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OCC Week in Review: April 1 - 5 If you've been gone from OCC for a while or just want to catch the latest news, here is your chance to do just that. There's a fair amount happening at OCC this week, starting with a slightly different review that's sure to make graphics card testing a lot more in-depth. NVIDIA's new Frame Capture and Analysis Tools are a combination of hardware and software components to accurately measure video game framerates. Software tools to accomplish the task have existed for a while, but they lack the ability to precisely record the gameplay experience. That's where NVIDIA's FCAT comes into play to provide a clearer picture of what to expect with your new graphics card. If you need some more cooling for your computer, it's hard to pass up any fans made by Noctua. Luckily we have a roundup covering three Noctua fans in 140 and 150mm sizes that should fit into your system. Whether it's for an air cooler, a watercooler radiator, or just a spot on your case, the fans reviewed in the Noctua roundup could be just what you're after. Switching over to the news, NVIDIA launched its new mobile GPU line that consists of five models in the 700M series. Three of them, the GT 750M, GT 745M, and GT 740M, are for the performance crowd, while the GT 735M and GT 720M are perfect for mainstream users. Some intrepid Linux users have discovered some possible ways Valve is going to expand Steam on the open source OS, potentially for a Steam Box. An NVIDIA Linux graphics driver and new boot splash screen were discovered, so we'll just have to see what this means for Steam. Perhaps the biggest gaming news from the week was the unfortunate demise of LucasArts. Disney acquired LucasFilm and LucasArts last year, but things were not meant to be for one of the most well-known and longest running gaming studios. Thermaltake added a new case to its Urban series, the S71 full tower. It offers sound-dampening foam, room for two 200mm and two 120mm fans, space for three 5.25" devices and six 3.5/2.5" drives, plus an optional window. Mushkin launched a new line of 1.8" solid-state drives, the Chronos GO series. Each drive runs on SATA III and comes in 120, 240, and 480GB capacities. Quantum computing is going to be a huge factor in the future, but there's still plenty of things to perfect before that happens. A new mechanical qubit design was proposed that works in a totally different way than past versions, as it's based on a vibrating carbon nanotube to protect the data from interference. It also allows for viability with current technology, which would bring quantum computers closer to reality. Graphene is a super strong yet fantastically thin product, yet even it appears to have a weakness. It appears the seven-atom rings at the domain borders of polycrystalline graphene can fracture with enough applied force. The good thing from the discovery is that the weakness can be circumvented with monocrystalline graphene, or polycrystalline graphene with smaller domain borders. One final thing to take away from this week is that voting for the OCC forum awards is now open. There are a multitude of categories and members to vote for in each one, so head on over to the voting threads and choose who you think is more deserving. Read More ...
Google Chrome Drops WebKit for Blink It won't be long before Google bids adieu to WebKit for its Chrome browser. The technology giant recently announced its browser will switch to the Blink rendering engine, which is an open source rendering engine based on WebKit. Google stated the reason behind the switch is because Chromium uses a different multi-process approach than other WebKit browsers, which has led to increased complexity. It's also been slowing down innovation, so in a way to curb all of that, there's Blink. Google didn't come to that conclusion lightly however, as a new rendering engine can introduce significant changes to the Web as a whole. What the company is banking on is having more rendering engines will lead to more innovation and improves the Internet's ecosystem. Blink allows Google to strip out a ton of unnecessary components on Chrome, with initial figures of 4.5 million lines of code being removed. That equates to seven build systems and 7,000 files with the first switch, which can only mean good things for the browser. Long term it should lead to more stability and less bugs, so that's a welcomed benefit. Google's Chrome OS is going to switch over to Blink, as will the Opera web browser, which moved to WebKit barely two months ago. Google is set to implement Blink in build 28 of Chrome that's due in about ten weeks, but it's already available in the Canary version for developers and early adopters. More information on Blink can be found here. Source: Chromium Blog and The Next Web Read More ...
Ionic Thrusters Investigated Much of modern air travel uses jet engines which relies on the compression and combustion of fuel in air to produce thrust; a noisy affair. There exists another kind of engine though that could produce the needed thrust, but it has not been scientifically explored for many reasons. Researchers at MIT however have decided to test this other kind of engine, the ionic thruster, and found some very interesting results. With a high enough voltage, it is possible to ionize the air around one electrode and drive it to another. As the ionized air moves, it will push other air molecules as well, creating thrust, and this method of propulsion has been used for years in small vehicles. The researchers decided to test its efficiency, compared to modern jet engines, and found that while a jet engine will produce 2 Newtons of thrust per kilowatt (Newton is a measure of force) an ionic thruster can produce 110 N of thrust per KW. Importantly the ionic thrust is very efficient at lower thrust, which wastes less energy in your wake. As impressive as the results may be though, it will still be a long time before any large vehicle would use ionic thrusters because the power requirements can be enormous. Potentially a thrust to drive an aircraft could need over a hundred kilowatts, or even megawatts of power, and generating that much power onboard an aircraft is not going to be easy, but thanks to this study, others are looking into the technology. Source: MIT Read More ...
Mushkin Announces New Solid State Drives Mushkin has released a new line of 1.8" solid state drives under the Chronos GO SATA III name. The 1.8" form factor allows the drives to maintain a lower profile and fit into cases that have more strict space constraints. The new line of Chronos SSDs will be available in capacities of 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB. Director of Global Marketing Nicolas Villalobos said, "Mushkin continues to push the envelope with higher performance, higher capacity and higher reliability products, and the new line of 1.8-inch Chronos GO SATA III SSDs is just one example. With these improvements, the new drives are very well-suited for professionals and for solution providers in demanding environments like digital signage, healthcare and point-of-sale." Read More ...
Improved Terahertz Imaging System Created Every frequency of light has special properties because it interacts with matter differently, and some frequencies are only just becoming accessible. Terahertz radiation exists between microwave and infrared frequencies, where light is able to penetrate many materials, including skin, but is much lower energy than X-rays. Producing and detecting terahertz radiation is not easy though, but researchers at the University of Michigan have created a new imaging system 1500 times more powerful than current systems. To achieve this great increase in power, the researchers used lasers to create optical funnels with plasmons. Plasmons are coupled electrons and photons that travel across a metal's surface more efficiently than a photon will alone. By creating a funnel with them, terahertz photons will be directed to electrodes more quickly, so less energy is lost. This allows the device to create terahertz photons with 50 times more power and be 30 times more sensitive than other imaging systems. The researchers expect they will be able to make the imaging system is more powerful by optimizing the plasmon funnels more. As this method addresses a fundamental issue of all photoconductive terahertz devices, it may be employed in more than just imaging systems in the future. Source: University of Michigan Read More ...
Thermaltake Adds S71 to Urban Series Within the past few weeks Thermaltake has added the S31 and S41 to the Urban case series, and yesterday the company added the S71 full tower to the existing mid towers. Like the models that have come before it, the S71 will be available in windowed and non-windowed configurations. Sound-damping foam is included to help minimize the sound produced from within the case, with space for two 200mm and two 120mm fans. The case can hold three 5.25" drives and up to six 3.5" or 2.5" devices internally, with an additional place for a drive on top of the case. The S71 can accommodate CPU coolers up to 160mm in height and GPUs up to 344mm in length. Read More ...
Understanding the Formation of Metallic Glass Glass is one of those terms that has a different meaning in the scientific and non-scientific worlds. In science, glass is not just the stuff of windows but a description of a solid with a disordered internal structure, unlike a well ordered crystal. Researchers at MIT have recently discovered an important mechanism for how metallic glasses form, which can have different and useful properties, compared to their normal crystalline versions. The discovery was actually an accident as the researchers were working with an alloy that most scientists believe cannot form a glass. The reason for this belief is that copper and niobium, the two elements in the alloy, do not mix, while atoms in known glasses typically do. What the researchers found is that when the alloy was quenched, small domains enriched in one element or the other would form. These domains were so small, that it is not possible for a crystalline structure to form, but it is the boundary between the domains of particular interest. There the atoms arranged themselves into a spongelike structure with pours, similar to the internal structure of gelatin which gives the mostly liquid material strength. Understanding the glass transition of a material is actually one of the larger mysteries of physics, so this discovery is very important. Better understanding the transition should allow new and better glasses to be made, with special properties such as high strength even compared to its crystalline form. Source: MIT Read More ...
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