Joel Hruska
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Last week, we covered NVIDIA's decision to disable PhysX support if the NV drivers detect the presence of an ATI product. Jump ahead seven days, and the utterly predictable has happened—end-users have found a way around NVIDIA's lockout and have re-enabled the one-two punch of ATI graphics and NVIDIA PhysX. Quick...
Read more...
The far-reaching effects of the global economic downturn could make it easy to blame the IC industry's problems on short-term market effects, but Doug Grose, CEO of GlobalFoundries, believes the fundamental problem confronting the industry is economic, not technical. According to Grose, "Only a handful of providers...
Read more...
September was a busy month for GlobalFoundries, the pure-play foundry AMD spun off earlier this year. For now, AMD remains the company's only customer; GF won't begin shipping STMicro products until the fall of 2010 at the earliest. Its current lack of customers hasn't deterred the company from thinking big, even as its slowed the pace on...
Read more...
If you've followed the early announcements concerning Fermi, NVDIA's next-generation GPU architecture, you should already be aware that the new GPU core is both an evolution of the existing GT200 architecture and a significant new design in its own right. NVIDIA made it clear early on that they weren't going to be talking about GeForce products...
Read more...
Every so often, someone on the 'Net stumbles across something noteworthy, but the news doesn't spread until weeks or maybe even months later. That's what's happened over at NGOHQ, where forum reader DarthCyclonis discovered that NVIDIA drivers released after the v185.85 WHQL package (i.e, 186.18 and higher) removed...
Read more...
The fusion of the Internet and television, once thought to be as natural as peanut butter and chocolate, has proven to be a tricky problem for would-be content producers. Consumers have embraced direct downloads, but the concept of the television-as-interactive-device has never found traction in a shipping product. Intel wants to see that...
Read more...
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has been a busy beaver as of late; we've previously discussed his thoughts on the importance of the Internet and the FCC's request for comments on how its Internet development funds should be allocated and used. The FCC chair spoke at the Brookings Institute in Washington today; his speech emphasized the FCC's...
Read more...
Waiting for new interface standards to actually be useful, is a bit like watching grass grow—in slow motion. The ratification stage can seem interminable, and the design, manufacturing, and deployment phases are the icing on Miss Havisham's wedding cake. Today's good news, for anyone waiting for USB 3, is that a host controller designed by...
Read more...
There's been an invisible hexa-core processor lurking on AMD's desktop roadmap ever since the company launched Shanghai on 45nm, but the company has refused to confirm or deny that such a chip was in the works—until now. As of today, AMD's hexa-core desktop processor—codenamed Thuban—is officially on the board. Exact launch dates aren't yet...
Read more...
In a market where dual-GPU, single-PCB graphics cards are readily available from most major OEMs, product manufacturers are increasingly turning to water cooling as a way to differentiate their products and out-maneuver their competitors. The superior thermal characteristics of liquid cooling allows companies like BFG to hit higher core /...
Read more...
It was a busy week for Palm; the resurgent smartphone designer both announced its Q1 2010 results and informed the world+dog that it would not support Windows Mobile in future products. The company's Q1 performance has received a bit more press than its move away from the Windows Mobile platform, and in Palm's case...
Read more...
The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (typically referred to as the Cell or Cell BE) processor used in Sony's PS3 was actually a joint venture between IBM, Sony, and Toshiba, but IBM and Sony have commercialized the architecture far more than their partner. That could change within a year or two; the electronics manufacturer has announced
Read more...
When the Blackberry Tour launched last June, it received generally good reviews. Skim them over, and the phone is universally dinged for not including WiFi support, but the trackball was scarcely mentioned. Two months later, the device's trackball is indeed causing issues. According to David Eller, an analyst with TownHall Investment Research,...
Read more...
The burgeoning SSD (solid state drive) market has been a modest success story over the past few years. Drive performance and capacity have both increased at a fair clip, while initial sky-high costs have at least fallen into the stratosphere. The two major factors keeping sSD's from broader market penetration are available capacity and...
Read more...
Last weekend, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick gave details on what he believes represents the future of gaming—and managed to become the poster child for unhappy workplaces. We'll talk gaming first. Current-generation consoles like the PS3, XBox 360, and Wii have been very kind to Activision and its lucrative Guitar Hero...
Read more...
Intel announced it intended to appeal the EU's decision to slap it with a $1.45 billion fine; the text of the company's request for annulment is now available in the Official Journal of the European Union. The Santa Clara-based company's request is best understood as an attempt to throw mud on the wall and see if anything sticks—Intel goes...
Read more...
IBM announced its new 476FP system-on-chip (SoC) processor today, and claims the new design will offer more than twice the processing power of its predecessor (in theory). The company is presumably referring to the PPC 464FP-HP90; the 476FP improves on the older design in several notable ways. According to IBM, the...
Read more...
The FCC has been particularly concerned about the Internet over the past six weeks, tasked as it is with the job of creating a national broadband policy. The FCC's chairman, Julius Genachowski, has gone on record proclaiming that spreading broadband across the country is a massive, possibly culture-changing event, on par with the creation...
Read more...
In the past 12 months, AMD has revamped its entire product line around its 45nm Shanghai architecture; the company now has a range of Athlon II and Phenom II parts that stretches from an Athlon II X2 at 2.8GHz/1MB L2 at $60 to the unlocked Phenom II X4 965 "Black Edition" at $245 with 512K of L2 per core and a 6MB L3...
Read more...
Sharp has announced that it's now capable of building a blue-violet laser with an optical output of 500mW that's capable of writing triple and quadruple-layer Blu-ray (BD) discs at up to 8x. (36MB/s) In theory, this new development could be attractive to consumers/businesses who prefer to backup to optical disc, but find themselves hampered...
Read more...
If early reports are accurate, Westmere—Intel's GPU/CPU fusion—will take center stage at the company's developer forum next week. The new processor has been a topic of interest for months, especially after Intel announced it was scrapping its plans to build both the CPU and GPU on a 45nm process. The company's strong 32nm ramp allowed it to...
Read more...
A few weeks ago, in early August, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski declared that the FCC viewed the creation of a national broadband policy as integral to the future of of the nation. Broadband, according to Genachowski, is "our generation’s infrastructure challenge...It is as important as electricity and highways were...
Read more...
