Xbox 720 to copy Wii U touchscreen controller

Microsoft looks set to copy some of the features of Nintendo's Wii U, with plans to use a touchscreen controller in its Xbox 720 next-generation game console.

 

Sources cited by Xbox World magazine said that Microsoft is experimenting with a tablet controller with touchscreen capability, but that it will be closer in shape and size to the PlayStation Vita than the Wii U's somewhat larger controller.

 

Gamers might immediately accuse Microsoft of being a copycat, but it likely learned its lesson when the Wii released with features completely different to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While some are not sure about Nintendo's new controller, Microsoft appears to recognise its potential, which takes advantage of the tablet craze since the launch of the original iPad in 2010.

 

 

Samsung unveils Ivy Bridge powered notebook too early

Unless Intel has decided to move the launch of its Ivy Bridge processors forward, Samsung is getting way ahead of itself as the company had put up one of its Ivy Bridge powered notebooks – the NP700G7C – on its US website yesterday. Beyond having an Ivy Bridge processor, the 17.3-inch notebook also sports Nvidia 600-series mobile graphics.

The product page has since then been pulled, but thanks to Google's cache the details are still available. As for the notebook, it's part of Samsung's 7-series, although there seems to either be a mistake in the specifications, or Samsung posted the wrong pictures as the key count for the keyboard doesn't add up. That aside, we're looking at a fully loaded notebook here with a Core i7-3610QM quad core CPU clocked at 2.3GHz with 6MB of L3 cache, 16GB of RAM (using four 4GB modules) and a pair of 1TB hard drives in RAID with the addition of Samsung's ExpressCache which adds 8GB of on-board flash memory as an SSD caching solution.

Apple files another US patent suit against Samsung

Apple has filed another U.S. patent lawsuit against Samsung Electronics and is seeking a preliminary injunction asking a federal judge to halt sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone while the case makes its way through the court.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, with a redacted copy of the case made publicly available Friday night. The lawsuit involves four Apple patents for technology that allows users to touch a phone number on a Web page to dial the number, word placement, Siri voice recognition and unified search, and the ability to unlock a smartphone by sliding an image from one location to another.

"Sales of the Galaxy Nexus during this litigation will cause irreparable harm to Apple," the company said in the lawsuit. "The smartphone market is at a critical juncture, as the overwhelming majority of consumers move to smartphones, and the consumers' long-term preferences and purchases may be determined to a great extent by the operating system on their first smartphone." The importance of that initial purchase "is precisely why Samsung copies Apple's products and incorporates Apple's patented features, i.e., in order to lure crucial first-time purchasers away from Apple."

Samsung's decision to sell the Galaxy Nexus in the U.S. "is all the more egregious considering that Samsung did so in the face of this Court's prior determination that Samsung's earlier devices likely infringe certain Apple patents and that sales of such devices would likely cause Apple 'to lose market share to Samsung' that 'could support a finding of irreparable harm'," the latest lawsuit says.

Amazon Might Launch New 7-inch and 9-inch Kindle Fire Tablets Mid-Year

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet continue to sell like hotcakes, assuming hotcakes sell like, well, Kindle Fire devices. The point is Amazon successfully launched a 7-inch competitor to the iPad and all the also-rans in the tablet space, so if you're Amazon, what do you do for a second act? Launch a bigger version, of course.

According to Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley, Amazon is indeed getting ready to launch a larger size Kindle Fire device, along with a refreshed 7-inch model.

"We are raising our 2012 sales forecasts to 14.9 million from 12.7 million. But we believe there is an upward bias, particularly from the new 7- and 9-inch models, which we expect to launch in mid-2012," Bartley wrote in a note to investors.

A full-size or nearly full-size tablet version of the Kindle Fire could spice things up, especially if Amazon is again aggressive with pricing. To do that, however, it would probably have to omit certain features. The existing Kindle Fire, for example, sells for just $199 but doesn't have a microSD card slot, front- or rear-facing cameras, a microphone, 3G connectivity, HDMI output, or even Bluetooth. Some of these may find their way onto second generation Fire devices, but it's hard to imagine all of them will.

Plantronics BackBeat 216 and BackBeat 116 headphones promise superb audio quality at amazing prices

Plantronics has announced the two new BackBeat stereo headphones with microphone for smartphones with multimedia capabilities. Compatible with iPhone and Android phones, the BackBeat 216 and BackBeat 116 headphones deliver high-quality audio performance and easy switching between music and calls. The Plantronics BackBeat 216 is a certified headphone with microphone for the Apple iPod, iPhone and iPad. The corded stereo headphones provide plug-and-play simplicity and feature noise-isolating ear buds with neodymium micro-speakers that boost bass levels and deliver well-balanced high and mid ranges. The BackBeat 216 also features a discreet inline controller with built-in microphone for convenient calling plus volume and music track control.

Rumour: NVIDIA GK104 Specifications

Needless to say, such reports should be taken with fair amounts of salt. However, 3D Center's previous such compilation for Tahiti turned out to be fairly accurate.

Kepler introduces a radical new architecture but the overall structure may be somewhat similar to Fermi. GK104 features 4 overall Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC) - twice that of GF114. Each GPC has 4 SMs - same as GF114. However, each SM now consists of 96 SP or CUDA cores - again twice that of GF114. Each SM features 8 TMU. The end resut is 16 SMs, 1536 SP and 128 TMU. GK104 continues to feature 32 ROP and 256-bit memory interface like GF114.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview to debut on February 29

On February 29, the third day of Mobile World Congress 2012 which takes place in Barcelona, Spain - Microsoft will host an event between 15-17h (3-5PM) Central European Time.

 

Titled "Windows 8 Consumer Preview", the official name of publicly available Windows 8 Beta (current development releases are Builds 8220 and 8224), the new version of operating system will be the first to target the conventional PC market as well as tablets and smartphones - through Windows Phone 8 (which shares the same kernel, heart of Windows operating system). As you can see in the screenshot above, there is a lot of changes coming to the conventional perception of Windows user interface. First off, you'll note that the orb is no longer in the left corner of the Windows tray... further more, there is a shift from left-centric approach to a right-centric approach, with key icons and controls being positioned on the right.

AMD refreshes FirePro series at the entry level with V3900

AMD's FirePro family of graphics cards for the Professional/Workstation user has just seen a new addition today with the launch of the FirePro V3900 which replaces the V3800. AMD promises best-in-class workstation experiences at an entry level price point with this card - that being  £95 at select online resellers.

Compared to the V3800, the V3900 gets double the memory at 1GB and uses a GPU derived from the 6800 family of Radeon cards, dubbed "TURKS". The card's 128-bit DDR3 memory arrangement gives it 28.8GB/s of memory bandwidth compared to the V3800 which had a 64-bit interface providing half the bandwidth at 14.4GB/s.

I-O Data soon to release new 23-inch IPS display

I-O Data is readying up a new 23-inch IPS based monitor for launch at the end of the month, initially set to arrive in the Japanese market at an equivilent cost of about US $347.

Dubbed the LCD-MF234XPGBR, this IPS display uses LED backlighting and has 178 / 178 degree viewing angles along with a native 1920 x 1080 resolution. Its maximum brightness is rated at 250 cd/m2 along with a constrast ratio of 1000:1 (80,000:1 DCR).

Habey USA Unveils Fanless Embedded PC

Embedded computing manufacturer Habey USA announced the BIS-6630, a small, fanless embedded computer with an Intel Atom N2800 (1.83 GHz) or D2700 (2.13 GHz) at its core. The D2700 version also has a PowerVR SGX545 GPU (640MHz) which purports to offer 60% improvement in graphics performance over previous Atoms.

Home security camera breach lets hackers spy on people

Thousands of home security camera have been breached by hackers, allowing people to bypass password security and spy on people in their houses, including children in their bedrooms.

 

The major security concern affects the live video feeds of 26 different Trendnet models and the first vulnerabilities were detected as early as 12 January, yet the problem is only coming to light now.

 

Trendnet contacted users who registered their devices with it, but only five percent of users have registered, leaving 95 percent of affected customers still exposed to a nightmare privacy invasion.

 

The company is issuing firmware upgrades to plug the security holes and has released the update for seven of the 26 affected models so far. Trendnet hopes to release the other updates within the next week. As many as 50,000 cameras could be vulnerable.

 

ASUS Singapore announces RT-N53 Black Diamond dual band wireless router

ASUS Singapore has recently announced the launch of their latest RT-N53 Black Diamond dual band wireless router, designed to bring the best home and office networking experience to users. It has a slim and elegant wall-mountable design, universal repeater mode that extends and enhances Wi-Fi network coverage, and boasts data rates of up to 600Mpbs at bandwidth with simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

AMD execs tout firm's tablet plans

With new CEO Rory Read at the helm for about six months, Advanced Micro Devices has turned its attention to the lucrative and burgeoning tablet market.

The question is whether it's too late for AMD, which hasn't been at the top of its game recently, to successfully enter a new market, analysts said.

"I don't think [AMD is too late]," said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT. "The company's focus on a combination of quality graphics performance, energy efficiency and competitive cost should be right down the alley of many tablet makers.

"Plus, he added, "rumors of Apple's world domination aside, the tablet market is anything but mature. I expect we'll see any number of challengers rising up and even winning in some markets."

Lisa Su, general manager of AMD's Global Business Units, told analysts and reporters last week that the company is going after the tablet market "in a big way."

AMD is betting that a new 40-nanometer chip, code-named Hondo, will power Windows 8-based tablets once it starts shipping later this year.
AMD and Intel both have been slow to make headway in the mobile market, whether tablets or smartphones. And that's been a problem for both chip giants.

Intel Realigning Atom Processor Strategy Away from Netbooks

Netbook sales aren't what they used to be. A combination of factors ended the netbook craze that existed not all that long ago, including the rising popularity of tablet PCs, lower cost notebooks, and the recent introduction of highly portable Ultrabooks. Underscoring this point is the fact that Intel's Atom processor and chipset revenue fell by nearly a third (32 percent) in the Q3 2011 compared to the same quarter in 2010, according to IHS iSuppli. So what does the future hold for Atom?

Looking ahead, Intel is shifting its Atom strategy towards network-attached storage (NAS) devices, entry-level servers, and embedded applications. This shift will begin with the introduction of Intel's next Atom CPU -- Centerton -- built on a 32nm manufacturing process with a slim architecture and low power consumption, according to DigiTimes.

Skipping ahead to 2013, Intel will following up Centerton with 22nm Silvermont-based Atom processors, and then 14nm Airmont-based Atom chips in 2014. By then, Intel hopes to have a better foothold in the tablet PC market, the same one that's been partially responsible for consumers' waning interest in netbooks.

Gigabyte X79-UD3 Motherboard Obliterates X79 Overclocking Record with F7 BIOS

Back in the days of old, overclocking used to require setting DIP switches and chanting prayers to the gods of clockspeed and stability. There was a good chance you could burn something up, and if you did, the motherboard vendor would simply shrug. And today?

 

Some of them will still shrug with indifference if you kill your hardware by overclocking, but the culture has changed dramatically. Not only do motherboard makers routinely tout overclocking-friendly features, but they actively participate in OCing competitions and are quick to brag when their gear is used to set new world records. Today is Gigabyte's day to gloat.

Das Keyboard Unveils Mechanical Keyboard For Mac

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you'll know that we're big fans of mechanical keyboards. And now, one of the famous ones is making the move to Mac. Das Keyboard today introduced a new version of its award-winning Model S keyboard designed to appeal to a fan base also known for its extreme loyalty - the Mac crowd. The company's new Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac is now available online for pre-ordering, and will be shipping by April 15.

Available in the U.S. and Canada, the Model S Professional for Mac retails for $133. A 15% discount is currently available on all pre-orders for the newest member of the Das Keyboard family.

"Mac fans will appreciate the high-quality and sharp design of our Model S keyboard, especially now that it provides the features and functions that Mac loyalists are used to and expect from their peripheral devices," said Daniel Guermeur, creator of the Das Keyboard and CEO of Metadot Corporation. "Essentially, we've introduced the most advanced mechanical keyboard on the market designed specifically for Mac users."

IBM Quietly Starts to Make Chips for AMD

Advanced Micro Devices has disclosed at an analyst event that it had begun manufacturing of its chips at IBM's facilities. The partnership is believed to ensure AMD's ability to supply its next-generation A-series Fusion chips code-named "Trinity" to PC makers and be in position to compete against Intel Corp.'s Core i-series future products.

"We win together, we have partnership in good times and in difficult times. What we are seeing is a focus on execution running test chips through the [production] line to gather the data [...] with partners from IBM and Globalfoundries," said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD.

Officially, AMD produces its central processing unit (CPUs) exclusively at Globalfoundries (GF), a contract manufacturer of semiconductors controlled by an Abu Dhabi-based financial organization called ATIC and AMD. The chip designer complained throughout 2011 about low production yield at Globalfoundries and even signed an agreement under which it paid GF on per working chips basis, not on per wafer basis.

Corning and Samsung Mobile Display to Make Rigid Glass for OLED Displays.

Corning and Samsung Mobile Display have signed an agreement to establish a new equity venture for the manufacture of specialty glass substrates for the rapidly expanding organic light emitting diode (OLED) device market. The new business will be located in Korea.

Combining Corning’s Lotus Glass substrate technology and Samsung Mobile Display’s OLED display expertise, this new entity is projected to be well-positioned to provide product solutions for current and future OLED technologies, from handheld and IT devices to large TVs and beyond. The newly formed entity will supply OLED backplane glass substrates for Samsung Mobile Display, as well as for the broader Korean market.

According to a recent NPD DisplaySearch report, OLED technology advanced rapidly in 2011, setting a trend that is forecasted to continue through this decade. They estimate that OLED display revenues will exceed $4 billion in 2011 (approximately 4% of flat panel display revenues), and will reach more than $20 billion (approximately 16% of the total display industry) by 2018.

AMD: Leading Graphics Performance Is Critical for Us.

Advanced Micro Devices said at its event for financial analysts that it would ensure performance leadership of its graphics processing units (GPUs) as the technology is critical for the company's further growth. But at the same time, the company is slowing down the progress of its high-performance x86 processors for enthusiast-class desktops as well as servers.

"Graphics technology ends up being the central piece of our entire roadmap. Graphics is a basic building block in terms of parallel processing capability that allows us to accelerate many-many applications. [...] This is really a secret sauce that goes into our APU line," said Lisa Su, general manager of global business units at AMD.

Graphics Performance Is the Key

Since highly-parallel graphics processing units can accelerate different types of workloads dramatically, it is crucial for AMD to ensure development of the best graphics architecture possible so that its accelerated processing units (APUs) could provide better overall user experience than Intel Corp.'s microprocessors. AMD calls processing on different types of cores as heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) and is working hard to improve efficiency of this architecture.

WD's Capacities to Total 58 Million HDDs per Quarter This Summer.

Pricing of hard disk drives may start to go down already this summer as Western Digital, formerly the largest maker of HDDs, expects to restore all of its production capacities that suffered severe flood in Thailand by July, which will mean the end of hard disk shortages.

When asked about actual production capacities of the company going forward, chief executive officer of Western Digital elaborated that the firm expects to have no constraints in terms of manufacturing capacities during the quarter that ends on September 30, 2012 and begins on July 1, 2012. Generally, this means that WD's capacities will be restored completely by June 30, or earlier.

 

Microsoft Officially Releases Kinect for Windows Sensor.

Microsoft Corp. has officially released commercial version of its Kinect software development kit (SDK) for Windows. The tools allow application developers to create programs that run under Windows and utilize motion sensor. In addition, Microsoft started to sell Kinect for Windows hardware device.
The final commercial version of Kinect for Windows SDK includes a number of improvements. Microsoft added support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer, improved skeletal tracking (developers can control which user is being tracked by the sensor), increased speech recognition accuracy and others.

HP Paid Intel $690 Million to Keep Itanium Alive - Court Findings.

In a bid to secure its mission-critical HP-UX platform, Hewlett-Packard has paid Intel Corp. around $690 to keep Itanium microprocessor alive till 2017 and update it in timely manner, court findings reveal.

Back in 2008 the maker of servers paid Intel $440 million in order to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014. In 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium central processing units for HP's machines till 2017, according to Wired. Under the terms of the agreements, HP has to pay for chips it gets from Intel, whereas the latter launches Tukwila, Poulson, Kittson and Kittson+ chips in a bid to gradually boost performance of the platform.

Given the fact that Itanium is essentially on life support, it is not surprising that software makers, including Microsoft and Red Hat have already stopped developing software for Itanium. Large makers of servers, Dell and IBM, dropped Itanium back in 2005. In early 2011 Intel discontinued support for Itanium in its C/C++ and Fortran compilers. In fact, Intel has even relocated engineers developing Itanium products onto Xeon-related projects, another signal that the platform will hardly evolve substantially going forward.


Oracle believes that HP mislead its customers by not disclosing peculiarities of Itanium's future and that Oracle's own decision to stop developing new software for Itanium was fully legitimate. HP believes that Oracle breached a contract and did so in a bid to improve competitive landscape on the business-critical server market in favour of its own Sun SPARC servers. The court found both companies acting unfairly.

Hewlett-Packard needs to keep Itanium microprocessor alive and improving for several years from now because its mission-critical platforms, such as HP-UX, OpenVMS or NonStop, rely on those chips and it will take years before they are ported to Intel Xeon architecture. But HP may need to speed-up its porting efforts as sales of its Integrity and Superdome IA64-based machines have been declining for several consecutive quarters now.

Seagate's Profitability Skyrockets Due to Constraints in Hard Drives Shipments.

Seagate on Tuesday reported financial results for the quarter ended December 30, 2011. Shipments of hard disk drives (HDDs) dropped only 3.1% in terms of units, but at the same time the Seagate's earnings increased by 18.5%, whereas the company's profitability rose whopping 375%. With increased pricing and long-term supply agreements, the HDD industry will change for a long time.

The company shipped 47 million disk drives and reported revenue of $3.2 billion, gross margin of 31.6%, net income of $563 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.28. At the same time a year ago the company shipped 48.9 million disk drives and on a GAAP basis reported revenue of $2.7 billion, gross margin of 19.5%, net income of $150 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.31.

AMD Starts Selling Second Radeon HD 7900-Series Graphics Card.

In a bid to further improve its competitive positions on the market of high-end graphics cards, Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday began selling a cut-down version of its high-end code-named Tahiti graphics chip. The new Radeon HD 7950 promises slightly better performance compared to Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 at lower - $449 - price-point.

The new Radeon HD 7950 "Tahiti Pro" belongs to Southern Islands family of graphics processing units (GPUs) and is based on the so-called graphics core next (GCN) architecture. The model 7950 supports all the advantages that the GCN has to offer, including support for DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2, ultra high-definition output support, optimized power consumption,  and other new technologies.

Compute performance of the Radeon HD 7950 is substantially lower - by around 25% - compared to its older brother 7970. Still, thanks to new architecture and support for new features it is likely to become popular when at $449 price-point.

Mad Catz Cyborg M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Now Available for Pre-order

At $129.99, the Cyborg M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse might be the most expensive rodent you ever buy. It's also one of the most flexible. Now available on pre-order from Mad Catz, the Cyborg M.M.O. 7 is a funktastic looking mouse for gamers with an adjustable weight system, ergonomic finger resting places, multiple buttons, and a high DPI sensor.

The DPI is adjustable from 100 to 6400 in increments of 25, allowing you to fine tune the mouse's behavior based on whether you're charging through an area like Rambo or sniping from a distance. It has 50G of acceleration, a 1,000Hz polling rate, tracking speed of up to 6m/sec, slick PTFE feet, and a gold plated USB connector attached to a braided cable.

It's the adjustable weight system that's the main attraction here. The mouse ships with five 6-gram weights with a storage canister to hold the ones you opt not to use. This is supplemented with two additional pinkie finger rests and two additional palm rests, all of which adds up to what Mad Catz claims is the world's most adjustable gaming mouse.

Clear Introduces Spot Voyager And Hub Express 4G Modems

Clearwire may be biting into LTE in the near future, but WiMAX is at the company's core, and evidently, so is sleek design. The company just launched the Clear Spot Voyager, one of the smallest 4G hotspots on the market. It offers unlimited 4G data plans, and if that one isn't in your wheelhouse, there's also the Clear Hub Express, a combination 4G modem and wireless router to give your home or office high-speed wireless internet.


The Voyager offers 4G sharing with up to eight Wi-Fi devices at the same time, and brings up to six hours of battery life in a form factor of 2.6" squared. The CLEAR Hub Express provides users 4G internet and is the only piece of equipment needed to set up a 4G internet hotspot in a home or office. With the device's built-in wireless router, users have an instant wi-fi network with no set-up or installation required. Unlike service plans from traditional wireless carriers which cap data usage, CLEAR offers unlimited* 4G usage plans that do not require long-term service contracts.

CLEAR offers unlimited* 4G coverage starting as low as $34.99/month for either a home or mobile plan. CLEAR service is currently available in areas of the United States where approximately 130 million people live. A detailed map of service availability can be found at www.clear.com/coverage.

The CLEAR Hub Express is manufactured by Gemtek, costs $99.99 (plus tax and shipping) and is 6.1" x 9.3" x 3.7". The CLEAR Spot Voyager and CLEAR Hub Express both currently are available -- the question is, are you still into WiMAX?

Kinect Sensing Technology Rumored To Hit Notebooks

It didn't take Microsoft long to realize that they had more than they bargained for with Kinect. While originally intended only for use with the Xbox 360, the motion sensing device soon found a home with PC hackers. After first rejecting the notion, Microsoft soon changed their tune and began to embrace the hackerspace. Earlier this month at the company's CES keynote, Steve Ballmer officially unveiled the Kinect for Windows package, which will be fully compatible with Windows PCs and enable hackers to do nearly anything with their Kinect, so long as there's a PC and USB port nearby. Now, The Daily is reporting that the Kinect could soon be coming to notebooks and other portable computers.

Lenovo Quietly Launches IdeaPad Y470p Laptop with Radeon HD 7690M Graphics

If you're looking for a well equipped laptop sporting AMD's new generation graphics technology, Lenovo may have exactly what you've been pining for. Lenovo quietly slipped out its IdeaPad Y470p, a 14-inch notebook with an Intel Core i7 2670QM processor (2.2GHz, 6MB cache), 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory, and AMD Radeon HD 7690 graphics with 1GB of video memory. That's a solid foundation, folks.

It also has a 750GB hard drive (5400 RPM), DVD burner, 2MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, GbE, HDMI, premium JBL speakers, three USB ports + USB/eSATA combo, 6-in-1 card reader, 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit wrapped in a "real metal cover with brushed-metal effect."

The Y470p lists for $1,499 MSRP with a Web price of $1,249. That seems a bit much for a 14-inch laptop, but don't despair if this happens to be your dream laptop, Lenovo currently has it listed for $799 after eCoupon (WKLYDEALSY470P), or about the price of a lower end Ultrabook.

Estimated ship date is February 13, 2012.

AMD Quietly Adopting "Tick-Tock" Model for Micro-Architectures.

Intel Corp.'s so-called "tick-tock" model  of transitioning to new manufacturing processes and micro-architectures has proved to be very efficient in making Intel the maker of the highest-performance microprocessors. Apparently, its smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices is also plotting something similar, but a bit differently.

As it appears from AMD's documents observed by an X-bit labs reader (in the comments for this news-story), starting from Piledriver micro-architecture and going forward, AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units (chips that integrate both x86 and stream processing cores) will feature "reduced", or "early" micro-architectural feature-set, whereas central processing units (CPUs) based on new designs will feature "full" or "late" feature-set. As a result, x86 performance of the former will be lower than x86 performance of the latter.

SanDisk Sees 2012 as Inflection Point for Solid-State Drives.

SanDisk Corp., a leading supplier of NAND flash-based products, believes that this year the demand for solid-state drives (SSDs) will start to grow rapidly as a result of lowering prices, better user experienced and maturity of technology. Even now SanDisk considers its consumer and enterprise SSD businesses a success, going forward the company expects further growth.

"We expect 2012 to mark the inflection point of SSD growth for SanDisk, with both the enterprise in client markets becoming strong contributors to our revenue growth in 2012 and beyond," said Sanjay Mehrota, chief executive officer and president of SanDisk, during the latest conference call with financial analysts.

Imagination Technologies May Introduce Standalone Ray-Tracing Accelerator.

Imagination Technologies, which could not popularize its graphics accelerators for PCs in early 2000s and decided to concentrate on mobile graphics adapters instead, may return to PCs and bring-in real-time ray-tracing accelerators.

Imagination Technologies tried to popularize its tile architecture for graphics processing units (GPUs) in the late nineties and the early thousands. While some products, e.g. Power VR Kyro, managed to boast respectable levels of performance, ImgTec could not capture significant share of the market due to very fast progress demonstrated by ATI Technologies and Nvidia Corp. and the lack of ties with PC OEMs. But the company may get back to discrete accelerator cards for personal computers already this year when it launches real-time ray-tracing accelerators.

Nvidia Lowers Revenue Expectations Due to Hard Drives Shortages.

Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday announced that it expects revenue for the fourth quarter ending January 29, 2012, to be lower than the company's previous outlook provided back in October. The developer of multimedia chips blames shortages of hard disk drives as well as lowering demand towards Tegra 2 system-on-chips for the lowering revenue.

 

WD Does Not Expect Ultrabooks to Boost Popularity of SSDs.

Ultrabooks are projected to capture a considerable part of the notebook market and redefine it in many ways. Many analysts as well as Intel Corp. believe that ultrabooks will boost the demand towards solid-state drives considerably thanks to higher performance and lower power consumption compared to hard disk drives. But Western Digital is confident that HDDs will continue to be popular even inside ultrabooks thanks to low price and high capacities.

 

"I expect ultrabooks to have traditional hard drives, hybrid hard drives and SSDs. [...] We think that the SSD penetration profile will be in very low single digits in a mature ultrabook environment. We see an emerging position for hybrids a little early to develop a view on exactly what percentage of penetration, but we see hybrids as a very compelling alternative on the performance side to solid-state on bang for the buck. We anticipate that in large capacity environments, traditional hard drives will continue to be the compelling solution," said John Coyne, chief executive officer of WD, during the most-recent conference call with financial analysts.

Micron Takes Over Virtensys to Boost Enterprise SSD Effort.

Micron Technology and Virtensys have announced that the companies have signed an agreement for Micron to acquire the assets of privately held Virtensys, a provider of PCIe-sharing solutions based in Manchester, England and Beaverton, Oregon.

The transaction would further strengthen Micron's enterprise storage portfolio by combining Virtensys' award-winning PCIe virtualization technology with Micron's solid state drives (SSDs), enabling data centers to share local storage across multiple servers. The agreement would enable a combination of enterprise technology solutions that have the opportunity to virtualize SSD storage on the path to a more flexible and dynamic data center.

"Virtensys' PCIe-sharing technology has helped change the way data center operators manage and deploy their virtualized I/O resources, and Micron's enterprise PCIe drive delivers market-leading speed, reliability and power efficiency," said Edward Doller, Micron vice president and chief memory systems architect.

The transaction is subject to closing conditions and is currently anticipated to close by the end of the month. Specific terms of the proposed agreement are confidential.

^{Virtensys PCIe sharing appliance}

"Virtensys has served as an OEM focused company working to deliver innovative solutions with some of the world's leading server, storage and I/O adapter manufacturers. Our technology complements Micron's enterprise products as we strive to empower the virtual data center, and we are delighted to join the Micron family," said John Nicholson, chairman and chief executive of Virtensys.

HP Launches Atom N2600-Based Mini 1104 10.1" Netbook

CES 2012 started the next netbook revolution, with Intel's newest Atom CPUs at the helm. Today, HP is (re)joining the crowd, with the newest Mini machine launching. The HP Mini 1104 is the latest Mini for business in education. It's priced at $399, weighs 2.78 pounds and has a 10.1" display. There's also a 93% full-size keyboard, a battery that's good for up to 9 hours, a dual-core Intel Atom N2600, an integrated VGA webcam, integrated Bluetooth and a hard drive accelerometer that acts as a motion sensor for protection if the Mini is dropped.

 

Adafruit Debuts FLORA, a Wearable Electronics Platform

If you’re a DIY electronics geek, Adafruit should be one of your favorite playgrounds. The open source hardware maker’s site offers a plethora of kits, parts, plans, and other electronic miscellany, and it recently announced FLORA, a wearable electronics platform.

FLORA is a tiny board that measures just 1.75 inches in diameter, and it’s based on Adafruit’s own Atmega32u4 Breakout Board and is compatible with Arduino. It comes with “addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread”; if you’re not sure what that is, have a peek at the image below.

An example of addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread

CPU Startup Combines CPU+DRAM—And A Whole Bunch Of Crazy

The CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. We spent some time earlier this fall discussing the new TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) with company CTO Russell Fish, but while the idea is interesting; its presentation is marred by crazy conceptualizing and deeply suspect analytics.

The Multicore Problem:

There are three limiting factors, or walls, that limit the scaling of modern microprocessors. First, there's the memory wall, defined as the gap between the CPU and DRAM clock speed. Second, there's the ILP (Instruction Level Parallelism) wall, which refers to the difficulty of decoding enough instructions per clock cycle to keep a core completely busy. Finally, there's the power wall--the faster a CPU is and the more cores it has, the more power it consumes.

Attempting to compensate for one wall often risks running afoul of the other two. Adding more cache to decrease the impact of the CPU/DRAM speed discrepancy adds die complexity and draws more power, as does raising CPU clock speed. Combined, the three walls are a set of fundamental constraints--improving architectural efficiency and moving to a smaller process technology may make the room a bit bigger, but they don't remove the walls themselves.

TOMI attempts to redefine the problem by building a very different type of microprocessor. The TOMI Borealis is built using the same transistor structures as conventional DRAM; the chip trades clock speed and performance for ultra-low low leakage. Its design is, by necessity, extremely simple. Not counting the cache, TOMI is a 22,000 transistor design, as compared to 30,000 transistors for the original ARM2. The company's early prototypes, built on legacy DRAM technology, ran at 500MHz on a 110nm process.

Sales of Intel Atom Hit All-Time Low: Netbooks Doomed.

While Intel Corp. is facing great demand towards its advanced Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" microprocessors, the firm of witnessing rapidly dropping demand towards its low-cost/low-power Atom chip line. In Q4 2011 sales of Intel Atom hit all-time low, which is another evidence of dropping popularity of netbooks and ultra low-cost PCs powered by Intel in general.

Based on Intel's financial report, the Atom micro-architecture revenue, including microprocessors and associated chipsets, was $167 million, down 38% from the third quarter and down 57% from the fourth quarter of 2010. Apparently, even despite of the beginning of revenue shipments of Atom 2000-series "Cedarview" chip, overall sales of the product family fell significantly.

According to the world's largest chipmaker, Intel Atom micro-architecture revenue is down as a result of lower demand for netbooks, inexpensive small form-factor mobile computers with limited performance and capabilities.

Intel Vows to Integrate 4G Tech into Chips.

Intel Corp. is on track to integrate wireless wide area network (WWAN) functionality into its system-on chip devices aimed at smartphones and tablets, something that would revolutionize its positions. The company declined to say when exactly such chips will become available.

"Over time, what we will want to do is grow [Infineon wireless technology] capability up by integrating the apps processor and the communication processors onto the same chip, while we drive our initial positions in apps processors from the top down," said Paul Otellini, chief executive officer of Intel, during the most recent conference call with financial analysts.

Mr. Otellini did not say a word when the company plans to proceed with the integration, but he made it clear that eventually Infineon modems will land onto the company's system-on-chip solutions.

Cloud Server Shipments Set to Explode - Analysts.

Spurred by the rising use of online storage and infrastructure systems to support client cloud services, cloud servers will enjoy robust prospects in 2012 and then move on to become the fastest-growing segment of the server industry within three years, according to a recent report from IHS iSuppli.

1.8 Million Cloud Servers to Be Shipped in 2015

Shipments of cloud servers are projected to reach 875 thousand units in 2012, up a notable 35% from 647 thousand in 2011 and nearly double the 460 thousand in 2010, IHS claims. High growth rates ranging from 23 to 30% are anticipated for each of the next three years until 2015, by which time cloud server shipments will have hit approximately 1.8 million units. The five-year compound annual growth rate for cloud servers beginning in 2010 stands at 31% - five times greater than the forecast for the total server market.

Cloud servers also will make up an increasing portion of total server shipments - growing from just a little more than 5% of the market in 2010 to more than 15% in 2015.

AT&T Expands Netbook Choices With The Addition Of The Aspire A0722

Acer's Aspire A0722 is now available through AT&T. This 11.6-inch netbook targets enterprise and consumer users by offering a portable and thin design with key usability features such as a full-size keyboard and multiple ports. The Aspire A0722 can connect to AT&T's HSPA+ network. The A0722 offers three USB ports, a VGA out connector, an Ethernet Jack, headphone jack, and HDMI-out port. This netbook is available for $449.99 without an annual contract or for $39.99 with a two-year agreement and a 3GB monthly data plan.

AMD Rolls Out RC11 Driver for Radeon HD 7900 Series

Here's a nice treat for AMD Radeon HD 7970 videocard owners as you get ready to end the work day and head into weekend. The Santa Clara chip maker just released its 8.921.2 RC11 AMD Radeon HD 7900 driver so all you early adopters can squeeze a little bit of extra performance out of your graphics card.

Performance highlights include up to a 250 percent performance improvement in TessMark (OpenGL when set to "insane" levels. That's crazy, and also of limited usefulness, though the driver also boosts performance in a handful of popular titles, including:

• Up to 8 percent in Aliens vs. Predator
• Up to 15 percent in Battleforge with Anti-Aliasing enabled
• Up to 3 percent in Battlefield 3
• Up to 3 percent in Crysis 2
• Up to 6 percent in Crysis Warhead
• Up to 10 percent in F1 2010
• Up to 5 percent in Unigine with Anti-Aliasing enabled

AMD Ups Performance Projections for Next-Gen "Trinity" APUs.

Advanced Micro Devices has increased performance projections for its next-generation code-named Trinity accelerated processing unit and set up launch timeframe for the chip. While AMD Trinity will be faster than initially believed, it will become available only in the middle of the year, which is somewhat later than generally expected based on AMD's comments.

According to performance benchmarks conducted by AMD, the Trinity 35W APU with Piledriver-class x86 cores will provide 25% better x86 performance compared to Llano 35W (with K10.5+ "Husky" x86 cores) based on results obtained in PC Mark Vantage Productivity benchmark. AMD also claims that Trinity 35W will offer up to 50% better result in 3D Mark Vantage performance benchmark compared to Llano 35W.

 

Earlier released slides, which were also presumably from AMD, projected 20% increase in x86 performance and 30% boost in graphics performance for Trinity compared to currently available A-series "Llano" APUs based on simulations.

Although AMD implied a number of times that it would release Trinity in the first half of the year and rather sooner than later, the official plan now is to launch it in the middle of the year. Some unofficial sources have implied that A-series "Trinity" will be released in June, 2012.
"We are indeed on track with Trinity for mid-2012," said Chris Hook, a spokesman for AMD, without elaborating on actual months or dates.

According to documents seen by X-bit labs, staring from early and middle March, 2012, AMD intends to mass produce its desktop A-series "Trinity" accelerated processing units with 65W thermal design power (TDP). In early May, 2012, the chip designer wants to initiate mass production of desktop A-series "Trinity" APUs with 100W TDP and higher performance.

AMD’s second-generation code-named Trinity APU for mainstream personal computers (Comal for notebooks and Virgo for desktops) will be made using 32nm SOI HKMG process technology at Globalfoundries. The APU will feature up to four x86 cores powered by enhanced Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture, AMD Radeon HD 7000-series "Southern Islands" graphics core with DirectX 11-class graphics support, DDR3 memory controller and other improvements. The chips will be compatible with new infrastructure.

Intel’s New Warranty Plan to Cover Processors Damaged by Overclocking

Overclocking has been an inevitable part of high-performance personal computers for over two decades now. Even though nowadays leading suppliers of x86 microprocessors and graphics cards release special chips and special tools to boost performance of their products by the end users, devices damaged by overclocking up to now have not been covered by warranties. Intel Corp. has decided to change that.

Intel on Wednesday introduced a new pilot plan targeted at the enthusiast community. The new pilot service plan for “K”, “X”, and LGA2011-socketed boxed processors called the performance tuning protection plan (PTPP) provide certain out-of-warranty service offerings in the event of damage caused by overclocking or overvoltaging by the user.

Available at the cost between $20 and $35 (depending on microprocessor), the plan enables user to receive a one-time replacement processor if the user’s overvoltaging or overclocking causes the original processor to fail. The plan only applies to issues directly related to performance tuning.

NZXT Announces Switch 810 Hybrid Full Tower Chassis

NZXT is into options; its new Source 810 chassis (available in black or white) is designed to offer gamers a bevy of different ways of easily configuring their preferred cooling setup, from liquid cooling to a slew of fans to a more quiet setup with the vents closed.

The case offers support for 280mm radiators (the top 5.25-inch plates comes out to make more space) and up to ten 140/120mm fans. The fins on the vents can be closed or left open, depending on your desire for airflow or noise reduction.

Inside, there are plenty of ways to route cables and maximize airflow. There are ten cutouts for cabling, and the two hard drive cages (which accommodate up to 7 drives) are removable. Further, there re a pair of pivoting 120/140mm fans that blow at a 40-degree angle to the graphics card and CPU.

The Source 810 has 9 expansion slots with room for four-way SLI or three-way CrossFire, and the case sports a pair of USB 3.0 slots, an SD card reader, and a HDD dock on the front. The chassis is available now for $169.99.

pureSilicon Reveals Kage K1 USB Flash Drive And Kage K1 SATA SSD

Like flash memory? Like good looks? pureSilicon has plenty of both, as evidenced by their introductions this evening. They're launching launched a new line of enterprise-focused storage devices, including the Kage K1 USB Flash Drive — an “impossibly thin” (4.5 mm) USB 3.0-based SSD drive.

It leverages the technology pioneered in pureSilicon’s recently announced Renegade and Nitro devices, making it available at a lower price point aimed at power users in the financial services, science, and engineering sectors, as well as creative professionals who need fast, high-capacity storage for digital media.

Sony Intros First USB 3.0 Flash Drive: Micro Vault MACH

Flash drives have been around for ages and ages, but the newer USB 3.0 ones are still taking shape. Sony's joining the group with a new Micro Vault MACH, which is the first SuperSpeed USB drive from the company. It's available in 8GB/16GB/32GB/64GB sizes, and supports transfer speeds up to 120MB/sec (read) and 90MB/sec (write). It's encased in aluminum, and sports a retractable USB connector and LED indicator.

Of course, the drive is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, and it comes with a few pieces of software for those who are into that kind of thing. It's available now, but no pricing is being made public just yet.

Shuttle's XH61 Barebones PC: So, So Small

Shuttle's become famous for their barebones PC options, and the company's newest box is as tiny as ever. The XH61 is a 3-litre PC for Intel's Sandy Bridge processors, measuring just 7cm high. The Intel H61 Express chipset selected for this new product supports second-generation Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors for the LGA1155 socket with a TDP of max. 65 W. The two memory banks on the pre-installed motherboard can take DDR3 modules up to a total capacity of 16 GB.

The XH61 is provided with UEFI and has 4x SATA 3 Gbit/s, 6x USB 2.0, 7.1 Sound, Gigabit-LAN and Kensington Lock. An HDMI and D-Sub port in combination with the graphics function integrated in the second-generation Intel Core processors enable dual monitoring and smooth HD playback.

The compact case (24.2 x 20 x 7.3 cm DWH) still provides space for an optical Slimline drive and 2.5" hard disk or SSD. An external 90 W power unit provides a noiseless energy supply. The optionally available PS01 pedestal accessory enables vertical operation. Alternatively, the optional PV02 VESA monitor mount allows the user to fit the XH61 to a range of screens and surfaces. "With the XH61, we can now fit second-generation Intel Core processors in our smallest and fastest PCs", states Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. "The practical format of the XH61 and its predecessor, the XG41, has proven its worth and will continue to be developed in future. 3-litre PCs represent a good compromise between space requirements and computing performance."

The recommended price for the Shuttle Barebone XH61 is EUR 146, but there's no word yet on if it's making its way to other nations.

HSTi's Moboplay Is World's Smallest Media Player

Small is in, and there's little questioning that. And the latest "small" gizmo is coming to us courtesy of HSTi. The company's Moboplay Pocket Media Player is said to be the world's smallest, measuring just 60mm x 64mm, which is smaller than a credit card. Even being that compact, it's capable of playing back 1080p material via HDMI, and there's a USB port / SD card slot if you want to load media up via either of those methods. Or, you could plug in the company's Wireless Media Stick to make similar things happen without wires. Best of all, it's just $89.95; trouble is... how will you keep yourself from losing it?

Samsung Brings Out New Blu-ray Line, UltraViolet Cloud Access

"Smart" is still in, and while 3D took a back seat to a lot of other things at CES 2012, intelligence is still at the front of most companies' minds. Samsung is tapping into a technology developed by Flixster and Rovi, where consumers will be able to import their existing Blu-ray and DVD collections from participating studios into the UltraViolet Cloud, which will make them viewable on a wide range of products. Moreover, Disc to Digital can work with any authorized retail service and will initially be available using a new Flixster application on Samsung's Smart Hub.

 

When consumers insert an eligible physical disc into a 2012 Samsung Blu-ray player and select the Disc to Digital icon, they will launch the Flixster application and can easily add the movie to their UltraViolet locker for a nominal amount. If high definition versions are available, they will have the option to upgrade their standard definition movies for an additional fee.