General Gaming Article |
- Microsoft Announces Own-Brand 'Surface' Tablets
- Nvidia 304.48 Beta Drivers Boost Performance and Stamp Out Annoying GTX 600-Series Bugs
- Intel's Brain-Like Neuromophic CPUs Provide Possible Blueprint for Future Generations of Robotic Overlords
- Linus Torvalds Tosses F-Bombs, Middle Fingers and General Disdain at Nvidia
- Verizon Introduces Flippin' Fast 300Mbps FiOS Quantum Internet Service
- Google: Number of Government Requests to Censor Internet Data is 'Troubling'
- U.S. Reclaims Pole Position in Latest TOP500 List of Super Computers
- iBuyPower Saddles Up with 17-inch Valkyrie Gaming Laptop
| Microsoft Announces Own-Brand 'Surface' Tablets Posted: 18 Jun 2012 08:39 PM PDT Until a few hours ago, the tech media was busy speculating about an upcoming "major announcement" from Microsoft. Some said it had something to do with Windows RT, while others said the company was going to unveil its first self-branded tablets. As it turns out, both of them were right. At an invitation-only event in Los Angeles today, Microsoft unveiled not one but two own-brand tablet PCs. The "Surface" family of Microsoft-made PCs includes two devices: the Surface for Windows 8 Pro and the Surface for Windows RT. Both sport a 10.6-inch display and are made out of vapor-deposited magnesium. Microsoft has also announced Type and Touch keypad covers for those who prefer a more traditional typing experience over the one provided by an on-screen keyboard. Their specs are as follows:
Surface for Windows 8 Pro
This is what the official press release says regarding pricing and availability: "Suggested retail pricing will be announced closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC. OEMs will have cost and feature parity on Windows 8 and Windows RT." |
| Nvidia 304.48 Beta Drivers Boost Performance and Stamp Out Annoying GTX 600-Series Bugs Posted: 18 Jun 2012 11:25 AM PDT
Nvidia's GeForce blog reports that the update corrects that annoying Adaptive VSync some users were running into, as well as an issue with the Global FXAA settings that turned the text in some programs -- such as Windows Live Mail -- into an unreadable, anti-aliased mess. Finally, some overclocked GTX 600 owners were finding that the 3xx drivers were forcing their cards into constantly running at idle clock speeds; 304.48 fixes that, too. Then, there are the performance tweaks, which Nvidia claims can boost the frame rates in some titles by up to 18 percent. Check out Nvidia's GeForce blog for a full list of improvements, or wander over to the GeForce beta drivers page to nab 304.48 for your rig. |
| Posted: 18 Jun 2012 10:57 AM PDT Intel's placing its bets on more than just the company's top-notch fabrication facilities; the company apparently has a stake in creating future generations of robot overlords, as well. Less than a month ago, Intel unveiled a new research project designed to make technology that's smart enough to learn its user's personal quirks and adapt accordingly; last week, Intel researchers published a proposal for a new, neuromorphic chip design -- hardware that mimics the human brain.
Intel's technique differs quite a bit from IBM's cognitive chips, which were first announced almost a year ago. While IBM's brain chips use traditional silicon circuits containing so-called "neurosynaptic cores" with "programmable synapses" and "learning synapses," the method proposed by Intel instead uses multi-input lateral spin valves and memristors. The LSVs are itty bitty magnets that change their magnetism depending on the rotation of the electrons coursing through them, while memristors either increase or decrease their electrical resistance depending on the direction of the electrical current's flow. The Intel researchers say that by arranging these parts into specific configurations, the LSVs can basically act as neurons, while the memristors mimic synapses. They also claim that the neuromorphic CPUs are amazingly energy efficient, using 15 to 300 times less power than current CMOS technology. The group claims that the chip would be good for processing tasks similar to what humans do, such as "analog-data-sensing, data-conversion, cognitive-computing, associative memory, programmable-logic and analog and digital signal processing." One big caveat; at this stage, Intel's neuromorphic CPU is entirely theoretical, while IBM's brain-clone is already a prototype. That being said, you can read all about Intel's neuromorphic chip in the company's whitepaper proposal, which you can find in entirety here. (PDF) (In related news, scientists have taught babbling baby robots how to speak, kinda.) |
| Linus Torvalds Tosses F-Bombs, Middle Fingers and General Disdain at Nvidia Posted: 18 Jun 2012 10:12 AM PDT
"Nvidia has been the single worst company we've dealt with," Linus says in the brief clip below, which is taken from a much longer talk at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE) in Otaniemi, Finland. (Hit this link to see the whole, interesting thing.) The tirade is kicked off by a weary user who had to jump through hoops to try and enable her laptop's Nvidia Optimus technology while running the open-source operating system. Linus talks about the hypocrisy of Nvidia's lackluster Linux support in the light of the company's heavy forays into Android before staring directly into the camera and extending his middle finger. "Nvidia… Fuck you!" he says, the words slowly and pointedly rolling off his tongue, just in case the gesture alone didn't get the point across. You gotta give it to Linus; he calls 'em like he sees 'em, and winning the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize hasn't curbed his opinionated tongue. Via The Verge |
| Verizon Introduces Flippin' Fast 300Mbps FiOS Quantum Internet Service Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:51 AM PDT
"A revolution in speed has arrived," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon's consumer and mass market business unit. "The new FiOS Internet speed and bundle options provide incredible value, and represent the most significant mass scale, consumer broadband speed enhancement in the nation in the past decade." Other standalone tiers include 3/1Mbps (download/upload) for $60/$55 month (month-to-month/two-year service contract), 15/5Mbps for $70/$65, 20/25Mbps for $80/$75, 75/35Mbps for $90/$85, and 150/65Mbps for $100/$95. Verizon also offers triple-play (TV, phone, Internet) and double-play (TV, Internet) bundles at various price points for new and existing customers. To put the new speeds in perspective, Verizon says it would take 1.4 seconds to download 10 songs (50MB each) at 300Mbps, 2.7 seconds at 150Mbps, 5.3 seconds at 75Mbps, 8 seconds at 50Mbps, and 26.7 seconds at 15Mbps. And to download a 5GB movie or upload 200 photos (250MB each), it would take 2.2 minutes and 31 seconds, respectively, on FiOS Quantum. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Google: Number of Government Requests to Censor Internet Data is 'Troubling' Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:22 AM PDT
"When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers," Google stated in a blog post. "We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not." In particular, Google is concerned about the number of take down requests it receives over political speech. "It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Google says. Need examples? Google claims Spanish regulators in the last half year accounted for 270 search removal requests linking to blogs and newspaper articles referencing public figures such as mayors and public prosecutors. And in Poland, Google received a request from a public institution to censor certain links that criticized the establishment. All of these were denied. Here in the U.S., Google says a law enforement agency requested that 1,400 YouTube videos be taken down due to alleged harrassment. The total number of content removal requests Google received in the past six months has more than doubled compared to the previous reporting period, the search company said. Image Credit: Simon James (Wikimeda Commons) Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| U.S. Reclaims Pole Position in Latest TOP500 List of Super Computers Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:37 AM PDT
TOP500 released the new list today at the 2012 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany. It's the 39th edition of the bi-annual list, which shows the U.S. claiming three of the top 10 spots. Mira, another system with IBM BlueGene/Q DNA, sits in third place, while Jaguar, a Cray XK6 system, resides at No. 6. Fujitsu's K computer out of Japan held the No. 1 spot on the previous two lists and is now in second place with a 10.51 Pflop/s score on the Linpack benchmark. The system is comprised of 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores. The list represents a staggering amount of computer power, made even more impressive by how quickly the collective performance has grown. Pooled together, the list now represents 123.4 Pflop/s of performance, up from 74.2 Pflop/s back in November 2011. Image Credit: NNSA Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| iBuyPower Saddles Up with 17-inch Valkyrie Gaming Laptop Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:09 AM PDT
iBuyPower claims its Valkyrie line combines a "unique design with full configurability and maximum price-performance value." Cost of entry is $1,300, which gets you:
Upgrade options abound, including meatier (and faster) storage solutions, the sore thumb in an otherwise well spec'd machine. As for the chassis, it boasts USB 3.0 support, a DisplayPort, HDMI output, fingerprint reader, and backlit keyboard. Image Credit: iBuyPower |
Nvidia's rolled out its latest iteration of beta drivers, and these looks like a must-have for GTX 600-series owners. In addition to the usual performance tweaks and added SLI and 3D Vision profiles for GTX 400, 500 and 600-series cards, the GeForce 304.48 beta drivers pack in fixes for some troublesome problems that have been irking GeForce GTX 600 adopters.
Between the new GTX 600 series GPUs and its top-notch Tegra 3 mobile chips, Nvidia's been getting a lot of love from the press and consumers alike in recent months. One guy ain't so happy with the company, though: Linus Torvalds. His lack of love revolves around Nvidia's continued reluctance to show the love to the Linux operating system -- and Linus isn't afraid to express his displeasure, either with words or obscene gestures.
Remember when 56.6K dial-up modems were the cat's meow? My, how we've grown up in the past couple of decades, and so has Verizon, which just unveiled new FiOS Internet tiers and pricing, culminating in FiOS Quantum with blistering fast downloads (up to 300Mbps) and scorching uploads (up to 65Mbps), which will set you back $210 per month, or $205 per month with a two-year contract.
The Internet may have forever changed the way information is shared and consumed, but what hasn't changed is the fact that government agencies around the globe go to great efforts to censor certain data. Google, which now discloses government requests to remove certain links and YouTube videos, says that what it's seen over the past two years has been nothing short of "troubling."
November 2009 was the last time a United States supercomputer sat on top of the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, and thanks to Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system residing at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the U.S. is back out in front of the pack after it achieved 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark. Over a million and a half cores (1,572,864, to be exact) comprise Sequoia, which TOP500 describes as one of the most energy efficient systems on the list.
Boutique system builder iBuyPower is launching its own line of signature series gaming laptops called Valkyrie. The first in the new series is the Valkyrie CZ-17, a 17-inch notebook with a Full HD 1080p display driven by 3rd Generation Intel Core processor (Ivy Bridge) options and Nvidia GeForce GTX 600 series (GTX 670 or GTX 675) discrete graphics, along with up to 32GB of DDR3 memory (8GB comes standard).| 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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