Intel Archives - Page 2 of 11 - VR World

AMD, CPU, Graphics, Guides, Hardware, Intel

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

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Intel, Microsoft, News, Operating Systems, Software Programs, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Windows

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 –

AMD, Apple, Breaking, Hardware, Microsoft, News, Nvidia, Operating Systems, OSx, Windows

Did Microsoft Fix its Biggest Mistake?

Microsoft is ending its ‘free Windows 10’ upgrade program. Ever since the company announced the availability of Windows 10 and a free upgrade for the older versions, the company was adamant it will only offer free upgrade program ‘for a limited amount of time’. That free upgrade program ends on July 29th, 2016. While there is a loophole that can keep your systems running on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 and still get the Windows 10 upgrade, discovered thanks to ZDNet: “When you upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, the Windows 10 setup program checks your current activation status and reports the result to the activation

AMD, Apple, Breaking, Business, CPU, Hardware, Intel, News, Nvidia, Samsung

TSMC Tapes out 10nm A11 Processors for Apple

Ten years, even five years ago Intel was the undisputed process leader, and if you wanted to see how the new process node would look like, you would wait to see a new processor coming from Intel architecture. That was the unwritten law of the semiconductor industry, with an occasional blimp when TSMC would introduce a half-node step, beating Intel’s 90/65/45/32nm with 80nm, 55nm, 40nm and 28nm GPUs for ATI and Nvidia. Today, Intel’s missed approach to mobile resulted in company loosing the process node advantage, and ultimately being forced to cancel the most of Atom product family. And now, to add insult to injury, DigiTimes (also known

Asia Pacific (APAC), Breaking, Business, China, Enterprise, Exclusive, Intel, News

100 PFLOPS: China’s Supercomputer Circumvents U.S. Sales Ban

A year ago, we revealed that the U.S. State Department blocked the further sales of Intel Xeon and Xeon Phi processors to Chinese institutions, most notably the Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The U.S. Administration also blocked the move in which a China-based investment fund would invest in AMD i.e. one of original reasons for Radeon Technologies Group – which is even without the said investment, performing above and beyond its financial capabilities. The reason to move against Tianhe-2 is complicated yet simple – ever since its debut in June 2013, the Tianhe-2 supercomputer from NUDT (National University for Defense Technologies) sits on top of the World’s 500 fastest computers list. From the looks of

Breaking, CPU, Hardware, Intel, News

Tick-Tock is Dead: Intel Confirms New Processor Cadence

Several months ago, we exclusively disclosed the new architectural cadence for Intel processors. After a decade of manufacturing processors in an bi-annual cycle (Tick – new architecture, old process; Tock – new process and ‘old’ architecture), Intel’s SEC 10-K filing (PDF download) officially killed the Tick-Tock cadence, moving to a three-fold product line-up for a single manufacturing process. Approximately four years ago, Tick-Tock encountered a first significant hiccup with Ivy Bridge being a 22nm version of Sandy Bridge. Ivy Bridge was the first processor from Intel that we could call APU, instead of a CPU – as 40% of the die was allocated for new graphics architecture. The

Entertainment, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, VR World

Zotac Uses GeForce GPU for VR-Ready Mini-PC

Looking for a PC ready for virtual reality? If you’re not looking to build a Virtual Reality Computer, Zotac may have what you’re looking for with the upcoming launch of its MAGNUS EN980. It’s actually a ZBOX mini-PC that not only packs a VR punch, but presumably saves space on your desktop or living room tabletop. It also sports a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU (mobile version?) and a sixth-generation Intel Skylake processor, making this unit a possible candidate for the upcoming Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset. The company says the MAGNUS EN980 is its most powerful ZBOX unit to date that “goes beyond

Breaking, Enterprise, Memory & Storage Space, News, VR World

Seagate Presents World’s Fastest SSDs

Seven months ago, Steve Luczo (CEO) stated that “there is no one that is using SSDs for storage.” This statement still haunts Seagate Technologies, LLC to this date, even though it was out of context. “I mean, maybe at the margin for replacing boot drives… I mean, maybe one or three per cent of the hierarchy is SSDs for storage. Most of our flash product is actually not hanging off the storage bus, it is fast memory.” As it usually goes, the dismissive statements come at the time when you know that you have a good thing coming down the line, but you need to hold the fort.

Breaking, Intel, News, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

iStaging: Is this Taiwan’s Second Act?

If you live in Taiwan or in APAC area of the world, there’s a lot of conversations saying that Asian (manufacturing) Tigers such as Taiwan ‘missed the boat’ when it comes to shared economy and application economy. While it is true that Taiwanese are quite conservative and cost-driven (which is a shame), the whole island has a specific positive vibe. Luckily, the future does not rest on old-school management which is still baffled why they cannot win contracts which are service-intensive, there is a new generation of Taiwanese which are connected in more ways that one. In fact, I would dare to publicly state that Taiwanese are one of most

Analysis, Auto, Breaking, Business

72% of All Cars to be Connected by 2021?

It is estimated that in 2015 over 88 million new cars were bought. Almost 53 million came out of just six manufacturers: Toyota, Volkswagen Group, General Motors, Renault-Nissan, Hyundai and Ford. If you add five million from FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), that’s almost 60 million vehicles. It is of no surprise that traditional PC and mobile names such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel all see the automotive industry as a key battlefield. Tens of millions of processors promise advanced telemetry, self-driving or automated driving capabilities, new level of infotainment, and ‘always online’ vehicles. In a research document called Automotive Safety and Autonomous Driving Service, ABI Research put out a

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Microsoft, News, VR World

Get Microsoft HoloLens for $3,000

Even though February 29th happens once every four years, but February 29th, 2016 will stay in memory as a very important day for Virtual and Mixed Reality. First, HTC launched pre-orders for its Vive Virtual Reality system, then Microsoft launched pre-orders for its Augmented Reality system, HoloLens. Naturally, there is a big difference between the two – HTC Vive will retail for anywhere between $799 (United States) to €899 (European Union), while Microsoft is starting to sell HoloLens Development Edition. This is far from a retail product, and just like Google Glass of yesteryear, Microsoft is pushing all the cost down to developers, and probably not loosing any money

Breaking, Graphics, News, Virtual Reality (VR)

GDDR5X Memory Shows Better Than Expected Results

2016 will be marked with the arrival of two memory standards, which should spread across the mainstream and high-end / enthusiast line-up like fire. First, we have the HBM2, an improved version of HBM memory which debuted (and so far, only ships inside) with AMD R9 Fury family of cards. HBM2 promises a four times increase in capacity and double the memory bandwith – meaning a single card can go from 4GB and 512GB/s to 16GB and 1TB/s. Given the low volume of HBM and HBM2 memory, those two will probably remain only on enthusiast graphics cards, such as recently renamed Greenland, high-end Polaris graphics processor from AMD

Analysis, Breaking, CPU, Hardware

Next Gen Processor Performance Revealed

There is a trend of large companies snapping up smaller chip designers, all at the time when several next=generation processor designers are starting to exit stealth modes and gain traction. Over the last couple of months, companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle – all have acquired at least one promising hardware designer or manufacturer. Soft Machines is one of the ‘new kids on the silicon block’, planning to do a ‘one up’ and build all-new processing architecture. Variable Instruction Set Computing or VISC is their brainchild, and on paper, we’re talking about a seriously efficient and flexible processor architecture which just may take sweep the rug

CPU, Hardware, Intel, News, VR World

Did Intel Got Lucky with the Skylake Freezing Bug?

UPDATE January 18, 2016 – MSI released a beta version of the BIOS which contains micro-code update that should remove the Skylake crashing bug. You can download the beta version of the BIOS for select products on their OneDrive account. Intel recently reported its quarterly and full year results, and they’re quite impressive. The company reported fourth quarter revenue of $14.9 billion, or 1% down from Q4 2014. Net income (profit) also declined to $3.61 billion. Once we look at full year results, they’re more than interesting – 2015 saw Intel recording a revenue of $55.4 billion with $11.4 billion net income. The results are quite

Augmented Reality (AR), Graphics, Hardware, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

MSI Teams with HTC, Launches ‘Mac Pro’ Box for VR Gaming

What started as a ‘MyStar International’, manufacturing motherboards in Taiwan and trying to penetrate the western markets – turned into a global leader in technology development and sales. Sales-wise, MSI is now more a force known for its gaming notebooks rather than motherboards, but the core business of motherboards and graphics cards is not showing any restrain. Titanium motherboards and Lightning graphics cards come with a lot of great features, and innovation is spreading throughout the company. One such example is recently announced collaboration between MSI, HTC and Valve, which went largely unnoticed (here’s a free hint – don’t put strategy announcements together with product announcements). Starting

AMD, Companies, Intel

2016 Intel High-End Lineup to Feature Six, Eight and Ten Cores

As we mentioned in our previous stories, Intel plans to debut the high-end, 14nm Broadwell-E processors for desktops, workstations and servers, replacing the 22nm Haswell-E. When it comes to the desktop side of things, the company traditionally offered two different core and several clock configurations – but that is about to change. There will be at least four processors belonging to the Core i7 6800 series, all of which will feature different cores and clocks. All cores are to come unlocked, meaning you should be able to overclock these systems quite nicely. i7 6800K – six-core, 12 logic cores, 15MB L3 Cache, 3.4 GHz Base

Business, Companies, Intel, VR World

Intel Releases Business Outlook At Annual Investor Meeting

At Intel Corporation’s annual investor meeting held on Friday, the company announced that its board of directors has approved an increase in its cash dividend to $1.04 per-share on an annual basis, an eight-cent increase, beginning with the dividend that will be declared in the first quarter of 2016. Intel also provided the 2016 Business Outlook. “Our financials show that Intel’s transformation is underway, and we’re forecasting growth for 2016,” said Stacy Smith, Intel CFO. “The 2016 dividend increase reflects confidence in the strategy and Intel’s ongoing commitment to create value and return cash to shareholders.” At today’s investor meeting, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich addressed

AMD, Business, CPU, Enterprise, Graphics, Hardware, Intel, Nvidia

Intel Moves to Attack NVIDIA Quadro, AMD FirePro Market

At the recently held 2015 HotChips conference, Avinash Sodani (KNL Chief Architect, Senior Principal Engineer, Intel) gave a speech how Intel plans to expand the Xeon Phi product lineup from a server-only, PCIe card concept into three different packages, which would appeal to the workstation and server customers in different fields. On SC’15 Conference, which takes place in Austin, TX – Intel finally confirmed the strategy and is coming out with a workstation product that will feature a fully-enabled Knights Landing (KNL) Many-Core processor. In the first half of 2016, the company will ship Intel-built, Intel-branded workstation powered by self-booting Xeon Phi processor. The processor will be able to boot standard

Companies, CPU, Hardware, Intel, VR World

Intel Core i7-6950X Broadwell-E Processor Coming Soon?

Intel’s next generation HEDT (High-End desktop) family isn’t scheduled to launch soon, but the leaked information confirms the upcoming Intel Core i7-6950X will be based on the Broadwell-E architecture, scheduled to arrive in spring 2016. Unlike the previous rumors about the processor family, the i7-6950X should be a performance monster with feature 10 cores i.e. 20 Threads, giving enthusiasts the fastest CPU on which they could base their high-end systems. The latest news on the Broadwell-E family comes from XFastest who have confirmed that Intel’s Core i7-6950X processor will be coming soon. The Intel Core i7-6950X processor should run with a base clock of mere 3.00 GHz, followed by a turbo boost clock that has yet to be

Hardware, Intel, Reviews, Smart Home

From HPC to HTPC: Can HTPC Become Your Main PC?

In the world of computing, the big iron – workstations, servers and HPC, were my main focus for the most of the past three decades. However, something on the opposite end of the spectrum from HPC, the kind of uber-mini desktop device, even smaller than HTPC – attracted my attention. This miniature box platform, using laptop CPU and chipset platforms & integration, but desktop peripherals and connectivity, is called many names: from NUC (Next Unit of Computing) by Intel, whose ex-desktop mainboard division is in charge is this product line; to Gigabyte’s BRIX line, likely named in the honor of their ex director and our