Modbook Pro, Probably the Best Tablet in the World

Los Angeles-based company, Modbook Inc., has finally announced the specifications of its highly-anticipated Modbook Pro tablet-PC. The device will come to the market this year, and it will probably be one of the most powerful tablets in the world. Years ago, Andreas E. Haas founded Modbook Inc. with the dream of building a high-quality tablet device that would have the power of a capable PC, the built quality and reliability of an Apple MacBook and that would be able to run Apple’s operating system. Back in 2008, Modbook Inc. went public and just ten days later Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, thus proving that the American government allowed financial companies to run rampant with no regard to the U.S. citizens’ well-being. The...

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Shuttle Intros AMD Radeon-Powered Fanless Slim PCs

Shuttle, Well-known mini-PC manufacturer Shuttle has just announced the new Slim PC model XS35 as reported by Fanlesstech. This one comes with an Intel Atom D2700 dual-core processor, but it has AMD’s Radeon HD 7410M graphics card to help deliver acceptable 3D graphics. Intel’s Atom D2700 is a dual-core Cedar Trail processor with HyperThreading enabled, that can handle four threads with modest performance. It comes with a single-channel DDR3 memory controller that can work with DDR3-800 MHz memory. Shuttle’s Slim PC XS35 is a completely fanless device that is certified for full 24-hour use and comes complete with an optional ODD bay for a slim DVD or Blu-Ray drive. Maximum power consumption is rated at 27 watts, and...

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Google Nexus 7 Is Official, Pre-Order Now, Ships in Two Weeks

During its annual developer-focused conference, Internet giant company Google has launched its first Android tablet. The new device has a 7” diagonal size and sports a 1280 by 800 pixel resolution. This is the first 7” tablet that’s being endorsed and marketed by one of the world’s biggest IT companies. Steve Jobs’ Apple has always mocked the 7” diagonal size and said many times that 7” tablets are not really tablets and, although in a much more humble manner, we tend to agree with him. Microsoft’s recently presented Surface tablet keeps up with Apple and features a diagonal of more than 7”, and it also brings other innovative features, such as a foldable keyboard/tablet cover. Therefore, Google is left alone by the...

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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on Galaxy Nexus, XOOM and Nexus S in Mid-July

While announcing the new flavor of Android, namely 4.1 Jelly Bean, Google also confirmed its availability for Ice Cream Sandwich-based devices. Starting with mid-July, the owners of Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S devices will get a taste of it, the same as those who own a Motorola XOOM tablet. The platform will be released along with the Android 4.1 source code, yet developers can already download and play with the updated SDK. The new OS flavor comes with a host of new features, including UI changes, Google now, updated camera app, improved notifications system, better performance, and more. You can have a look at how the new platform can fare when compared to Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus in the video above. The user experience will certainly be improved, but don't...

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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Now are Official

Today, Google has unveiled to the world the next flavor of its mobile operating system, Android. Jelly Bean, the new of version, Android 4.1, comes with a new user interface, as well as with a set of new features meant to improve the overall user experience with the platform. Among these, we can count Project Butter, destined to improve the overall performance of the platform, as well as its response time. Better animations are also included in the new OS version, along with better CPU management, for increased response. Users will be able to dynamically resize widgets on the homescreen, and can also remove them by simply flicking them off the screen. Apps can be removed the very same way. The camera app was updated...

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Xeon Phi and AMD’s GCN Squeezing Nvidia’s TESLA

Intel’s Xeon Phi seemed like a doomed architecture back when Intel was attempting to compete with the likes of ATi and Nvidia. The company even scrapped the Larabee project, but all that work was not thrown away. Intel redirected the use of their multiple core architecture towards high performance computing. We believe that much of the work was done on the software side, as Intel’s main purpose was to make software integration much easier for HPC users. The idea is a good one and the result is practical, although we’d rather have anything but x86 inside. For now, if Intel Xeon Phi x86 offers the better result, it deserves all the credit. Nvidia’s main problem is the fact that CUDA takes a whole lot of work to...

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Adobe Brackets, an Open Source Code Editor Built in HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Adobe is very keen on HTML5 and the open web in general. This isn't just PR talk, it realized that Flash won't cut it for a lot longer and started supporting HTML5 in a big way. One example is the Brackets code editor which is available under an MIT license on Git Hub. The editor is intended for HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but it's in the early stages and a lot more functionality is planned. What's more, modularity and extensibility are at the core of the design and there's no reason why users can't expand the editor's functionality to support more languages. Of course, HTML editors are a dime a dozen, what makes Brackets special is that it's actually built with HTML and JavaScript. In fact, the Adobe developers use Brackets...

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Sapphire Intros AMD Radeon HD 7870 FleX Video Card

Traditional AMD video card and mainboard manufacturing partner Sapphire has just announced the new Sapphire HD 7870 Flex Edition video card, on its official website. The new addition to Sapphire’s AMD Radeon product lineup comes with dual BIOS and the efficient Dual-X cooling system. The new card features the cool AMD “Pitcairn” GPU that runs at the default 1000 MHZ frequency and uses 2 GB of on board GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800 MHz effective. For the enthusiasts gunning for maximum performance, a new version of the Sapphire’s TriXX overclocking tool is also added in the box along with the standard accessories. There are four heatpipes taking care of the GPU cooling and two fans that blow air through the cooling fins. The...

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Coming in Q3: AMD 4GHz Vishera FX 8350

AMD’s Piledriver architecture is bringing a whole lot of improvements to the original Bulldozer core. In fact, Piledriver is exactly what Bulldozer was supposed to be when it was first launched a year ago. Reported by Fudzilla, AMD is planning a Q3 launch for its Piledriver-based FX 8350 processor. We believe that if Piledriver’s enhanced clock mesh seen in Trinity is applied to the FX processors also, the highest clocked model will most likely surpass, or at least equal, the 4 GHz frequency. The SOI manufacturing enhancements, along with the architecture improvements brought by Piledriver, have managed to get AMD’s APUs from 2,9 GHz to a high 3,8 GHz. Llano’s top model was clocked at a base frequency of 2900...

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Test: 3 Tb/s Wireless

There is a great deal of expectation when we talk about the new wireless devices belonging to the novel 802.11ac standard. It was said that WirelessAC is the first “Gigabit Wireless” standard, but it seems that scientists are not satisfied with the results and are working hard at the “Terabit Wireless” standard. We don’t see 802.11ac as true “gigabit wireless,” because when using a single antenna on the AP and a single antenna on the receiving device, only 0.4 Gb/s data rates can be achieved. So we could say that we’re not satisfied with the current WirelessAC standard either. Scientists at NASA and many other universities in China, US and Israel have reported by Gizmodo tested a wireless signal able to transfer data at...

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Acer Sandy Bridge NetBook

Acer has decided to build a decent netbook, and that’s probably detrimental to the usual battery life expected from netbooks in general. The new device is powered by a modest-performing Celeron B877 processor and features a 11.6” screen. The new netbook from Acer, Fudzilla reported quite a bit heavier than the usual netbook, but unfortunately it doesn’t feature the useful DVD-Writer. In fact, the TravelMate B113 is heavy enough not to fit in the UltraBook category either, but that is also excluded by the device’s thickness. The TravelMate B113 is a very peculiar device. It doesn’t look like an UltraBook, can’t last as long as a netbook, and it doesn’t have a propped ODD drive just like any notebook should have. This...

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RSA SecurID bypassed, Access Cryptographic Keys only in 13 Minutes

Experts from France, Italy, the UK, and Norway have released the results of a study which demonstrates that the flaws present in many of the popular security devices, such as the RSA’s SecureID 800, can be leveraged to obtain the precious cryptographic keys. In a paper called “Efficient padding oracle attacks on cryptographic hardware,” researchers Romain Bardou, Lorenzo Simionato, Graham Steel, Joe-Kai Tsay, Riccardo Focardi and Yusuke Kawamoto detail the vulnerabilities that expose the imported keys from various cryptographic devices that rely on the PKCS#11 standard. They describe the method they used, the padding oracle attack, as a “particular type of side channel attack where the attacker is assumed to have access to...

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AMD Fusion APUs 500% is Faster than Intel’s CPUs in Musemage

When it comes to photo processing, GPU accelerated compute power has a very high performance potential. Depending on the architecture in question and the API used, the result can be amazing. AMD’s Llano seems to be a very capable APU, and despite the fact that it can already be called “last year technology” it demonstrates nice results. Software developers preference for open source APIs also puts AMD’s OpenCL capabilities in a better position than Nvidia’s CUDA. During this year’s AFDS, AMD posted some nice short videos exemplifying the performance improvement offered by the company’s GPU architecture. What the video doesn’t show is the impressive performance results that are achieved in real benchmarking. William Van Winkle from Tom’s Hardware put AMD’s A8-3850...

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AMD G-T16R Shows 300% Performance of the GeodeLX, Consume Less Power

Fabless CPU and GPU designer, Texas-based company AMD has launched today the company’s new G-T16R embedded processor, on its official website. The new wonder consumes an average power of 2.3 watts and offers over three times the performance of Geode LX. Many of our readers will remember AMD’s Geode line of embedded processors that the company acquired from National Semiconductor. Back in 2002, AMD needed to buy a whole CPU team from National Semiconductor to be able to offer processors that were proper to fit thin industrial clients and manifested a power consumption of less than 10 watts. Now, AMD is able to offer APUs that consume roughly less than quarter of that value and offer 300% the performance. We should...

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This is it, HP’s First AMD “Trinity” Desktop System

HP has been a strong supporter of AMD during the last years.  Now, the company is among the first big OEM builders to launch “Trinity”-based desktop computer systems. HP has chosen AMD GPUs as their main 3D processing solution in the company’s mobile systems for years now.  Even Nvidia was telling us at a Kepler presentation some months ago that they were very happy HP decided to finally use Nvidia GPUs again. They were proud to include HP on Nvidia’s design wins board, but the thing is that the first Ivy Bridge notebooks launched by HP were still using AMD GPUs. HP’s SleekBook is one of AMD’s best examples of how a “Trinty” UltraBook can be better than an Intel-based one. Of course, the UltraBook moniker is...

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AMD Fusion Server Brings 252% of MATLAB Performance Using OpenCL

AFDS 2012 event is proving to be very interesting and is clearly has much more serious impact on the computing industry as last year. Now we even have AMD APU based  professional servers from Penguin Computing fited with proper software that will take advantage of the iGPU inside AMD’s Fusion APUs and offer considerable better results. In this case the demonstration is done on a Penguin Computing Altus 2A00 server that you can read full story in Penguin Computings' Website. The system is powered by AMD’s Llano APUs, but we can expect Trinity versions to appear soon. In this particular case, Penguin uses Accelereyes’ software called “Jacket” that allows MATLAB to run on but the x86 core and the iGPU at the same time. The iGPU is able to deliver 52% better performance,...

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Galaxy Nexus HSPA+, the First Phone with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Google is indeed gearing up for the release of a new version of its Android platform, and a leak coming from the company itself confirms it. The Galaxy Nexus HSPA+, which is being sold through Google Play Store, has been listed on the website as “the first phone with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean,” screenshots coming from Droid-life confirm. This is the latest Google phone out there, and it was only natural for it to receive the latest OS upgrade first, as tradition calls.  Moreover, the checkout page on the webs store listed the phone with a new homescreen, in line with what was spotted on the Google I/O conference app screenshots. The mentioning was already pulled off the site, but rumor has it that Google might make...

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Apple Explains the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Adapter

If you’re looking to find out which computers support the Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter, where you can connect it, the requirements for using it, etc., Apple released a handy FAQ that answers all these questions, and more. If you’re curious to know which Macs support this adapter, you should be happy to learn that all Thunderbolt-equipped systems are a go, so long as you have OS X Lion v10.7.4 or later installed. Macs released prior to June, 2012 that also boast a Thunderbolt connector will require Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2.1 to use this adapter. You can connect this adapter to external devices, as well as directly to the port on your Mac. And, if you’re "daisy chaining" multiple devices, Apple says...

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