15618832
submission
Lanxon writes:
Music lovers can now be immortalised when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones, reports Wired. A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles.
15504254
submission
arcticstoat writes:
With Fusion's grand entrance rapidly approaching, AMD has finally decided to stop being all secretive and start dishing out the details. The company is detailing two new CPU cores called Bobcat and Bulldozer at Hot Chips today, showing a new approach to CPU architecture. For a start, Bulldozer sees AMD taking on Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. Rather than attempting to execute two threads on a single core, a Bulldozer core instead features two integer units with a shared floating point unit. Given that most compute tasks use integer calculations, it could effectively process two threads much more efficiently than an Intel core with Hyper-Threading. Meanwhile, AMD ie eyeing up the netbook market with its Bobcat core, which it says can run while consuming just a single Watt. Like VIA's Nano processor, Bobcat can also process instructions out-of-order, giving it a potential advantage over Intel's "in-order" Atom chips.
15504236
submission
Stoobalou writes:
With Fusion's grand entrance rapidly approaching, AMD has finally decided to stop being all secretive and start dishing out the details.
The company is revealing all the juicy gossip about its forthcoming Bobcat and Bulldozer cores at the Hot Chips symposium today, but it also kindly shared the information with us beforehand.
15197874
submission
arcticstoat writes:
Another formerly PC exclusive game series has opened its arms to the console business, as GSC Game World has announced that STALKER 2 will be a multi-platform title. "A completely new multi-platform technology developed by GSC will make the core of the game," says a statement issued by the developer. GSC Game World joins Crytek in the ranks of PC-exclusive developers who are now opening their arms to the console business. Crysis 2 will now be available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as well as the PC.
15080706
submission
arcticstoat writes:
UK digital radio maker Pure is launching a service called FlowSongs next week, which enables listeners to buy tracks directly from the radio as they're playing. The service kicks off on Monday 16 August with a UK-based beta using Internet-connected radios. Rather than relying on information from the broadcaster, FlowSongs instead gets its information from song-recognition service Shazam. As well as then being able to stream the track to your radio whenever you want at a bit-rate of 128Kb/sec, you'll also be able to download the track directly to a PC or Mac via a DRM-free 320Kb/sec MP3 file.
15041338
submission
Stoobalou writes:
The traditional semiconductors that currently rule nearly every area of our digital lives could be replaced in the future by spintronics devices, which read and write data via the "spin" of electrons, rather than switching transistors.
Spintronics has been a common buzzword in predictions for the future of computing, and the process was recently photographed by physicists at the University of Hamburg. However, researchers at Ohio State University have now taken the technology from theory to practice, creating a working spintronics-based memory device.
14999704
submission
arcticstoat writes:
Jokers at AMD's graphics wing are clearly enjoying watching Nvidia's new chips eat power supplies for breakfast, as they've just made a joke movie comparing the heat output of Fermi-based PCs to home cannabis farms. The two-minute video called The Misunderstanding shows a SWAT team being briefed about a raid, in which infrared shots from a police surveillance helicopter show a major hotspot coming from a building. A few shots of kids looking like typical stoners are then shown entering and leaving the house, and one of the team jokes to his buddy: "I bet we're going to find something green in there!" However, after battering the door down, the SWAT team enter the suspect location only to find a couple of startled gamers sat at a glowing-green PC. "Fermi again! It's the third time this week," says an exasperated member of the SWAT team.
14999590
submission
arcticstoat writes:
Jokers at AMD's graphics wing are clearly enjoying watching Nvidia's new chips eat power supplies for breakfast, as they've just made a joke movie comparing the heat output of Fermi-based PCs to home cannabis farms. The two-minute video called The Misunderstanding shows a SWAT team being briefed about a raid, in which infrared shots from a police surveillance helicopter show a major hotspot coming from a building. A few shots of kids looking like typical stoners are then shown entering and leaving the house, and one of the team jokes to his buddy: "I bet we're going to find something green in there!" However, after battering the door down, the SWAT team enter the suspect location only to find a couple of startled gamers sat at a glowing-green PC. "Fermi again! It's the third time this week," says an exasperated member of the SWAT team.
14783164
submission
arcticstoat writes:
Blizzard's latest Zerg-busting romp has now officially stomped on Command & Conquer, rubbed Civilization's nose in the compost and taken Company of Heroes to the cleaners. After selling a bumper stack of 1.5 million copies in just 48 hours, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the fastest selling strategy game of all time. According to Blizzard, StarCraft II had already managed to rack up over a million sales in its first day alone, making it the best-selling PC game of the year in just 24 hours. Blizzard says it compiled the figures using a combination of public data, reports from distribution partners and its own internal company records.
14644840
submission
arcticstoat writes:
Data could cruise through fibre optical cables at 1Tb/sec in the near future, according to the guys at Intel. The chip maker's researchers have just successfully trialled a 50Gb/sec data connection using photonics, and they reckon that's just the beginning. The key technology behind the achievement is the hybrid silicon laser, where silicon is bonded to Indium Phosphide, and etched gratings on the silicon act as "mirrors" to create different wavelengths. Intel's system features two major components; a transmitter which splits the electrical data signal into four 12.5Gb/sec channels and then combines them with a multiplexer to create a single signal that can travel down a fibre optic cable. This is then split back into four electrical channels by the receiver chip at the other end. The director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab, Dr Mario Paniccia, reckons we could start seeing the first use of photonics systems in just three to five years' time.
14640586
submission
Stoobalou writes:
Apple has reopened the online store after an hour or two of outage to reveal pretty much what everyone was expecting.
The Mac Pro range of desktop workstations has had a bump to Intel's latest six core Xeon processors — and if your wallet is healthy enough, you can have two of them crammed into Apple's beautiful aluminium case for a total of twelve cores.
Not surprisingly, Apple is touting the new twelve-core beast as the fastest Mac ever.
14537800
submission
Stoobalou writes:
After ditching the previous Labour administration's pledge to offer tax relief to the UK gaming industry in his Emergency Budget, Tory Chancellor George Osborne may be planning a U-turn.
14537742
submission
Stoobalou writes:
A tabloid journalist working for the UK's Daily Star newspaper has been caught out by a spoof Photoshopped image claiming to be of a Grand Theft Auto game based on murderous gunman Raoul Moat.
14537682
submission
Stoobalou writes:
Samsung and Toshiba have teamed up to push the solid state industry towards using toggle mode DDR2 NAND memory.
With a 400Mb per second interface, the toggle mode DDR2 specification can effectively triple the bandwidth of the 133MB interface found on toggle mode DDR memory. It also multiplies the headroom of the 40Mb/sec interface used in standard SDR NAND memory by a factor of ten.
14534094
submission
mr_sifter writes:
Intel is due to replace its mainstream CPUs with a new range at the end of the year, currently codenamed "Sandy Bridge." As well as being incompatible with current motherboards (by one pin!), a leaked presentation confirms the design of the motherboards may effectively kill off overclocking by using a very locked down clock generator. That is, unless, of course, you want to pay extra for a special K-series CPU, which will allow overclocking via the multiplier.
