SONY Tab 20 Home Tablet

Japanese giant electronics and entertainment company SONY apparently thinks that we should all have a home tablet next to our PC, mobile multimedia and communication tablet, mobile notebook workstation and big screen smartphone. The IT companies are trying hard to convince us we need all of these, and SONY’s new Tab 20 / home tablet concept made us wonder what its primary use or reason for being is. The best explanation we have for it is that this is basically a huggable AIO computer that has a small battery to allow you to carry it from one room to another. The SONY Tab 20 is a 20” tablet with a 10-point multitouch display featuring a rather modest 1600 by 900 pixel resolution that doesn’t exactly fit with the usage model,...

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Intel Xeon Phi Barely Equals AMD VLIW Radeons

Intel’s work on the Larabee project and succeeding Xeon Phi accelerator cards has costed the company billions of dollars and lasted for almost a decade. Now the architecture is finally ready to fight for a place on the GPU compute market. During this year’s Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California, the world’s largest semiconductor company has shared the final details on the Xeon Phi cards and it seems the company has achieved a lot for a first generation product. On the other hand, not all is rosy for Intel and its Xeon Phi project. Intel’s problem is best described by its own slides during the presentation as the company is actually now comparing its new and very advanced architecture with last year’s technology...

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HP Stunning SpectreXT TouchSmart Ultrabook

HP decided to surprise the UltraBook fans with an incredibly well built and well featured mobile device at the IFA 2012 event in Berlin, Germany. The new mobile system features the first ThunderBolt port on a HP UltraBook and it’s the first time the company has used a 1080p IPS screen on such a design. We’re very glad HP has decided to equip its new UltraBook with such high end features, but we’re even more impressed with the fact that it also comes with an incredibly strong and good looking magnesium alloy body. The laptop is only 17.9 millimeters thick (0.7”), but weighs in at 4.77 pounds (2.16 Kg) and that’s a bit heavier than Lenovo’s S series. It is build using Intel’s Ivy Bridge and comes with two USB 3.0 ports and...

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AMD Different CPU Design Method Experiments [Updated]

AMD has decided to concentrate on the bulk manufacturing process instead of the usual Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) that has been the company’s main technology for the past eleven years. Back in 2001, AMD’s Palomino processors, or the famous AthlonXP as most of us knew them, were imbued with IBM’s SOI technology to help achieve higher working frequencies by lowering the amount of current leakage and power consumption. When designing a high frequency microprocessor, the architect is not really concentrating on lowering the power consumption. Some of the internal units that are literally getting very hot when heavily in use could pose a problem to the chip’s overall stability and ability to function. Therefore the designers...

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AMD Private Meeting Highlights: Yes to Tablets, No to Ultrabook Alternative

Being one of those lucky enough to land a one-on-one briefing with AMD at IFA 2012, I got the inside scoop on quite a few things, from laptops to tablets and the processors used in them. It was actually surprising to learn that AMD was going to focus on tablets during the meeting, rather than ultrathin laptops and notebooks. Nevertheless, that is what happened. There are some things we can’t talk about just yet, but we have free reign on just as many subjects, if not more. To start off, AMD isn’t going to follow the same pattern that the rest of the IT industry adopted in regards to the tablet market. For those who don’t know what we mean, many companies released a sort of test product before entering the segment, some after...

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HTC Accord Windows Phone 8 Device

Rumors on the upcoming HTC Windows Phone 8 devices started to pour in a few months ago, though the Taiwanese company has yet to confirm any of these speculations. Although it’s not yet clear how exactly HTC plans on taking Nokia on the Windows Phone market, it appears that new info on one of the unannounced WP8-based handsets has just emerged online. A photo of the alleged HTC Accord, one of the Windows Phone 8 smartphones that leaked for the first time back in June, was recently published by an XDA Developers forum member via Twitter. Along with the said press photo, several specs of the HTC Accord have been unveiled also, then again there have been no confirmation from the handset maker so far. Today, a new render of the...

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MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 (GK106) Power Edition Video Card

We’ve already reported about the Nvidia GK106 GPU here, but it seems like we were somewhat right and, if the GPU has 1152 CUDA cores on the semiconductor die, the retail cards will not come with all the processing units enabled. There is the unlikely possibility that the GK106 really has only 960 CUDA cores inside, like depicted in MSI’s marketing material on its GTX 660 Power Edition card. The most likely scenario is that Nvidia will eventually stop using the GK106 for the GTX 660 Ti cards and go for the cheaper and cooler GK106. We will not have to wait too much to receive official confirmation from Nvidia as the GK106 and the GTX 660 video card will be officially launched next week. MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Power...

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How Thin the iPhone 5 Really Is? This is 3GS, 4S and Next iPhone 5 Comparison

The French are at it again with a new set of images that aim to give us a good picture of what the next iPhone will look like. Nowhereelse.fr has posted images showing a comparison between the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 3GS, and the next-generation iPhone’s chassis. Sandwiched between its older counterparts, the iPhone 5 is notably thinner and svelter. This achievement was possible thanks to Apple’s machining process behind the unibody enclosures for its popular products. This time around, they’ve used it on the iPhone too, not just Macs. Apple is expected to lift the cloth off this shiny new product next week, during a press event that is rumored for September 12. Physical availability of the handset is expected around September...

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