46816161
submission
MojoKid writes
"As with any major CPU microarchitecture launch, one can expect the usual 10~15% performance gains, but Intel apparently has put its efficiency focus into overdrive. Haswell should provide 2x the graphics performance, and it's designed to be as power efficient as possible. In addition, the company has further gone on to state that Haswell should enable a 50% battery-life increase over last year's Ivy Bridge. If the company delivers on this promise, then users stand to greatly benefit while its leading competitor might have to go back to the drawing board. There are a couple of reasons why Haswell is so energy-efficient versus the previous generation, but the major reason is moving the CPU voltage regulator off of the motherboard and into the CPU package, creating a Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator, or FVIR. This is a far more efficient design and with the use of "enhanced" tri-gate transistors, current leakage has been reduced by about 2x — 3x versus Ivy Bridge."Link to Original Source
46787671
submission
MojoKid writes
"Hot Hardware recently set out to design a custom mini desktop system with the popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, the goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. This small DIY project is just one of many examples of the flexibility of Raspberry Pi's open architecture. And to think you can even run Quake and Minecraft on it."Link to Original Source
46777441
submission
MojoKid writes
"AMD has lifted the veil on its next-gen, low-power APUs targeted at mobile and ultra-mobile form factors. Kabini and Temash are not simple updates to existing products, however. They feature newly-designed CPU cores fused to a Graphics Core Next-based GPU, and they're designed to considerably improve performance while also operating at lower power. Kabini is the follow-up product to AMD’s very successful Brazos line of products. Temash and Kabini are based on the same microarchitecture and share essentially the same feature set, but Temash targets small form factor notebooks, tablets, and hybrids 13-inches and smaller. AMD puts Temash-based products under the “2013 AMD Elite Mobility APU” umbrella, and the SoCs will come in dual (A4) and quad-core (A6) configurations. Performance-wise, the A4-5000 matches up well versus similar clock speed Core i3 CPUs from Intel but with a significantly stronger integrated graphics engine."Link to Original Source
46776975
submission
MojoKid writes
"Today marks the arrival of NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 780, a graphics card that is essentially a GeForce GTX Titan, with a scaled down GK110 GPU with an 863MHz core clock (900MHz Boost) and a smaller, but still relatively large, 3GB complement of video memory. As its name suggest, the new GeForce GTX 780 falls in above the GeForce GTX 680, and just below the GTX Titan, performance-wise but at a much more palatable price point."Link to Original Source
46601493
submission
MojoKid writes
"In an effort to coax developers to begin taking Atom seriously as an Android platform, Intel has just released a complete suite of tools that should help ease them into things — especially since it can be used for ARM development as well. It's called Beacon Mountain, named after the highest peak outside of Beacon, New York. As you'd expect, Beacon Mountain supports Jelly Bean (4.2) development, and with this suite, you're provided with a collection of important Intel tools: Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, Integrated Performance Primitives, Graphics and System Performance Analyzers, Threaded Building Blocks and Software Manager. In addition, Android SDK and NDK, Eclipse and Cygwin third-party tools are included to complete the package."Link to Original Source
46589447
submission
Deathspawner writes
"Whether you like it or not, companies have proven that they want our heads in the cloud. Adobe’s recent move to shift its entire Creative Suite there and make it subscription-only solidifies that fact. While there are some downsides to this movement that are blatantly obvious, the biggest devil may be hiding quietly in the details. Techgage explores these oft-overlooked downsides."Link to Original Source
46569349
submission
MojoKid writes
"Japan’s NEC has created a smartphone that actually employs liquid cooling, which is a development that is either awesome or stupid, and we’re not decided as to which it is yet. In any case, the NEC Medias X N-06E smartphone indeed has a water-filled heatpipe that pulls heat away from the device’s processor, apparently dispelling the heat through the phone’s polycarbonate exterior; there’s also a graphene sheet on the motherboard, providing a nice additional heat buffer."Link to Original Source
46559991
submission
MojoKid writes
"It's no secret that Intel is readying processors based in its Haswell microarchitecture. The new chips are due to be released in the not too distant future and feature a number of noteworthy enhancements, including a much more powerful integrated graphics core. When Haswell arrives, it will supplant current Ivy Bridge-based processors, which target more mainstream market segments. For the foreseeable future, however, Intel's big dog remains Sandy Bridge-E, the monstrous six-core beast which utilizes the X79 Express chipset and socket LGA 2011. That processor is the Core i7-3970X and Intel has clearly been tuning up the manufacturing process because some chips are capable of hitting 4.78GHz and higher on standard air cooling. Benchmark-wise, even at stock speeds of 3.5GHz (4Ghz Turbo Boost), this latest speed bin of Sandy Bridge-E is appreciably faster than the previous gen chip."Link to Original Source
46531175
submission
MojoKid writes
"AMD is announcing its Radeon HD 8970M today. The mobile GPU is based on a design that has a few small feature changes that have led it to be unofficially labeled a Graphics Core Next (GCN) 1.1 part versus AMD's previous gen GCN 1.0 technology. AMD claims that the Radeon HD 8970M is significantly faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680M in a variety of tests, but high-end laptops that use AMD hardware are harder to find these days."Link to Original Source
46539003
submission
MojoKid writes
"Folks have been eagerly anticipating the Google I/O conference and the company delivered with a ton of updates and new products. The Android platform is enjoying a number of new upgrades.Google announced Google Play Music All Access, which is the oft-rumored Google music subscription service; for a monthly fee of $9.99, you can create “radio stations” based on any artist, store up to 20,000 of your own uploaded tracks in the cloud. In addition, the Google Play store will carry a special Google version of the Samsung Galaxy S4, which will offer the same “Google experience” as the Nexus devices and will retail for $649. Google+ got some goosing, too; Stream received a multi-column layout with larger media that’s designed to unify the look across devices, and it includes hashtags so you can dig deeper about a given topic right from a post. Finally, There’s a whole new Google Maps interface that offers personal maps that adapt to you, your environment, and your needs. For example, Google Maps can use your usual routes, such as those from home and work, to start adding helpful points of interest, such as places you might like to eat in the immediate area."Link to Original Source
46537765
submission
shaneaustin220 writes
"In an update on the early progress of the transition to enhanced campaigns last night, Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce at Google — and the lead on enhanced campaigns — said that close to two million campaigns have been set to enhanced. That’s up from 1.5 million Google quoted on the first quarter earnings call on April 18.
Based on positive case studies from clothing retailer American Apparel, financial services provider Woodbridge Structured Funding, and an unnamed luxury shopping brand among others, Ramaswamy says early adopters of enhanced campaigns are seeing better conversion rates and lower costs-per-click, while saving time on management."Link to Original Source
46499041
submission
bigwophh writes
"NVIDIA’s Android-based, portable gaming system and media streaming device, originally known as Project SHIELD, was a big hit at CES. NVIDA has since dropped "Project" from the name and it appears the device is about ready to ship. If you’re unfamiliar with SHIELD, it is essentially a game controller with a built-in, flip-up 5” multi-touch screen. It is powered by NVIDIA’s own Tegra 4 quad-core SoC (System-on-Chip) with ARM A15 CPU cores, 72 GPU cores, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 802.11n 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and GPS support, among a number of other features. In addition to offering an array of Tegra-optimized games, part of SHIELD’s allure is the ability to wirelessly stream games and other media from a GeForce GTX-powered PC to any TV connected to SHIELD. Pricing for the device is set at $349 and pre-sales begin on May 20."Link to Original Source
46476417
submission
MojoKid writes
"For the past decade, AMD and Intel have been racing each other to incorporate more components into the CPU die. Memory controllers, integrated GPUs, northbridges, and southbridges have all moved closer to a single package, known as SoCs (system-on-a-chip). Now, with Haswell, Intel is set to integrate another important piece of circuitry. When it launches next month, Haswell will be the first x86 CPU to include an on-die voltage regulator module, or VRM. Haswell incorporates a refined VRM on-die that allows for multiple voltage rails and controls voltage for the CPU, on-die GPU, system I/O, integrated memory controller, as well as several other functions. Intel refers to this as a FIVR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator), and it apparently eliminates voltage ripple and is significantly more efficient than your traditional motherboard VRM. Added bonus? It's 1/50th the size."Link to Original Source
46423799
submission
MojoKid writes
"Is the world really ready to shift from native apps to HTML5 Web apps? Probably not, at least not in North America yet, but developing nations may see it differently. That's the hope with Firefox OS, a web-based operating system that's (in theory) a lot more open. Of course, one needs only look at Microsoft's battle to get Windows Phone into a place of competition to realize that gaining market share is no easy task, which is why Mozilla will soon be handing out Firefox OS developer phones in order to bolster that. The company's goal is to get app builders to build for Firefox OS, so Mozilla is sending out free Preview handsets for folks to tinker with."Link to Original Source
46346899
submission
MojoKid writes
"After some delays in manufacturing, the highly anticipated HTC One smartphone is officially here. Although this high-end smartphone has not received the same buzz that Samsung’s much-hyped Galaxy S 4 enjoyed, the One has many compelling features that will give Samsung and Apple some serious competition among savvy consumers. The HTC One features a full-metal, zero-gap unibody design along with a number of features that set the phone apart, including HTC "BoomSound" which combines front-facing stereo speakers with dedicated amplifiers and Beats Audio integration. The phone's "UltraPixel Camera" only sports a 4 megapixel sensor but according to HTC, this sensor is capable of capturing 300% more light than most leading 13 megapixel cameras. As the flagship smartphone in HTC’s line-up, the One features a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor along with 2GB of RAM. The phone is available in both 32GB and 64GB models, depending on your carrier. In the benchmarks, the One scores right up there with the likes of the Galaxy S4 but in certain graphics tests, can't quite catch the iPhone 5."Link to Original Source