TechEye |  |
- Bitcoin bubbles to $100
- Solar powered bins save cash, environment
- TSMC might rain on Samsung’s parade
- Intel denies Haswell delays
- TSMC and ARM tape out first ARM Cortex A57 chip
- Apple admits to fleecing Chinese customers
- AMD claims Nvidia is bitter about PS4
- Russian billionaire wants to put human consciousness into machines
- Assange forms political party
- US Navy funds robotic jellyfish
| Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:39 AM PDT The value of Bitcoin surpassed $100 yesterday, on April Fools’ Day. The virtual, uncontrolled currency has gone from strength to strength in recent months but now it is starting to resemble a massive bubble. Back in January, Bitcoin was trading at just $15 and just a month ago it was at $35. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to realise that something is very wrong and that it is only a matter of time before something truly nasty happens. At this rate, you are probably better off investing in Cypriot banks than in Bitcoins. Multiple businesses and web services have started accepting Bitcoin as payment over the past few months, but this doesn’t justify the spike in value. In fact, nothing does. Analyst Nick Colas told Business Insider that investors are wary of Bitcoin, which is hardly surprising given the numbers. “The reaction from clients has been pretty uniform: it must be a bubble. Too far, too fast, too new … you get the idea. Moreover, it’s very hard to short Bitcoins, so there’s no real way to express that pessimistic point of view, which is saving a lot of people some real money, since Bitcoin has some solid momentum just now,” he said. If Bitcoin crashes, it wouldn’t be the first time. Back in 2011 Bitcoin was trading at $30, but much of the value was wiped out after multiple hacking incidents raised questions about security. This time though, the crash could be much bigger. |
| Solar powered bins save cash, environment Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:37 AM PDT A solar powered bin which automatically detects when it's full and crushes the waste inside has been saving US taxpayers cash. |
| TSMC might rain on Samsung’s parade Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:16 AM PDT Although Samsung is currently the darling of the tech press and Android geeks, all might not be well in South Korea. TSMC’s 20nm process is apparently ahead of schedule. Focus Taiwan reports TSMC will open its first commercial 20nm facility, dubbed Fab 14, on April 20. This is a couple of months ahead of schedule and the new process will allow TSMC to maintain its lead for quite a while. In contrast, Samsung is still struggling to get its 28nm process off the ground. Samsung’s previous generation Exynos 4 chips were very competitive and most were built using Samsung 32nm process. The process was pretty competitive at the time, as some competitors were stuck at 40nm. Then came along Qualcomm and it blew away the competition with its first generation 28nm Krait chips in mid-2012. This time around Qualcomm is not the only SoC maker with 28nm chips, as Nvidia’s Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i will also be stamped out in TSMC’s 28nm fabs. Samsung’s first 28nm SoC, the Exynos 5 Octa, already seems to be behind schedule. As a result most Galaxy S4 phones will ship with Qualcomm processors instead. But this time next year things could get much worse for Samsung. The Exynos 5 Octa is a very competitive chip for the time being, but the next crop of A15 and custom core SoCs from the likes of Nvidia, Qualcomm and other players could show up in roughly a year and many could use TSMC’s new 20nm process. Apple is also said to be looking at TSMC’s 20nm offer and it is looking to ditch Samsung wherever possible. This leaves Samsung in a pretty pickle. Its manufacturing process is already half a generation behind and the industry is moving to more elaborate SoC designs, with power hungry A15 cores and plenty of GPU transistors to cope with full HD displays. Although 28nm chips still have a future, they won’t be of much help in the highly competitive high-end SoC market once the competition transitions to 20nm parts. Now it appears TSMC is already leaping ahead of its own 20nm schedule, while Samsung’s 28nm process is still experiencing teething problems. |
| Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:13 AM PDT Fashion bag maker Intel has denied that there will be delays to its Haswell chip, after JMP Securities started to believe that it would be late. JMP downgraded Intel shares to "Market Perform" from "Outperform" after one of its bean counters Alex Gauna became convinced that the chip maker may be at risk of delays with "Haswell". He said that Intel's effort to integrate a voltage regulation stage into the Haswell architecture appears to have fallen short of desired results. This meant that the company is consequently reversing course and not pursuing this power management scheme with subsequent products. He discovered the problem during a chat over tea and a sticky bun with several power management partners at the APEC (Applied Power Electronics Conference) trade show that was held March 17-21, 2013. Apparently they were just told about Intel's change of direction recently. But soon after the announcement Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy got on the blower to Barron's to assert there are no problems at all with Haswell. He said that Haswell was healthy and on track for an announcement and there was no problem with the Haswell part at all. Mulloy said that Haswell was on track to provide Chipzilla with the biggest improvement in battery life in the company's history. Not only will Haswell be a major milestone it's on time, he added. Mulloy referred to previous remarks about Haswell made by management during the company's January conference call. At that time Intel said it had started production on Haswell, which we expect to qualify for sale this quarter. It is rare that Intel responds to the speculation of analysts, journalists and fashion consultants. |
| TSMC and ARM tape out first ARM Cortex A57 chip Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:09 AM PDT TSMC and ARM have taped out the first Cortex A57 processors built using FinFET process technology. The A57 is not just another ARM SoC for mobiles. It is the fastest ARM chip to date and it can handle compute intensive applications beyond phones and tablets. In other words we should see A57 derivatives in servers and other gear. The processor is based on 64-bit ARMv8 processor cores and it is built in 16nm FinFET technology. "This first ARM Cortex-A57 processor implementation paves the way for our mutual customers to leverage the performance and power efficiency of 16nm FinFET technology," said Tom Cronk , executive vice president and general manager, Processor Division, ARM. "The joint effort of ARM, TSMC, and TSMC's OIP design ecosystem partners demonstrates the strong commitment to provide industry-leading technology for customer designs to benefit from our latest 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, big.LITTLE processing and ARM POP IP across a wide variety of market segments." TSMC believes the FinFET process is ready for the new chip, although it might take quite a bit of time before we see any kit based on ARM’s new chip. It is also unclear whether we will see consumer oriented FinFET SoC designs any time soon. |
| Apple admits to fleecing Chinese customers Posted: 02 Apr 2013 04:03 AM PDT After an internet campaign by Apple fanboys protesting its innocence, Cupertino has finally confessed to cheating its Chinese customers. Apple fanboys flooded the web after journalists revealed that the company was not playing fair with its warranty agreements. If an iPhone broke in the rest of the world, Apple would give the user a new one. In China they would take the phone away to be repaired. Apple insists on a one year warranty, something it can't manage to get European regulators to accept. Apple denied the allegation and its fanboys hit the net to claim that the Chinese journalists who made the claim were lying. Now, according to Reuters, Apple chief executive Tim Cook has confessed and apologised to Chinese consumers over his company's antics. He said he had altered iPhone warranty policies in its No. 2 market after more than two weeks of condemnation in the state-run media of its after-sales service. It seems that Apple realised that it could not win when the state controlled press were against it. From China Central Television to the People's Daily newspaper, government-controlled media outlets bashed the world's largest technology corporation for its "arrogance," protesting among other things that its current one-year service warranty was far shorter than in other markets. Cook said due to "insufficient external communication", some consider Apple's attitude to be arrogant, inattentive or "indifferent to consumer feedback". In a note on the company's Chinese website he said: "We express our sincere apologies for causing consumers any misgivings or misunderstanding". Cook said in the long letter that Apple has "much to learn about operating and communicating in China". We guess it has worked out that if wants China to be a huge part of its bottom line it has to stop treating its punters like idiots. It has also shown what happens when Apple does not control the press, like it does in the West. One of the few advantages of a state controlled media is that if a big corporation does something wrong, it is unlikely that the press will let them off. Apple will offer full replacements of iPhone 4 and 4S instead of major repairs, adding a one-year warranty starting from the date of replacement. Jobs' Mob will provide simpler and clearer explanations of warranties on its website and allow customers to offer feedback directly, Cook said. The company will also provide refresher training to service providers to explain the new warranty policy, he added. |
| AMD claims Nvidia is bitter about PS4 Posted: 02 Apr 2013 03:53 AM PDT AMD claims that Nvidia's attacks on the Sony's PS4 are just sour grapes because it did not get the graphics chip contract. Nvidia's Tony Tamasi dubbed the new Playstation's specs as "a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU" when compared to gaming PCs. He claimed that the console's guts were outdated even before the PS4 launches. AMD's director of ISV relations Neal Robison said that Nvidia is a little bitter about not getting the contract. Robison told Gaming Bolt that looking at AMD's APU it is more than the sum of its parts. He said that it was impossible, as Nvidia tried to do, to pull out individual components off it and hold it up and say, 'Yeah, this compares to X or Y'. Robison said that it was the integration of the two, and especially with the amount of shared memory that Sony has chosen to put on that machine. He said that users can do so much more moving and sharing that data which is more than just a CPU doing all these calculations and a GPU doing more. Robison said that the technology was all about how AMD moves tasks between the two. Developers can push the console's capabilities beyond the traditional x86 PC architecture, and take advantage of all eight cores. This is going "to become a huge deal for a lot of the big blockbuster games". |
| Russian billionaire wants to put human consciousness into machines Posted: 02 Apr 2013 03:26 AM PDT In what looks like a Dr Who plot made real, a Russian billionaire wants to use his wealth to build a cyborg. Dmitry Itskov, who does not own a zeppelin, wants to make humans immortal by merging them with machines. In 2011 he founded the 2045 Initiative which is his deadline to make "substance-independent" minds to receive artificial bodies. We guess Itskov would be knocking on a bit by that time so might even be a starter for the first few transplants. His ultimate goal is to be able to transfer a person's mind or consciousness from a living brain into a machine with that person's personality and memories intact. It means that a person would exist in a network similar to the internet and be able to travel at the speed of light all over the planet, or even into space. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Itskov has mapped out several key steps with the first goal to create an Avatar using a brain-machine interface. He has until 2020 to do that and he is not far off. Avatar B, due 2025, would involve transplanting a human brain into an artificial body "at the end of one's life". That is a similar plot to a Dr Who episode where, on an alternative earth, humans are perfected by shoving their brains into machines by a genius billionaire who cannot face his own mortality. Of course the risk of merging your consciousness with a machine is that you might lose all your humanity, or get involved with wars with other cyborg type forces like the daleks. By 2035 Itskov thinks that by the time Avatar C rolls around in 2035 he can keep all human personality intact. To achieve this step, it will be necessary to create a computer model of human consciousness. By 2045, Itskov hopes the Initiative will have learned enough about the human mind to free it completely from physical form. From the internet-like hive mind, individual personalities could manifest themselves as holograms when they need to interact with their environment. Itskov is going to need a lot of money, and his billions probably aren't enough. He is hitting up other billionaires but didn't make much progress and recruiting scientists to his cause to support to push society's transition to "neo-humanity". |
| Posted: 02 Apr 2013 03:08 AM PDT WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is still hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, thinks that a wizard way to get attention is to form a political party. Assange slipped out of the news when it was clear that nothing was really going to happen and it is fairly clear that he is miffed that he is no longer being talked about. Short of leaving the embassy and facing up to the sex charges levelled at him, Assange appears to have decided that he has a future in politics. Of course, he can’t leave London's Ecuadorian embassy because the police will arrest him and cart him off to face his long appointed sex case in Sweden. Instead, he has appointed a high-profile opponent of Britain's monarchy to run his campaign for a seat in Australia's upper house of parliament. Former Australian Republican Movement head and lawyer Greg Barns said he would be campaign director for the WikiLeaks Party, spearheading Assange's absentee bid for a Senate seat in Australia's September 14 election. Even if people voted for him the bid would not provide him with a get out of jail free card. To win he would need 15 percent of votes in the Victoria state. If he wins he would need to return to Australia to be sworn in and he will not do that while he could be arrested. The days of the UK exporting its criminals to Australia have passed. Barns insisted that it will be a serious campaign as Assange does attract support from across the political spectrum. He said Assange’s party will offer a refreshing change from the Australian government's culture of secrecy. His platform will be to champion free speech and break court suppression orders. It would be a good position for a free speech advocate to be in. If he wins a Senate seat, he would be covered by Australia's parliamentary privilege rules, which protect politicians against legal action over comments made in parliament. Assange's party had already secured backing from former Citibank executive Philip Wollen. He also has found 500 members to fulfil party registration requirements. |
| US Navy funds robotic jellyfish Posted: 02 Apr 2013 03:02 AM PDT The US Navy has asked scientists at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering to continue the development of a robotic jellyfish for surveillance use. The boffins also need to work on enhancing the four hour battery life that the robot currently has to make it viable for real world use. |
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