General Gaming Article |
- Intel Mashes Wi-Fi And CPU Together, Working On Solar-Powered Chips
- Details of AMD's Mid-range 'Pitcairn' GPU Exposed to the Web
- Researchers: 'Bleak Future' Awaits Flash-based Solid State Drives
- Next Generation Chromebooks Will Run Faster, Be More Secure, Google Says
- Barnes & Noble Reportedly Prepping 8GB Nook Tablet with Lower Price Tag
- Asus Warranty Doesn't Cover Damage Caused by 'Space Invasions'
- Samsung Series 9 Ultra-Thin and Light Notebook Now Available for Pre-Order
| Intel Mashes Wi-Fi And CPU Together, Working On Solar-Powered Chips Posted: 20 Feb 2012 10:02 AM PST
The breakthrough is made possible thanks to the digital revolution, Wired explains. Traditional analog Wi-Fi chips are bulky and difficult to downsize, so Intel whipped up a new digital type of Wi-Fi chip, instead. The digital chip's teeny-tiny size means the 2.4GHz radio can fit on the same silicon as a dual-core Atom CPU. CPUs and Wi-Fi radios are kind of like teenage siblings, though; each one normally interferes in the other's business. To stop that from happening, Intel created noise canceling and anti-radiation technology for use with the Rosepoint processors. That helps give Rosepoint great signal quality, and mixing Wi-Fi with the CPU results in excellent power efficiency, Intel claims. The technology is still in its infant stages: Wired says we won't see Rosepoint chips until at least "the middle of the decade." As if that isn't nifty enough, Intel has also been working on light-powered CPUs, with plans to expand the technology into graphics and memory markets. The company plans on talking more about the tech at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week. The Pentium-derived "Claremont" chips have already successfully ran Windows and Linux PCs using the light from a desk lamp, TechWorld explains. Expect to hear more about Claremont once Intel outs it further. Image credit: Intel via Wired.com |
| Details of AMD's Mid-range 'Pitcairn' GPU Exposed to the Web Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:11 AM PST
Chinese website Expreview.com has the skinny on Pitcairn, which will manifest in Radeon HD 7870 and two Radeon HD 7850 graphics cards with 1GB or 2GB of onboard memory. According to the leaked info, AMD's HD 7870 (Pitcairn XT) will feature 22 Core Next compute units, 1,408 stream processors, 88 texture units, 24 ROPs, and 2GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory bus clocked at 1,375MHz (5,500 MHz effective). The GPU will be clocked at 950MHz. Sitting one rung lower is the HD 7850 (Pitcairn Pro) with 20 CUs, 1,280 stream processors, 80 texture units, 24 ROPs, and 1GB or 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,250MHz (also on a 256-bit bus). The GPU will run at 900MHz. These three cards are expected to debut in March with prices ranging from around $220 to $300 (possibly lower in the U.S.), followed by a $360 Radeon HD 7890 sometime in the second quarter of 2012. According to Expreview, the 7890 will feature a different core than the other two and will possibly be a gimped version of Tahiti. Image Credit: Expreview.com |
| Researchers: 'Bleak Future' Awaits Flash-based Solid State Drives Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:46 AM PST
It's a good question, and one that's answered by Steven Swanson (director of UCSD's Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory), Laura Grupp (a graduate student at UCSD), and John Davis (Researcher in Microsoft Research's Silicon Valley lab) in a paper (PDF) titled "The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory." "In recent years, flash-based SSDs have grown enormously both in capacity and popularity," the paper begins. "In high-performance enterprise storage applications, accelerating adoption of SSDs is predicated on the ability of manufacturers to deliver performance that far exceeds disks, while closing the gap in cost per gigabyte. However, while flash density continues to improve, othe metrics such as reliability, endurance, and performance are all declining." The researchers laid out data collected from 45 flash chips from 6 manufacturers, which they analyzed to predict the performance and cost characteristics of future SSDs. What they found is that the rapid increase in density -- which is necessary to continue improving upon storage space and costs -- has a negative impact for flash memory when it comes to performance, program/erase endurance, and energy efficiency. So, when is the end of the world for SSDs set to take place? "It's not going to be viable to go past 6.5nm... 2024 is the end," Grupp said at the 10th Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies, according to ComputerWorld. |
| Next Generation Chromebooks Will Run Faster, Be More Secure, Google Says Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:20 AM PST
Today's limited selection of Chromebooks feature an Intel Atom N570 processor clocked at 1.66GHz, 2GB of DDR3 memory, 16GB solid state drive, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 1.3MP webcam, and various other odds and ends. And what about Chromebooks of tomorrow? With Ultrabooks all the rage, does Google even care about the platform anymore? "We remain very excited about Chromebooks," Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, told CNet in an interview. "We got a lot of positive feedback, and we are really looking forward to the next generation of Chromebooks. We will improve on the dimensions of speed, simplicity, and security." He didn't go on to offer any specifics, but one possibility is that the next generation of Chromebooks could follow the same upgrade path as netbooks by incorporating Intel's Cedar Trail platform. It's an upgrade path that would allow Google and its partners (Acer and Samsung) to maintain the same or similar price points, but offer improved performance, along with other promised upgrades (simplicity and security) that could be delivered through continued tweaking of the Chrome OS. Image Credit: Google |
| Barnes & Noble Reportedly Prepping 8GB Nook Tablet with Lower Price Tag Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:02 AM PST
It appears Barnes & Noble aims to find out. The Verge claims to have come across documentation that reveals a new Nook Tablet SKU with 8GB of onboard storage, the same as the Kindle Fire and half the amount of the current Nook Tablet. It's set to launch on Wednesday (February 22, 2012) at Walmart for an undisclosed price, but considering it has less memory and will be sold at Wally World, you can bet it will carry a lower price tag. Here's how things stack up now. Both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are 7-inch slates featuring IPS panels with 1024x600 resolutions (169 pixels per inch). They both sport TI OMAP 4 dual-core 1GHz processors, and both run Android. That's where the similarities end. The Nook Tablet has more onboard storage (16GB plus a microSD card slot versus 8GB and no expandable storage) and twice the amount of memory (1GB versus 512MB). It also has hardware controls and a microphone, both of which the Kindle Fire lacks, and a more traditional Android interface, which can viewed as a plus or minus. Keeping in mind that the Nook Tablet only reserves 1GB of storage space for user for non-Barnes & Noble content (like your own video and music files), would a lower priced version with 8GB of onboard storage tempt you to choose it over the Kindle Fire? |
| Asus Warranty Doesn't Cover Damage Caused by 'Space Invasions' Posted: 20 Feb 2012 05:31 AM PST
As you know, product warranties are limited by certain exclusions. For instance, they don't usually cover any damage caused by natural disasters. But what if an alien species invades planet Earth and intentionally or unintentionally damages your laptop or tablet in the process? For the sake of this article, we are going to assume that you will be in a position to pick up the pieces of your life after the invasion and that few of those pieces will be from an Asus product still under warranty. Well in that case, you can forget all about making a warranty claim because the Taiwanese vendor is farsighted enough to expressly exclude space invasions from "your ASUS Warranty Extension Program." This is probably another good reason for us to avoid contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Image Credit: BitSnipe |
| Samsung Series 9 Ultra-Thin and Light Notebook Now Available for Pre-Order Posted: 20 Feb 2012 04:58 AM PST
The 13.3-inch variant of the second generation Series 9 has every right to be incensed at being denied the ultrabook tag, for it's actually thinner and lighter than both the 13.3-inch and 14-inch Series 5 models currently on the market. Not that the 15-inch Series 9 is obscenely corpulent. The 13.3-incher is 12.7mm thick and weighs 2.43 lbs, where as its 15-inch counterpart is 16.25 mm at its thickest and weighs just 3.50 lbs. Both the models are now available for pre-order on online retailer J&R. They have the following specs:
The 13-incher is listed for $1,399.99, whereas its elder brother carries a $1,499.99 price tag. However, the listings don't mention any shipping date. |
When it comes to mobile technology, the push to make things better, faster and smaller is non-stop and all consuming. The more functions you can cram onto a single chip, the better! Plenty of companies have thrown their proverbial hat into the convergence ring, but as the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, all eyes tend to gravitate towards Intel for trend-setting processor news. And who is Intel to disappoint? The company's already announced plans for a 
In the coming weeks, AMD will flesh out its Radeon HD 7000 lineup with its mid-range 7800 Series based on the Sunnyvale chip maker's Pitcairn GPU. Pitcairn slips neatly in between Cape Verde (Radeon HD 7700 Series) and Tahiti (Radeon HD 7900 Series) and will likely consist of three separate videocards, according to information that was leaked to the Web over the weekend.
The average selling price of mechanical hard drives has risen ever since severe floods in Thailand wreaked havoc on HDD manufacturing plants, and on the opposite end of the storage spectrum, the cost of solid state drives (SSDs) has been steadily decreasing as the technology matures. With that being the case, why in the world would researchers from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) declare the future of NAND flash memory and SSDs as being bleak?
Google tried to change the way we think about computing when it launched its Chromebook platform. These devices are the result of a three-way between a laptop, netbook, and the almighty cloud, the end result of which is an 11.6-inch or 12.1-inch notebook with just enough lower end components to scrape by living in the cloud. The next generation of Chromebooks, however, will be better spec'd for improved performance, among other things.
Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet costs $249 while Amazon's Kindle Fire sells for $199. There are other differences between these two competing 7-inch tablets, of course, but for many consumers, the only one that matters is the $50 price discrepancy. In the eyes of the average shopper, both of these slates are capable of doing the same thing, so why pay 25 percent more for the Nook Tablet? Tech savvy users can answer that question by running their fingers down the spec sheets, but at the end of the day, Amazon's Kindle Fire, now the second most popular tablet in the world behind the mighty iPad, is the one people are buying. If the Nook Tablet was also priced at $199, would that still be the case?
A couple of years back, British cosmologist Stephen Hawking caused quite a stir around the globe when he advised mankind against contacting aliens, for it could lead to a highly advanced alien species paying us a rather hostile visit. In case his fears aren't entirely unwarranted as some contend, it might already be too late for us to prevent them from contacting us. As it turns out, our planet is surrounded by an ever-expanding radio emission bubble over 100 light-years in diameter. While the possibility of an alien invasion has been probed umpteen times in science fiction, its impact on product warranties has been entirely overlooked. Hit the jump for more.
This year's Consumer Electronics Show saw a deluge of ultrabooks. Samsung was one of the vendors that unveiled their ultrabook contenders at the event. But not only did it unveil the Series 5 ultrabook back then, it also used the opportunity to announce the second generation Series 9 ultra-thin and light notebook. The latter is now available for pre-order online. Hit the jump for more.| 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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