General Gaming Article |
- Microsoft Explains How it Will Dramatically Decrease Windows 8’s Memory Usage
- TDK Discovers a Way to use Lasers to Double Hard Disc Capacity
- RIM Drops an Estimated $100 Million to Buy NewBay
- Amazon Spins off the Kindle Fire and Silk Browser Under a New Company Named Seesaw
- Worlds First Carbon-Neutral Data Center in Iceland Gets The Green Light
| Microsoft Explains How it Will Dramatically Decrease Windows 8’s Memory Usage Posted: 09 Oct 2011 10:48 AM PDT
According to Windows 8's lead designer Steven Sinofsky, "Fundamentals such as memory usage represent a key engineering tenet of Windows 8. In building Windows 8 we set out to significantly reduce the overall runtime memory requirements of the core system. This is always good for everyone and especially in a world where people want to run more and more apps at the same time or run on systems with only 1 or 2GB of memory". Windows performance manager Bill Karagounis goes on to further explain, "Something that might not be obvious is that minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life". "In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power." Manufacturers often offer large amounts of RAM in PCs to counteract the increased requirements from applications and Windows. "The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses," says Karagounis. The less amount of RAM in use and in the system then the more battery life for laptop and tablet devices. To achieve it's goal, Windows 8 is taking 5 creative new approaches to managing memory usage. Memory Combining This technique allows Windows to efficiently access the system RAM during normal reads, and locate duplicate information. Microsoft estimates this can save 10s to 100s of MBs of memory depending on the task. Service Changes and Reduction Microsoft has instituted a new "start on demand" model for system services. This would for example disable plug and play until you attach a new device. Less Memory for General OS Operations Microsoft describes this change as shaving tens of MB on average per machine, all without sacrificing functionality. Only Loading Desktop Component When Required Outside of Metro If you can live in Metro, why waste RAM? Microsoft estimates this saves around 23MB Prioritization of Memory "This means that Windows can make better decisions about what memory to keep around and what memory to remove sooner," says Karagounis. Microsoft's efforts here will likely pay off big time in the tablet arena, though I'm guessing "saving tens of MB of RAM" isn't that big a priority to our readers planning to load this on their primary PC. |
| TDK Discovers a Way to use Lasers to Double Hard Disc Capacity Posted: 09 Oct 2011 10:01 AM PDT
The theory itself was devised by TDK and more specifically, involves the use of lasers couple with a high coercivity material to allow for the capacity bump. The new laser approach seems to be the secret sauce behind the discovery, but will also need to be married with bit-patterned media (BPM), to assist with recording and retaining data. The technology isn't quite ready for prime-time just yet, so TDK has been pretty tight lipped about the exact details. Either way it should give the fans on team mechanical new hope. SSD cost per GB has been dropping pretty rapidly over the past few years, but I shudder to think about how much 8TB would cost. |
| RIM Drops an Estimated $100 Million to Buy NewBay Posted: 09 Oct 2011 09:32 AM PDT
NewBay's flagship product is better known to handset junkies as LifeCache, and is featured prominently on phones offered by T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, AT&T, and Verizon. RIM's strategy here differs again for the vast majority of their competitors who have settled around more established services such as Facebook and Twitter, and cloud products from Amazon and Google. According to RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, it's an interesting move, but RIM is still late to the game. "RIM is coming later to market than competitive offerings (may take another 6-12 months to be fully integrated) vs. Apple's iCloud, Amazon's Cloud Drive and related services, and Google cloud apps," he explains. "It's not known yet whether RIM's offering will match or lag the content and user experience of competitors." |
| Amazon Spins off the Kindle Fire and Silk Browser Under a New Company Named Seesaw Posted: 09 Oct 2011 09:10 AM PDT
Amazon has not publically commented as to why they are spinning-off their two new tablet products while keeping the Kindle e-ink readers still under the main company, but it never hurts to speculate! Its possible Amazon is taking early steps to separate mobile devices from the companies retail arm, which might also suggest more tablets or even phones might be on the way in the not to distant future. One thing is for sure, with a build cost of $208, and a retail price of $199, Seesaw is probably going to have a really crappy holiday quarter. |
| Worlds First Carbon-Neutral Data Center in Iceland Gets The Green Light Posted: 09 Oct 2011 08:21 AM PDT
Iceland doesn't have a ton of prime real estate for people, but as Verne Global points out, they've got a ton of cool air to spare which is useful for cooling massive server rooms. "It's all about the power," Verne Global CTO Tate Cantrell says. "Iceland has great natural resources." The company is planning to build a 200,000 square foot data center in the country, and collect the over 100 megawatts of power needed from geothermal and hydroelectric sources. Cooling for the facility as mentioned will come from outside air, and the facility will sport an 8-terabit-per-second connection to the United States and Europe. Applications for the new data center aren't set in stone just yet, and one potential problem with the facility will be the latency. It's estimated average ping time from New York would be around 41 milliseconds, and for London around 20 milliseconds. This might not sound like much to you and me, but for cloud services this is considered a bit on the high side. Either way it's great to see companies looking for new ways to make cloud computing sustainable, and we hope to see many more such projects in the future. |
Microsoft has been pretty clear in its message regarding the system requirements for Windows 8. If it will run Windows 7, it will run Windows 8. Promising to add new features, all while keeping the OS footprint steady is no easy task, but why stop there. 
Mechanical drives might be a bit on the slow side, but the price per GB still makes them king among digital packrats. The technology behind today's 2 & 3TB drives is currently known as perpendicular magnetic recording, but recently we seem to have hit a wall. Manufacturers are already hard at work on 4 platter-4TB drives, but were starting to reach the limitations of what's possible. Luckily a recent collaboration by the remaining mechanical drive makers has begun to pay off, and the Storage Technology Alliance believes it has discovered a way to use 
Research in Motion has been struggling lately to find a solid direction for it's iconic Blackberry OS, but a recent acquisition might give us a few clues as to what the Canadian device maker has in store for the future. According to AllThingsD, RIM has dropped down an estimated $100 million to buy NewBay, a cloud-based media management service, which allows users to store and share pictures, videos, and anything else they'd care to broadcast.
Planes, trains, and automobiles are often singled out as technologies that are destroying the planet, but whether we care to admit it or not, data centers are increasingly becoming part of the problem. An individuals lifetime of Google searches probably doesn't add up to much, but multiply that across a billion inquiry's per day, and you've got a carbon footprint big enough to give mother nature quite the ass kicking. Many companies have talked about ways to reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to keep our massive server farms running, but Verne Global thinks they've found the answer, | You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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