RayTracing is in the news again as a company named Caustic Graphics launches a product they claim can accelerate OpenGL Raytracing up to 200 times faster than current multi-core multi-CPU solutions.

The product called CausticOne is an ad-in card that runs off of a proprietary API and OpenGL version together they are called, imaginatively CausticRT (RT=Raytracing). Applications that are written with CausticRT support can benefit from the acceleration.

Although Intel has show Real-Time raytracing on high-end many-cored systems they have usually only showed primary ray acceleration.

Yesterday heralded the announcement that AMD had dropped from the top 10 semiconductor companies list. This leaves Intel as the only CPU maker on that exclusive list. But while AMD's disappearance from the top 10 in irksome their inclusion on the list of companies in the most danger of failing by Yahoo! Finance makes things a little more worrisome.

This announcement follows an interview with Dirk Myer by Business week. Where the new AMD CEO talks about netbooks, nVidia's x86 CPU project and the release of AMD's production assets into the new Globalfoundries company. You have to wonder if the interview was in preparation for these two announcements or if they come as a surprise to AMD.

Read about it here

Those in the UK who still wish to buy a Nintendo Wii might just get a little bit miffed when they find out that Nintendo is raising the price on the Wii. Nintendo is placing blame on the weakening pound for the price hike.

The new projected price for the Wii is expected to be £199.99. Apparently Nintendo missed the memo that prices are supposed to drop for consoles as time passes, not increase.

EVGA launched the X58 Classified Edition motherboard, raising the bar on enthusiast level motherboards.

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Fusion-io announced the ioDrive Duo, the world's fastest solid state drive. The new ioDrive Duo doubles the slot capacity of the first ioDrive.

(Click the above image for the large version)

Fusion-io says that the new drive offers previously unheard-of levels of performance, protection, and capacity utilization from a single server. The performance for the ioDrive Duo scales linearly when multiple drives are used, allowing for up to 6 GBytes/s with just four ioDrive Duo's.

An economic downturn is not the time you want to get hit with big fines.

Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened to Hitachi. It seems they finally confessed to helping to fix prices on LCD panels with rivals.

Their punishment for this is a hefty $31 Million dollars. Hitachi and three other companies kept prices artificially high on TFT (thin film transistor) LCD panels according to the charges.

Looks like the iPod touch 2G has finally been hacked for the masses.

Today the DevTeam released a free jailbreaking application on the heals of the $15 one that was released this morning

This adds the iPod touch to the "pwned for life" according to the Dev Team Blog.

Ok, we know that nVidia is at least in the planning stages of a System on Chip (SoC) x86 CPU. nVidia has finally admitted to this. But is this a good idea given the market and potential IP battles?

It seems that analysts are up in the air about this too. But no matter the opinion of the analyst they all agree tht if nVidia is serious they need to take the lessons learned from Cyrix, PowerPC and Transmeta to heart.

Intel and AMD have much of the x86 IP in their tight little fists and while it is true that nVidia could attempt to garner the needed IP from Via; I am not sure Via would give it up as it would mean yet another competitor for their Nano CPU. Of course they could license the IP with the condition that nVidia not expand beyond the SoC realm.

I am not sure if this is good news for Linux and OSX fans or not. However, it seems that DX10 might make its way to those operating systems courtesy of CodeWeavers' CrossOver project.

Codeweavers CEO Jeremy White posted in his blog that they are gearing up for DX10 support after the release of CrossOver Games 7.2 which had added even more support for DX9 in Unix.

CodeWeavers is looking to make all flavors of Unix (including Linux and OSX) fully Windows Compatible. They want users to be able to run Windows applications in native format without the need for an Emulation layer.

Something pretty cool popped up this morning while I was looking over news. It is a fanless, 1080p Small Form Factor HTPC from Habey USA.

This tiny and quiet little device has an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU under the hood comes complete with support for up to 2GB of RAM, two SATA II ports and options for Wireless and HDTV Tuners. HDMI support helps to round out the package.

There has been a push towards these types of devices for home entertainment as an HTPC can provide a broader base for digital entertainment than your stock Set Top Box from the cable company.