Thursday, August 8, 2013

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Nvidia planning own brand high end tablet

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 06:39 AM PDT

Nvidia is reportedly planning to launch an own-brand high end tablet based on the upcoming Tegra 5 chip, codenamed Logan.

The new chip is expected to show up in the first quarter of 2014 and Nvidia's tablet could be the first device to use it. Nvidia took the same approach with the Tegra 4, which ended up in the Shield console.

Fudzilla's Fudo Abazovic has been hearing from sources based in Europe that the tablet will go ahead with NV branding, like its foray into experimental PC-streaming, the Shield.

It's expected parts of the EU will be included at launch, unlike the Shield which popped up in the US and Canada.

Fudz heard that Nvidia plans to expand its hardware operations in Europe.

Nvidia has managed to get its chips under the bonnet of some tablets, so it is curious that it feels it necessary to experiment with tablet hardware. However, Tegra 4 was delayed and it does not appear to have many tablet design wins at this point, which may explain Nvidia's tablet push.

Nvidia is also working on a small tablet or phablet, which was leaked on a benchmark site last week. 

Intel breaks ground on 450mm Fab

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 06:29 AM PDT

Intel has started building its first dedicated facility for 450mm wafer production.

The new foundry, which will have the catchy title D1X Module 2, will come online in 2015 and cost $2 billion.

The 450mm facility will set records because of the cost of the new manufacturing equipment, something that Intel is banking on. After all - if it is one of the few chip makers that can afford the new generation of gear, it will will gain a significant competitive advantage.

Intel's enthusiasm may be masking some nerves. The industry attempted a transition from 200mm to 300mm transition which went disastrously wrong.

The cost and fears of another disaster mean that rivals like IBM, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries have begun to talk about a 450mm transition, while Intel is full steam ahead.

The logic is that while 450mm wafers are expensive in terms of equipment costs, in the long term you can make a lot of money.

GlobalFoundries has said that a 450mm wafer can yield 3,400 dies while a 300mm wafer yields just 1,450.

So, a 450mm fab with a 40 to 45,000 wafer starts a month will produce as much as a 300mm fab with 100,000 wafer starts a month. It is believed that 450mm wafers will save 20 percent to 25 percent in capital expenditures.

Cutting costs is all very well, but the whole project will bank on Intel's ability to sell the chips it makes. This could be a little tricky given the downturn in the IT industry. Chipzilla is already facing failing margins to sell its chips, and some of the savings it makes from 450mm wafers might just go to keeping its head above water.

According to ExtremeTech, Intel hopes to address this by moving to 14nm at the same time.

If a 450mm wafer packs 2.5 times the processors of a 300mm wafer, the cost-per-processor is far lower if and only if Intel can ship every single chip.

To achieve this, Intel really could do with widespread uptake of its Atom processors to justify the enormous build-outs the company has done at Fab 42 and now at Fab D1X. 

Moto X will get Android 4.3 eventually

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 04:32 AM PDT

While Motorola aims to be on the cutting edge of the Android OS, it did not seem to be in any hurry to get Android 4.3 under the bonnet of the new Moto X.

Launch models were all based around the earlier flavour of the OS, despite the new version having launched.

There were some fears when Google bought Motorola it would give it favoured status over other hardware makers and allow it to put newer versions of Android in its phones before anyone else. This time, it appears the company will be as slow as the next guy.

Google introduced Android 4.3 last month alongside a new Nexus 7 tablet and it has been rolled out to the Nexus and other Google Play Edition devices.

There have been some questions as to why the Google-owned Motorola had not released its Moto X with Android 4.3.

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside confirmed that the Moto X buyers will get an Android 4.3 OS update soon after it hits the streets.

However, Woodside said that the company had run out of time as it got to production. He did assure that the device will get the update and Motorola is making it a priority.

According to All Things Digital, he added that Motorola was pretty good at updating and had done so with 85 percent of its devices released over the last two years. 

CBS blackout leads to piracy spike

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 04:16 AM PDT

While Big Content claims that thieving pirates do so for fun and profit, an interesting look into the psychology of P2P took place in the US that suggests an alternative theory. Simply put, people pirate when the content is otherwise unavailable.

Since Friday, more than three million Time Warner customers throughout the United States lost access to CBS programming. According to Torrent Freak, the percentage of unauthorised downloads from affected regions rose pretty dramatically.

The piracy rates of the popular show "Under The Dome" shot up 34 percent over the weekend, while official ratings fell.

This means that one of the main reasons people pirate material is availability. If they cannot get the content they want in the format they want it, when they want it, they will pirate it.

Take Game of Thrones - network quibbling about regional rights meant many international audiences just torrented the show instead.

CBS blacked out in some regions when Time Warner Cable dropped the former, after the companies failed to reach a broadcasting agreement.

Under The Dome is one of the most pirated TV shows at the moment with 10.9 percent of downloaders coming from the blackout regions. But this increased to 14.6 percent for Monday's episode.

New York saw its relative piracy rate more than double, from 1.3 percent of all US downloads to three percent for the episode that aired after the blackout.

While piracy spiked official ratings took a large hit. Under The Dome fell to a season low, with only 10.49 million viewers compared to 11.41 million the week before.

Once again it appears that while Time Warner and CBS are having a spat with each other, they are losing legitimate customers to piracy.

The blame then is not on P2P and piracy generally, but because customers do not want to wait for Big Content to stop playing silly buggers. 

Open source CubeSats satellites go into orbit

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 03:48 AM PDT

From next week it will be possible to run science projects on the world's first open-source satellites.

ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X were launched to the International Space Station on 3 August aboard a Japanese resupply vehicle which will arrive tomorrow.

New Scientist reports the 10cm volume CubeSats contain an array of devices including cameras, spectrometers and a Geiger counter.

The satellites will then be deployed using a robotic arm and put into orbit around Earth.

Since there will be no need for a dedicated launch vehicle the satellites will be on the cheap.

Chris Wake of NanoSatisfi, which built and will operate the satellites, said that no one has given people access to satellites in the same way before.

The launch was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, with backers buying some of the satellites' time slots to run experiments.

Customers will also be able to program controls on the satellites and run experiments for three days for $125, or for a week for $250.

ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X run the Arduino open source software which will let anyone write code for an app, game or research project that uses the on-board instruments.

Initial projects includes tracking meteorites and making a 3D model of Earth's magnetosphere.

The first two satellites will orbit for three to seven months before burning up as they fall to Earth. The plan is to get as many of the cube satellites up as possible and reach half a million students. 

Glenn Greenwald plans to release more Snowden files in 10 days

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 03:39 AM PDT

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald is planning to release more documents from the cache handed over to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden, claiming that what has been seen so far is just a very small slice compared to the bigger picture.

Greenwald plans to make new revelations public "within the next 10 days or so", expected to be related to secret US backed surveillance of the internet, worldwide.

According to Reuters, Greenwald told a Brazilian congressional hearing, that is itself investigating US surveillance in Brazil, the articles published so far are a "very small part" of the revelations that ought to be.

He said that new leaks will show how the US has been spying and invading the communications of Brazil and Latin America.

Greenwald said that he had recruited experts to help understand some of the 15,000 to 20,000 classified documents from the National Security Agency that Snowden passed him.

He also said that Julian Assange and his Wikileaks organisation had no connection to Snowden's files.

Greenwald apparently speaks to Snowden a lot since he left the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, using very strong encryption.

It is not clear however how Moscow will view this. One of the conditions that Snowden had for receiving temporary asylum in Russia was that he stop leaking. But Greenwald already has access to these files - so technically speaking - these will not be fresh leaks but the disclosure of already leaked material.

Greenwald said Snowden planned to stay in Moscow "as long as he needs to, until he can secure his situation".

Greenwald slammed governments for failing to offer Snowden protection, even while they publicly denounced the US surveillance of their citizens' internet usage.

He claimed Washington was working through diplomatic channels to persuade governments to stop talking about the surveillance programs.

NSA after superconducting supercomputers

Posted: 07 Aug 2013 09:47 AM PDT

US spooks are pushing to build superconducting supercomputers to run their snooping databases.

According to Computerworld such a low-energy system move evolve into an exascale system, which would be about 1,000 faster than today's petaflop system.

The US Director of National Intelligence published a notice asking for help to develop superconducting systems. Such a system can offer "an attractive low-power alternative" to current technology.

He said that the US government wants to "demonstrate a small-scale computer based on superconducting logic and cryogenic memory that is energy efficient, scalable, and able to solve interesting problems".

The largest US supercomputer, Titan, uses just over 8 MW to reach 17.59 petaflops and to get faster, an exascale system would need significantly more power.

Current superconducting technologies can reduce power demand for one petaflop to 25 kW or even 100 petaflops for about 200 kW, including the cost of cryogenic refrigeration.

However, superconducting supercomputing uses super cold temperatures to get metal to a state where there is no or little resistance to electrical current.

Once you get superconductive electronics cold it requires a lot less energy to keep them frozen.

It is possible to use commercial coolers to sustain the very low temperatures, at around -450 degrees Fahrenheit, required for superconducting, along with the operation of Josephson junctions and switches that dissipate little energy.

The NSA has said there are "significant technical obstacles prevented exploration of superconducting computing" and there needs to be cryogenic memory designs that allow operation of memory and logic in close proximity within the cold environment. Switching technology also needs to be a lot faster.

The NSA does not say why it needs to be at the cutting edge of superconducting computers. It just says that conventional computing systems, and their normal metal interconnects, "appear to have no path to be able to increase energy efficiency fast enough to keep up with increasing demands for computation".

NSA databases might need to be huge to store details of all its citizens, but the desire to use a supercomputer to sift through the data gives you an idea of the complex data mining tech that the US is planning. The fact its plans require data mining hardware which has not been invented yet is probably a little worrying. 
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