Latest News - Page 3113

The WarpDrive has been a really good product for LSI and datacenter owners. The product has been so successful the successor has already been announced and production is ramping up quickly for a Q4 or early Q1 launch. That information has been public for the last month or so, released at IDF.

LSI is already working on an even newer product, one that they don't really want to talk too much about. So without an official name I'm going to designate this one WarpCache.

The LSI MegaRAID controllers have two distinct add-ons. We've covered them both in the past, FastPath, an IOPS accelerator and CacheCade, an HDD cache system fed by solid state drives. By placing an SSD or an array of SSDs in front of the HDDs to hold hot data the data can be read at the pace of SSDs. This also reduces wear on the traditional platter drives as frequently read data is pulled from the much faster SSD cache.With CacheCade 2.0 the SSD cache can write incoming data as well, a large bonus for write intensive apps.

Newegg are currently running a special on OCZ SSD drives, all you need is the coupon code "BLKNOVSSD". The specials are pretty good and include both the Vertex 3 and Agility 3 drives from OCZ. The specials include all three drive sizes, 60, 120 and 240GB.

Vertex 3 in 60, 120 and 240GB have original prices of $109, $190 and $475, respectively. With the 15-percent off and mail-in rebate, this brings the pricing down to $73, $142 and $374 for the 60, 120, and 240GB drives, respectively. For the Agility 3 drives, we see the same discount apply, 60, 120, 240GB drives with original prices of $107, $171 and $360, respectively, taken down to $71, $125, and $276, respectively, after the 15-percent off and mail-in rebate.

These are some seriously nice prices for the SSD drives from OCZ and would make quite the Christmas present if Mrs TweakTown reader is watching. Get one and stuff it into your partners' stocking for some Christmas morning SSD surprise!

We've seen some pretty amazing advances in mobile technology over the past decade, and even more so in the past two to three years. Battery life is one thing that has not kept up with the fast pace of the industry and this is set to [hopefully] change.

A team of engineers at Northwestern University claim to have discovered a breakthrough that could revolutionize the industry. The researchers have developed an electrode for lithium-ion batteries that could increase the capacity and recharge rate by 10 times. If this can be done, we could see smartphones lasting for an entire week before requiring a recharge. Oh, what's that? You need to recharge it to last another week? That'll only take a few minutes versus a few hours.

Currently, lithium-ion batteries are charged by a chemical reaction that causes litium ions to move between the anode and cathode. As energy is used, litium ions travel from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte. This is reversed when its charging. The anode is composed of carbon-based graphene sheets and they can only handle one lithium atom per six carbon atoms.

Airport body scanners that use X-ray technology have been banned across Europe. Officials have said in a press release that the X-ray technology is now deemed off-limits in order to not risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety.

Tiny bits of radiation emits from X-rays and have long since been connected to cancer in rare instances by physically damaging DNA. In a letter to ProPublica from the FDA, the agency claims that the risk of fatal cancer from scanners is 1 in 400 million.

Another report from ProPublica says that anywhere between six and 100 US airline passengers could develop cancer each year from walking through the machines. The TSA has responded to the EU's decision to ban the X-ray scanners, revealing that 300 dangerous or illegal items have been found on passengers by using the X-ray scanners. One would think that over the entire course of years using the scanners that finding 300 dangerous or illegal items, is worth the better chance of not getting cancer from the scanners?

Boxee Box is set to receive an upgrade in the form of the Boxee Live TV. Boxee Live TV is a dongle that allows you to connect an antenna to your Box and watch channels such as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC in HD without a monthly fee.

Most people are watching less traditional TV, because of Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Vudu and Vimeo. Boxee wants to get in on this, by providing something that allows you to still use those great services through Boxee Box, but allows broadcast TV channels such as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC over the air in HD through Boxee Live TV.

The traditional TV model is changing, we know that. Most people (like myself) don't sit down and watch TV when it is happening, live. They'll pre-record, DVR, download, or stream it over the Internet, to watch it later. Cable companies don't understand this, as their decades-old business model is fading, and they don't know how to stop it. Companies like Boxee understand you, most importantly, the new-age of TV viewers.

Apple have been having quite the hard time lately, with iOS updates flying thick and fast lately. iOS is rumored to be hitting some time next week, with another attempt from the Cupentino-based company to fix their battery life issues that went unresolved with iOS 5.0.1.

Battery drain has been a serious, recurring issue with iOS updates, although most devices are usually unaffected. iOS 5.1 is set to include a bunch of upgrades to Siri, expanding its functions. iOS 5.1 should include the ability to take a photo or record video using voice commands, as well as toggling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on or off. iOS 5.1's release date? TBA.

Apple officially considers Siri to be in a beta state, with some functions unavailable to those outside of the US and currently only supports just a few languages. Siri currently installs on just the iPhone 4S, but it has been hacked to work on older products.

Google have just unleashed Google Music from its beta hold, and have also announced a music store that is built into the Android Market. Google Music is available to anyone in the US without an invitation requirement, and includes the ability to upload 20,000 songs to the cloud for free.

Google Music will have an app for Windows, Mac and Linux devices that will help you upload songs to the cloud, and the songs uploaded to the cloud can be either streamed or "pinned" for offline listening. The Android Market music store will include millions of songs, sortable by genre, sub genre, top albums, and top songs.

There are Staff Picks and a New Releases section, song prices range between $0.99 and $1.29 and every song is 320kbps MP3s with 90 second previews for each song. There will be a new free song every day and the first one is David Bowie's "Sound and Vision", Google have said there will be hundreds of free songs from the get-go. Big major labels have joined in, such as Universal, EMI and Sony music, as well as a number of smaller, independent labels.

Toshiba 24nm MLC flash isn't exactly breaking news, SandForce had this drive on display at IDF 2011. We did learn today that Toshiba's 24nm flash should cost less than IMFT 25nm flash so all of those SandForce SF-2281 controlled drives could become a little cheaper in 2012.

We still are scratching our heads on what performance will be like but Toshiba's 3Xnm flash with the 2281 is the current speed king on the market today. Drives like the OCZ Technology MaxIOPS, Patriot Wildfire and OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G are just a few examples that use Toshiba flash already.

Also on display at AIS 2011 were several non-standard form factors produced by companies that are supplied with SandForce controllers.

I know, I know. I've posted a few rumors on the next-gen Xbox a few times now, but it seems there's just more news on it lately and especially today. Today's rumor is a bit more specific, though. Ubisoft Montreal are reportedly hard at work on 'target boxes' based on the intended specifications of the next-generation Xbox from Microsoft.

Delivery of the first iteration of genuine devkits, running custom hardware, are expected to reach studios before Christmas, which is pointing to a finalized console arriving in late 2012. Ubisoft's teams are reportedly working on PCs containing off-the-shelf components provided by Microsoft, and several other major developers such as EA are also in possession of these target boxes.

AMD is rumored to be providing Microsoft with the GPU goodness inside of the new consoles (and their target boxes).

In The Matrix, Neo said "Whoa", and the whole world listened. Today, I'm saying "whoa" at the rumor of HTC's Zeta smartphone. It's rumored to be a quad-core smartphone but sports a 2.5GHz APQ8064 CPU along with 1GB of RAM, all looking purdy on a 4.5-inch 720p HD display.

The phone is also very unique in its shape, which I kinda dig. Zeta is said to have Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed, with Sense UI running the show, too. 32GB of internal storage should keep most people happy, an 1,830mAh battery, Beats Audio, Bluetooth 4.0, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual LED flash, 1080p video capture and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

Dimension-wise, we have 109.8 x 60.9 x 9.8mm (4.32 x 2.4 x 0.39 inches) and weigh 5.15 ounces (146g). Right now this is just sitting on RumorTT, but it is something that could definitely materialise. Now, I've been talking about this for a while, especially with the release of the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, and various other handsets like this new HTC Zeta, but I'm going to come out and say it in a single sentence below, and I'd like some thoughts on it:

Another console game, port, rape of series has happened in front of our eyes. From Electronic Arts' and Black Box, we have Need for Speed: The Run. NFS: The Run is powered by Battlefield 3's gorgeous, pant-swellingly beautiful, make-you-call-out-mom-in-your-dreams amazing graphics engine, Frostbite 2.0.

Even though the game is powered by that amazing engine, the game is locked to 30fps. What? Am I joking? No. The Run is locked to just 30fps. Now, this may work for other titles, but for a game capable of oh-so-much more on the PC, it's still locked. Locked frame rates on consoles can work, but what if you've just dumped your hard earned cash on a new X79-based system with Quad SLI GeForce GTX 580's?

Well, you'd be cranking out those serious 30fps in style and nothing more. The system above would be capable of 1080p at max detail (including AA) at 150 - 200fps and above in Battlefield 3, so why not NFS: The Run? Black Box have obviously put an artificial limitation on The Run, now the question ins "why?".

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was misquoted during Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting, where he answered a bunch of questions regarding Microsoft's future. Ballmer was asked whether we're in a post-PC era world and what his expectations are of the PC market going forward, he said:

But, press outlets and bloggers ran with it and thought Ballmer had all but confirmed Windows 8 for phones, but this is not the case. Microsoft have been clear that Windows 8 will be made for 7-inch devices and up. They have no plays to make Windows 8 available for phones and Microsoft are reportedly putting their focus on pushing the two ecosystems together with Windows 8, which is set to include the mix of the next-generation Xbox.

Wow. It was 10 years ago today that Microsoft unleashed the Xbox onto the gaming world. 100,000 units were shipped to retailers in the first week after its launch, and 1.5 million were sold before the end of 2001. This made the Xbox the best-selling video game console launch on record, and quite the achievement [unlocked?] for Microsoft. The picture below shows Edward Glucksman, where Bill Gates hands over the very first Xbox video game system to him.

10 years later, Microsoft have quite the collection of additions to the Xbox brand such as the current Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and Kinect for 360. Xbox LIVE boasts 35 million members worldwide who spend 2.1 billion hours per month on the service. Kinect for 360 set a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronic device, selling 8 million in just 60 days.

I still personally remember the original Xbox, Halo looked stunning. Absolutely stunning. Project Gotham Racing saw me pouring unlimited amounts of hours into it. Since then, Microsoft seem to have concentrated more on their Xbox products than PC, which is disappointing for PC owners, but great for console gamers. Let's hope we don't have to wait 3 - 4 more years for another Xbox, launch one next year, Microsoft. We all need the push for games.

We've had some truly amazing games over the last few months, and Skyrim is definitely one of the creme of the crop. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has sold over 3.4 million copies at retail in its first 2 days on sale. Keep in mind that this is without the inclusion of digital sales (Steam, etc).

This is an increase of over 600-percent on top of what Oblivion sold, with an opening of just 490,000 copies. Skyrim is set to outsell Oblivion in mere weeks. 59-percent of units sold were on the Xbox 360 (over 2 million copies) and 27-percent were on the PS3. The PC? Just 14-percent, again, without digital sales included.

2.5 million of the total 3.4 million sold were in the US, with the remaining 950,000 units in EMEAA. Skyrim has managed to slay Gears of War 3 and FIFA Soccer 12 for first week sales, is head-to-head with Battlefield 3 and the only thing stopping it from reaching the stars is Modern Warfare 3. But, Skyrim is an RPG, and 3.4 million copies in 48 hours for an RPG is damn impressive.

NVIDIA have just announced that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, uses energy-efficient, low-power NVIDIA Tegra ARM VCPUs, together with high-performance NVIDIA CUDA GPUs. BSC is in the planning stages and hopes to roll out the new ARM-based supercomputer, with a near-term goal of demonstrating two to five times improvement in energy efficiency compared with today's most efficient systems.

BSC's ultimate research goal is to establish exascale-level performance while using 15 to 30 times less power than current supercomputer architectures. This so-called EU Mont-Blanc Project will explore next-generation HPC architectures and develop a portfolio of exascale applications that run efficiently on these kinds of energy-efficient, embedded mobile technologies.

As ARM gains more support around the world with ARM-based initiatives, NVIDIA have also announced plans to develop a new hardware and software development kit. NVIDIA's new kit, with hardware developed by SECO, will sport a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM CPU accelerated by a discrete NVIDIA GPU.

It seems every few months there's some news about RIM, BlackBerry are dying, BlackBerry are returning... well, now we have the first-ever photo of the next set of BlackBerry devices, which will sport RIM's new BBX operating system.

The phone in the above picture is the BlackBerry "London", and should have a June 2012 release. The phone sports a TI OMAP dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of on-board storage, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 2-megapixel front-facing camera and is reportedly "thinner than the iPhone 4" and roughly the same size as Samsung's Galaxy S II.

Right now there's not enough information on the handset to make a complete, 100-percent claim on what is inside of it, how it looks, etc. But this is merely a tease. Whatever it is, I really enjou the look of it. It has that Porsche Design look of it that was on RIM's Porsche Design P9981.

One thing that really irks me with Windows (and even OS X) is updating and the requirement of restarting. I've never understood how operating systems have come this far with everything happening behind the scenes, yet it requires user intervention to do simple things like "when would you like to restart, I've just done updates, come on!".

Microsoft are working on this for Windows 8, which will see Windows Update consolidate all the restarts in a month, synchronizing with the monthly security release. This means that your PC will only restart when security updates are installed and actually require a restart. Security updates are released in a single batch on the second Tuesday of every month, where this will keep the system secure, in a timely manner, reduces restarts and makes restarts more predictable.

Now, Windows Update will notify you of any upcoming automatic restarts. If Windows Update has already detected, downloaded and installed security updates and requires a restart, Windows Update will notify you of an upcoming automatic restart through a message on the login screen that will persist for three days. This gives you an option of "Update and shutdown", or "Update and restart" at the login screen. You can still kick it old school and go to Windows Update in Control Panel, or do it like I do and search for "Update" in the start bar.

In the developmental stages, DICE had intentions of making Battlefield 3 a contendor in the e-Sports community. What happened? Origin and Battlelog happened, that's what. Battlelog is good, it allows you to support clans through "Platoons", which organizes squads, but its far from perfect.

There could be a future where Battlelog allows you to schedule events, formally and publicly challenge other platoons to a match or tournament, which would show up on the Battlefeed. If DICE introduced the Battlerecorder, that would be another huge tick in the e-Sports book of awesomeness. Spectator mode would also be a huge addition, allowing people to sit in on a live match being played.

Fans have been asking Global Community Manager, Daniel Matros, what DICE's plans are to bring Battlefield 3 up to par with other e-Sports titles. He didn't go into great detail, but he did mention that "we are hearing the competitive community...", he was asked if there is any way to hide the in-game HUD and weapon, where Matros responded "not right now but considering the post launch updates and plans we have, all feedback is considered to be very nice."

Now, if I had to fly somewhere in the world to do a story, it would be Google X. Most large enterprises like Google have something similar, Apple has reportedly had their room where Steve Jobs would tinker with unreleased, or fantasy products, but Google X... wow.

Only a handful of people even know where this secret facility is located, and even less is known about the lab itself, or the people involved. Google will no doubt be working on some super secret and mind-blowing creations and concepts behind its closed, air-locked, arm-guarded doors. The New York Times reports that when Google employees were asked about the project, very few knew anything at all about it.

Sergey Brin is rumored to be involved with the project, and when Larry Page was announced as CEO, Sergey was appointed as "head of special projects". Internally, Sergey is known as the "Head of Google X", sources close to Google told the Business Insider. Both Larry Page and Eric Schmidt are also known to participate, having contributed many of the current 100 ideas found on Google X's research and development list.

NVIDIA have just launched a new hybrid processing technology that should interest professionals that want to use NVIDIA's graphics and compute products in the same machine. NVIDIA first showed the technology off at SIGGRAPH 2011 in August, and now enter, Maximus.

Maximus technology works pretty close to how their consumer graphics switching software, Optimus, works. Instead of allocating resources between two graphics processors (generally an integrated and discrete solution), Maximus offers the hybridization of NVIDIA's Quadro GPU and Tesla GPGPU products.

Where the Quadro series is targeted toward displaying graphics such as computer-aided design (CAD) and Tesla is geared toward raw compute tasks. Now, systems sporting both products can use Maximus to intelligently distribute loads as necessary. In the video demonstration below, NVIDIA shows how professionals would use the Tesla card to render a project, while Quadro allows them to continue working.