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Quantum Computing Making Strides
Researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria have managed to transfer quantum information from an atom to a photon, which is being seen as a breakthrough in the making of quantum computers.
According to Humans Invent the breakthrough allows quantum computers to exchange data at the speed of light along optical fibres. Lead researcher on the project Tracy Northup said that the method allows the mapping of quantum information faithfully from an ion onto a photon.
Northup’s team used an “ion trap” to produce a single photon from a trapped calcium ion with its quantum state intact using mirrors and lasers. No potential cats were injured in the experiment. The move enables boffins to start to play with thousands of quantum bits rather than just a dozen or so. This means that they can get a computer to do specific tasks like factoring large numbers or a database search, faster.
HP Goes All-In On Tablets
Hewlett-Packard garnered attention at Mobile World Congress show with its new Slate 7-inch tablet and then the sale of webOS assets, but the company is looking to put past distractions behind and will release more tablets in the future, the company said.
“You can expect going forward [to release] a family of products,” said Shane Wall, chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard’s mobility group, in an interview at MWC. The mobility trade show is being held in Barcelona from Feb. 25 to 28.
The 7-inch tablet attracted a small crowd at the HP booth, with people lining up to photograph or use the device. The company effectively took a dive into the low-cost tablet and tried to differentiate its tablet by a lower price, and also features like a micro-SD card slot for expandable storage and dual-cameras. Google’s $199 Nexus 7 is priced higher and has a quad-core processor, a higher-resolution screen and Android 4.2, but HP believes it will sell a lot of the tablets at the $169 price.
“We’re obviously late,” Wall said. “We wanted to start and see how aggressive we can be on the low end.”
The Slate 7 also signifies HP’s re-entry into the consumer tablet market after a disastrous stint with the webOS mobile operating system, which it got with the acquisition of Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion. The first webOS tablet, the TouchPad, was launched in 2011, but later discontinued along with webOS smartphones. Since then HP has released enterprise tablets such as ElitePad 900 with Windows 8, and now the company has adopted Android for consumer tablets.
AMD Debuts R5000
AMD has released its Firepro R5000 graphics card that has video over IP capabilities.
AMD typically promotes its workstation class Firepro cards using CAD/CAM software, however this time the company is relying on remote viewing as the big selling point for its latest workstation graphics card. AMD’s Firepro R5000 has a GPU that uses its Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and Teradici PC video over IP technology to send graphics output over the network.
AMD used its Pitcarin GPU coupled to 2GB of GDDR5 memory in the Firepro R5000. However it isn’t AMD’s GPU that is the big selling point of the Firepro R5000 but rather Teradici’s Tera2240 chip that encrypts display output before sending it out on the network, while supporting up to 60fps (frames per second).
AMD’s Firepro R5000 is intended to be used in render farms, with each final image being sent over an IP network to the end host, and the firm claims that the technology can be used in education, financial and media environments.
The Firepro R5000 is a single slot graphics card that has two mini Displayport outputs that can drive two 2500×1600 displays, however it can also drive a further four remote displays at 1920×1200 resolution by sending data over its RJ45 Ethernet port.
Both AMD and Teradici talked up the low configuration overheads of the Firepro R5000.
LG Buys webOS From HP
Hewlett-Packard has sold some of the rights to its webOS mobile operating system to LG Electronics for use in smart TVs manufactured by the South Korean electronics giant.
LG has agreed to acquire the source code, webOS engineering team and other assets from HP, in a deal announced on Monday. LG will also license HP patents related to webOS and cloud technology, the companies said.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
HP acquired the mobile operating system, along with device maker Palm, in February 2010. HP used the OS on its short-lived TouchPad device, which debuted in mid-2011 then disappeared weeks later.
HP announced a new tablet, the US$169 Slate 7, on Sunday. The Slate 7 will run the Android operating system.
LG will lead the Open webOS and Enyo open-source projects as part of the deal, the company said. HP will retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.
HP said it will also continue to support Palm users.
LG will use the technology to expand the Web capabilities of its smart TVs, said Sam Chang, LG vice president and general manager of innovation and Smart TV, in an interview.
LG bought the webOS assets in part for the engineering team, which includes user experience engineers, he said. The webOS engineers who remained at HP — the companies aren’t saying how many there are — are to join LG’s Silicon Valley labs.
Is Non-Volatile Memory The Next Craze?
A report from analysts Yole Developpement claims that MRAM/STTMRAM and PCM will lead the Emerging Non-Volatile Memory (ENVM) market and earn a combined $1.6bn by 2018. If the North Koreans have not conquered America, by 2018 then MRAM/STTMRAM and PCM will surely be the top two ENVM on the market.
Yole’s Yann de Charentenay said that their combined sales will almost double each year, with double-density chips launched every two years. So far we have only had FRAM, PCM and MRAM to play with and they were available in low-density chips to only a few players. The market was quite limited and considerably smaller than the DRAM and flash markets which had combined revenues of $50bn+ in 2012, the report said. In the next five years the scalability and chip density of those memories will be greatly improved and will spark many new applications, says the report.
ENVM will greatly improve the input/output performance of enterprise storage systems whose requirements will intensify with the growing need for web-based data supported by cloud servers, the report said. Mobile phones will increase its adoption of PCM as a substitute to flash NOR memory in MCP packages thanks to 1GB chips made available by Micron in 2012, it added. The next milestone will be the higher-density chips, expected in 2015, will allow access to smart phone applications that are quickly replacing entry-level phones.
AMD 2014 GPU Shaping Up
It looks like AMD has changed its mind about 8000 series graphics, part of the Solar System range of products are slowly showing up in the market.
We got an idea that at some point in the latter part of 2013 there will be some new Sea Islands based graphics line from AMD. What we refer to as the HD 8000 series will come at some point, but AMD can actually end up branding some of these new parts as HD 7000 series products as well.
We were more interested in the big picture, when and whether we will see an entirely new generation in 2014, let’s call it 9000 series for now. Multiple sources have told us that AMD will stick with discrete graphics for the foreseeable future. In 2014, we should see the new HSA generation as well as a steady roadmap for the future beyond 2014.
Remember, AMD still makes quite a bit of money on graphics. It doesn’t makes a lot, but it doesn’t build GPUs at a loss either. Its graphics integrated in CPUs, APUs if you will, also help AMD sell more cores and this is why AMD will stick with making new graphics cores in the future. Technology developed for high-end discrete graphics will trickle down to APUs over time.
Winning all three consoles, including the already launched Nintendo Wii U as well as the soon to launch Xbox 720 (next) and Playstation, 4 will definitely help AMD to perform even better in the future and build closer relations with developers.
Nvidia will have someone to fight in this market and AMD will continue to make discrete graphics cards, as well as notebook chips. Both companies will fight for as much market share as they possibly can and analysts who claim either of them is about to ditch the discrete market is dead wrong.
MSI Shows Off Lightning
MSI’s Geforce GTX 680 Lightning-L graphics card has showed up in Japan and it is possible that we will it in other markets as well.
Apparently not much has been changed compared to the original GTX 680 Lightning, as the PCB and feature set look about the same. The only thing that is different are the clocks. Set at 1019MHz and 1084MHz for base and boost GPU, they are somewhat lower. For comparison, the original GTX 680 Lightning worked at 1100MHz for base and 1176MHz for Boost GPU clock.
The new Lightning is still cooled by MSI’s Twin Frozr IV GPU and it comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz. With the same feature set it is expected that this SKU will have a rather decent amount of overclocking headroom as well, depending on the GPU below the cooler, of course.
Although it has not been officially launched, we will surely keep an eye out for it in other markets as well.
Will Intel Drop Itanium?
Intel has scaled back plans for its next Itanium chip, prompting observers the question Intel’s commitment to the chip.Intel said the next version of Itanium, codenamed Kittson, will be a 32nm part. It will not migrate to a more advanced process. The new chips will use the same socket as the existing Itanium 9300 and 9500 chips.
Analyst Nathan Brookwood said the move is Intel’s idea of an exit strategy.
“It may very well be that Itanium’s time has come and gone,” he said.
Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds told Computerworld that Itanium might see a new process in the future, if it proves successful enough to make the investment worthwhile. However, he does not expect any more major updates to the architecture.
Itanium launched in 2001 and it quickly became a running joke in the industry. It never achieved the volumes expected by Intel and AMD seized the opportunity to take on Intel with 64-bit Opterons. However, Itanium soldiered on for years, although many vendors stopped developing software for the chip.
MS Surface Pro Sells Out
Microsoft started selling its Surface Pro tablet last Saturday, and quickly ran out of its supply of the 128GB configuration.
While the less expensive 64GB device was also listed as out of stock Saturday on Microsoft’s online store, by Sunday it was again available.
The company acknowledged the outages.
“We’re working with our retail partners who are currently out of stock of the 128GB Surface Pro to replenish supplies as quickly as possible,” said Panos Panay, general manager for Microsoft’s Surface line, in a Saturday blog post. “Our priority is to ensure that every customer gets their new Surface Pro as soon as possible.”
Numerous online reports noted the shortages, saying that some Microsoft retail stores sported Apple-esque lines on Saturday and that many Best Buy and Staples locations — Microsoft’s retail partners for the Surface in the U.S. — had single-digit supplies that in some cases were claimed earlier in the week.
Microsoft is selling the Surface Pro in the U.S. through its online e-mart, its approximately 70 retail outlets, and the Best Buy and Staples chains.
The device, which runs Windows 8 and is powered by an Intel processor, sells for $899 in a 64GB storage configuration, and for $999 with 128GB. Keyboard-cover accessories — the Touch Cover and Type Cover — sell separately for $120 and $130, respectively.
AMD Delays Cards
While some people are packing in smoking, AMD thinks it is a good idea to pack in releasing new graphics cards, at least for a year or so.
AMD marketing manager Robert Hallock told Megagames that the company has no intentions to release Radeon HD 8000 series cards for the foreseeable future.
“The HD 7000 Series will remain our primary focus for quite some time,” he said.
When pressed he said that AMD and its partners are happy with the HD 7000 Series, and it will continue to be its emphasis in the channel for the foreseeable future. There had been some rumours that an HD 8000 Series was being developed. However AMD has never confirmed it and so far there has been no proof that any were ready to show up.
Hallock’s comments lend credibility to rumours that the HD 8000 family won’t be out before Q4 2013.