Starting today, on April 20th we’re launching a new daily section covering the latest news from the world of technology. Every day we’ll try to bring Top 10 stories for you to read and eny. We hope you’ll enjoy them. Hold on, memory will be cheaper (soon?) http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170418PD203.html “Major NAND flash suppliers including Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology and Toshiba have rolled out 64-layer 3D NAND flash products, said the sources. SK Hynix has even introduced what the company claims is the industry’s first 72-layer 3D NAND flash chips.” Microsoft explains why the company opted against combining Polaris GPU with RYZEN CPU architecture http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-the-scorpio-engine-in-depth “There are
Intel in Trouble? Cancels Intel Developer Forum After 20 Years
Intel Developer Forum i.e. IDF traditionally was an event that ends the summer break and opens new opportunities to do business. However, over the past couple of years we’ve heard numerous stories that the company is charging too much for the exhibit space, and does not know where the focus is. At the same time, its public arms – Public Relations (PR) and Investor Relations (IR) departments started to retreat into themselves, becoming more and more unavailable to the members of media, new media channels as well as industry analysts. Today, the biggest confirmation of “building a Wall around the company” came true, as Intel Developer
Two New X86 CPU Vendors coming to Market in 2018, 2020
One of everlasting legacies from former President of The United States (POTUS) Mr. Barrack Obama will be the creation of Chinese semiconductor industry. Following the ban on completion of Tianhe-2 supercomputer in 2014, Chinese government did not double down, but decided to put semiconductor industry as one of top 3 national priorities, and started to infuse over a quarter of trillion U.S. dollars, i.e. 2 trillion RMB (Yuan) into the domestic semiconductor industry, creating not a train, but a “Hyperloop Express” that is changing the semiconductor industry landscape. First, we’re starting to see the power of homegrown computers with ShenWei 260-core CPU processors powering the
Intel Can’t Hide Strategical Mistakes, AMD to Pounce?
If you would align your wristwatch to the sound of Intel’s tick tock, you would miss your important meeting. The launch of a new generation of processors represents a symbolic beginning of a new cycle and for Intel, “Kaby Lake” launch was everything but normal. First launching the Ultra-low Voltage parts (the U series), then the Desktop line-up and finally the mainstream notebook designs, with troublesome rumors about its enterprise, Xeon-branded counterpart. Kaby Lake is perhaps too focused on the processor power task rather than processor performance. A lullaby. The same story for the last six years continues. Admittedly, for the past 18 months there were whispers
Khronos Announces an Open VR Standard Initiative
The Khronos Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies, have just announced a call for participation in a new initiative to define a cross-vendor, royalty-free, open standard for access to modern virtual reality (VR) devices. “Virtual Reality’s success is dependent on a large thriving market of hardware where casual and professional consumers alike can take their pick without worry of fragmentation and incompatibility,” said Christopher Mitchell, OSVR business lead, Razer. “This has been OSVR’s vision from day one and we are thrilled to be a part of the Khronos Group in order to push standardization of interfaces across the industry.” The standards body
Intel Drones Fly Around the Campfire
There is dark and there is light. Fire. How long is it in human hands? Out there, at night, by the campfire. Magic of this entire, beautiful and sometimes dreadful world around us. Fire can put us in a bubble. Glittering stories that seem like they starting right there behind us, when we step into the darkness. Or perhaps silence by the campfire. Warmth and we with ourselves. How much today we have improved as people, become more noble than, lets say, Chinese people from the 12th century when they invented fireworks? Talk about the fire on the website dealing with the last cries of
Cube i7 Book 2 Intel Tablet with Windows 10
After a recent review of Onda OBook 20, we were wondering what are further developments in the world of affordable tablets and convertibles. Onda’s dual boot feature was quite intriguing, but being based on Cherry Trail meant the performance was somewhat lagging even behind the Qualcomm Snapdragon processors (in case of Android OS). After some digging, we discovered the Cube i7 Book 2 tablet/laptop. Amazingly, it isn’t all that more expensive than the Cherry Trail-based Obook. Decision to name the product “I7” in order to bring attention to the processing side would pay dividends if the Cube I7 actually featured Intel’s Core i7 processor. Instead, this
Review: Onda OBook 20 Plus Dual OS Tablet
There are many Windows 10 tablets on the market. Labeled as “transformers”, “2-in-1s” or “convertibles” – they mostly pack a decent specs list. The same can be said for Android tablets. However, it seems the two operating systems mentioned do not satisfy their customers and it isn’t surprising to see dual boot tablets coming out of Far East. Of course, there are some technical issues related to the compatibility, but devices such as Onda OBook 20 seem to solve such problems. The design of the device is slick and thin. Back of the OBook 20 features a clean plastic back-plate in an champagne color. Front
Futuremark Announced VRMark, The New VR Benchmark
Futuremark, a company best known for its 3DMark benchmark just announced the availability of their a new benchmark suite called VRMark. As the name implies, this benchmark is used for testing your system’s ability to run VR games and experiences, since the performance required to do so is much higher than normal gaming performance. As always, Futuremark did their best to use a custom game engine to drive the experiences to the levels which can make your systems slow to a crawl. With VR, the maneuvering space was limited, as reducing the framerate inside the VR experience could potentially get you in a bad shape.
Gigabyte: Lock and Load for Intel’s Kaby Lake
On April 19, 1965, in anniversary issue of Electronics magazine, director of research and development at Fairchild Semiconductor, Gordon E. Moore had a short article named “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”. There he has presented his views on the future of semiconductor components industry. In essence, an observation expressed in this article was later popularized as “Moore’s Law” (Number of transistors on a microprocessor chip will double approximately every two years). Moore’s Law has held the line for many years and only in 2015 Intel stated that the pace of advancement has slowed. Now a second, much less quoted Moore’s law, comes to the
Microsoft Pulls an Apple with the New Surface Products
At the annual Surface event, this time dubbed as the Windows 10 event, Microsoft showed us its new, really good looking and innovative devices, as well as software tidbits that we are really happy to see. The company showcased Windows 10 Creators Update, a new update that is expected to become available in April 2017. Windows 10 Creator’s Edition features Paint 3D, better gaming (including 4K and in-game broadcasting) features, a new photo and video sharing feature, as well as Augmented Reality (HoloLens) and Virtual Reality (Windows VR) updates. This is the update that was formerly known as “Redstone 2”, with Insiders Preview to follow later this
Microsoft Windows VR Headset Devices Coming in April 2017
Microsoft product lineup surprised everyone today, but the biggest surprise was planned for VR fans. The company revealed a range of Windows VR headsets alongside its upcoming Windows 10 update known as “Redstone”. This update will come to market as the Windows 10 Creator’s Edition, scheduled for April 2017. This new hardware platform will be manufactured respective partners: Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and HP. Not only are these devices cheaper than the Oculus Rift and Vive, but Microsoft says they’re better too. “These headsets will be the first and only to ship with inside-out, six degrees of freedom sensors,” said Terry Myerson, Executive VP of the Windows
Can The Best of Intel, Skylake-R Skull Canyon PC Run VR?
This Next Unit of Computing (NUC) mini-PC shares just two traits with its dual-core, square-brick siblings: follows the same unpronounceable naming convention and is an ultra-compact PC that can do real work. Outside of that, the NUC6i7KYK forges a different path for itself. For starters, it looks nothing like the rest of Intel’s signature line of tiny computers. This NUC is flat and long, comes shaded in black and gray, and has a huge skull emblazoned on the lid. If you don’t like the “pirate lid,” you can easily switch it with plain black lid that also comes with the case. NUC6i7KYK is the fastest NUC money can
How To: Build Your Liquid Cooling Computer
Even though we’ve been seeing liquid cooling PCs since the late 1990s, this form of cooling only became a big thing over the last couple of years. If you are thinking about crossing that line you might want to read this post. First thing first, when it comes to liquid cooling, you need to make a decision; go with a custom loop or AIO (All-in-One)? In my opinion today’s AIO’s are “good enough” and as EKWB proved, you can even add a GPU to your loop later. Personally, I think that if you want a silent gaming PC with great overclock potential – go for the custom loop. If you still
China Now Leads the Server Race: Meet the Phytium MARS Processor
Two decades ago, the US high end microprocessor industry was a lively, diverse market where about five various instruction set architectures battled it out across the workstation and server fields. You had choices like DEC’s Alpha – the speed leader; MIPS – the Silicon Graphics heart; SPARC from Sun Microsystems, IBM POWER, HP PA, the nascent X86, and a few custom architectures for MPP massive parallel processing, for instance. The rest of the world pretty much had nothing – British Transputer and German Hyperstone platforms died out due to lack of funding, while ARM was still keeping to the low end embedded arena after the end of the
Microsoft Windows 10 Holographic Edition to Run on 2017 PCs
Following the troublesome release of Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, which “bricked” tens of millions of webcams around the world, Microsoft is turning its attention to “Windows 10 Holographic Edition”. Unlike the HoloLens stand-alone computer, Holographic Edition will run on PCs, targeting discrete VR HMDs such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and a numerous upcoming headsets based on OSVR and Intel’s own Project Alloy. However, we would not advise you to expect rosy marketing statements to come true, promising Windows 10 Holographic Edition to run: “on an inexpensive and tiny Intel NUC at 90 fps.” Because that ‘tiny and inexpensive’ NUC is a 600 dollar Skylake-S based NUC6i7KYK, and secondly –
Intel Doubles Down on VR and AR, Calls it Merged Reality
Slowly but certainly, Intel is unveiling its “Merged Reality” strategy. About a year and a half ago, Intel invested in Razer bringing the valuation of the said company to north of $1 billion. Exactly a year ago, that investment expanded with the launch of Open Source Virtual Reality or OSVR. Today, Razer is bringing Hacker Development Kit 2.0 to the market, and Intel announced their first lovechild codenamed Project Alloy. Project Alloy is best described as a VR Headset in the class of HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, but with the ability to “cut the VR cord”, since it features mobile processing similar to the
Intel to Buy Imagination Technologies or AMD’s RTG?
This week started with a milestone announcement of Japanese SoftBank moving in to acquire ARM Holdings for a record $32 billion. Many analysts lamented that the takeover was a result of Brexit, even though everyone in their right minds should know that negotiations of this magnitude take years and typically are made in complete silence for 6-18 months (due dilligence and all that jazz). However, this might not be the only acquisition in the modest pool of British semiconductor players. As we reported on multiple occasions, Intel is reorganizing, i.e. restructuring the company. As a part of that reorganization, the company performed no less than three rounds
Win Killer Technology Enabled ASRock Motherboards
Killer Networking technology is on the rise. Now under the careful guidance of the original founders, the company is focused on increasing their footprint on the market through the motherboard One of mistakes original Killer Networks did was focusing solely on high-end market segment, requiring a $300 investment in what was becoming a commodity technology. We extensively detailed the rebirth of Killer networking products in an interview with Michael Cubbage, co-founder and CEO of Rivet Networks. The new focus of the network technology isn’t competing against existing network NICs and PHYs, but rather to bring a complete solution that can improve the performance over what can
GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 Shortage Until August?
With the conclusion of E3 2016 trade show, which took place last week in Los Angeles, California – many international guests went on for the hunt for several hot ticketed items – HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and of course, Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. The ‘retail’ mission was the only option after availability from online e-tailers simply did not transpire. HTC Vive is available in 3 out of five Microsoft stores we’ve checked, while Oculus Rift availability was tied to Intel’s Retail Experience. Best Buy in West Hollywood didn’t had Intel Retail Experience and there was no Rift, but the story changed in
