Intel Takes AMD Example and Plans Server Interconnect Technology

A completely integrated way of interconnecting servers, blades and the communication adapters seems the next major step in the server world. Initially, this was done mostly on supercomputers and very large server setups that required a certain specification to be fulfilled. AMD’s SeaMicro has already developed the Freedom Fabric technology that consists in dedicated chips that offer a fully integrated way to interconnect the server boards. The Freedom Fabric interconnect from AMD offers an impressive 1.28 Tb/s bandwidth which translates into 1.25 GB/s. Intel’s vice president of the Architecture Group, Mr. Raj Hazra said that the new interconnect technology practically will virtualize the I/O and will tie together storage...

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Samsung Shooting an Anti-Apple Commercial

In the Apple vs. Samsung war, some would say that the customer is the winner, but we don’t believe that to be true. Both companies have the financial resources to publicize a media fight while a price war is something unimaginable. We’re not saying that a price war is desirable, but playing tag with “mine is rounder than yours” is not really what technology enthusiasts were envisioning as the definition of the term competition. In our opinion, we thought that democracy and capitalism was all about competition and the freedom the competitors have to take something and make it better. Apple argued some time ago that Samsung’s workers studied the iPhone in the development process for the Korean-made smartphones and that screen...

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Pentax K-5 II and K-5 IIs DSLR Cameras

Where the Q10 camera is small and relatively affordable, insofar as products sold for several hundred dollars can be called such, the K-5 II & K-5 IIs don't even try to pass themselves off as anything of the sort. Priced well beyond the $1,000 / 1000 Euro mark, even not counting the lenses, they are overall better at everything. That includes image quality, zooming, autofocus and, most importantly, withstanding less than stellar conditions. Both cameras are reasonably resistant to cold, dust and bad weather, and what is particularly interesting is the DR II (Dust Removal II) mechanism, which induces ultrasonic vibration to shake dust off the CMOS sensor. Like the Pentax Q10, the K-5 II and K-5 IIs DSLR cameras will...

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Incoming Intel Mobile Pentium “Ivy Bridge” CPUs

We reported here and here about Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors that the company is introducing now, but the CPU giant is also getting ready with new Pentium-branded mobile chips, featuring the same architecture. The company is moving the Ivy Bridge architecture in the mainstream line, but the cheapest alternatives will still be Sandy Bridge-based. Intel is now getting ready with new mobile Ivy Bridge processors that bare the Pentium brand, CPU-World reports. We’re talking about the Pentium 2117U CPU that is an Ivy Bridge dual-core chip with no HT technology. Running at 1.8 GHz, it will fit inside the same 17 watts TDP that the Sandy Bridge Pentium 987 has, but the SB part is 300 MHz slower. It features HD...

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AMD FirePro Get RealD BlueLine Technology, to Become Better at 3D

The event known as Intel Developer Forum kicked off today, so naturally, Advanced Micro Devices made some press announcements meant to move people's attention from that. The launch of the SeaMicro SM15000 server is the main AMD event of the day, but the partnership with RealD isn't something minor either. As it turns out, the AMD FirePro line of professional graphics adapters will start benefiting from RealD's BlueLine technology. The video cards already have all they need to send 3D feeds to projectors, TVs, monitors, etc., but there is still the matter of control and ease of use. RealD's BlueLine technology enables just that: control over the DLP projector, the 3D software and the graphics card, all from a single...

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EVGA Z77 FTW Overclocking Mainboard with 300% More Gold Content

Today traditional Nvidia video card manufacturing partner, American company EVGA, is launching its top overclocking mainboard, targeting socket 1155 enthusiasts. The new device features an impressive 300% more gold content in the CPU socket assembly. The official name of the new product is EVGA Z77 FTW and while we don’t clearly know what that gold is doing exactly, we can definitely say that there’s less than a tenth gram in there. The mainboard is completely overclocking oriented and it comes with several original EVGA features such as Vdroop Control, Dummy OC, E-LEET Tuning Support, EZ Voltage read points, onboard clear CMOS, power and reset buttons and triple BIOS support. It can use up to 32 GB of DDR3-2133 memory and it has six SATA3 connectors. Two of the SATA3 ports...

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World First 28nm DDR4 Memory Controller

Californian electronic design automation software and engineering services company Cadence Design Systems has just announced the world’s first DDR4 memory controller manufactured in 28nm technology. The chip has already been manufactured and tested in TSMC’s 28nm (28HPM and 28HP) process technologies. "We are excited to be the first to offer silicon-proven DDR4 memory controller and PHY IP that will enable our customers to exceed performance and power requirements in their next generation SoCs with reduced risk," said Marc Greenberg, director of product marketing, SoC realization group at Cadence Design Systems. DDR4 technology will have 50% higher frequency than the currently available DDR3 and will also require less...

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Gigabyte GB-TCD Thin Mini-ITX Desktop PC

Gigabyte is launching yet another nettop powered by Intel’s low-power and low-performing Atom processor. As the semiconductor giant has established the EOL for the D2700, the best Gigabyte can do is the Atom D2550 processor. The new Gigabyte GB-TCD thin mini-ITX desktop PC is built around Intel’s N10 chipset and comes with a single SO-DIMM slot supporting up to 4GB of DDR3-1333 memory. Graphics is handled by one of Intel’s most basic controllers, the extremely low performing GMA X3650. Gigabit LAN is handled by Realtek’s RTL8111E PHY and sound is provided by Realtek’s ALC887-VD2+ALC105-VE. There is one 2.5” storage bay available along with a SATA 2 connector and a Mini-PCIe slot along with an additional mSATA slot. The...

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SeaMicro SM15000 Server, Based on Opteron or Xeon CPUs - Intel Inside AMD

After seeing Advanced Micro Devices and Intel so firmly opposed to each other, it is slightly surreal to witness the appearance of a product which, though made by one of them, is fully ready to accept and use the resources of the other. A system capable of using hardware from a rival company is not unheard of, but that doesn't make the AMD SeaMicro SM15000 any less surprising, although we suppose this was bound to happen. AMD did buy SeaMicro for this very purpose after all. Rather than a CPU, or some other piece of hardware usable in servers, the SeaMicro SM15000 is a full-fledged server that supports not only AMD Opteron processors, but Intel Xeon “Ivy Bridge” units as well. Noteworthy about the micro server is the patented...

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Unlock 720p Video Recording on Google Nexus 7

The famous Google Nexus 7 tablet manufactured by Taiwanese mainboard maker ASUS already has video recording capabilities, but only 480p recording has been available up until now. Skilled and curious users over at XDA Forums have managed to unlock the 720p video recording capability in ASUS’ bestselling tablet, and now all Next 7 owners can enjoy the higher resolution just by applying the same tweaks, XDA-Developers forum reports. The video above also shows just how different and how much better the 720p mode is when compared with the standard 480p recording. We recommend you all try this, but we caution any readers that there are no guarantees with this mod and you might end up messing up your software settings. On the other hand, if the instructions don’t seem beyond...

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Intel Crystalwell Technology Uses a Wide Memory Bus

Haswell’s GT3 integrated graphics processing unit (iGPU) and, for those who don’t remember our spring report, we must say that Crystallwell technology is the so-called L4 cache that the new processor will come with. The company clearly needs some sort of memory buffer for its iGPU, as this is the best way to ensure a performance increase besides increasing the number of shader units or the clock frequency. In the case of GPUs, the graphics memory BUS width is the greatest performance bottleneck and hardware experts from Semiaccurate.com believe that Crystawell technology is a wide memory BUS design attempting to solve that issue, SemiAccurate reports. It is very complicated to use eDRAM in such a manner and a big quantity...

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