Microsoft's research labs have been known to create some pretty wild projects. Granted, not all of them have hit the market or anything, but there's a good chance that something huge down the road will spring up. Project Natal is already proof that Redmond has quite a few out-of-the-box thinkers on staff, and while we...Read more...
NVIDIA has built its brand and reputation as a GPU designer since the company was founded in 1993, but recent comments by the company have implied that it believes platforms like Tegra and ION will be key revenue generators in the future. We've previously discussed NVIDIA's ongoing emphasis on the GPU as a massively...Read more...
It appears that the military brain trust over in Korea might have seen Iron Man or Star Wars: Clone Wars too many times. It's difficult to say exactly where the inspiration came from for their concept for a new battle-dress uniform (BDU), but it definitely looks like something right out of the realm of science fiction. The Korea Times reported...Read more...
From pre-paid calling cards to minute plans with so-called "free phones", sometimes it's painfully obvious that, although we hate to admit it here, it's not always completely about the hardware. More than a few industry analyst have predicted that the mainstream PC of tomorrow will be nothing more than a thin client connected to...Read more...
In the final IDF keynote address on Wednesday, Vice President and General Manager for Software and Solutions at Intel, Renee James, spoke about the "digital revolution" and what sort of opportunities the recent advances in Intel technology will enable. Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks and John Carmack of id software were among the guest speakers...Read more...
In the final IDF keynote address on Wednesday, Vice President and General Manager for Software and Solutions at Intel, Renee James, spoke about the "digital revolution" and what sort of opportunities the recent advances in Intel technology will enable. Just as the Pentium processor helped...Read more...
It was about a month ago that NVIDIA released drivers that included PhysX support, leading to multiple allegations of cheating. Why? Well, quite naturally the CPU physics test (3DMark Vantage) shows much higher results with PhysX in the mix, as the CPU load moves greatly to the PPU.According to a forum post, Futuremark hasn't been...Read more...
You've probably heard the buzz-word "Cloud Computing" tossed around recently. Cloud Computing is the next big thing in remote and distributed computing and is very much in fashion now for many industry bellwethers like IBM, Sun, Amazon, Google and storage giants like EMC. You don't have to have a degree in IT to...Read more...
The idea of being invisible has captivated scientists and comic-book writers alike for many years. As Einstein told us, it's going to be pretty hard to do. But it's somewhat easier to make something invisible to sound waves. Researchers in Spain have developed a material that directs sound waves around an object so that they re-form...Read more...
Freescale Semiconductor has a new kind of Random Access Memory they'd like you to consider soon: MRAM. They've spun off the part of their business that's been developing MRAM chips and gotten $20 million in funding from a handful of VCs to push the technology forward enough to make it commercially available. What's MRAM, you ask?MRAM stands...Read more...
With each passing year, access, management and security of data storage has become exponentially more important to end users and in the enterprise space, as volumes of data grow with ever-more connected global economies, businesses and communities. It is no surprise that technologies that are key to the enablement of more intelligent...Read more...
Amazonian beetles, to be more precise. Researchers have long understood that if they could produce a photonic crystal, a diamond-like structure that would allow light to be shunted around inside instead of electricity, that they would be able to make superfast optical computers that used little power and wouldn't generate heat the way your...Read more...
Futuremark has just officially unveiled the latest version of their 3DMark benchmark suite, 3DMark Vantage. Like PCMark Vantage which was released a few months ago, this latest version of 3DMark was designed for testing Windows Vista-based systems. This latest version of the 3DMark, however, is specifically bound to Windows Vista...Read more...
Futuremark has just officially unveiled the latest version of their 3DMark benchmark suite, 3DMark Vantage. Like PCMark Vantage which was released a few months ago, this latest version of 3DMark was designed for testing Windows Vista-based systems. This latest version of the 3DMark, however, is specifically bound to Windows...Read more...
The President of Toshiba, Shozo Saito, delivered a fascinating look at near future of solid-state memory last week. He's in a position to know about NAND flash memory and Solid State Drives, and the future not only looks bright, it looks like the future is right now. He predicted one-quarter of notebook PCs will have a solid state...Read more...
It has been predicted that existing manufacturing materials used in microchips will eventually hit a wall that no amount of R & D can overcome. As a result researchers are looking into several other technologies such as Graphene."When current silicon transistor technology goes below 10 nanometers in size, it's predicted it will run into...Read more...
Your computer memory is magnetic affair of one sort or another. (We're assuming you've stopped using Punch Cards by now)Your processor is an electrical festival. The two have developed into a very powerful computing/storage machine indeed, but they have essentially always run on two separate tracks, one relying on the other to handle any increased...Read more...
Global warming got you down? Concerned about rising gas prices and our over-dependency on fossil fuels? Before you declare that the sky is falling and reach for your favorite tree to hug in what some call the last few days of earth's existence, remember there are some pretty smart cookies and valiant visionaries still working on...Read more...
In the strangest trademark application we've seen since Fark tried to trademark NSFW, Futuremark is attempting to trademark PWNAGE.If it is approved, Futuremark's request will cover an extremely wide slice of the digital entertainment market, including (but not limited to) the following:"Computer game software for communication devices; computer...Read more...
Apple has applied for patents on a series of single and multiple touch gestures that will undoubtedly show up in some iteration on their Mac OS X sometime in the future. Of course Apple already uses a limited number of touch commands on some of their hardware, but the series of gestures outlined in the application indicate an enormous...Read more...
By now just about everyone has heard of the RIAA and their law suits against people who have allegedly pirated music over the Internet. The stories of the RIAA suing grandmothers, minors, and the deceased are common place, but it seems that the RIAA's latest step might have taken things too far: they're asking that a new law be passed...Read more...
Recent IDF attendees might have overlooked such acronyms as ONFI and NVMHCI, but these two acronyms could very well be the future of flash based storage and possibly even a look at the future of Intel Robson-like technologies.So what exactly are these acronyms, and how are they planning on changing the PC landscape?“It [NONFI] is a part of...Read more...