Although last week Hewlett-Packard announced plans to introduce its first 3D printers this June, the company by now has retracted the statement. It appears that HP’s 3D printing tech is not yet ready for commercial introduction and will only be demonstrated by the end of October. Chief executive of HP, …

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Oculus VR, a developer of virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion. The move will provide Oculus necessary money to finish development of its Oculus Rift VR headset and start to market it. But what …

Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday publicly updated its graphics processing units roadmap for the coming years. The company removed its code-named Volta architecture from the plan and introduced Pascal architecture instead. The latter is believed to feature similar innovations to Volta, but to be even more significantly tailored for low power …

Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday introduced its new GeForce GTX Titan Z graphics card at its annual GPU Technology Conference. The graphics board carries two fully-featured GK110 graphics processing units on board and provides ultimate performance for video games in ultra-high-definition resolutions as well as general-purpose compute apps. Its price is …

Early this month Advanced Micro Devices introduced its new low-cost desktop platform based on Kabini chip design. The new AM1 platform comprises microprocessors carrying Athlon and Sempron brands with integrated graphics cores as well as new mainboards with FS1b sockets previously only used for mobile applications. What AMD did not …

Although Microsoft Corp.’s DirectX 12 application programming interface will significantly improve performance of currently available hardware and most likely will enable new level of graphics quality, to fully benefit from the potential of the new API, new hardware will be needed, according to an Nvidia Corp.’s representative. Tony Tamasi, senior …

While Apple MacBook Air family has probably been the most popular Apple laptops for quite some time now, they were not significantly updated in the last three years. A media report claims that Apple plans to introduce an all-new MacBook Air 12”, which will not only have larger display than …

Apple is thinking about releasing a version of iTunes music and content store for Google Android operating system, according to a media report. In addition, the consumer electronics giant is mulling to create an on-demand music service like Spotify in a bid to continue earning from selling music and digital …

Microsoft Corp. has been quiet about virtual reality technologies and their support by its new-generation Xbox One console. However, it would be short-sighted to think that the company has not played with the tech. It certainly has. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft Game Studios, confirmed this during a conversation …

While Microsoft Corp. revealed yesterday that it will release preview version of its DirectX 12 application programming interface this year, its press materials did not disclose when to expect the final version of the API and games that take complete advantage of it. According to various media reports, it looks …

Both analysts as well as developers of application processors for mobile devices are predicting the emergence of smartphones with ultra-high-definition displays in the foreseeable future. Even so, none smartphone makers have so far disclosed plans to launch such gadgets. A Sony executive this week was the first official for a …

Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Gear smart-watch has not become popular due to many reasons, but the main one was its price of $299. With the Gear 2 series of watches as well as Gear Fit smart-band the company risks to repeat its central mistake: price the devices higher than customers are …

Adoption of solid-state drives has been growing rapidly in the recent years and will continue to do so this year, according to the chairman of Transcend. One of the main reasons behind growing popularity of SSDs is their declining prices, which will drop further in 2014. Peter Shu, the chairman …

DisplaySearch, a leading display market tracker, said this week that shipments of ultra-high-definition (UHD) televisions in 2013 totaled 1.6 million units. Moreover, in the last quarter of the year various manufacturers supplied one million units, which means that the demand for such displays with 3840*2160 resolution is on the rise. …

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday unveiled DirectX 12, the latest incarnation of one of the world’s most popular application programming interfaces. The new API can not only greatly improve rendering performance, but to also bring top-notch quality graphics to all Microsoft platforms, including personal computers, tablets/smartphones and even Xbox One. One …

Early last year Intel Corp. demonstrated the world’s first fully-patterned 450mm wafers and in mid-2013 started to construct D1X module 2 fab, which is supposed to act as a primary development facility for virtually all of Intel’s 450mm initiatives. It was expected that commercial production of chips on 450mm wafers …

Advanced Micro Devices has announced that Crytek, a leading developer of video games and game engines, will adopt the company’s proprietary Mantle application programming interface for CryEngine. Once the latter gains support for Mantle, games based on CryEngine may get a performance boost on systems featuring AMD Radeon graphics based …

Huawei, a top maker of smartphones, has denied plans to release a handset with two operating systems, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone. Instead, the China-based manufacturer intends to keep offering phones with Android and Windows Phone, but separately. Last week it turned out that Huawei was going to release …

Although Hewlett-Packard is the world’s largest maker of printers, it has not so far launched a single 3D printer due to various reasons, the main of which is low adoption of the technology in general. However, chief executive of the company, Meg Whitman, announced on Wednesday that the first 3D …

Wireless hard disk drives are extremely convenient and easy to use. But their major problem is a rather high price which prevents many people from buying large wireless storage devices. Fortunately, it looks like Toshiba Corp. has found a solution for the problem. A U.S. division of Toshiba on Wednesday …

Seagate announced earlier this year that it would start shipments of its first enterprise-class hard disk drive with 6TB of storage space sometimes in April. While the firm is getting ready to release its highest-capacity hard drive ever, it has already started to ship a HDD that combines performance with …

Imagination Technologies, a leading-designer of graphics processing technologies for mobile devices, has introduced its brand-new family of graphics IP cores that are designed to render graphics using real-time ray-tracing method. The latter allows to significantly increase realism of graphics on all types of devices. Moreover, Imagination claims that despite of …

Biostar, a second-tier maker of mainboards that specializes on various niche and unique solutions, this week introduced BTC-24GH, a special mainboard designed for Bitcoin mining and featuring 64 special-purpose ASICs [application-specific integrated circuits] which were specifically designed for mining of the virtual currency. In the world of crypto currencies, a …

Samsung Electronics is reportedly facing more issues with production of its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5. In addition to a fire on a fab that produces printed-circuit boards for the device, there are problems with production of lenses for the Galaxy S5 cameras. Samsung is seemingly having trouble manufacturing …

Google on Tuesday introduced the world’s first operating system designed for wearable devices from the ground up. The new OS is expected to enable tens of intelligent wearable devices from tens of manufacturers in the coming quarters. Google Android Wear uses systems found in Android OS for mobile devices and …

Crucial, a division of Micron Technology, on Tuesday introduced a new breed of solid-state drives with increased performance, optimized power consumption and up to 1TB capacities. The new SSDs will power various PCs in different form-factors while offering consistently high performance and energy efficiency. Crucial’s M550 solid-state drives are based …

Samsung Electronics’ Gear smart-watches seem to be rather promising solutions for those who want to have an additional mobile companion device that monitors things like heart-rate. Unfortunately, they only work with Samsung’s own Galaxy smartphones at present. However, that might change in the future. The Samsung Gear 2 and Gear …

Apple on Tuesday re-introduced the iPad 4 16GB at a new price-point of $399/£329. The old-new iPad with retina display will replace the iPad 2 and will significantly improve Apple’s competitive positions on the entry-level market segment. The fourth-generation iPad was originally introduced in 2012 and then discontinued in late …

Even though Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he was interested in making Apple TV and even knew how to make a unique TV-set, the co-founder of Apple also told other executives of the company that it did not make sense to enter the TV business. Despite of …

Advanced Micro Devices and OCZ Storage Solutions, a subsidiary of Toshiba Corp., on Monday said that they would showcase personal computers powered by AMD hardware and Vector 150 series solid state drives at the Game Developers Conference later this week. The systems will illustrate how developers can enhance productivity and …