70536877
submission
MojoKid writes:
Intel recently released its latest generation of NUC small form factor systems, based on the company's new low-power Broadwell-U series processors. The primary advantages of Intel's 5th Generation Core Series Broadwell-U-based processors are better performance-per-watt, stronger integrated graphics, and a smaller footprint, all things that are perfectly suited to the company's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) products. The Intel NUC5i5RYK packs a Core i5-5250U processor with on-die Intel HD 6000 series graphics. The system also sports built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, M.2 SSD support, and a host of other features, all in a 115mm x 111mm x 32.7mm enclosure. Performance-wise the new 5th Gen Core Series-powered NUC benchmarks like a midrange notebook and is actually up for a bit of light-duty gaming, though it's probably more at home as a Home Theater PC, media streamer or kiosk desktop machine.
70508633
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD just unveiled new details about their upcoming Carrizo APU architecture and the company is claiming the processor, which is still built on Global Foundries' 28nm 28SHP node like its predecessor, will nonetheless deliver big advances in both performance and efficiency. When it was first announced, AMD detailed support for next generation Radeon Graphics (DX12, Mantle, and Dual Graphics support), H.265 decoding, full HSA 1.0 support, and ARM Trustzone compatibility. But perhaps one of the biggest advantages of Carrizo is the fact that the APU and Southbridge are now incorporated into the same die; not just two separates dies built into and MCM package. This not only improves performance, but also allows the Southbridge to take advantage of the 28SHP process rather than older, more power-hungry 45nm or 65nm process nodes. In addition, the Excavator cores used in Carrizo have switched from a High Performance Library (HPL) to a High Density Library (HDL) design. This allows for a reduction in the die area taken up by the processing cores (23 percent, according to AMD). This allows Carrizo to pack in 29 percent more transistors (3.1 billion versus 2.3 billion in Kaveri) in a die size that is only marginally larger (250mm2 for Carrizo versus 245mm2 for Kaveri). When all is said and done, AMD is claiming a 5 percent IPC boost for Carrizo and a 40 percent overall reduction in power usage.
70491859
submission
MojoKid writes:
Conventional wisdom in years past was that hackers didn't bother to exploit Apple's OS X operating system because its relatively insignificant market share didn't warrant wasting resources to attack it. The reasoning was, why bother with OS X when Windows was pushing over 90 percent of the worldwide OS market? However, in recent years, Apple has seen an uptick and pretty much dominates when it comes to notebooks priced over $1,000. The higher sales profile for Macs running OS X also means more attention from hackers and malware. A new report shows that both of Apple's major operating systems sat atop the leaderboard when it came to the number of security vulnerabilities during 2014. OS X took top honors with 147 vulnerabilities, 64 of which were labeled as "high risk". iOS took the number two position with 127 vulnerabilities, 32 of which were high risk. Rounding out the top three was the Linux kernel, with 119 total vulnerabilities including 24 high risk, while most Windows versions only had 34 — 38 vulnerabilities in total on average. When it comes to applications, Microsoft's Internet Explorer led the list with 242 total vulnerabilities, nearly twice that of the next closest entry, Google Chrome, with 124 total vulnerabilities.
70451133
submission
MojoKid writes:
What a week it has been for Lenovo. Often considered one of the best of the notebook vendors, it was discovered earlier this week that the company in recent months had been bundling some seriously shady software on many of the PCs it sold to consumers. Not only did this software inject advertising into user Web browsing, it also opened up a can of worms with regards to security. While it seemed at first that Superfish was just another bundled bloatware, Lenovo quickly changed its tune after the web exploded with ire and even US Homeland Security urged removal. That lead up to yesterday, where the company apologized and offered an uninstall guide. Hopefully as the final chapter in this debacle, Lenovo has today released a tool that automatically removes Superfish, rather than forcing the user to jump through hoops to get it off their system.
70384277
submission
MojoKid writes:
The bulk of today’s high-capacity external storage devices still rely on mechanical hard disk drives with spinning media and other delicate parts. Solid state drives are much faster and less susceptible to damage from vibration, of course. That being the case, Samsung saw an opportunity to capitalize on a market segment that hasn't seen enough development it seems--external SSDs. There are already external storage devices that use full-sized SSDs, but Samsung's new Portable SSD T1 is more akin to a thumb drive, only a little wider and typically much faster. Utilizing Samsung's 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology and a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, the Portable SSD T1 redlines at up to 450MB/s when reading or writing data sequentially, claims Samsung. For random read and write activities, Samsung rates the drive at up to 8,000 IOPS and 21,000 IOPS, respectively. Pricing is more in-line with high-performance standalone SSDs, with this 1TB model reviewed here arriving at about $579. In testing, the drive did live up to its performance and bandwidth claims as well.
70342227
submission
bigwophh writes:
Asus announced the super-slim Zenbook UX305 during the IFA trade show in Berlin in September. The machine will be available in two models, one with a 1920x1080 IPS display and one with a QHD+ display that boasts a native resolution of 3200x1800. They’re both built around the power efficient Intel Core M processor, which was designed for ultra-thin, fanless form factors. Intel’s Core M offers some significant advances both in terms of power consumption and performance, which enables many of the design features found on the 12.3mm thin UX305. The Core M 5Y10 in the Asus Zenbook UX305 is complemented by 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, and this is one of the few ultrabooks to feature a matte display. All told, the machine put up some decent numbers in the benchmarks and battery life was excellent.
70021833
submission
MojoKid writes:
Here's a dose of Rebel goodness to tide you over while you wait for the next Star Wars trailer. A drone enthusiast in France recently graced the web with a few videos of a self-built quadcopter with a shell designed to look like the Millennium Falcon. It's enough to make a Star Wars fan tear up. The drone features a blue thruster light, just like the real Millennium Falcon, and has bright front lights as well. Its creator, who goes by "Oliver C", has some serious modding skills. The shape of the Millennium Falcon presented Oliver with some challenges, but he has the balance more or less handled by the time the spaceship (or quadcopter) takes its first flight outside.
69962503
submission
MojoKid writes:
ARM's Cortex-A57 is just now starting to break stride with design wins and full-ramp production in new mobile products. However, today ARM is releasing a wealth of information on its successor: the Cortex-A72. ARM is targeting a core clock of 2.5GHz for the Cortex-A72 and it will be built using a 14nm/16nm FinFET+ process. Using the Cortex-A15 (NVIDIA Tegra 4, Tegra K1) as a baseline, ARM says that the Cortex-A57 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, Samsung Exynos 5433) offers 1.9x the performance. Stepping up to the Cortex-A72, which will begin shipping in next year's flagship smartphones, offers 3.5x the baseline performance of the Cortex-A15. These performance increases are being made within the same power envelope across all three architectures. So in turn, the Cortex-A72 can perform the same workload as the Cortex-A15 while consuming 75 percent less power. Much like the Snapdragon 810, which uses a big.LITTLE configuration (four low-power Cortex-A53 cores paired with four high performance Cortex-A57 cores), future SoCs using the Cortex-A72 will also be capable of big.LITTLE pairings with the Cortex-A53. ARM has also announced its new Mali-T880 GPU, which offers 1.8x the performance of the current generation Mali-T760. Under identical workloads, the Mali-T880 offers a 40 percent reduction in power consumption compared to its predecessor. ARM again also points to optimizations in the Mali-T880 to efficiently support 4K video playback.
69858313
submission
MojoKid writes:
In all of its iterations, NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture has proven to be a good performing, power-efficient GPU thus far. At the high-end of the product stack is where some of the most interesting products reside, however. When NVIDIA launches a new high-end GPU, cards based on the company's reference design trickle out first, and then board partners follow up with custom solutions packing unique cooling hardware, higher clocks, and sometimes additional features. With the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980, NVIDIA's board partners were ready with custom solutions very quickly. These three custom GeForce cards, from enthusiast favorites EVGA, MSI, and Zotac represent optimization at the high-end of Maxwell. Two of the cards are GTX 980s: the MSI GTX 980 Gaming 4G and the Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omgea, the third is a GTX 970 from EVGA, their GeForce GTX 970 FTW with ACX 2.0. Besides their crazy long names, all of these cards are custom solutions, that ship overclocked from the manufacturer. In testing, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 was the fastest, single-GPU available. The custom, factory overclocked MSI and Zotac cards cemented that fact. Overall, thanks to a higher default GPU-clock, the MSI GTX 980 Gaming 4G was the best performing card. EVGA's GeForce GTX 970 FTW was also relatively strong, despite its alleged memory bug. Although, as expected, it couldn't quite catch the higher-end GeForce GTX 980s, but occasionally outpaced the AMD's top-end Radeon R9 290X.
69783151
submission
MojoKid writes:
Dell's 2015 XPS 13 notebook made a splash out at CES this year with its near
bezel-less 13-inch QHD+ (3200X1800) display and Intel's new 5th Gen Core
series Broadwell-U processor.
At 2.8 pounds, the 2015 XPS 13 isn't the absolute lightest 13-inch
ultrabook book out there but it's lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air and
only a few ounces heavier than Lenovo's Core M-powered Yoga 3 Pro. The
machine's Z dimensions are thin, at .33" up front to .6" at its back edge. However, its 11.98" width almost defies the laws of physics, squeezing a 13.3" (diagonal) display into an 11.98-inch frame making it what is essentially the smallest 13-inch ultrabook to hit the market yet. Performance-wise, this review shows its benchmarks numbers are strong and Intel's Broadwell-U seems to be an appreciable upgrade versus the previous generation architecture, along with lower power consumption
69708921
submission
MojoKid writes:
Valve's Steam Machine was all the rage at CES 2014 but as we enter 2015, the SteamOS gaming platform (and Valve's Steam Controller) are still works in progress. SteamOS hasn't been written off, but Dell, which was one of the first PC makers to build a custom console-sized system for SteamOS, made it clear they weren't waiting around. Dell's Alienware gaming brand launched the Alienware Alpha, which is targeted as a living room gaming PC. The Alienware Alpha plugs the holes left by Valve with standard PC and Microsoft hardware, Microsoft-powered software and a simple 10-ft UI developed in house. Instead of shipping with a Steam Controller, for example, the Alpha features an Xbox 360 wireless controller. The 10-foot user interface, which would have been handled by SteamOS, comes courtesy of Dell's custom Alpha UI. And that software, in turn, runs on Windows 8.1, though you can choose to boot directly to Windows if you wish. You can also boot to Steam Big Picture mode. Prices on the various Alpha models currently available range from $499 to $899. The processor selection includes Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 CPUs and 8GB of memory. For graphics, Alpha relies on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The system can handle most modern game titles at 1080p resolution with medium to high image quality. It's a decent little gaming rig that looks good and blends in well with a home theater setup.
69522115
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA is launching a new Maxwell desktop graphics card today, targeted at the sweet spot of the graphics card market ($200 or so), currently occupied by its previous gen GeForce GTX 760 and older GTX 660. The new GeForce GTX 960 features a brand new Maxwell-based GPU dubbed the GM206. NVIDIA was able to optimize the GM206's power efficiency without moving to a new process, by tweaking virtually every part of the GPU. NVIDIA's reference specifications for the GeForce GTX 960 call for a base clock of 1126MHz and a Boost clock of 1178MHz. The GPU is packing 1024 CUDA cores, 64 texture units, and 32 ROPs, which is half of what's inside their top-end GeForce GTX 980. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory on GeForce GTX 960 cards is clocked at a speedy 7GHz (effective GDDR5 data rate) over a 128-bit memory interface. The new GeForce GTX 960 is a low-power upgrade for gamers with GeForce GTX 660 class cards or older that make up a good percentage of the market now. It's usually faster than the previous generation GeForce GTX 760 card but, depending on the game title, can trail it as well, due to its narrower memory interface.
69486895
submission
sciencehabit writes:
When it comes to brains, bigger is definitely better. Now, scientists have pinpointed 8 genes that help determine the size of key brain regions that influence everything from memory to motor control. These variants may represent “the genetic essence of humanity,” says Stephan Sanders, a geneticist and pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco.
69438487
submission
MojoKid writes:
Dell has been strategically setting-up their new Venue 8 7000 tablet for cameo appearances over the past few months, starting back at Intel Developer's Forum in September of last year, then again at Dell World in November and at CES 2015. What's interesting about this new device, in addition to Intel's RealSense camera is its Atom Z3580 quad-core processor, which is based on Intel's latest Moorefield architecture. Moorefield builds upon Intel's Cherrytrail Atom feature set and offers two additional CPU cores with up to a 2.3GHz clock speed, an enhanced PowerVR 6430 GPU and support of faster LPDDR3-1600 memory. Moorefield is also built for Intel's XMM 7260 LTE modem platform, which supports carrier aggregation. Overall, Moorefield looks solid, with performance ahead of a Snapdragon 801 but not quite able to catch the 805, NVIDIA Tegra K1 or Apple's A8X in terms of graphics throughput. On the CPU side, Intel's beefed-up quad-core Atom variant shows well.
69417825
submission
MojoKid writes:
Making wireless charging a viable thing is far from being a new goal, but to date, no method has caught on in a big way. Microsoft might have an alternative solution that involves light rays, but not solar pads. Because indoor light is so weak compared to outdoor light, it's not realistic to rely on those light rays to charge a device. So, Microsoft built its own charger, in the form of a light fixture. Equipped with a high-powered LED flashlight, whenever this light fixture detects a compatible device kicking around, it'll begin beaming light straight at it. However, a big problem arises here immediately: no one is likely to want a light randomly pointing at their phone. It's mentioned that infrared lights could be used down-the-road to fix that problem. Also, this charger won't simply continue to charge a device when its battery is full. Via an on-phone LED, the mobile device would handshake with the light source, and either charge or not charge depending on the battery-level.
