This is Haswell, Intel’s latest microarchitecture that is destined to slip into slimmer-than-slim laptops and Ultrabooks of the future. It is built on 22nm process technology, relies on the company’s 3D Tri-gate transistors and should lead to over ten full days of connected standby battery life in mobile devices. Haswell is expected to appear on notebooks starting in 2013, which isn’t very far away. That’s just after Ivy Bridge. Exciting?

Read more…

Nintendo yesterday announced a brand new 3DS for those that love all things pink. However, the company also had a few surprises for current 3DS owners. First up is the added functionality of 3D video capture. The company also confirmed updates for its eShop and new Street Pass items. On the games side of things, the biggest piece of news was the arrival of Monster Hunter 4. Other upcoming titles for the 3DS include Animal Crossing, Luigi’s Mansion 2, Fire Emblem, DS Gundam 3D Generation, Resident Evil: Revelations, Project Mirai, and Culdecept 3DS.

Not mentioned at any point during the conference was the much talked about slide-pad attachment that adds an second analog stick to the 3DS console. However, while Nintendo remained silent about it during its Tokyo Game Show press conference, the peripheral hit the company’s website shortly after with a price tag of roughly $20.

Set for Japanese release in December, the peripheral requires one AAA battery and will be utilized by Monster Hunter Tri 3G, Resident Evil: Revelations, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D, and Kingdom Hearts 3: Dream Drop Distance to name just a few. No word on when it will arrive in the United States but we imagine it might get here just in time to be the latest must-have stocking filler for 3DS owners.

SOURCE via GamePro

Microsoft has unveiled its Windows 8 over at their Microsoft Build event, and has also made available their Windows 8 Developer preview. It’s now available for download over at Microsoft’s page. This is what the Windows President has to say about the preview:

You probably want to try out the preview release—and you can. Starting later tonight you can download the Windows 8 Developer Preview. This includes a 64-bit (x64) build with development tools to build apps, and a 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) build without development tools. The releases also include a suite of sample applications (please note these are merely illustrations of potential apps, not apps that we intend to ship with Windows 8). The ISOs are linked to from http://dev.windows.com.

Upgrade from Windows 7 installation is not supported for pre-release code; only clean installs are supported. Reminder: this is a developer preview release and is not meant for production. It is not a beta release. We will be updating the release with various quality updates and drivers over the coming weeks/months just to exercise our overall update and telemetry mechanisms.

MarketWatch reports that Intel and Google have formed a partnership that will see future releases of Google’s Android OS optimized for Intel’s Atom E-Series. Intel reportedly hopes that this move will help propel the company into a mobile sector currently dominated by ARM’s mobile architecture.

The partnership between Intel and Google was revealed Tuesday during the Intel Developers Forum by Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini and Google’s senior vice president of mobile Andy Rubin. The duo indicated that future versions of Android won’t necessarily focus on the Atom SoC, but will support the x86-based architecture along with other architectures already saturating the mobile market.

Tuesday Otellini also said that Intel has made “real progress” in its attempt to enter the smartphone sector, and expects to see the first wave of devices sweep the market within the first half of 2012. “Every time we collaborate with Google, good things come out,” Otellini said. “I’m excited and have high expectations around this as well.”

In addition to x86 support in Android, Otellini also showcased new technology slated for Q4 2011 that will allow users to have the same experience across multiple devices. One tech was called “Intel pair and share” which will allow users to link to PCs and access whatever is on the hard drive. Another called “teleport extender” will allow users to access text messages and other alerts on their phones from a linked PC.

While we’re happy to be chugging along with our computers where you can count the gigahertz on a single hand, AMD’s gone and broken a Guinness World Record for speeds reached with its upcoming Bulldozer chip.

Just how fast did the expert overclockers crank Bulldozer? 8.429 GHz. That breaks the previous record of 8.308 GHz.

The record was set on August 31, 2011, in Austin, Texas, by “Team AMD FX,” a group comprised of elite overclocking specialists working alongside top AMD technologists, who will also be named in the Guinness World Records.

“We applaud AMD for their entry into Guinness World Records for achieving the Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor,” said Freddie Hoff, adjudicator for Guinness World Records, who is presenting the award today at the AMD Fusion Zone, a technology showcase in San Francisco, Calif. “We congratulate everyone involved in this record-breaking achievement.”

Back in 2003 Maserati shown to the world their Kubang concept, and now in late 2011 the concept is resurfacing again at the Frankfurt show that starts today, and marks the Trident’s entry into the sport luxury SUV segment.

Read more…

Based on a leaked road-map, AMD will be releasing their new GPUs in Q4 for the upcoming holiday season. The GPUs will start with four different GPUs based on the 28nm version of the VLIW4 (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture. The four GPUs will be equipped with 768 to 1536 Radeon cores (stream processors) and GDDR5 memory.

The fun begins when you start to look at the new high-end GPUs codenamed “Tahiti”, which is expected to see a Q1 2012 release. The “Tahiti” will make use of PCIe Gen3 interface, which has a massive bandwidth of 32 GB/s. The 7900 series is set to utilize new AMD’s Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture. The GCN is expected to boost performance per square millimeter die area to improve upon the VLIW4 architecture.

The most interesting change is AMD’s decision to go with XDR2 memory interface from Rambus over previous generation DDR5 memory interface. Rambus claims the XDR2 is twice as fast as DDR5, while offering 30 percent less power consumption.

Additional information leaked has the Radeon HD 7970 series with, 2048 Radeon Cores, GPU frequency of 1000 MHz and XDR2 memory at 8000 MHz, which would result in a memory bandwidth of 256 GB/s over a 256-bit memory interface. This compared to the 176 GB/s in Radeon HD 6790 with GDDR5 memory at 5500 MHz. All this power will be packed within an estimated power consumption of 190 watts

There looks to be some interesting times ahead for AMD in the coming months for us to keep watch. AMD will be releasing its new “Bulldozer” architecture; along with the new GCN architecture for the 7900 series GPUs (if the information leaked is accurate).

SOURCE via NordicHardware