More Details Available For Intel Knights Landing Processors
The first details for the Knights Landing family of processors and co-processors from Intel were released at the end of last month and additional details have now been made available. Knights Landing will have 72 cores with the capacity for four threads each. Up to 36MB of shared L2 cache and 16GB of High Bandwidth Memory will be included on each processor, with support for six DDR4 channels and up to 384GB of RAM. The cores used will be 14nm Silvermont cores that Intel claims will have "up to 3 times the single threaded performance over the last generation of Xeon Phi co-processors and up to 300% gains in power efficiency."
Source: WCCF Tech
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Supposedly Planned for September
NVIDIA's new TITAN X video card is the current top dog in terms of single card performance, as it packs a GM200 core, 12GB of VRAM, and impressive numbers, even at 4K resolutions. People have figured it is only a matter of time until that core trickles down to something else, like a GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Rumors have pointed to the GTX 980 Ti launching after summer, but now a new rumor puts that card right at the very end of summer: September. The plan is to apparently counter whatever AMD has in store with a GTX 980 Ti packing the full GM200 core on the TITAN X, just with 6GB of GDDR5. Core speeds could see a bump to 1126MHz, with Boost clocks at 1216MHz, while everything else would mirror the TITAN X. Pricing would be less than the TITAN X, but if it's something in the $600-700 range, there may not be much of a reason to jump to the TITAN X unless you need 12GB of VRAM.
All of this is still just a rumor, but it would make sense for NVIDIA to launch something new soon after AMD's R9 390X/390. As with this and other rumors, do take it with a grain of salt.
Source: Sweclockers via WCCFTech
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Grand Theft Auto V Arriving a Little Early on PC
PC gamers have been eagerly awaiting Grand Theft Auto V, especially when you consider it first arrived on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back near the end of 2013. Luckily, the wait is nearly over, as Grand Theft Auto V is due to arrive this coming Tuesday. However, there's an interesting note to mention with that: Rockstar is releasing the game at midnight British Summer Time. So, what exactly does that mean for folks in the U.S.? A launch at 7PM Eastern Standard Time. When you're getting done with dinner, home from work, or home from school, depending on your Monday plans and where exactly you're at in the country, you can start playing GTA V a little earlier than expected. Just be sure to get that pre-load going early on Steam, as it's a ~60GB download.
Source: Twitter
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Amazon Bringing HDR Videos To Prime
Amazon is planning to introduce support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos to its Prime streaming service later this year, with Amazon Originals programming expected to be the first to see the increase in quality. Netflix is also planning to offer HDR support this year, and HDR will be in addition to the previously announced 4K resolution videos. Amazon will be starting with its own programming as HDR requires some help from content producers, it can't simply be scaled up. VP of digital video at Amazon Michael Paull described the move stating, "4K Ultra HD picture resolution was just the beginning — we’re excited that Prime members will soon be able to view movies and TV shows including Amazon Originals in HDR quality."
Source: Venture Beat
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Phonon Tunneling Explains Heat Transfer Across Small Gaps
Whether it is hot or cold, heat transfer is important to us and in most cases it is well understood. For situations are covered by convection, conduction, or radiation, but at the small scale of a nanometer or less, things get harder to explain. That has changed now, thanks to researchers at MIT who have found that quantum tunneling can explain how heat can jump the gap.
When discussing heat at small scales, phonons must be part of the conversation as they are the energy units for vibrational energy and heat. Exactly explaining how phonons move has been a challenge for a long time now, as some theories skip over what happens at the atomic scale and others have obvious flaws to them. To find the solution, the MIT researchers turned to the microscopic Maxwell's equations, which are a form of the better known Maxwell's equations that govern electricity and magnetism. When these were applied the researchers found that phonons could actually tunnel across gaps between objects separated by just one nanometer or less. Tunneling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle or wave will skip over, or tunnel through a barrier it normally should not be able to.
With this answer, we have a more complete understanding of how heat flows, as now that understanding finally reaches to the nanoscale. It of course has practical applications wherever heat transfers, especially at very small scales.
Source: MIT
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Explore the Northern Realms in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Gameplay Trailer
A little over a month remains before we can all step back in the familiar boots of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt RED's latest RPG looks to hit all the right notes, and if the first 15 minutes didn't grab your attention, perhaps the new gameplay trailer will do the trick. The Witcher 3 tasks Geralt with finding the Child of Prophecy, a "living weapon" capable of changing the very shape of the world. Geralt journeys into the Northern Realms in his search, with merchant cities, vast wilderness, immense mountains, and dangerous dungeons all waiting for him. There are hundreds of weapon and armor upgrades to find along the way, and plenty of monsters that need slaying.
The trailer below takes us across a small part of the Northern Realms and what Geralt will find, and man, does it look great. We see some horseback riding, sailing, a massive tail fin off in the distance, and some creepy holes in the ground to explore. Geralt's voice is as raspy and haunting as ever, and his wit and charm are still as sharp as his blades. The trailer does contain some language and violence, so do keep that in mind when watching.
NSFW
Source: YouTube
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Frustrated Magnets Found to be More Unusual than Some Expected
If you heat a magnet up enough, it will lose its magnetism, but cooling a magnet should not remove that property. For some materials however, magnetism does disappear at temperatures near absolute zero, and these are called frustrate magnets. Due to this lack of magnetism, many believe that the Hall Effect, which relates to magnetism, would not exist at these temperatures, but some thought otherwise, and now researchers at Princeton University have confirmed it.
The Hall Effect is the deflection of a current of charge carriers, electrons, in a conductor by an external magnetic field. As a frustrated magnet contains neutral, non-charged particles at low temperatures, the Hall Effect seemingly would not work, but at these temperatures quantum mechanics reigns and expectations can mean very little. To test this, the researchers needed a frustrated magnet, to cool it to 0.5 K, and to be able to resolve temperature differences between opposite edges of the crystal. It was not easy to achieve, but the researchers succeeded and put a heat current through the crystal, which is analogous to an electrical current at these temperatures. When they then applied a magnetic field perpendicular to the current, they observed the current deflecting, just like the Hall Effect would suggest.
This research opens up some interesting possibilities, including potentially a new understanding of high-temperature superconductors. Some of these materials may rely on a particle called the spinon, the proposed carrier for heat currents in quantum systems, and this research may lead to a means of discovering it.
Source: Princeton University
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Thermaltake Launches Commander FT Touch Screen Fan Controller
Thermaltake, a leader in computer chassis, thermal solutions, and power supply units, has just launched the Commander FT touch screen fan controller, its latest product that facilitates superior cooling performance. The Commander FT features an extraordinarily large 5.5-inch touch panel that allows fan speeds to be adjusted on-the-fly, with owners able to select from auto, manual, performance, and silent operating modes. A total of five fans can be independently controlled with the Commander FT, with each channel delivering up to 10W of power. Thermal performance can also be monitored, and the Commander FT includes an embedded temperature alarm for ultimate peace of mind.
Source: Press Release
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Details Emerge
New details surrounding the next Call of Duty title, which will be developed by Treyarch, the award-winning creator of the two most-played games in Call of Duty history, have been revealed. According to the source code from the official website for the game, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will take players to a dark, twisted future that features a new breed of the Black Ops soldier as well as warfare controlled by cutting-edge military robotics. Three game modes are currently scheduled to be featured within the game, which include campaign, multiplayer, and of course zombies.
Additional Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 details are expected to be announced on April 26, 2015, when the game will officially be revealed to the public.
Source: WCCFtech
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Lego Dimensions Is Latest Game in Popular Series
Several popular franchises have been turned into games set in the Lego universe and the latest game, Lego Dimensions, combines several of those properties and some new ones into a single entity. Currently confirmed to appear in the game are Batman, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie, and Lego Ninjago, among others, with more expected to be announced before the game is released. The game will be available on September 27 across all major consoles. It will also be able to integrate with the Lego Toy Pad, creating an experience similar to Skylanders from Activision. The starter pack will cost $99.99 and will come with the Toy Pad and three Lego figures. Several expansion packs have already been announced for Back to the Future, Lego Ninjago, and DC Comics. VP of digital games at Lego Niels Jørgensen described the new game stating, "Lego Dimensions’ is unlike anything that we have ever done. It further extends the Lego play experience into the digital world with all of the characters, humor and action of Lego videogames now combined with the fun of Lego minifigure and model building."
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Separating Out Cancer Cells with Sound Waves
One of the many challenges when it comes to cancer is finding circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in a blood sample. Traditional methods involve using special antibodies and centrifuges that run for ten minutes. Researchers at Penn State though have developed a much simpler technique that utilizes sound waves to separate cells at a rate better than 83%.
The new technique exploits the fact that sound waves are pressure waves, which means they can exert a force to move small objects, like cells and nanoparticles. The researchers worked with an acoustic-based microfluidic device, which allows blood to stream through continuously, and applied sound waves of the same frequency to both sides. This creates an area where the sound waves from the two sources cancel out, so an object pushed along by the waves will stop in that area, and continue flowing through the device, but separated from other, different particles. The researchers optimized the procedure to separate HELA and MCF7 cells, and achieved a separation rate better than 83%, and when they tested it with other cancer cells achieved the same better than 83% rate.
Obviously this could greatly help with the treatment of cancer by allowing for a simpler, faster, and cheaper process to identify cancer cells in the blood. Some more work is definitely needed though, such as finding how to mass produce these devices, so they can be disposable after having touched human blood.
Source: Penn State
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New Research May Bring Antennas Onto Chips
There are several antennas in various devices surrounding me at the moment, and while we have understood how many of them work for over a century, some of them have been a puzzle. Specifically those antennas made from insulators, instead of conductors have been a mystery since their discovery. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found the answer though, and the discovery has great potential both for practical devices and our understanding of physics.
Maxwell's equations explain how accelerating electrons generates electromagnetic radiation, which makes sense in conductors, but in dielectrics that restrict electrons from moving, another explanation is required. To do their work, the Cambridge researchers used thin films made of piezoelectric materials, which will physically deform or vibrate, when exposed to a voltage. At certain frequencies though, they become very efficient resonators and radiators of EM radiation. From this they were able to determine a link to symmetry breaking of the electric field. Accelerating electrons already breaks the symmetry of an electric field, but by applying asymmetric excitation to the thin films, the researchers were able to cause similar breaking, and thus generate EM radiation.
With this understanding, it may be possible to make ultra-small antennas, and potentially integrate them into computer chips. It also may provide a missing link between electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, which would lead to even more possibilities.
Source: University of Cambridge
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HDMI 2.0a Specification Released
Version 2.0a of the HDMI specification has been released by HDMI Forum, Inc., a non-profit, mutual benefit corporation. The latest standard, which is available to current HDMI 2.0 Adopters via the HDMI Adopter Extranet, offers the ability to transmit HDR formats and includes references to CEA-861.3, the latest published update of HDR Static Metadata Extensions. HDR formats provide greater detail for both the bright and dark parts of an image, thereby improving overall picture quality. Arnold Brown, the Chairman of the HDMI Forum Board of Directors, stated "By adding HDR, the HDMI Specification continues its history of supporting the latest formats and technologies planned for Hollywood content."
Source: TechPowerUp
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