Latest News - Page 2909

It looks like AMD is preparing an impressive "native" 16-core processor, with all sixteen cores sitting on the same die. This technology will reportedly surface sometime after 2015.

All of this will begin in AMD's server processor range, with its multi-core Opteron processors for high-end servers using multi-chip-module (MCM) technology. These chips use two six- or eight-core dies onto the same piece of substrate to create a 12- or 16-core solution. This tech will roll down to the consumer side of things, where we should expect a new 16-core processor from the chipmaker sometime in 2015-2016.

As this year continues, AMD will release an Opteron processor codenamed "Warsaw". Warsaw will feature 12 or 16 cores on AMD's Piledriver architecture, and should arrive toward late 2015. The company should also be capable of making a 32-core, multi-chip-module for high-end servers by slapping together two 16-core dies onto a single substrate. 32 cores aren't far away!

Amazon is getting a little scary as we shift into 2014, with a new patent for "anticipatory shipping". This patent will allow the US giant to sent items to shipping hubs in areas where it believes that particular item will sell well.

The new shipping scheme should slice delivery times down, as well as putting Amazon much higher up on the food chain than it already is. The company plans to box, and ship products it expects its consumers will buy preemptively, based on previous searches and purchases, wish lists, and how long the user's cursor hovers over an item online.

Amazon wants to go a step further, by having the products "speculatively shipped to a physical address" without knowing if the customer wants it. This would eventuate in returns of unwanted deliveries, but Amazon is willing to take that risk. Amazon stated in its patent: "Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill."

The benefit of solid state drives and flash storage continue to intrigue consumers and business users, but consumers can still expect to see small storage capacities and relatively high prices, according to market research group Objective Analysis. Consumers can expect to pay around 75 cents per gigabyte for SSD, with manufacturers expected to see the best success with 200GB SSDs.

Sandisk, which expects SSDs to make up 25 percent of the company's corporate revenue before the end of the year, said pricing should stabilize.

SSD read and write speeds continue to increase - and consumers are becoming more familiar with the flash-based storage - but cost and smaller storage capacity may lead consumers to choose traditional hard disk drives. SSD performance still outpaces HDD, but price issues and low storage capacities may prevent consumers from purchasing SSDs for their own hardware upgrades.

The Apple iPhone and Samsung Google Android-powered smartphones both grew their respective market shares in the United States during Q4 2013, according to The NPD Group. iPhone ownership increased from 35 percent up to 42 percent year-over-year, while the Android smartphones jumped from 22 percent up to 26 percent during the same time frame.

The top five music apps used on smartphones during the fourth quarter of 2013: Pandora, iHeart Radio, Spotify, TunIn Radio, and Slacker Radio. As more consumers use smartphones with unlimited data - and Wi-Fi-supported devices - there is a huge demand for streaming music and other connected services. Music streaming rose 11 percent up to 52 percent, and that number will likely increase even higher.

"Considering the increase in prominence of smartphone music apps, it's not surprising that hardware manufacturers such as Betas are leveraging partnerships with carriers, like AT&T to break into the streaming music market," said John Buffone, NPD Executive Director of Connected Intelligence, in a statement. "This allows AT&T to offer subscribers more of what they want in the way innovative music apps and provides Beats a partner capable of driving trial in a market where consumers already have an affinity for the music services they use."

Cyber security threats continue to plague users and businesses trying to defend against increasingly sophisticated and well-executed attacks, according to the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report. Cyber security is a major business as Cisco and other companies develop cyber security efforts to protect end-users and businesses.

Overall cyber attacks increased 14 percent in 2013, with select industries facing a staggering number of attacks designed to steal information and disrupt day-to-day operations. The pharmaceutical, agriculture, mining, chemicals and electronics industries all saw an increase in malware aimed at compromising systems - a whopping growth of 600 percent - while energy, oil and gas industries saw a 400 percent increase in malware and cyber attacks.

"Although the Cisco Annual Security Report paints a grim picture of the current state of cyber security, there is hope for restoring trust in people, institutions and technologies - that that starts with empowering defenders with real-world knowledge about expanding attack surfaces," said John Stewart, Cisco Chief Security Officer, noted in a press release. "To truly protect against all of these possible attacks, defenders must understand the attackers, their motivations and their methods - before, during and after an attack."

The Sacramento Kings from the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced it will become the first professional sports team to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. Until March 1, basketball fans can purchase game tickets and merchandise in a "faster and more" secure manner, according to the team.

"We are maniacally focused on creating the most seamless experience for our fans in all facets,"said Vivek Ranadive, majority team owner of the Kings, in a press statement. "With BitPay, we are able to implement a technology that allows our fans to make Kings-related purchases without physically reaching into their wallets. A major tenet of the NBA 3.0 philosophy is about utilizing technology for the betterment of the fan experience, and this is yet another step in that process."

While the Kings became the first major pro sports team to accept bitcoin payments, expect others to jump onboard as well. If nothing else, other organizations will patiently observe and learn from any technology growing pains that the Kings - and any major business - face when trying to accept bitcoin.

The United States market for augmented reality is expected to grow by 30 percent per year until 2018, as more users become familiar with AR products, according to TechSci Research. Moving forward, the video game industry will push AR forward and will usher in a new era of consumer AR product development.

Although relatively new to the consumer market, government defense contractors have the largest market share - and continue to push forward with the demand of new head-mounted displays (HMD) HUDs. In 2012, California, Colorado, Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois dominated the market by pushing demand.

In United States HMDs and HUDs market, Delphi Automotive, Denso Corp., Johnson and Controls, BAE Systems and Rockwell Collins are currently the leading market players,"said Karan Chechi, TechSci Research's Director, in a statement. Google, Vuzix, Ad-Dispatch and Layar are the major players in AR smart glasses and apps market, however, with the growing shipments of smartphones and tablet PCs, other players such as Sony, Microsoft and Oakley are expected to make significant contributions over the next five years."

The Ubuntu Linux operating system is the most secure end-user operating system currently available, according to research done by the Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG). The CESG is part of the British Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), and while none of the OSes is completely secure, Ubuntu Linux 12.04 was rated the highest.

Each OS was rated on criteria such as Virtual Private Network (VPN) support, disk encryption, authentication, malicious code detection and prevention, incident response, and device update policy, among other categories. Ubuntu's built-in VPN struggled to meet the strict criteria set by the CESG, though hopes its own VPN will be supported with Ubuntu 14.04, scheduled for an April launch date.

During the analysis, researchers took a look at the following operating systems - for both desktop and mobile devices - Android 4.2, Android 4.2 on Samsung devices, Apple iOS 6, Google Chrome OS 26, BlackBerry 10.1, Ubuntu 12.04, Windows 7 and 8, Windows 8 RT, and Windows Phone 8.

Beijing's smog problem is becoming so bad that not only do people have to walk around wearing masks to try and be a little safer than walking through pollution, but citizens of one of the city cannot even view a natural sunrise.

The Chinese capital has now placed massive digital commercial TVs across the city that display virtual sunrises... yes, virtual sunrises. Air pollution monitors have issued a severe air warning for both the elderly and school children to stay indoors until the quality improves. Beijing's commuters have resorted to wearing industrial strength face masks to get to work because of the intense smog.

Beijing's air quality is normally poor, but the readings for Thursday for particles of PM2.5 pollution are the first of the season to be above 500 micrograms per cubic meter. Mid Thursday morning, the density of PM2.5 was between 300-500, but the air started to clear toward the afternoon. The World Health Organization considers 25 micrograms safe, so these readings are around 26 times the WHOs safe limits.

Today the long running saga of OCZ's slow decline has finally come to an end. This morning a OCZ received approval from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the district of Delaware, to sell all of its Solid State Drive assets to Toshiba. This approval allows OCZ to finalize the acquisition that we were the first to tell you about back in October, and then again in November.

"The OCZ team is excited to be a part of an innovative company like Toshiba where we can continue to develop new and unique SSD technologies that position the company as a solid state solutions leader in both the client and enterprise storage markets," said Ralph Schmitt, OCZ CEO, in a statement.

OCZ says the asset acquisition will complete by the end of next week, and Toshiba will keep the OCZ brand alive with its full portfolio of consumer and enterprise SSD products. With the financial powerhouse that is Toshiba now behind the OCZ brand, things could turn out very well for the once falling company.

Nimbus Data, a leading provider of unified all-flash storage systems for enterprise and cloud infrastructure, has announced record-setting financial results for 2013. Nimbus Data specializes in unified all-flash array technology, and their Sustainable Storage systems have surpassed 500 deployments. Their products bring together low-latency flash, data management and protection, and highly-scalable multiprotocol storage features to create a fault-tolerant solid state solution designed for server and desktop virtualization, databases, HPC, and next generation cloud infrastructure.

Nimbus all-flash arrays are available for a acquisition cost that is comparable to disk-based storage arrays with tremendously lower operating costs and total TCO.

Things are moving along quickly for Nimbus Data, with net income growth 4x that of 2012 and doubled revenue as well. They have also expanded their facilities and staff with a new sales and engineering office in Austin, TX, and headcount growth of 125%. These solid financials and continued controlled growth may foretell a possible IPO in 12-18 months.

Nintendo had a stellar 2013 with its 3DS console, but overall, sales of its hardware are not impressing anyone. The Japanese gaming giant expects to post an operating loss of 35 billion yen ($335 million) for the year ending March 31, 2014.

It did have a projected operating income of nearly triple that, according to its full-year financial and dividend forecasts. Nintendo projected net sales of 920 billion yen and profit forecast of 55 billion yen for the current financial year. These numbers have been reworked now, dropping to 590 billion yen in sales, and a net loss of 25 billion yen.

Nintendo has said that the operating loss is thanks to a "significantly lower" holiday season of sales than it had originally forecasted. This is mostly due to hardware sales not meeting internal targets, and the year-end sales season "constitutes the highest proportion of the annual sales volume."

We've learnt quite a lot from Valve's developer-only Steam Dev Days conference, with VR being the focus of the second, and last day of the event. Oculus VR's founder, Palmer Luckey, was a key guest for its VR discussions, where he teased the future of VR.

Luckey said: "Valve's VR tech is the best virtual reality demo in the world right now". This is quite a statement from Luckey, considering his company just received $75 million in Series B funding for Oculus Rift. The specifications of what Valve and Oculus expect from a consumer VR headset for 2015 are very, very promising:

Feasible 2015 consumer HDM

This morning Samsung officially announced the existence of its rumored Galaxy Tab 3 Lite after the device's user manual leaked late last night. The Galaxy Tab 3 Lite is aimed at the low-end side of the market and hopes to attract more customers to the small tablet realm in hopes that they will upgrade to a high-end model in the future.

The Galaxy Tab 3 Lite features a 7-inch screen with a 1024x600 resolution screen, while a 1.2GHz dual-core processor handles computational duties. 1GB of RAM should barely keep things running smooth while 8GB of on-board storage is on hand to store all of your files. A micro SD slot allows for more storage while a 2MP rear camera handles imaging duties. Battery life will be questionable with only a 3600mAh battery being featured, but with the slimmed down specifications, this may turn out not to be an issue.

The Wi-Fi version is expected to retail for around $165 while a 3G compatible version will cost consumers about $100 more putting the price tag at $265. With prices like this, Samsung has to face some stiff competition in Google's Nexus 7, Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX, and even offerings from Acer and ASUS.

Diablo and Sandisk received Storage Visions 2014 Visionary Product Award, in the Enabling Professional Storage Technology category, for the ULLtraDIMM. The ULLtraDIMM adds NAND onto a DIMM-type module, leveraging Diablo IP for translation and Sandisk's Guardian Technology for NAND management.

The Diablo MCS (Memory Channel System) technology creates the pathway that allows NAND to be used as either in-memory compute space or block-level storage. This allows for two different usage models that present unprecedented speed and density from flash storage. We were lucky enough to speak with the CEO and co-founder of Diablo, Riccardo Badalone, at this year's Storage Visions conference.

This new technology is very disruptive, and Sandisk and Diablo aren't the only companies eyeing this type of product. They currently are in the lead, with working silicon and hardware already in the validation stages. We expect this technology to be a game-changer of enormous magnitude, and will help to enable the emergence of the all-flash datacenter. We spoke with Jon Scaramuzzo, the SVP and GM of the Enterprise Storage Solutions group at Sandisk, in this interview where he outlines the penetration of flash into every storage tier of the datacenter.

Some parents' kids racked up some massive in-app purchases through iOS-based game, which ended up in a Federal Trade Commission complaint. This complaint has ended with Apple having to hand over $32.5 million.

The FTC's complaint alleges that Apple failed to tell parents that by entering a password, they were allowing single in-app purchases, as well as additional purchases that their children could make without the parent intervening again. FTC chair Edith Ramirez said: "This settlement is a victory for consumers harmed by Apple's unfair billing, and a signal to the business community: whether you're doing business in the mobile arena or the mall down the street, fundamental consumer protections apply. You cannot charge consumers for purchases they did not authorize."

The FTC had received tens of thousands of complaints about unauthorized purchases by parents of children who used their iOS devices. One consumer saw a massive $2,600 bill from a game called Tap Pet Hotel.

Steam Dev Days has kicked off, with announcements flowing - we just heard that Alienware will launch its Steam Machine in September - but now we're hearing about some massive growth on Steam.

Over the past three months, Valve has seen an additional 10 million users join Steam, which has seen its total user base climb from 65 million to 75 million users. Breaking this down into geographical locations, 41% of sales come from the US, and 40% from Europe. Russia and Brazil's markets grew the most year-over-year, with Russia's market increasing 128%, and Brazil's market 75%.

What about the Steam mobile app? Well, that has a total of 7 million people using it, and a split of 55% and 45% for Android, and iOS, respectively.

Tonight Adobe announced an exciting new feature for its Photoshop Creative Cloud software. The new 3D Printing feature allows users to create, color, and texture their 3D models and then button them up for 3D printing. Photoshop will also build support structure into the model to ensure everything prints exactly as planned.

As a heavy Photoshop user and avid 3D printing guru, this will definitely be something I try out in the coming weeks. While I think I may still prefer the tested methods of modeling an object and then prepping it for printing using a service such as NetFab, but who knows, Adobe could have just changed the game for experienced Photoshop users who are into 3D printing.

CES 2014 - 3D Printing was arguably the hottest category at this years Consumer Electronics Show, and we got the chance to stop by their booth on the show floor where XYZ Printing was showing off its sub $500 da Vinci 3D Printer. XYZ Printing is owned by the New Kinpo Group, a company that has been making normal printers for decades.

Pooling from its years of experience, XYZ Printing developed what can only be considered as one of the most refined consumer level 3D printers on the market today. The da Vinci's exterior is something that would look at home in anyone's workroom or office and would fit in alongside any other office machine. Furthermore, the da Vinci is fully enclosed which lends for a better build environment as well as acting as a safety barrier when the machine is running.

The da Vinci is a FDM-based printer and utilizes proprietary filament cartridges, which enable the company to provide consistent printing results and negates the issues with consumer supplied filament which might be of lower quality and cause issues. A build area of 7.8-inches cubed allow for large model creation, and is large enough for almost anything you need to print. XYZ has also built a "Cloud Database" which contains thousands of printable models, so users get a truly plug and play experience.

CES 2014 - Between scheduled meetings I had about an hour to walk the CES floor in one of the many ballrooms that were set up to house the thousands of vendors who were showcasing their products for media, buyers, and analyst. I happened to stumble across the PAPAGO booth and got to check out their newly released line of video camera devices that have just launched in the US.

Being an avid Airsoft player, their small cylindrical 1080p GoLife Extreme Action Camera instantly caught my eye. The GOLife Extreme is a lightweight and rugged small action camera that features a rechargeable battery and allows for full 1080p capture during even the most extreme sporting outings. Having recently researched action cameras for my Airsoft outings, the GoLife Extreme is definitely the lightest and smallest of the models I have looked at, and would be perfect for anything where a lightweight camera is desired to capture all of the action.

Action cameras are awesome, but PAPAGO is most famous for its line of Dash Cameras, and the company was showing of its latest P3 dashcam at CES. The P3 records your commuting trips in full HD and features a built-in G-Sensor that automatically backed up all recorded footage in the event of a collision. Additionally the P3 features an integrated GPS navigation system, and the device can wan you when you exceed the speed limit.