61705597
submission
MojoKid writes:
Samsung has just unveiled its latest series of solid state drives for consumer applications, the SSD 850 PRO. Like the previously-released SSD 845 EVO series, the 850 PRO leverages Samsung's tri-core MEX controller, but these new drives also feature bleeding-edge, 32 layer, 3D V-NAND flash memory that offers better power, endurance, and performance characteristics than traditional MLC NAND. Other features of the Samsung SSD 850 PRO series includes "Device sleep" (DEVSLP), which can maximize battery life in mobile devices and support for Samsung's RAPID mode technology, which leverages system RAM to boost performance. The SSD 850 series drives put up impressive benchmark numbers in a variety of benchmarks, besting many other drives in its class, but they also carry a long 10 year warranty.
61654453
submission
MojoKid writes:
Here's an interesting psychological factoid: Emotional states can be transferred to other people via text-based messages on social media, such as Facebook. That means that if, for instance, you view a bunch of sad posts, you're more likely to pen a sad post yourself shortly thereafter even though you don't realize that the sad posts made you sad. Here's a snippet from the "Significance" section of the paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS): "We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness." That's almost 700,000 people that Facebook experimented on. The social network purposely manipulated the Newsfeeds of hundreds of thousands of people. Shouldn't Facebook have had to notify those users that it was doing--something? The research itself is significant because, according to its authors, "emotional contagion" can happen not just in real-world interactions, but also from social media interactions. Thus, a social network could be a vehicle for massive, large-scale emotional contagion.
61596745
submission
MojoKid writes:
LG is probably getting a little tired of scraping for brand recognition versus big names like Samsung, Apple and yes, even Google. However, the company is also likely taking solace in the fact that their smartphone sales figures are heading for an all-time high in 2014, with an estimated 60 million units projected to be sold this year. LG's third iteration of their popular "G" line of flagship smartphones, simply dubbed the LG G3, is the culmination of all of the innovation the company has developed in previous devices to date, including its signature rear button layout, and a cutting-edge 5.5-inch QHD display that drives a resolution of 2560X1440 with a pixel density of 538 PPI. Not satisified with pixel overload, LG decide to equip their new smartphone with 'frickin' laser beams' to assist its 13MP camera in targeting subjects for auto-focus. The G3 performs well in the benchmarks with a Snapdragon 801 on board and no doubt its camera takes some great shots quickly and easily. However, it's questionable how much of that super high res 2560 display you can make use of on a 5.5-inch device.
61579027
submission
MojoKid writes:
Google's I/O developer conference has had a large number of announcements, some a little more interesting than the others. Then there are some that are down-right strange — at least at first. Google's "Cardboard" easily falls into that category. Imagine sitting at I/O, watching a keynote, and then being told to pick up some cardboard on the way out. You might begin to think that Google had lost it. Well, that really did happen, and event-goers were handed a sheet of corrugated cardboard on their way out of the auditorium. Of course, this wasn't an ordinary piece of cardboard — it could be unfolded, and reconstructed into a Virtual Reality housing unit for an Android smartphone. A device like this would be useless without an app, so don't worry, Google has one. With it, you can take a tour of different locations through Google Earth, watch YouTube videos on a "massive screen", walk down the street with Street View, and partake in some other fun activities, while the app takes advantage of a phone's head-tracking functionality.
61502325
submission
MojoKid writes:
Intel today made a splash at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany by revealing new details about its next-generation Xeon Phi processor technology. You may better recognize Xeon Phi by its codename, Knights Landing. No matter what you call it, this represents a significant leap in High Performance Computing (HPC) that will deliver up to three times the performance of Intel's previous generations while consuming less power. A big part of the reason for this is the construction of a new high-speed interconnect technology called Intel Omni Scale Fabric, which Intel has been a bit cagey about, though reportedly it is comprised of silicon photonics interfaces as well as IP from Cray and QLogic. This will be integrated into the next generation of Xeon Phi processors as well as future general-purpose Xeon chips. At launch, more than 60 HPC-enhanced Silvermont-based cores will connect with up to 16GB of on-package, high-bandwidth memory designed in partnership with Micron, which leverages the fundamental DRAM and stacking technologies found in Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) product.
61475413
submission
MojoKid writes:
The transistor is one of the most profound innovations in all of human existence. First discovered in 1947, it has scaled like no advance in human history; we can pack billions of transistors into complicated processors smaller than your thumbnail. After decades of innovation, however, the transistor has faltered. Clock speeds stalled in 2005 and the 20nm process node is set to be more expensive than the 28nm node was for the first time ever. Now, researchers at NASA believe they may have discovered a way to kickstart transistors again — by using technology from the earliest days of computing: The vacuum tube. It turns out that when you shrink a Vacuum transistor to absolutely tiny dimensions, you can recover some of the benefits of a vacuum tube and dodge the negatives that characterized their usage. According to a report, vacuum transistors can draw electrons across the gate without needing a physical connection between them. Make the vacuum area small enough, and reduce the voltage sufficiently, and the field emission effect allows the transistor to fire electrons across the gap without containing enough energy to energize the helium inside the nominal "vacuum" transistor. According to researchers, they've managed to build a successful transistor operating at 460GHz — well into the so-called Terahertz Gap, which sits between microwaves and infrared energy.
61340673
submission
MojoKid writes:
Harley-Davidson is going green. No, not a Lime Green motorcycle or anything to do with paint jobs, but a brand new hog that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. To kick off the initiative, which HD is calling "Project LiveWire," the iconic motorcycle maker is taking 22 electric bikes on a tour across the U.S. next week to both promote the new rides and gauge the public's reaction. Once the attention rolls off of social media and into the streets where the hardcore bikers prefer to spend their time, it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction an electric hog elicits. These bikes lack an exhaust and the accompanying rumble that bikers love to hear. HD even tried (unsuccessfully) to trademark its bike's "Potato-Potato-Potato" sound. On the flip side, HD could attract a whole new audience to the world of motorcycles, one that cares more about carbon footprints than a rumbling exhaust.
61234209
submission
MojoKid writes:
Over the past few weeks, I've spent a significant amount of time with Watch Dogs. The game is infamous for not running very well on PCs. After some legwork, I've figured out a hefty chunk of the reason why. Ubisoft royally screwed up its suggested VRAM (graphics card frame buffer) settings. Watch Dogs sucks down far more frame buffer memory than many modern PC games currently. In the past, VRAM usage in games like Guild Wars, Battlefield 4, and Total War: Shogun 2, with all detail levels maxed out, was about 1.5GB. BF4 will break 2GB if you use the supersampling option to render the game internally in 4K mode. Ubisoft claims that Watch Dogs' "High" texture detail setting requires a 2GB frame buffer while its "Ultra" textures need 3GB of frame buffer memory. That might technically be true, but these figures should be treated as a minimum, not a max. Playing the game through with High Textures and "Ultra" details systems stutter repeatedly with jerky slowdowns while running a mid range GeForce GTX 770. Switching to "High" Details improved the situation, but didn't resolve it. Unfortunately, the best way to improve performance in Watch Dogs is to ignore Ubisoft's recommendations altogether and opt for lower detail levels, depending on your configuration and monitor resolution. Ubisoft has said that a patch is coming that may address some of these issues. In the mean time, this article covers suggested settings with various graphics card frame buffer sizes, for better performance.
61139667
submission
MojoKid writes:
Samsung unveiled its latest flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S, at an event in New York City tonight, and the new device is thin, lightweight, and sports a killer Super AMOLED display. Samsung boasts that the Galaxy Tab S's 2560x1600 display has 73% better color reproduction than conventional LCD displays and can match colors up to 94% of "nature's true palette" with deeper blacks and a 100,000:1 contrast ratio. The 10.5-inch device weighs just 467g and measures a mere 6.6mm in thickness (and there's an 8.4-inch version, too). Under the hood, the Galaxy Tab S features Android KitKat 4.4, 3GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of storage with a microSD slot that supports up to 128GB. The front camera is 2.1MP and the rear 8MP camera has an LED flash. No word on the exact processor on board just yet, other than it's a quad-core SoC. It's likely a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 though an Exynos variant or perhaps even Tegra 4 wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility.
60884935
submission
MojoKid writes:
Google's Project Tango tablet is a 3D mapping and spatially-aware device that, with number of cameras and sensors on it, can detect its surroundings and your movements in three dimensions. As such, you can utilize the device to develop applications and uses that integrate the physical world around you in a virtual representation on screen. From augmented reality, to gaming and terrain mapping, the things you could conceivably do with a device like this are rather fascinating. Until today, we haven't gotten a lot of detail regarding exactly what makes Project Tango tick but the folks at NVIDIA have helped, along with Google, to let the cat out of the proverbial bag. It appears that the just announced Project Tango development kit is based on a 7-inch Android tablet with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and it's powered by NVIDIA's new Tegra K1 integrated processor and SoC (System On a Chip). Interestingly, previous versions of Project Tango have been torn down, revealing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 under the hood. However, it appears Google needed a bit more juice and is also going with NVIDIA's new low power mobile beast. Word is Google's Project Tango Developer's Kit will be available "later this year" and will cost exactly $1024. Wouldn't you know it, that price fits neatly into a 1KB memory space. Think they meant to do that?
60660711
submission
MojoKid writes:
Last week, Microsoft unveiled the third iteration of its Surface Pro tablet, the aptly named Surface Pro 3. Unlike previous revisions to the product, the new Surface Pro 3 can be considered a major overhaul. Not only does the new device feature more powerful internal components and offer a handful of new features, but its form factor is a complete departure from the previous version, thanks to its screen's 3:2 aspect ratio. The particular model tested here is built around an Intel Core i5-4300U processor with integrated Intel HD 4400 series graphics, 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, and a 256GB SSD. For users that care about performance, the Surface Pro 3's unique cooling solution with its cylindrical-shaped fansink could be what sets this device apart, offering up to a an Intel Core i7 processor in a tablet form factor but with near silent acoustics and comfortable exterior temperatures. Performance-wise, even the Core i5-based Surface Pro 3 competes or sometimes exceeds the performance of some full-sized Ultrabooks on the market.
60544303
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA recently announced that it would offer a free 24-hour test drive of NVIDIA GRID to anyone who wanted to see what the technology could do. Taking the company up on its offer, it turns out to be pretty impressive technology. NVIDIA's GRID is a virtual GPU technology that allows for hardware acceleration in a virtual environment. It's designed to run in concert with products from Citrix, VMWare, and Microsoft, and to address some of the weaknesses of these applications. The problem with many conventional Virtual Desktop Interfaces (VDIs) is that they're often either too slow for advanced graphics work or unable to handle 3D workloads at all. Now, with GRID, NVIDIA is claiming that it can offer a vGPU passthrough solution that allows remote users to access a virtualized desktop environment built around a high-end CPU and GPU. The test systems the company is using for these 24-hour test drives all use a GRID K520. That's essentially two GK104 GPUs on a single PCB with 8GB of RAM.NVIDIA's Test Drive is designed to give anyone a chance to see how the program works generally, but GRID is designed for corporate deployments across high-speed networks, not for cross-country Internet connectivity from a home account. The TD program is still in beta, the deployment range is considerable, and the test drives themselves are configured for a 1366x768 display at 30 FPS and a maximum available bandwidth cap of 10Mbit.
60377283
submission
MojoKid writes:
The PC market is changing rapidly as tablets supplant some laptops, new players such as the Chromebook disrupt the old WIntel model, and innovations in processors and graphics allow for ever-smaller PCs such as Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) PC. Gigabyte recently introduced a rather unique product that combines the tiny 4.5-inch square form factor of Intel's NUC PC platform together with a mini DLP projector. The Gigabyte Brix Projector measures 4.24 x 4.5 x 1.93 inches (WxLxD) but manages to fit in an Intel Core i3-4010U (1.7GHz) processor with built-in Intel HD 4400 graphics and support for up to 16GB of 1600MHz RAM. Finally, an mSATA slot inside the chassis also supports up to a 256GB SSD. The system's DLP (LED backlight) projector itself offers a resolution of 864x480 with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a purported image size of 7 to 85 inches. It promises 75 ANSI lumen brightness, a contrast ratio of around 900:1, and 3LED (RGB) technology. It's not an HD setup but the potential use cases are interesting. A follow-on version capable of 1080p output would be even more useful for gaming and HD video.
60093361
submission
MojoKid writes:
OCZ was recently acquired by Toshiba and has been going through its product stack, revamping its SSD portfolio with fresh re-designs based on Toshiba NAND Flash memory for not only increased performance but better cost structure as well. OCZ has now replaced their RevoDrive family of PCIe SSD cards with an almost complete re-designed of the product. The RevoDrive 350 is based on the same OCZ VCA 2.0 (Virtualized Controller Architecture) technology as the previous generation but is now enabled with a PCI Express X8 card interface and up to 4 LSI SandForce SD-2282 SSD processors, along with 19nm Toshiba NAND Flash. The good news is, not only is the new RevoDrive 350 faster at 1.8GB/sec claimed bandwidth for sequential reads and 1.7GB/sec for sequential writes, but it's also significantly more affordable, at literally half the price of the previous gen RevoDrive 3 when it first launched. In the benchmarks, the new PCIe card excels at read throughput, regularly hitting its 1.8GB/sec claimed bandwidth, especially with sequential workloads. Write performance is solid as well and the drive competes with the likes of some higher-end and more expensive SLC NAND-based PCIe cards like LSI's WarpDrive and Intel's SSD 910.
59929077
submission
MojoKid writes:
Although Intel isn't quite ready to take the wraps off of its updated Haswell-based processors (codenamed Devil's Canyon) or its next-gen Broadwell-based processors, the company is at the ready with a brand new chipset that ups the ante in terms of features and overall performance. The Z97 Express chipset was designed to be an updated platform for Intel's high-end Haswell-based desktop processors, that adds more high speed SATA ports and M.2 / SATA Express SSD support, but it is also ready for next-gen Broadwell-based processors, which we should be hearing about from Intel shortly. There is another 9-series chipset planned as well, namely the H97. The main differences between the two 9-series chipsets lie in their support for things like overclocking, Intel Smart Response Technology, and vPro management-related features. Z97 chipset motherboards offer similar, though perhaps ever-so-slightly better performance than legacy Z87 boards. There are only a few percentage points here and there that separate the two families in the benchmarks. However, overall system performance will likely improve significantly when using a higher-bandwidth M.2 SSD.
