AMD Holds Contests For 40th Anniversary
What better way to celebrate a company anniversary than to hold a few contests? That’s apparently exactly what the guys down at AMD were thinking. As you may or may not have already known, today (May 1) is AMD’s 40th anniversary. Are you interested in getting a top-of-the-line graphics card just from doing a 60-second video? Or how about a nice, new processor for a decent photo? You better continue reading.
For AMD’s video contest, all you have to do is record a video wishing AMD a happy 40th. You can write a song, do a sketch, or even do a QuickCapture if you’re not a very imaginative person. Videos will not be accepted if you forget to say “Happy 40th Anniversary, AMD.” Don’t forget. All entries must be sent to amdcontests@bitepr.com. Three grand prize winners will each receive high-end ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, while 40 first place winners will each receive an ATI Radeon 4650 graphics card. Read more
Toshiba 400GB 2.5-Inch HDD Launched Today
Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of high performance 2.5-inch HDDs, including a low-noise flagship model that boosts areal density to 477Mbit/mm2 (308Gbpsi) to achieve a capacity of 400GB on just two platters, plus five drives that bring new levels of performance and 7,200rpm rotational speeds to the company’s full range of storage capacities.
Mass production of the 400GB MK4058GSX will start from September, targeting notebook PC and consumer electronic applications. Mass production of the 7,200rpm drives will start in August. The line-up includes the 320GB MK3254GSY and models with 80, 120, 160 and 250GB capacities.
Toshiba will feature the new drives at DISKCON JAPAN 2008, organized by The International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), which will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from July 22 to 23, and at IFA 2008, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics trade fairs, which will be held in Berlin, Germany, from August 29 to September 3.
The MK4058GSX uses an improved read-write head and enhanced magnetic layer to boost areal density to 477Mbit/mm2 and achieve a capacity of 400GB on only two platters, the highest data density of any of Toshiba’s 2.5-inch HDD. A further plus is that acoustic noise during data seek has been reduced by 2 decibels (dB), compared to the company’s current top-of-the-line 320GB MK3252GSX, making operation almost inaudible. As a result, the new 400GB drive is ideally suited for noise-free playback of movies and music on notebook PCs and digital products. These advances are complemented by an improved energy consumption efficiency*2 that makes the MK4058GSX approximately 20% more efficient than Toshiba’s current top-of-the-line MK3252GSX.
The five other drives that Toshiba has added to its line-up take full advantage of a 7,200rpm rotation speed to boost performance. Compared to the current 200GB model (MK2049GSY), the 320GB MK3254GSY improves maximum internal data transfers rate by approximately 14% to support high-speed processing of high volume data, meeting demand for notebook and desktop PCs offering faster performance. The 320GB drives is also 37% more efficient than the MK2049GSY in terms of energy consumption efficiency*2. All of the drives, available in a line-up of 80, 120, 160, 250 and 320GB capacities, support an optional Free Fall Sensor function, that detects a falling HDD and parks the head before impact.
A Closer and Sharper Look At Things With The AM411T Dino-Lite Digital Microscope
Learning is a never-ending process. This is best manifested by the curiosity that hits each and everyone of us about things around us that are not easily explained and not readily seen. Technology, as always, endeavors to provide an answer – the AM411T Dino-Lite Pro USB Digital Microscope.
Reinforced Inno3D Poised To Conquer Gaming Market
two heads are better than one. In the high-technology computing arena, this serves as a valuable principle in which success can be founded. Inno3D, in partnership with after-market cooling specialist Arctic Cooling, has had a great impact on today’s highly competitive gaming enthusiast market through its iChill series of graphic cards.
One of the latest products to come out of this successful teamup is the iChill series’ Inno3D 8800 GT Accelero X1.
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Maxtor BlackArmor: Beauty Meets Security
The growing trend in technological advancement these days is either going green or going secure. With the BlackArmor USB Hard Drive, Maxtor steered its path towards the latter.
VIA Mini-ITX 2.0 Adds Multimedia Features
By announcing their new Mini-ITX 2.0 model, VIA set a ‘minimum standard of the latest PC technology’. This standard includes new features such as a 16-lane PCI Express, to sustain a state of the art graphics card, Blu-ray disc playback to DirectX 10 support and a 6-channel surround sound. Read more
New Infos About The Intel Atom 330
In our previous posts about the Intel Atom processor we were unable to provide more informations about the model due to the very little data leaking out of the Intel labs. Today, rumors are gathering up, as more details come in about the Atom series. Read more
Intel To Release A Dual Core Atom Processor
There were rumors that Intel was going to release a dual core Atom processor and now Fudzilla brought a few details, along with the confirmation. The first dual core processor will be called Atom 330 and will have a frequency of 1.6Ghz, along with 1MB of cache, and a TDP rating oh 8W. The rumor about the 1.87Ghz versions hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it might soon.
We should expect the Intel Atom 330 by Q3, this year, but we currently don’t have information about pricing.
Containership Powersupply Sails In Your Home
This Containership Powersupply was announced by giffintermeer to participate at the ICCF Javits Convention Center. It surely resembles a ship and can accommodate all the power adapters from your personal space. Read more
Dominator Sets New DDR3 Speed Record
Effects of overclocking reached insane levels at Corsair labs: they made a 1GB stick of Dominator DDR3 SDRAM to run at 2462MHz, which is the highest frequency ever encountered in RAMs. This is heaven for gamers, as, along with other appropriate PC components, these sticks can make any resources-consuming application run very smoothly.
VIA Adopts 45nm Process And Will Launch Dual-Core Processors In 2009
DigiTimes announced that VIA Technologies will adopt the 45nm manufacturing process for their processors and they are expected to launch their first dual-core processors by the end next year. According to the same source, it seems like VIA said something about the Isaiah-based processor which could feature a 2GHz core and 800-1333MHz V4 Bus speed, among others. Also, it seems like Fujitsu will manufacture the CPU and they will adopt the 65nm process. In the end, VIA said that they expect to equal the shipments of first-half 2008 with the total shipments in 2007.
SpursEngine Co-Processor Reaches Assay Stage
The SpursEngine co-processor chip has just been released for testing purposes, as the Toshiba engineers believe it is almost ready for common use. The processor was inspired by Sony’s PS3 Cell, and contains a hardware codec that decodes and encodes MPEG-2/H.264 videos and uses 4 processor cores instead of the 8 from Cell.
It was designed to handle video manipulation and graphics processing in real time and can handle all its assigned tasks. The processor already went through tests, like gesture control, HD video transcoding or facial recognition.
The co-processor has a great amount of power for multitasking and surely can speed up heavy-duty processing. Above all, its price will be somewhere around $50, so the quality/cost ratio is very good too.
40Gbps Internet Connection Used For Drying The Laundry
What would you do if you would have the fastest internet connection in the world? Well, here is what Sigbritt Löthberg (photo), the Swedish that actually has it, uses it for: drying her laundry. With the 40Gbps speed you can download a full DVD in just a second and browse the web like your computer’s folders.
Right now, the 75 year old lady was taken the kit away for further testing in a different location, but Hafsteinn Jonsson, leading the fiber network operation for Karlstad Stadsnät, stated that they are considering giving her a 100Gbps connection in the summer. ‘Then she’ll be able to dry all her neighbors’ laundry too’, the same man joked afterwards.
Peter Löthberg, Sigbritt’s son, is behind the project that aimed at demonstrating how a cheap low capacity fibre line can be built over long distances. The secret of the ultra-speed connection is a modulation technique that allows data to be transferred between two routers at a 2,000 kilometers one from the other directly, excluding any intermediary transponders.
Atom Processor For Only $6 To $8
It seems that Intel has found a new goldmine to exploit in the Atom processors, a new generation of chips designed primarily for the mobile market. It is expected that one chip will cost between $6 to $8 in which the production, packaging and shipping prices are included.
The launch of new item is believed to be the biggest product launch of Intel after the release of the Pentium processors. Atom (previously known as Silverthorn) will have a production cost near the one for a 286 CPU, as Intel states, and it could be produced in hundreds of millions of units per year.
Although we can’t predict its exact price and we’ll have to wait until it is officially launched to see what it will be, rumors place the cheapest of the series in a range of $29 and $49. If we look at the measly $8 Intel will pay for each of them, we can already imagine the sort of profits this new release will bring to Intel.
Intel And Microsoft Join Forces To Reinvent Computing
Microsoft and Intel are the biggest companies from the software and, respectively, from the hardware market, but that didn`t stop them to come together with a $20 million grant for two universities. With these funds, Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers from UC -Berkeley and The University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana will have to research and develop a way to make “parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming”, according to the head of the UIUC lab, Mark Snir.
He was referring to the fact that in recent years, companies stopped developing faster-processing chips, and concentrated their efforts on making multiple chips work together on the same silicon chip instead. This way, more computer functions can be processed in parallel, and not one at a time. The problem with these new systems is that programmers today are still writing programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.
The most advanced microprocessors have up to eight cores on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more. Again, researchers state that the issue is not regarding the hardware component, but that a software to keep 10 or more processors busy simply does not exist.
If the research efforts of these universities will be successful, the processing power resulted will lead to developing new sorts of portable PCs and would be decisive in improving areas like image processing, speech recognition, health care systems and music. For example, the digital musical instruments could be as versatile and complex as pianos or violins.