Thursday Gigabyte released the next model in its G1-Killer motherboard series, the G1.Sniper 2, based on Intel’s Z68 chipset. For the uninitiated, this series of motherboards is built around emulated components of a disassembled gun, perfect for modders and PC gamers who feel like making intimidating statements without using words (or real weapons).

“Like soldiers about to head out into the line of fire, elite gamers know that the equipment they use can mean the difference between getting the frag, or being fragged,” the company said. “That is why GIGABYTE has designed the G1-Killer series of motherboards for one purpose, and one purpose only; serious hardcore gaming.”

The biggest feature of the G1-Killer series is its “Locked and Loaded” heatpipe design. This is modeled after common firearms issued to soldiers deployed to warzones including pistol and rifle components, and ammo magazines. GIGABYTE said the design isn’t just for looks — it utilizes a unique “fluting” technology similar to a rifle barrel fluting which allows for maximum heat dispersion.

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Research groups at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego claim to have discovered a path to light signals on a silicon chip from reflecting backwards and interfering with its operation.

Transporting information in computer chips relies on a technique that allows current to flow in only one direction that avoids interference through a scattered beam that would make a signal and a chip unstable. So far, the model used in silicon chips, which relies on a diode to isolate electric signals, has not been possible. However the researchers say they have developed a metallic-silicon optical waveguide system to channel light so it travels in different patterns depending on its propagation direction. When traveling forward, the pattern is symmetric, but asymmetric when reflected backwards. According to a paper published in the journal Science, backscattered light is dissipated as a result.

“This discovery will help to realize a long-term goal of combining electronics with photonics to enable scalable, energy-efficient and cost-effective technology that will have a tremendous impact on such information systems as supercomputers, the Internet, and data centers,” said Yeshaiahu Fainman, professor and chair of the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Computer technology will be able to handle a lot more data, faster and at lower cost, which will benefit large-scale business and government users as well as gadget-loving consumers.”

SOURCE via Caltech and UCSD

AMD’s release of Llano signaled a new level of graphical performance for the entry-level and mainstream computing market.

Computers built around AMD’s latest Fusion chips all come with decent GPU functionality that’s integrated right into the same CPU package. No longer would system builders need to factor in an additional entry-level video card for some World of Warcraft action, which is a win-win situation for both the vendor and consumer.

Of course, AMD also makes video cards, and this new processor package innovation could mean that demand for its more modest discrete entries will fall as a result of the more capable Fusion chips.

For that reason, AMD is considering the removal of its low-end discrete graphics products.

Speaking about its low-end offerings, interim chief executive Thomam Seifert told analysts and investors that “parts of this business will be cannibalised and the low-end discrete GPUs will be replaced with Fusion-type products,” according to Tech Radar.

Ken Brown, a spokesman for Nvidia, told X-bit Labs that Kepler silicon will be available this year, but now it seems production of graphic cards will not happen until 2012. So far, we have been under the impression that Kepler cards could be arriving just in time for Christmas, even if Nvidia already had said at the International Supercomputing Conference in June that the new cards may be delayed by a month or two.

Kepler will be succeeding the Fermi architecture and use a 28 nm production process. There have been rumors that Nvidia is struggling with the 28 nm production and that manufacturing is causing the delay. Of course, Nvidia isn’t commenting on the delay and no chip manufacturer would ever give a statement on yield issues anyway. However, Nvidia is under pressure of getting Kepler out on time and especially get to Kepler right. (The current Fermi architecture was delayed several times and had a less than perfect launch.)

According to information released by Nvidia so far, Kepler cards will triple the dual-precision floating point performance of Fermi and hit up to 6 dp GFlops, while its successor Maxwell (scheduled for a 2013 release) is expected to with almost 16 dp GFlops. These are big promises and Nvidia wouldn’t want to miss them.

SOURCE via xbit labs

SweClockers reports that Seagate has decided to shorten the warranty period for most of its consumer-based hard drives in order to cut costs. Warranties will supposedly be reduced from the five-year plan down to a two-year plan or three-year plan.

Although Seagate hasn’t announced anything official, the rumor suggests that the new warranty reduction will be applied to the Barracuda (including the Barracuda 7200.12) and Momentus Green product series. The Barracuda line features 3.5-inch HDDs spinning at 7,200 RPM and 5,900 RPM and ranging in capacities from 500 GB to 2 TB. The Momentus line consists of 2.5-inch HDDs ranging in capacities of 250 GB to 750 GB and are typically used in notebooks.

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Wednesday Patriot Memory launched its new line of Pyro 2.5-inch SSDs featuring an SATA 3 (III) 6 Gb/s interface and SandForce’s SF-2281 controller. These two factors allow for sequential read speeds up to 550 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 515 MB/s.

“The Patriot Memory Pyro will continue to aggressively expand on what consumers can expect out of performance class solid state drives,” said William Lai, Patriot Memory’s Product Manager. “With near enterprise level performance by utilizing the new SandForce SF-2281, coupled with Patriot Memory’s reputation, Pyro will deliver unmatched price per performance.”

Patriot’s Pyro arrives in three capacities: 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB. All three offer TRIM support, up to 85K 4K random write IOPS, and ships with the latest 3.1.9 firmware. So far additional information like pricing and actual availability is unknown.

Back in June, Patriot revealed another line of SATA 3 SSDs, the Wildfire series. Available in 120 GB and 240 GB capacities, these use the SandForce SF-2200 series controller and offer sequential read speeds up to 555 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 520 MB/s. There’s also a 480 GB version in the works, but Patriot currently has it labeled as “coming soon.”

Given that the new Pyro SSDs are slightly slower than the current Wildfire drives, it’s probably safe to assume that they’re also somewhat cheaper. Currently the Wildfire 120 GB SSD retails for $299.99 and the Wildfire 240 GB SSD retails for $514.99 on Newegg.

Hard to believe that OCZ Technology’s original Z-Drive were shown at CeBIT 2009, and just over two full years, and already we’ve seen the 600MB/sec claims offered on that fellow eclipsed by a few successors. Today, the latest in the line is making its debut, with the Z-Drive R4 offering 2,800MB/sec and over 500,000 IOPS with a single SuperScale controller; step up to a dualie, and you’ll see 5,600MB/sec transfer rates coupled with 1.2 million input-output operations per second.

Not surprisingly, this guy’s aimed squarely at enterprise users — folks who can genuinely take advantage of the speed, and are willing to pay the unpublished rates that go along with it. It’s retaining the PCIe-based form factor, and will be shipped in two standard configurations: a half height version designed for space constrained 1U servers and multi-node rackmount servers, and a full height version. Each of those will be made available with SLC / MLC NAND flash memory, and as with all of OCZ’s enterprise kit, customer-specific configurations and functionality are available upon request.

Tuesday Toshiba said that it will begin mass production of its new MQ01ABD 2.5-inch HDD starting the middle of August. This new line will feature the company’s 500 GB/platter technology using an “industry-leading” areal density of 744 Gb/in², thus increasing the quantity of data stored per square inch by over 37-percent compared to prior 2.5-inch models. For consumers, this means drive capacities up to 1 TB.

“The creation of rich content by consumers and businesses continues to push the demand for storage capacity,” said Joel Hagberg, vice president of product marketing, Storage Device Division of TAIS. “The Toshiba MQ01ABD series provides not only the capacity and performance required by notebook and PC manufacturers, multimedia professionals, multi-room set-top-box and other power users, but also the benefits of a low-power, environmentally friendly drive.”

The MQ01ABD line will arrive in five capacities: 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB using one platter, and 750 GB and 1 TB using two platters. All five will have a rotational speed of 5400 RPM and connect via a Serial ATA 3 Gb/s interface. The maximum media transfer rate will be 1288.6 Mbps and the average seek time will be 12 ms. Each drive will sport an 8 MB buffer memory.

“Toshiba’s MQ01ABD series HDDs have been engineered for superior energy efficiency — the series HDDs consume only 0.55watts during idle mode,” the company said. “The MQ01ABD drives also offer improved acoustic performance, emitting a maximum of 19dB at idle and 24dB during seek operations. This combination of areal density, power utilization, and acoustic performance enables PC and consumer electronics makers to build differentiated systems based on capacity, performance, heat dissipation, and power efficiency.”

So far info on pricing and actual availability is available, so stay tuned.

AMD appears to have had a pretty good launch into the GPU-CPU era as it was able to steal x86 processor market share from Intel, according to a new report published by market researchers from IDC.

AMD claimed 1.5 points of share from Intel overall and now stands at 20.4%. In mobile computers, AMD gained 1.8 points to 15.2%, in desktops it added 1.5 points to 28.9%, IDC said. Intel held 79.3% overall and 84.4% in mobile and 70.9% in desktops.

According to IDC, Intel was able to extend its dominance in servers and added 0.6 points to 94.5%, while Intel stood at 5.5%.

The good news for Intel and AMD was the fact that Sandy Bridge and Fusion already account for more than 60% of processor shipments. Given AMD’s gains, it appears that AMD had a much better start into this era than Intel.

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Operating system have been one of the major drivers for DRAM demand, and have experienced an almost persistent boost since the introduction on Windows 95 in 1994 – back then we were asked to upgrade our computers from a modest 4 MB of DRAM to 8 MB.

IHS now says that the trend of quickly growing DRAM demand may come to an end as leaner operating system do not call for rapid increases anymore.

“The growth rate of dynamic random access memory content in personal computers is set for a historic decline, with the average annual increase in DRAM amount for each new PC not expected to exceed 35% after 2012, down from an average 48% during the last quarter-century,” IHS said. “After climbing 38% in 2009 and 25% in 2010, average DRAM content per PC will rise 30% in 2011 and 35% in 2012,” IHS noted. “The year 2012, however, will represent the last high point for growth, with the amount of annual DRAM content growth in the following years expected to be significantly less than 35%.” IHS said that DRAM growth per PC was 48% between 1985 and 2009 and ranged from 40 to 45% in the early 2000s.

The market research firm stressed that, historically, each new version of Windows demanded more memory, but that pattern broke with Windows 7: “From Windows 7’s release in 2009 until a year later, DRAM content growth per PC actually dropped 13% – auguring the kind of lower expansion rates likely to be seen in the years to come.”

Microsoft already said that Windows 8 will not have hardware requirements that exceed Windows 7′s requirements. Instead of operating systems, it appears that memory drivers will be shifting to more computing devices as well as applications, which would include more applications running at the same time as well as increased use of multimedia.

“As the appetite for digital data swells continually among consumers, so too will the memory requirements needed to feed the ravening beast,” IHS said.