Australian dollar has continued to dance around parity with the US dollar based on strong commodity markets and soft U.S. economy. With studios starting to open their catalogues to much anticipated titles, coupled with deep discounting in overseas markets, it's still a really great time to import some rarer Blu-ray titles.
Let's jump into the latest instalment of the series and cover some recently released overseas titles that are wholly safe for Australian Blu-ray players.
Lawrence of Arabia: Collector's Edition
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United States
Purchase: Amazon.com
Region: A, B, C
What's this you say?
Lawrence of Arabia has just been released on Blu-ray in Australia? Well, no. At least, not like this it hasn't.
Fans of the classic David Lean epic will be most pleased with this lavish and beautifully oversized boxed set, reminiscent of Laserdisc boxsets of old. Under the hood is a beautifully printed coffee table book on the production of the film, a unique and numbered 70mm film cel, the Maurice Jarre CD score and the Blu-ray itself, including an exclusive third disc of extra features, including additional documentaries, an in-depth discussion on the restoration of the film, and a never before seen deleted scene, introduced by editor Anne Coates.
The new restoration of
Lawrence of Arabia is a sight to behold, and Sony pictures should be congratulated for embarking on such a massive restoration, and going the extra mile for fans. The boxset is a limited edition and only available in the United States and United Kingdom, however it's slightly cheaper imported from Amazon in the US.
Watchmen: Ultimate Cut: Collectors Box
Studio: Warner Brothers Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United States
Purchase: Amazon.com
Region: A, B, C
I wasn't initially a vocal fan of the 2009 comic adaptation, but a recent repeat viewing made me significantly re-evaluate the film. Whilst the film has previously been available in its original theatrical cut, and later directors cut, this third edition of the film adds in a 30 minute animated sequence "Tales of the Black Freighter" along with some live action book end sequences to merge it into the film, blowing the run time out to three and a half hours.
The collector's box also includes a hardcover edition of the original Watchmen graphic novel, included in a classy lenticular box, along with a Blu-ray disc of extra features, and a Blu-ray disc of the Watchmen motion comic feature. A beautiful set for fans, to be sure.
Peter Pan
Studio: Disney Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Purchase: Amazon.co.uk
Region: A, B, C
Disney has continued pumping out its animated classics throughout the last year, even though in some instances it's a case of quantity rather than quality. Whilst it's not perfect, the Blu-ray debut of the 1953 animated feature is a quality disc with a great transfer and all the DVD features ported over.
Whilst the film isn't slated for release in Australia and the United States until March 2013, the region free Blu-ray can be imported from the United Kingdom... now.
London 2012 Olympic Games
Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Purchase: Amazon.co.uk
Region: A, B, C
Whilst the 2012 Olympic Games wasn't a memorable one for many Australian athletes (probably why it hasn't received a local release), BBC's five disc Blu-ray is a great set which includes the amazing opening and closing ceremony in 1080i.
Whilst the other two discs of highlights might only appeal to British ex-pats, it makes for a nice collection of human feats, including Hussein Bolt's amazing performance.
It's quite astounding to think that only 12 years ago at the Sydney 2000 Olympics was filmed in a 4x3 aspect ratio at a maximum of 576i standard definition. Fast forward to today where the 2012 Olympics was filmed in 3D and super high-vision 8K resolution. What a glorious time we live in.
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Imagination Ships Caustic Series2 R2500 and R2100 Ray Tracing Accelerators
Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, is now shipping its Caustic Series2 PC boards, the R2500 and R2100, which accelerate PowerVR OpenRL applications including the Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max and the Neon viewport in Rhinoceros 5 from Robert McNeel and Associates.
The Caustic Series2 is the first family of high performance ray tracing accelerator PC boards using Imagination's unique ray tracing technologies in the world's first chipset dedicated to high performance, fully interactive ray tracing in a workstation environment.
The Caustic R2500 OpenRL PC board costs just US$1495, targeting the latest high-end workstations. The Caustic R2100 board is priced at an aggressive US$795, intended for upgrading a wider range of mid-range and higher workstations.
Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: "Ray-traced rendering is now no longer limited to non-real-time applications and server farms. By enabling totally interactive, fully ray-traced viewport environments Caustic Series2 is a truly disruptive innovation in the field of high-quality and photorealistic content generation and revolutionizes the workflow of creative professionals."
Says Alex Kelley, Caustic's director of business development: "We are thrilled to bring this kind of targeted ray tracing hardware to the industry at an affordable price. The Caustic R2500 and R2100 will accelerate look development for artists and designers to a level where they can view final render results while still developing their models. Artists and design professionals will love all of the extra time they'll have to be more creative."
The Caustic R2500 and R2100 ray tracing accelerator boards and Caustic Visualizer for Maya plug-in are available for purchase from today from here.
For a limited period of time both Caustic boards ship with a free copy of Caustic Visualizer for Maya. The software-only version of the Caustic Visualizer for Maya is separately priced at US$299. A 3ds Max Visualizer will be available in Q2 2013, with beta trials from March 2013.
Imagination's Caustic R2500 and R2100 boards are qualified for relevant Dell and HP workstations (full details of qualified systems can be found at
http://www.caustic.com/series2/qualification). Qualification for other systems, including Boxx, and Lenovo is expected in Q1 2013.
Hardware for better workflow
Featuring Imagination's unique Caustic RT2 custom chips, the R2500 and R2100 PCIe boards set new standards for price performance, with up to 5x acceleration (over software alone) across popular media and CAD 3D applications, as well as significantly lower power consumption. They are an ideal upgrade path for users wishing to use tools such as Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, or Robert McNeel & Associates Rhino 5, to create stunning 3D content in a totally interactive, fully ray-traced viewport environment.
The Caustic boards set a new standard for affordable, high performance ray tracing and revolutionize workflows for creative professionals. Now it is possible to immediately see the effects of changes made without having to wait for rendering; iteration takes moments not minutes.
Support for very large scenes
The Caustic R2100 and R2500 boards include 4 Gigabytes and 16 Gigabytes of memory, respectively, which is used to store scene geometry and the ray tracing acceleration structure. Unlike most GPU solutions, shading is performed by the CPU. Shader materials like texture maps are stored in memory on the workstation, freeing up the ray tracing hardware to store very large models - often a requirement for applications in CAD or film and post production
The Industry welcomes Caustic Series2
"At Autodesk University 2012, Imagination Technologies debuted their real-time, interactive ray tracing with the Series2 ray tracing boards, which accelerate the capabilities of Caustic Visualizer plugins for Maya and 3ds Max", said Robert Hoffmann, senior product marketing manager, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. "Our customer reaction was very positive, and we are pleased that Maya and 3ds Max users will be among the first to be able to take advantage of this new technology."
"We believe Caustic's photorealistic ray tracing acceleration technology will change the way artists design in the future, which is why we chose to integrate the viewport directly into Rhino 5 as Neon," said Bob McNeel at Robert McNeel and Associates. "This technology combined with one of the Caustic Series2 ray tracing acceleration cards enables designers to create content within an interactive, fully ray traced viewport, complete with accurate lighting, shadows and reflections. By providing users with high-quality visual feedback from the earliest stages of modelling, potential issues can be identified and resolved much earlier in the design cycle."
"At HP we are always pushing ourselves to bring new innovations into the world, which is why we chose to feature the Caustic Visualizer and Series2 cards at 'Rock On' last December," said Ron Rogers, R&D director, HP Graphics Business Unit. "We believe this new ray tracing acceleration solution from Imagination Technologies will change the way products are designed in the future. As we all take a step forward in innovation, we are very pleased to announce we've certified and optimized our machines for Imagination Technologies' Caustic Visualizer and Caustic Series2 ray tracing acceleration boards."
"At Dell we take pride in offering our workstation customers leading edge and innovative technology to boost productivity and creativity," said Efrain Rovira, Executive Director, Dell Precision Workstations. "The Caustic Series2 cards and Caustic Visualizer bring new levels of interaction and visualization for 3D artists and designers and we are proud to announce that our Dell Precision T3600, T5600, and T7600 tower workstations helped develop and are optimized to run these groundbreaking ray tracing and visualization solutions."
"The performance and workflow benefits resulting from the Caustic Visualizers and hardware is a game changer for us at Greg Lynn FORM," said Greg Lynn at Greg Lynn FORM. "Being able to see shadows (sun) while making changes to an architectural model is a very big deal! This is one of the main reasons why designers move from digital to physical models. This benefit alone will save us a tremendous amount of time and money. Ray tracing is really the only way to accurately visualize the light and shadows for interior and exterior renderings in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) world. In the past, the design sequence was something of a guessing game; you set up lights and textures where you might want them and see what happens after rendering. Using Caustic technology our digital 3D models now have the benefit of visualizing daylight, shadow and lighting in general from the very first digital sketches; Caustic's products bring this late stage design quality to the early stages of my design process."
"With the Caustic Visualizer and hardware cards this is the first time I have been able to model and ray trace simultaneously", said president of Technolution, Max Sims. "I can see true refractions and reflections as I design. The quality, speed and fidelity really blow me away and frees us up to iterate at will, making product design perfectly interactive."
"Caustic Visualizer for Maya makes the limits of IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering) a thing of the past," said David Perkins, Lead Draftsman at Silent House Productions. "We are now able to fine tune materials and lighting directly in the Maya viewport, complete with translucency, reflections, and soft shadows." This has almost completely eliminated our need to use mental ray to test material settings, Now, we only use mental ray when our entire scene is constructed from elements that are tested using Caustic. With the Caustic hardware, we were able to arrive at higher quality images faster. We're also able to tumble around texture mapped objects in near realtime, to test specularity and the material's reaction to light from all angles. One other feature that surprised us, was the ability to preview lights with a 2K resolution image sequence mapped to its colour channel, and how well the viewport matched final output, in terms of accuracy and quality."
Software designed for OpenRL
Imagination's hardware accelerated Caustic Visualizer family of plugins brings the world's first fully interactive real time ray tracer to the working viewports of the industry's premier 3D design and animation packages. Thanks to Imagination's unique high performance OpenRL-based ray tracing hardware and software technologies, the Visualizer photorealistic viewport provides far higher visual quality than 3ds Max and Maya's normal rendering viewports, including globally accurate lighting, reflections and shadows within a 3ds Max, Maya or mental ray scene. It enables artists to identify and resolve potential problems within their final renders from the earliest stages of modelling; minimizing the need for time-consuming preview renders and radically streamlining the look development process.
The Caustic Visualizer viewport renderer interactively updates and responds to all edits in 3ds Max and Maya including geometry, lighting and shading characteristics while preserving their powerful interactive workflows. Selected objects in the Maya viewport continue to have fully editable wireframes and manipulators overlaid on the real-time ray-traced shaded preview.
Neon for Rhino is a fully ray-traced viewport plug-in for Rhino 5. Developed in collaboration with Imagination Technologies, Neon helps a designer to quickly evaluate and establish the form, colour, texture, lighting, and material requirements of object components within a scene, very early on.
Neon supports all Rhino 5 rendering features - including the sun, skylight, ground plane, standard materials, environments and most procedural textures. In addition, Neon supports many Brazil shaders and materials if Brazil 2.0 for Rhino is installed.
Specifications
R2100
- Up to 50 million incoherent rays per second
- Target workstation: Single CPU
- Bus: PCIe x8 Gen 2.0 - single height, half length
- Power: 30 Watts maximum, bus powered (no PCIe external power required)
- OS Support: Windows 7 and Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
- On-board memory: 4 Gbytes of scene geometry (up to 60 million triangles)
- System memory: same requirements as 3D application (e.g., Maya). For optimal performance all memory channels should be fully populated
- Ray-tracing hardware: one Caustic RTU (ray-tracing unit) chip
R2500
- Up to 100 million incoherent rays per second
- Target workstation: Dual CPU
- Bus: PCIe x16 Gen 2.0 - single height, full length
- Power: 65 Watts maximum, bus powered (no PCIe external power required)
- OS Support: Windows 7 and Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
- On-board memory: 16 Gbytes of scene geometry (up to 120 million triangles)
- System memory: same requirements as 3D application (e.g., Maya). For optimal performance all memory channels should be fully populated
- Ray-tracing hardware: two Caustic RTU (ray-tracing unit) chips
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VESA Introduces Updated Dual-Mode Standard, Enabling Creation of DisplayPort-to-HDMI
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced the latest release of the DisplayPort Dual-Mode Standard. This release supports the next generation of Dual-Mode DisplayPort enabled personal computers and Dual-Mode DisplayPort cable adaptors, expected to be available to consumers later this year. Among several refinements to improve interoperability, the updated standard enables a higher data rate for DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable adaptors, providing support for HDMI 1.4 display resolutions such as 1080p 3D at 60Hz, and Ultra HD (4K x 2K) up to 30Hz frame rate, as well as 1080p with deep color.
"The first Ultra HD displays were introduced in 2012, but today's Dual-Mode DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable adaptors limit display resolution to 1080p," said Craig Wiley, senior director of marketing at Parade Technologies, and VESA Board of Directors chairman. "For a personal computer to fully support HDMI 1.4 or deep color, today a separate HDMI output is needed. This updated DisplayPort Dual-Mode Standard version 1.1 enables full support of HDMI 1.4 video modes, and 1080p deep color, using a simple cable adaptor plugged into the system's DisplayPort output. This helps to reduce the number of interface ports needed on a Personal Computer, which is desirable as form factors shrink."
Developed by VESA's nearly 200 leading industry member companies, the DisplayPort Dual Mode Standard defines the requirements for Dual-Mode DisplayPort source devices and Dual-Mode DisplayPort cable adaptors. DisplayPort was developed to provide a single video interface that both provides advanced features as well as interoperability with legacy displays including VGA and DVI, and HDMI. The new Dual-Mode Standard is in line with this objective by enabling the support of the latest HDMI standard, HDMI 1.4. In addition to releasing the DisplayPort Dual-Mode Standard Version 1.1, VESA is also releasing an updated DisplayPort Dual-Mode Cable Adaptor Compliance Test Specification, version 1.1. Conformance to the updated Compliance Test Specification, or CTS, is required for using the DisplayPort logo with a Dual-Mode Cable Adaptor.
A Dual-Mode DisplayPort source is a device, such as personal computer, that can logically output either DisplayPort or TMDS (Transitional-Minimized Differential Signaling) from the DisplayPort output connector, enabling the support of DisplayPort, DVI, and HDMI monitors. An additional device, specifically a Dual-Mode DisplayPort cable adaptor, is required to convert the mechanical connector, as well as the electrical aspects of the signal, to output that is compatible with a DVI or HDMI cable and display. A Dual-Mode DisplayPort source automatically detects the presence of a plugged-in Dual-Mode DisplayPort cable adaptor and provides the DVI or HDMI signal, as required, to support the connected DVI or HDMI monitor.
Prior to the updated Dual-Mode Standard release, Dual-Mode cable adaptors were limited to a TMDS clock rate of 165MHz providing support for display resolutions up to 1080p with 60Hz and 24 bits color. In this latest specification, a new Dual-Mode cable adaptor configuration is defined that enables a TMDS clock rate of up to 300MHz. While the DVI standard limits TMDS clock rates up to 165 MHz, the HDMI 1.4 specification allows TMDS clock rates up to 297MHz, enabling the support of 1080p 3D at 60Hz, or Ultra HD (4K x 2K) up to 30Hz frame rate.
With the release of this new VESA specification, existing adaptors will now be referred to as "Type 1" adaptors, and the new adaptors as "Type 2." A Type 2 adaptor will be backward compatible with an existing Dual-Mode DisplayPort source device, but it will only support up to a 165MHz TMDS clock rate unless it is used with a "Type 2 enabled" Dual-Mode DisplayPort source device. Some existing systems will be software updatable to support Type 2 adaptors. A Type-2 enabled Dual-Mode DisplayPort Source devices, together with a Type 2 Dual-Mode DisplayPort-to-HDMI adaptor, will enable support for HDMI 1.4 display modes such 1080p 3D at 60Hz, or Ultra HD (4K x 2K) up to 30Hz frame rate, as well as 1080p with deep color. Type 2 adaptor prototypes are currently available from multiple suppliers.
For more information about the DisplayPort Dual-Mode Standard, please visit
http://www.displayport.org.
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Kanex DualRole Combines USB 3.0 Hub with Gigabit Ethernet
Kanex, a leader of innovative Apple and iOS connectivity solutions for homes and businesses worldwide, today announced DualRole, a USB 3 Hub and Gigabit Adapter all in one solution. The hub portion uses the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard for fast transfer speeds between devices and your computer. It has three extra USB 3 ports which enable users to connect more USB 3 devices such as hard drives, digital cameras, MP3 players and more. The Gigabit Ethernet adapter adds a Gigabit port to your MacBook Air, MacBook Pro with Retina display or any other USB 3 enabled computer and provides a fast and secure wired connection without hassle of Wi-Fi setup.
"We designed DualRole with MacBook travelers in mind," said Kelvin Yan, president of Kanex. "We know when on the road sometimes you need an Ethernet connection for Internet or network access or even more USB ports, which is why we combined both a hub and adapter into one small compact solution."
The Kanex DualRole is bus-powered however for additional power; users can plug in a 5V wall power adapter to provide more power to the USB3 ports. This enables users to connect USB 3 devices that require more power to operate.
Pricing and Availability
The Kanex DualRole is available for $69 through select retailers and our
kanexlive.com/dualrole website.
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NVIDIA GPU-Accelerated Supercomputer Sets World Record for Energy Efficiency
Italy's "Eurora" supercomputer -- which uses NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators based on NVIDIA Kepler, the world's fastest and most efficient high performance computing (HPC) architecture -- has set a new record for data center energy efficiency, NVIDIA today announced. The Eurora supercomputer, built by Eurotech and deployed Wednesday at the Cineca facility in Bologna, Italy, the country's most powerful supercomputing center, reached 3,150 megaflops per watt of sustained performance -- a mark 26 percent higher than the top system on the most recent Green500 list of the world's most efficient supercomputers.
Eurora broke the record by combining 128 high-performance, energy-efficient NVIDIA Tesla K20 accelerators with the Eurotech Aurora Tigon supercomputer, featuring innovative Aurora Hot Water Cooling technology, which uses direct hot water cooling on all electronic and electrical components of the HPC system.
Available to members of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and major Italian research entities, Eurora will enable scientists to advance research and discovery across a range of scientific disciplines, including material science, astrophysics, life sciences and Earth sciences.
"Advanced computer simulations that enable scientists to discover new phenomena and test hypotheses require massive amounts of performance, which can consume a lot of power," said Sanzio Bassini, director of HPC department at Cineca. "Equipped with the ultra-efficient Aurora system and NVIDIA GPU accelerators, Eurora will give European researchers the computing muscle to study all types of physical and biological systems, while allowing us to keep data center power consumption and costs in check."
Pairing NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPUs with Eurotech's Aurora Hot Water Cooling technology, the Eurora system is more efficient and compact than conventional air-cooled solutions. HPC systems based on the Eurora hardware architecture, including the Eurotech Aurora Tigon, enable data centers to potentially reduce energy bills by up to 50 percent and reduce total cost of ownership by 30-50 percent.
In addition, the use of Aurora Hot Water Cooling technology reduces or eliminates the need for air conditioning in typically warm climates like Italy. The thermal energy the system produces can be used to heat buildings, drive adsorption chillers for air conditioning or generate tri-generation, the combined production of electricity, heating and cooling.
"GPU accelerators are inherently more energy efficient than CPUs, and Tesla K20 accelerators widen this gap considerably," said Sumit Gupta, general manger of the Tesla accelerated computing business at NVIDIA. "Energy efficiency has become the defining element of computing performance. And GPUs enable data center computer systems of all sizes -- from small clusters to future exascale-class systems -- to achieve performance goals within an economically feasible energy budget."
Eurora is a prototype system developed for Cineca under the PRACE 2IP initiative to provide a sustainable, high-quality infrastructure to meet the most demanding needs of the European HPC user community. A commercial version of the Eurotech Aurora Tigon supercomputer is also available today from Eurotech. More information is available on the Eurotech website.
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