New Algorithm Will Improve Google Chrome Load Times
Google is getting ready to roll out a new compression algorithm, known as Brotli, that will be able to compress data up to 26% more than its current offering. First announced last September, Brotli will replace the current engine known as Zopfli. Users will see improved load times in the next release of Chrome and other browsers, such as Firefox, will adopt the algorithm in the future. Brotli will also carry benefits for users of the mobile version of Chrome including "lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use."
Source: The Verge
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Next Generation NVIDIA GPUs to Use HBM2
The next generation of Pascal based NVIDIA GPUs are reported to use the HBM2 standard and will be built using the 16nm FinFET process. According to the rumors, these cards are already being tested internally by NVIDIA with mass production expected to start in the first half of this year. The cards are then expected to be available for purchase in the second half of the year. The Pascal core will support up to 16GB of HBM2 in consumer grade cards and up to 32GB on professional level cards. HBM2 has a peak bandwidth of 1TB/s and the cards will also have access to the Next-CUDA graphics architecture.
Source: WCCF Tech
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Evidence Suggests Solar System Has a Ninth Planet
I remember being taught in school that the Solar System has nine planets, with Pluto being the most distant, but not too long ago, Pluto got demoted to the newly created dwarf planet status, bringing the planet count to eight. Now it looks like we may be back at nine planets thanks to researchers at the California Institute of Technology, including Mike Brown, one of the researchers that led to Pluto's demotion.
Back in 2014 a paper was published by one of the Brown's former students, in which 13 distant Kuiper Belt objects were described because of their very unusual orbits. To explain these orbits, the paper suggested a small planet might exist. This explanation seemed unlikely to Brown, but it got him thinking, so he went down the hall and began collaborating with a theorist. The theorist constructed a computer model to test the mechanics involved, which constantly tested and was tested against Brown's observations. Quickly Brown realized there was an odd alignment between six of the 13 objects that simply should not happen randomly.
Initially the planet explanation seemed to be the only answer, but it did not quite fit right, until, almost by accident, they tried simulations where the planet of these objects had anti-aligned orbits. This means the part of their orbits that are closest to the Sun, called the perihelion, are 180º opposite each other. While this would explain it, the mechanics involved are so rare that it still was hard to accept, but then they found this solution answers other questions. Other Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered with unusual orbits that cannot normally be explained, including some that orbit perpendicularly to the plane the planets orbit on (known as the plane of the ecliptic). A ninth planet perfectly explains these orbits.
Currently the researchers are calling it Planet Nine and the math indicates it should have about 10 times the mass of Earth, and its average distance from the Sun is about 60 times that of the Earth, or 20 times that of Neptune. At this distance it should take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one orbit. The speculation for its origin is that instead of four planetary cores existing in the early Solar System, which eventually became the gas giants, a fifth core could have also existed, but was ejected to its current eccentric orbit when it got too close to Jupiter or Saturn. Now we just need to find it, which could be very difficult depending on where it is in its orbit, and how much Sunlight may be hitting it. If it is near its farther point from the Sun, only the world's most powerful telescopes might spot it, but if it is closer other telescopes have a chance. In fact, it may have already been captured in previous surveys.
Source: California Institute of Technology
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Hardware Roundup: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, Edition
The middle of the week is here, bringing with it several items to help get you through the day. We start with a review of the ASUS X99-M WS motherboard, an mATX version of the Workstation line with support for Haswell-E processors and USB 3.1. On the AMD side, we have the BIOSTAR A68N-5200 motherboard, which places an A6-5200 APU on the motherboard directly from the start, giving you a headstart on that low-powered PC. If you just need something to hold your gear, perhaps the be quiet! Silent Base 600 case is the one for you. For those needing a way to better hear their games, the Aftershokz Gamez wireless gaming headset, with its unique design and dual noise canceling microphones, could be the solution. Ending things for today is some gaming on the go, as the HP Pavilion Gaming Notebook 15-ak020NB featuring an Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M GPU gets put to the test.
Motherboards
ASUS X99-M WS @ PC Perspective
BIOSTAR A68N-5200 @ Madshrimps
Cases
be quiet! Silent Base 600 @ Benchmark Reviews
Speakers/Headphones
Aftershokz Gamez @ LanOC Reviews
Laptops/Tablets
HP Pavilion Gaming Notebook 15-ak020NB @ Madshrimps
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Vulkan Developers Day Held by NVIDIA
Recently NVIDIA held its first ever Vulkan Developers Day at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. For those who do not remember, Vulkan is the next generation graphics and compute API being developed by the Khronos Group, which also developed and maintained OpenGL. Like OpenGL, Vulkan is going to be an open-standard API that will work with various platforms and devices, and like DirectX 12, it is being designed to be more efficient and allow applications direct control over the GPU. Such low level APIs can significantly reduce CPU overhead, improving performance. Both APIs can also work across multiple CPU threads, further increasing performance.
At the Vulkan Developers Day, several key engineers from NVIDIA and its partners discussed and gave lectures on the best ways to leverage the power of Vulkan, and naturally how to do so with NVIDIA hardware. John McDonald of Valve also spoke about High Performance Vulkan Programming. The day ended with workshop sessions and time for developers to speak with the engineers directly. Once Vulkan is publicly released, recordings of the sessions will be made available through NVIDIA's developer portal.
Source: NVIDIA Blog
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XTREME GAMING XM300 Gaming Mouse Announced by GIGABYTE
GIGABYTE, a pioneer in the motherboard industry that also manufacturers a wealth of other gaming and technology products, has officially introduced the XM300 gaming mouse. The XM300 is the latest product within the XTREME GAMING series, and is the first gaming mouse to be featured within the series. The GIGABYTE XM300 includes two OMRON micro switches that provide excellent response while featuring durability of over 20 million clicks, a 6400DPI optical sensor that is adjustable in increments of 50DPI and can track up to 200 inches per second at 50g acceleration, and a high-quality cable that ensures free moment during gaming sessions. The XM300 also offers gamers with RGB backlighting that allows for a variety of customization options in terms of colors and lighting effects, rubber side grips for enhanced control while swiping or lifting the mouse, and extra Teflon feet that can be swapped out as the attached ones wear down from extended use.
Source: TechPowerUp
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Means Found to Potentially Prevent Defects in Integrated Circuits
Defects can be very important in the semiconductor industry as these imperfections can translate into missed release dates, broken products, and lost revenue. Naturally then, many methods are used to reduce the number of defects, but as the circuitry gets smaller it becomes much harder to maintain a standard of less than one defect per 100 cm2. Luckily researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have made a discovery that should help, even as circuitry shrinks.
Current methods for creating computer chips involve photoresist polymers, which allow one to control where a material is etched. The problem is that there is a limit to how small these polymers can be. The new solution is to turn to block copolymer molecules, because they can self-assemble into desired shapes with great density and precision. The trick has been making sure the copolymers are in a stable state, so that the pattern will not change, as opposed to metastable states. Copolymers can exist in a metastable state for long periods of time though, so the researchers used supercomputers to figure out the energy barriers between these and lower-energy stable states. This allows the researchers to find the path the molecules can take from a metastable state to a stable state.
Armed with this knowledge, manufacturers should be able to take advantage of block copolymers to significantly reduce the defects in the products they produce. Now the researchers will continue their work by looking into more materials, building more complex patterns, and potentially creating 3D structures for more advanced technologies.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
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Phishing Attack Targets LastPass
Security researcher Sean Cassidy of Praesidio has revealed a phishing attack targeting the LastPass password manager at ShmooCon 2016 in Washington D.C. He calls it LostPass and describes it as "sophisticated enough to fool users into handing over their passwords, email, and all the passwords and documents stored in their LastPass vault." The LostPass exploit seeks to deceive users by creating a pixel-for-pixel replication of legitimate LastPass messages. In order to be exposed to LostPass, "the intended victim must visit a malicious website or a real website vulnerable to XSS. Once laden with malicious code, the website can then prompt the user with a notification which shows login expiry and an appeal to log in again -- made worse by the CSRF flaw as the website can log the user out of LastPass to make the request appear legitimate." At this point the attacker can gain access to the users account, even if two-factor authentication has been enabled, and can "install a backdoor in their account via the emergency contact feature, disable two-factor authentication, add the attacker's server as a trusted device."
Cassidy informed LastPass of his phishing attack in November and the company has responded. A company spokeswoman stated, "We did work directly with Sean Cassidy, and can confirm this is a phishing attack, not a vulnerability in LastPass. However, we've released an update that will prevent a user from being logged out by the phishing tool, thereby mitigating the risk of the phishing attack. In addition, LastPass has a built-in security alert to let you know when you've entered your master password into a non-LastPass web form."
Source: ZDNet and Fast Company
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GIGABYTE Announces Five New Intel Motherboards
GIGABYTE has announced the addition of five Intel motherboards, targeted at the High-End Desktop market, to the X170 and X150 series. The boards use the C236 and C232 chipsets with support for Xeon E3-1200 v5 processors in addition to sixth generation Core, Pentium, and Celeron CPUs. Three of the boards, the X170-Extreme ECC, X150-PRO ECC and X150M-PRO ECC, support ECC memory to help "ensure reliability for critical applications while helping to reduce system crashes." All boards include a PCI-e x16 Gen. 3 slot to provide "128Gb/s of unrestricted bandwidth to your graphics cards for better performance when running GPU intensive applications." Also included are PCI-e Gen. 3 x4 connectors to accommodate M.2 SSDs, providing up to 32Gb/s transfer speeds. Joining the previously mentioned boards are the X150-PLUS WS and X150M-PLUS WS. VP of GIGABYTE's Motherboard Business Unit Henry Kao described the new boards, stating "I know GIGABYTE is providing the best HEDT experience with the X170 and X150 Motherboards, combining performance, stability and durability."
Source: Press Release
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Ubisoft Releases The Division Agent Origins Short Film to Amazon Prime Video
Ubisoft has today announced a short film, "Agent Origins," will be available on Amazon Prime Video. This short film provides a live-action narrative of the backstory of the four agents in The Division, an upcoming Ubisoft game. To create the film, Ubisoft worked with Corridor Digital and used talent from RocketJump and devinsupertramp. Amazon Prime members can watch the episode compilation today as a thirty-minute short film, and five of those minutes are exclusive to Amazon Prime Video.
The Division launches on March 8 for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4, but its closed beta begins January 28.
Source: Press Release
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Hardware Roundup: Tuesday, January 19, 2016, Edition
Tuesday is here, bringing with it a few items to check out. The be quiet! Silent Base 800 mid-tower case gets reviewed to see just how quiet a system is inside it, thanks to the sound dampening mats on the front and side panels, and even a soundproofed window. We have a look at the Cooler Master V750 750W power supply, featuring an 80 PLUS Gold certification and a fully modular design so you only need to hook up the cables your system requires. Wrapping things up today is the Gigabyte P34W v5 gaming laptop, a 14" model that includes an Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M GPU.
Cases
be quiet! Silent Base 800 @ PC Perspective
Power Supplies
Cooler Master V750 750W @ ThinkComputers
Laptops/Tablets
Gigabyte P34W v5 @ TechSpot
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