1,000 core processor plausible?

A team of researchers at the University of Glasgow led by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede announced that they have “effectively” developed a 1,000 core processor based on the technology field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). To do that, the researchers divvied up the millions of transistors in the FPGA into 1,000 mini-circuits that are each able to course their own instructions — which, while still a proof of concept, has already proven to be about twenty times faster than “modern computers” in some early tests.

Now what does Intel, the mighty chip mammoth has to say about this. Apparently the company says that the idea of a 1,000 core processor is “feasible”, as Intel’s Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is already able to pack a whopping 48 cores, and could “theoretically” scale up to 1,000.

He does note, however, that there are a number of other complicating factors that could limit the number of cores that are actually useful — namely, Amdahl’s law — but he says that Intel is “looking very hard at a range of applications that may indeed require that many cores.”

SOURCE via Dailymail

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South Korea rolls out world’s first commercial electric bus service

The city of Seoul is going green with the roll out of probably the world’s first electric bus service in the city. The Seoul Metropolitan Government is going all out with working commercial service, developed in agreement with Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hankuk Fiber, and the buses themselves can run up to about 52 miles on a single charge (which takes about 30 minutes). Besides, it can also go up to 62 miles per hour. Though several other cities have small fleets of electric public transportation, Seoul has announced that half of its massive fleet of buses will be electric by 2020. This will be a good start, as South Korea International Expo 2012 is getting near.

SOURCE via Gizmag

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Periodic table of sports cars

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Lightning photographed by superfast X-ray camera

Here’s a picture of a lightning taken, but don’t you feel that it looks weird? There’s the green stuff that you never see before. That’s because you’re not using a 1,500-pound heavy X-ray camera. That’s a picture of a lightning taken using an X-ray camera that shoots crazier than Sergeant Frank Woods. Ten million frames per second. That’s how fast the thing can shoot. But the story of the photo is more than just ten million and some luck.

You see, the lightning is human-made. That’s why they know where and when to use the camera. This was done by shooting rockets into thunderstorms, with attached wires directing the flow of energy down into their target zone. The imagery produced from the X-ray sensor is actually extremely low-res — a 30-pixel hexagonal grid is all you get — but it’s enough to show that X-ray radiation is concentrated at the tip of the lightning bolt. What’s the point of all these? Well, nobody really knows.

SOURCE via National Geographic

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Samsung readies 23mm-thick 3D Blu-ray player for CES

Here’s the world’s slimmest Blu-ray player, because you just need to have the slimmest. Samsung’s obsession continues with this 23mm-thick unit which will be unveiled at CES 2011. What we know of it so far is that it’ll be able to both play back native 3D content and convert 2D to “quasi-3D,” it’ll come encased in a metallic, wall-mountable chassis, and it’ll feature the now familiar trimmings of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter integration. Now all your friends know you’re stalking a specific girl.

SOURCE via PC World

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Three versions of iPad 2 for 2011?

Not sizes, but features at least. Currently there are two versions of iPad being released, a WiFi-only and a WiFi + 3G. Now, sources close to industry stated that Apple will be adding CDMA into that lineup. That means we’ll see iPad 2 in Wi-Fi, UMTS, and CDMA. Apple will ship about 500,000-530,000 units to channels in January with shipment ratio of Wi-Fi, UMTS and CDMA models at 3:4:3, according to industry sources, citing upstream component makers.

“The sources pointed out that about 60-65% of current iPad shipments are 3G models, indicating that consumers prefer models that are able to connect to the Internet all the time, therefore Apple is aiming to work even more closely with telecom carriers by offering more wireless solutions for iPad 2 to satisfy market demand.”

Besides adding CDMA, the source also stated Apple working on improving the glass panel of the iPad 2 for better anti-smudge and anti-reflective treatments, to probably give a fight against Kindle and gain ahead in the tablet market. How about considering Gorilla Glass, Apple?

“Since Apple’s upstream supply chain is estimated to ship about 16 million iPads in 2010, the sources expects about 2-3 million iPad units of inventory will remain in the channel rolling over into 2011. Since Apple will gradually stop the production of iPad after January and launch iPad 2 by the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second, the remaining iPad inventory should be able to satisfy demand during that period of time.”

Now, what about the capacity memory options? If Apple keeps up with the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB options, that’s about nine versions of iPad 2 to be manufactured.

SOURCE via Digitimes

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History’s land-speed record cars

All these while no matter where human goes, this greedy species has always wanted to be the fastest, be number one. That’s where the Olympics come from, that’s where all the racing comes from. From two legs to two wheels; to four wheels and no wheel. . It should be no surprise, then, that the internal combustion engine and the land-speed record have evolved at roughly the same pace over the last century or so. In order to celebrate the Bloodhound SSC’s quest for land speed supremacy, designer Stefan Marjoram took on the ambitious project of creating a massive poster commemorating and comparing history’s official land-speed record holders. You can even get the copy for yourself if you have the wall space and are so inclined, but it’s a massive 16.5 x 23.4-inch copy.

Marjoram says that he did his best to keep the vehicles size relative to one another in order to underscore just how much land-speed record vehicles have changed over the years. From simple car shapes to cars that looked like spears. While the drawings are simplified, stylized interpretations of the quickest machines throughout history, this will look very cool on the wall of a motorhead. If you’re interested, head over to StefaanMarjoram.com for more details.

SOURCE via Stefanmarjoram

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NFC chip with embedded flash memory from Samsung

Looks like NFC chip will indeed go quite big in 2011, as Samsung announced that its new near field communications (NFC) chip now comes with embedded flash memory for next-generation smartphones. Fancy a Galaxy S2 with Gingerbread and NFC? Mass production of the NFC is slated for the first quarter of 2011, so we should be able to see these NFC chips being used in smartphones launched during 2011, at least the third quarter.

The new Samsung NFC chip adopts flash for the embedded memory which allows device designers to easily to upgrade software or firmware. Samsung also provides a software protocol stack and technology services for antenna design and tuning. Through such features and support, designers can reduce their product’s time-to-market, the vendor said.

Samsung claimed it developed this NFC chip to have minimal power consumption in both active and stand-by mode. With a 20% decrease in power consumption, Samsung’s NFC chip remains active for mobile payment even without battery power. But if you look at the current NFC chip in the Google Nexus S, switching it on full time does little to the lifespan of the battery that it’s totally insignificant. The PN544 NFC chip from NXP that is used in Google’s Nexus S runs at an insignificant 50 micro amps and 35 milliamps when briefly interacting with a tag. If you deduct 20-percent from that, which we assume is the benchmark of current NFC chip’s power consumption then 40 micro amps is definitely insignificant to the battery’s consumption.

SOURCE via Digitimes

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Call of Duty: Black Ops is the most pirated game

Call of Duty: Black Ops has been the fastest selling video games of all time, but that also racks the title a good spot in Jack Sparrow’s territory. The FPS game is now one of the most downloaded games, illegally.

TorrentFreak, a BitTorrent news site reports a scary 4.2 million download for Black Ops. That’s a very big number considering that the game has only been out not so long ago, and already beaten Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (3.96 million downloads), Mafia II, and Mass Effect 2 to take the notorious throne.

Thieves who own an Xbox 360 did their share in Black Ops stealing, downloading that console version 930,000 times, according to TorrentFreak’s numbers. Dante’s Inferno wound up being the most downloaded Xbox 360 game, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 sitting atop the most pirated list on for Wii owners. Well, the good thing is Black Ops is winning at nearly every corner.

SOURCE via TorrentFreak

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Intel’s new SSD 310 is eight time small than your notebook’s HDD

Intel has announced a new SSD. Nothing fast that’ll kill SandForce, but something that’s extremely small which Intel hopes to give a fight to Toshiba. Intel’s just announced a new SSD 310 line that offers spectacularly minimal 51mm by 30mm by 5mm dimensions, while retaining X25-class performance (up to 200MBps read and 80MBps write speeds).

To give you an idea of what those measurements mean, the industry-standard 2.5-inch form factor, an already diminutive footprint, is eight times larger than these new-fangled storage chips. 40GB and 80GB variants of the SSD 310 are shipping out to OEMs already and Lenovo has confirmed it plans to roll these into its next refresh of the venerable ThinkPad laptop line.

Prices are set at $99 and $179 (depending on size) when bought in batches of 1,000, though direct sales to end users are predictably off the table for now, as expected. The next SSD might be more expensive, and you’ve been warned.

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