A researcher at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, has developed a new technology for use with a magneto-resistive type of memory which promises to solve part of the universal memory dilemma equation. Dr. Natia Frank, an Associate Professor and Researcher at the UVic Department of Chemistry, has patented what …
Read More »Intel 300-series chipsets to provide USB 3.1 Gen2 and Gigabit Wi-Fi
Some features on the upcoming Intel 300-series chipsets have surfaced on Chinese forum Benchlife. The Intel 300-series chipsets are being developed for Intel's Cannonlake (10nm) and Coffeelake (14nm), the latter of which should pop up in the second half of 2017 in the form of hexacore desktop processors. There doesn't …
Read More »Intel pulls the plug on the Intel Developer Forum
It was a great run, but Intel Corporation has announced it has pulled the plug on the Intel Developer Forum (IDF). This has left many in the industry with a huge gaping hole in their mid-August agendas, as the staple Intel-branded event now disappears into posterity. The Fall edition, regularly held …
Read More »‘Apple Car’ project lives on, testing permit awarded in California
We all knew that Apple had the hots for cars. First they went after McLaren, then they put 1,000 people working on Project Titan, aka the ‘Apple Car' (but the project had been rumoured to have been shelved due to internal issues at Apple), and now it seems that the …
Read More »HP is finally launching its vaunted portable VR system, the Omen X VR Backpack
Almost a year after the initial news broke, HP's foray into VR technology will finally reach shops come June this year, reports PC World. Little is known of the device's specs, however. HP has disclosed it will weigh 4.5 Kgs (10 lbs), include dual batteries for hot-swapping without powering down …
Read More »More grief for ailing Toshiba in NAND unit sale
It seems that Toshiba just can't catch a break. After a year of pretty hefty losses and a multi-billion dollar writedown which forced its hand into the sale of its cash-cow NAND business and, more recently, releasing its much-delayed Q1'17 earnings reports without the approval of its consultants PwC, it …
Read More »Cristiano-phone sells out in 56 seconds
Reports are coming in that ZTE's ‘premium' brand, nubia (sic), sold out just as it went on sale. The smartphone, dubbed the Z17 mini, is endorsed by soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and used his mojo to sell out a mere 56 seconds after it was launched in China, having moved an estimated …
Read More »Maker gets Cortana with Windows 10 IoT Core Creators Update
Maker aficionados of the Windows 10 IoT Core persuasion will be happy to know that Cortana has landed. The Windows 10 Creators Update milestone has delivered on a number of new features, including the Cortana voice assistant, which can now be used by makers in their Windows 10 IoT implementations. …
Read More »Qualcomm hit with $815 million royalty refund to Blackberry
A court arbitration case between Qualcomm and Blackberry has ended today awarding Blackberry Inc. a sum of $814.9 million, plus interest and attorney's fees, on royalties charged for past sales. The decision is binding and Qualcomm will not be able to appeal. The dispute reportedly related to Qualcomm setting caps …
Read More »AMD’s Ryzen has not brought the price wars we all wanted/needed
As much as AMD's Ryzen has seen the CPU underdog being thrust back into the race, how much of an impact has it really had on Intel's thus-far dominant Core i7 and Core i7 processors? Using Camelcamelcamel.com‘s Amazon pricetracking tool, we've measured the changes in the US and UK, and …
Read More »AR brings back an oldie-but-goodie: meet HoloLems
Globacore, a Canadian company specializing in creating unique AR/VR experiences, has dug deep in the ol’ chest of fond memories and converted a childhood favourite into a HoloLens game. Aptly named HoloLems, the AR adaptation is basically a tribute to the classic 90s videogame. Lemmings was a 2D side-scrolling puzzle-platformer …
Read More »Las Vegas to get 30,000 square foot eSports venue in 2018
Allied Esports International and MGM Resorts International have penned a deal to create “the first permanent eSports venue” on the Las Vegas strip and promise to make it the eSports go-to venue, in much the same way Wembley and Wimbledon are for footie and tennis. MGM has commissioned the conversion …
Read More »AMD is getting into wireless VR headset technology
When AMD launched its Radeon RX 480 graphics card it promised to deliver VR for the masses, or at least the computing power to do so. And it did. Fast forward 10 months and while VR-capable graphics cards have become relatively the norm, the software (apps) and hardware (headsets) ecosystem …
Read More »EA to strengthen ranks in Montréal, invests CAD 500 million
The Québécois government has announced EA will be upping its existing investment in the city of Montréal and – over the course of 10 years – bring 500 new jobs and an estimated $500 million, presumably Canadian, to the dinner table. Montréal is where EA's Bioware studios have been hard …
Read More »G.SKILL Announces Trident Z RGB DDR4-3333MHz 128GB and 64GB kits
PC enthusiast memory maker G.SKILL has announced a new line-up of top-tier memory kits for discerning modders and gamers. The Trident Z RGB DDR4-3333MHz 128GB and 64GB retail kits are squarely aimed at the high-end X99 and Z270 motherboards, respectively, currently driving the likes of Intel's Xeon E5 (v3)-series and Kaby Lake …
Read More »BAFTA eSports Audience Award leaves PC game developers scratching heads
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awarded its second eSports Audience Award in a ceremony last night, giving the people a vote in recognizing the popularity and importance of eSports and related game franchises. The nominee list, chock-full of AAA-rated MOBA and TDM games like Overwatch, DOTA …
Read More »Toshiba NAND bid hits $30 billion mark. TSMC bows out, leaves Foxconn in the lead
Reports have surfaced in the Japanese press that TSMC has quit on its bid to buy Toshiba's rather precious NAND-flash business, leaving Foxconn in the lead position. Foxconn has offered to pony-up 3 trillion Yen (around $30 billion), or $21.2 billion more than what Reuters had reported as the sought-after …
Read More »Nintendo Switch costs $257 to make, won’t line Nintendo’s pockets suggests report
Despite a number of teardown sites already having published complete guides on the Nintendo Switch, we now get a better idea of the BoM involved in the manufacture of the device through a report from Fomalhaut Techno Solutions in Japan. This lab has gutted the gaming device in order to …
Read More »Canonical drops Ubuntu phones, tablets. The future is in the Cloud
Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, introspectively announced on the Ubuntu insights blog that his company is facing a change of direction, despite highlighting how great a quarter the company has just had. Six years after adopting Ubuntu Unity (not to be confused with the open-source graphics engine), the project that …
Read More »AMD’s RX 500-Series starts its slow leak to fame
Right now, the Internet is rife with rumours and screen grabs of AMD's latest reincarnation (or rebrand, or rebadge) of its totally vanilla and mainstream RX 400-Series-come-500-Series GPUs. According to one site, someone has been benchmarking the RX 500-Series Radeons on 3DMark and posting their results. The benchmarking event, documented at …
Read More »Ryzen 5 1600 performance showcased in early review
It looks like someone broke the Ryzen 5 street date as a Spanish site this week published an early review for the Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, using a retail sample obtained prior to the official release. The review is fairly comprehensive too, showing AMD's affordable 6-core in a wide range of …
Read More »Amazon introduces Amazon Cash top-ups in the US, no need for bank cards
US customers of Amazon have been treated to its latest-and-greatest shopping enablement tool: Amazon Cash. Handy, it says, for those who do not own a bank card, but still have a hankering to shop online on Amazon. All you need is an Amazon account, a barcode and some money burning …
Read More »At least one iPhone 8 is a curvy little number, industry sources claim
A recent report on Nikkei Asian Review has exposed a Samsung deal with Apple to provide the iPhone-maker with OLED panels from here to kingdom come – 70 million of them. Samsung, say experts, has capacity to squeeze out up to 95 million OLED panels for Apple, in case demand …
Read More »AMD X399, X390 leak onto the web, Ryzen 4700, 2700 in the works
Some technical diagrams for the upcoming AMD X399 and a would-be X390 chipset have made a splash on the internet, it seems. A post on an AMD subreddit included some very convincing chipset block diagrams showing off what looks like the X399 and X390 chipsets, and even a board layout …
Read More »Sony finally says goodbye to the PS3, production ends this week
It looks like our time with the PlayStation 3 is coming to an end, as this week it was revealed that the console has reached the end of its lifespan, with Sony ceasing production this week. A moment of silence is surely in order as the historic games console gets …
Read More »Google reinvents JPEG compression, tells Internet to take a load off
With humans capturing and uploading images to the Internet at an unprecedented rate, social media running amok, and image-heavy websites taking advantage of existing broadband connections, Google has committed to improving JPEG image compression. Google has developed a new open-source JPEG compression algorithm, dubbed Guetzli (apparently that means “cookie” in …
Read More »Ryzen 5 six core and quad core SKUs leak, will land in April and start at $169
An accidental leak, just a day shy of the actual announcement, has revealed AMD's plans for its Ryzen R5 CPU line-up. According to a post on Guru3D.com (now removed), AMD Ryzen R5 CPUs will come in four different flavours – two hexacores and two quadcores – with a clear assault …
Read More »NAND Flash supply is achingly short on all fronts
According to a report from analyst firm DRAMeXchange, demand for consumer-grade Flash NAND during a production transition phase has left Flash manufacturers scrambling to keep up with demand. Contract prices are estimated to climb 10% this first quarter of 2017. In what seems to be a perfect storm of bad …
Read More »