Intel claims that platforms built around its Haswell microarchitecture – the successor to the today’s Sandy Bridge, scheduled for 2013 – will use one-twentieth the power of today’s stingiest low-power platforms.

“Haswell was designed to enable a 30 per cent reduction in connected standby power over the currently shipping notebooks using our 2nd Generation Core microprocessors,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said during his keyote presentation at the Intel Developer Forum. “But we can do more than that. We can do much better than that.”

Haswell will already have one jump on today’s 32nm Sandy Bridge processors, which Intel brands as their 2nd Generation Core processors: Haswell will be manufactured using the same 22nm tri-gate process that will be used in Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge’s follow-on, which is scheduled to appear next year.

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Frankfurt Motor Show is happening right now, and well a modern motor show would not be complete without Toyota’s ever tantalizing FT-86. Here, then, is the car in its latest state as a FT-86 II — colored red. It’s pretty and, of course, you still can’t buy one, even if you can afford it.

It’s bewildering to think that I first saw a Japanese magazine render of the FT-86 in 2007. It is as if Toyota has invented glacial time and the idea of the permanent concept car. Every year, they add in new trends to the concept, wondering when they will finally decide to sell it. “Ah, day light LEDs are the new trend, let’s place some into the concept!” “Big mouth design is digging now, let’s do it too!” “Oh! Let’s not forget that badass diffuser!”

Perhaps the plan with the FT-86 is to leave it in permanent beta, to develop a version for every major auto show, until every AE86 owner dies of sadness. A strange way to make cars, but hey, it’s certainly a revolution of sorts. This car better be good!

According to the document, which stretches over 649 pages, IBM describes a BlueGene/Q system that is based on 524,288 processing nodes with 16-core PowerPC A2 processors that are able to handle 64 threads each. The system would include almost 8.4 million processing cores that are organized in 512 racks. The targeted performance is a peak of 107 PFlop/s.

The BlueGene/Q Sequoia supercomputer IBM is currently building for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use about 1.6 million A2 processing cores in 96 racks. The patent claims that each processing node will consume about 30 watts of power, which puts the 107 PFlop/s system at only 15.7 MW. That is rather impressive for a system with more than 8 million CPU cores.

The patent suggests that IBM has big plans with BlueGene/Q and especially its 5D torus network that connects the computing nodes among each other. There was no information when such a 100+ PFlop/s system could become reality. Sequoia is scheduled to go online in 2012 with a peak performance of about 20 PFlop/s.

SOURCE via Conceivablytech

If you need to take a breather from the exhausting business of arboreal zombie warfare, you’ll be able to participate in nine new mini-games on the iPhone version of Plants vs. Zombies today. An update for the title just launched, which adds three packs of three diversions to Crazy Dave’s store, such as ZomBotany 2, Invisi-Ghoul and Beghouled Twist. Really, the puns are worth the price of admission. Each pack can be bought with in-game coins, or if you prefer, with $0.99 of your real-world cash.

SOURCE via PC World

HTC has Google to thank for its meteoric rise to smartphone stardom. Prior to the launch of the search giant’s Android operating system, HTC was an OEM whipping up made-to-order phones for other companies and cell phone carriers around the globe. However, with the arrival of Android came a new HTC. Since then, the company has had numerous successful handsets, including the Nexus One, Google’s first flagship Android device. It’s also branched out to include a fistful of Windows Phone 7 devices in its portfolio. But is the company ready to move away from Android and Windows Phone 7?

HTC has expressed interest in purchasing its own mobile operating system. Following reports that it was mulling over an OS purchase, HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang, speaking to the Economic Observer (via Focus Taiwan), confirmed the news.

“We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse,” Wang said. “We can use any OS we want. We are able to make things different from our rivals on the second or third layer of a platform. Our strength lies in understanding an OS, but it does not mean that we have to produce an OS.”

HTC has always stayed faithful to its HTC Sense UI, so it’s surprising to hear the company is looking to purcahse, rather than develop. Still, Wang made it clear that the company is confident enough in its expertise to shop around for something it likes rather than waste time developing its own. HTC has yet to offer any indication as to which OS it’s considering buying, but like Wang said, it’s in no rush.

SOURCE via Focus Taiwan

The biggest dose of Skyrim yet! This fantastic twenty minute video is what was shown to press at the Skyrim E3 demonstration. Narrated by Producer Todd Howard, it shows you… well just about everything. There’s horse riding, mountain climbing, dungeon crawling, flower picking even a massive battle against one of Skyrim’s unlimited dragons. So settle down and make yourself a cup of tea, because you’re going to be watching this for a while.

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Jay Wilson, game director of Diablo 3 thinks that the bad conspiracy of pc platform is getting weaker is hitting hard, and the crowd is buying into that myth. But he also thinks that Blizzard is actually gaining from this. This is what he said during an interview with PC Gamer over at Gamescom few weeks ago.

“The install base of PCs outnumbers all the consoles combined together hands down.” said Jay. “There’s a lot of people out there with PCs and Macs, and they like games too.”

Jay seemed frustrated by a lack of confidence in our games platform of choice, but admitted that Blizzard might have benefited from a less crowded marketplace: “It’s unfortunate that the illusion that the PC is dying has been propagating for so long and that people have bought into it. On the other hand I’d say Blizzard has done quite well off of that – the fact that people have the illusion that PC is not a place where you can make money. It’s made it even easier for us to do really well.”

The game director also implied that the fruitful relationship between Blizzard and PC might be one of superior functionality, not platform loyalty: “I would add – we don’t see ourselves as a PC developer – we see ourselves as a game developer. It’s just that the games that we wanted to make suit the PC platform. And one of the things that we’re not willing to ever do is go to a platform just to cash in on it.

“We don’t believe you can make a Starcraft style RTS and make it great – Blizzard great – on console.” He’s got a point. I played an RTS on a pad once. I felt like a massive-hooved cow trying to do crochet.

Jay is obviously proud of Blizzard’s successes, and even recommends Blizzard’s rivals look to them for direction: “If people think that you can’t make money from the PC they should really look at us as a symbol and they should really be asking why we’re so successful. It’s primarily because of the quality of the games, but when you have a high quality product, very little competition and a high install base…”

SOURCE via Pc Gamer