SK Hynix 8Gb LPDDR3 RAM for High-End Mobile Devices

Future high-end smartphones might indeed become as powerful as laptops and other computers are today, given that SK Hynix has already announced 20nm 8Gb (1GB) LPDDR3 chips for inclusion in devices before the end of the year.

The company’s chip is said to provide data transmission speed of 2,133Mbps, and to support high density of maximum 4GB (or 32Gb) packages, while featuring a thinner profile and less power consumption in standby when compared to LPDDR2. The company also announced that the new 20nm RAM could be provided in forms that include ‘PoP’ (Package on Package), as well as in a single package with ‘eMMC’ (embedded Multi Media Card).

SK Hynix expects high density LPDDR3 memory products over 2GB to be included in top-level mobile devices in the second half of the year.

SK Hynix intros new high-density RAM for top-level mobile devices
Image credits to Engadgety

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Creative Sound Blaster Cards Lose THX Logo

Creative had a really tight partnership with THX until a while ago, and probably still maintains a collaboration.

It's no longer essential though, because Creative has its own audio software now: SBX Pro Studio. It is this software that now ships with the Sound Blaster Recon3D sound cards. Speaking of which, a new card collection is out: Sound Blaster Z series. And somewhere in limbo between Sound Blaster Recon3D and Sound Blaster Z rests the Sound Blaster Recon3D r2. It's essentially the Recon3D but with the new software.

That means it has a Sound Core3D native-PCIe chipset, Cirrus Logic-made DAC, 5.1-channel output, 24-bit resolution, 102 dBA SNR, a dedicated 600 Ω headphones amplifier, 96 kHz sample rates, and OpenAL hardware-accelerated audio API support. It also gets EAX 5.0 Advanced HD and compatibility with Windows 8.

Creative Sound Blaster card
Image credits to Creative

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Colorful iGame GTX Titan Ultra Edition with Subzero Cooling

Since the GeForce GTX Titan graphics card from NVIDIA is already an overpowered beast, it takes special conditions to push it even higher.

After all, the better a video card, or a processor of any type really, runs, the more heat it generates. Solid capacitors and strong VRMs can help keep things stable, but it ultimately falls to the cooler to keep things from melting. Knowing this, Colorful equipped the iGame GeForce GTX Titan Ultra with the best water cooler it could think of. The biggest hint that this isn't a normal water cooler is the compressor assembly inside a separate case the size of a micro-ATX tower. The dual-slot waterblock is a really awe-inspiring sight too, as is the pair of insulated refrigerant pipes.

It's interesting to note that the waterblock covers both sides of the PCB, instead of just one. Between all that and the phase-change cooler (the same principle as deep-freezers), the temperature can be driven as low as 50 degrees Celsius while the GPU operates at 954 MHz / 1,006 MHz (default/boost) and the 6 GB of GDDr5 at 6 GHz.

Colorful iGame GTX Titan Ultra
Images credits to gdm

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64-bit ARM Servers Ready by Year's End

The issue of ARM-powered servers has mostly been skirted around, but it looks like there's nothing that can be done about the momentum of the technology.

Much as Intel might hate the thought of its customers looking elsewhere, at least some of them will adopt 64-bit ARM processors for servers by the end of 2013. Currently, there are two major ARM-based server processor suppliers in the enterprise market: Marvell and Calxeda. The former supplies chips for Dell, while Calxeda has HP as primary client. There's also Applied Micro, which, along with Calxeda, shows off 64-bit ARM chips at Computex 2013.

Taiwan-based Mitac International and some companies from China will release processors by the end of 2013 as well. It is all building up towards a nice race that will definitely disrupt the chains of deals on the IT market.

Calxeda ARM processor module
Image credits to Calxeda

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