Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Curiosity Mars Rover Video Animation
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Oh not again: Nebraska Nuclear Power Plant Floods After Berm Collapses
According to the NRC, no water got into the building and there is no danger associated with the flood as of right now.
They are the first results from a planned 30-year project to monitor the health of the 2 million residents of Fukushima prefecture.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Reportedly no radioactivity, but Fukushima people piss radioactive urine !.
They are the first results from a planned 30-year project to monitor the health of the 2 million residents of Fukushima prefecture.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Reportedly no radioactivity, but Fukushima people piss radioactive urine !.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Robot fails to complete Japanese nuke plant mission
The job, clearly too dangerous for a human being, was obviously too complex for the robot, who got stuck in a staircase landing. A TEPCO spokesperson said the cable that was supposed to drop the gauge also malfunctioned.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Bad luck after bad luck.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Bad luck after bad luck.
Friday, June 24, 2011
US Stock Futures Fall As Worries Circulate About Italian Banks
US stocks and Italian Banks? What is the Italian connection?
Among the possible reasons for the sudden tumble of Italian shares include an unconfirmed rumor that domestic banks undergoing a European-wide stress test won't pass it in July. Moody's also warned that a group of Italian banks face possible ratings downgrades.
Among the possible reasons for the sudden tumble of Italian shares include an unconfirmed rumor that domestic banks undergoing a European-wide stress test won't pass it in July. Moody's also warned that a group of Italian banks face possible ratings downgrades.
Can employment ever catch up with productivity?
Over the past 30 years or so, unemployment has been high, compared to the previous 30 years, when unemployment was low. When unemployment is low, productivity gains go to labor; when unemployment is high, they go to capital.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: After an entire generation in which debt has been growing much faster than GDP.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: After an entire generation in which debt has been growing much faster than GDP.
Embedded crash: Researchers discover how to predict market crashes
Using new statistical analysis tools of complexity theory, researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) performed new research on predicting market crashes.
It has long been thought that market crashes are triggered by panics that may or may not be justified by external news. This new research indicates that it is the internal structure of the market, not external crises, which is primarily responsible for crashes.
NECSI researchers show that a dramatic increase in market mimicry occurred during the entire year before each market crash of the past 25 years, including the recent financial crisis.
"We have demonstrated mathematically that there is significant advance warning to provide a clear indicator of an impending [stock market] crash," explained Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of NECSI and principal investigator on the research.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Will another economy crash strike even this year or the next one? Possible or not?.
It has long been thought that market crashes are triggered by panics that may or may not be justified by external news. This new research indicates that it is the internal structure of the market, not external crises, which is primarily responsible for crashes.
NECSI researchers show that a dramatic increase in market mimicry occurred during the entire year before each market crash of the past 25 years, including the recent financial crisis.
"We have demonstrated mathematically that there is significant advance warning to provide a clear indicator of an impending [stock market] crash," explained Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of NECSI and principal investigator on the research.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Will another economy crash strike even this year or the next one? Possible or not?.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Industry heavyweights prep ARM-based notebooks
A number of industry heavyweights - including Samsung, Toshiba, Acer and Asus - are reportedly prepping ARM-powered notebooks for the mainstream PC market.
Word has it that AMD and ARM are planning to make a common on-chip interface and interconnection where manufacters might be able to perform a 'mix-and-match' of both x86 and ARM hardware without having to deal with compatibility issues
Word has it that AMD and ARM are planning to make a common on-chip interface and interconnection where manufacters might be able to perform a 'mix-and-match' of both x86 and ARM hardware without having to deal with compatibility issues
Sony forthcoming Alpha 77 has 24 MPixels at ISO 100 000 !
The Alpha 77 will have a new 24 Megapixel APS-C size sensor and it's meant to deliver the best ISO performance we've seen from a DSLR type camera to date with an expected ISO range from 100 to 102,400. The A77 uses a new double Bionz processor and a newly developed 3 million dot OLED EVF. It takes more than 10 frames per seconds and has 11 cross AF points. Of course, it records videos at FullHD.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Let me remind you that 3Mpixel is the native resolution of human eye. In the EVF you will thus not see any resolution degradation, but with all the benefits of digital image processing retained.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Let me remind you that 3Mpixel is the native resolution of human eye. In the EVF you will thus not see any resolution degradation, but with all the benefits of digital image processing retained.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Microsoft will stop providing security updates, for the XP in April 2014.
Windows XP is slated to exit all support -- meaning Microsoft will stop providing security updates, aka patches, for the OS -- in April 2014.BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Currently 60% business users still relying on XP, and only 20% on Win 7. Clear winner is ... Windows 8.
Nearly Three of Four U.S. Nuclear Plants Leaking Radioactive Material
Nearly Three of Four U.S. Nuclear Plants Leaking Radioactive Material
"You got pipes that have been buried underground for 30 or 40 years, and they've never been inspected, and the NRC is looking the other way," said engineer Paul Blanch, a nuclear engineer turned whistleblower. "They could have corrosion all over the place."
It could seep into groundwater. Sometimes in quantities hundreds of times over the federal limit, of what is hazardous in drinking water.
"You got pipes that have been buried underground for 30 or 40 years, and they've never been inspected, and the NRC is looking the other way," said engineer Paul Blanch, a nuclear engineer turned whistleblower. "They could have corrosion all over the place."
It could seep into groundwater. Sometimes in quantities hundreds of times over the federal limit, of what is hazardous in drinking water.
Tilera: Intel's Sandy Bridge performance x10
The first of the TILE-Gx family of processors, the 36-cores device, will be sampling in July of 2011, with the 64 and 100-core chips slated to hit the streets in 2012.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Intel's Knights Corner multicore got a competition ?.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Blue screen of death bugs: War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs
Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds.
Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions: Slide Show
Monday, June 20, 2011
SGI, Intel Plan to Speed up Supercomputers 500 Times by 2018
SGI hopes to bring a massive performance boost to its supercomputers through highly parallel processors based on Intel's MIC (many integrated cores) architecture, said Eng Lim Goh, CTO at SGI.
"Our intent is to have OpenCL support available on the first MIC product -- Knights Corner," said Radoslaw Walczyk, an Intel spokesman.
"Our intent is to have OpenCL support available on the first MIC product -- Knights Corner," said Radoslaw Walczyk, an Intel spokesman.
WIndows 8 is Big Brother
The first such feature concerns geo-location, which supposedly allows Microsoft to track a Windows 8-powered machine's location, although how Microsoft intends to implement it without running afoul of privacy issues remains to be seen.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Basically, Windows 8 will be Windows 7, but with a transparent web browser that loads at boot time and executes HTML-based apps. Mozilla, in fact, is in the perfect position to create an open, free alternative to Chrome OS and Windows 8. It could be called FirefOS (TM BAD HARDWARE WEEK). Mozilla could even build it on Chromium OS, the open source brother of Chrome OS.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Basically, Windows 8 will be Windows 7, but with a transparent web browser that loads at boot time and executes HTML-based apps. Mozilla, in fact, is in the perfect position to create an open, free alternative to Chrome OS and Windows 8. It could be called FirefOS (TM BAD HARDWARE WEEK). Mozilla could even build it on Chromium OS, the open source brother of Chrome OS.
Surprise: Modern DRAMs are equally inefficient like modern processors.
Seems that all modern computer architecture is designed exclusively for physically distant processor.Whereas data rates of DRAM interfaces have increased by over an order of magnitude over successive generations, the DRAM core frequency has remained relatively constant. Over time, core prefetch size has increased in order to keep pace with improvements in interface bandwidth. These larger prefetch sizes increase the access "granularity" (a measure of the amount of data being accessed), and deliver more data than necessary for applications such as graphics or multi-core computing. Retrieving excess data is inefficient and wastes DRAM and signaling power.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: What to say for cache hierarchy in processors? Sort of data prefetchers too.
A History of Digital Storage
Micron increses memory speed 20fold
- Increased Bandwith — a single HMC can provide more than 20x the performance of a DDR3 module.
- Power Reductions — HMC is exponentially more efficient than current memory—using just one-tenth as much energy per bit.
- Smaller physical systems — HMC’s stacked architecture uses nearly 90% less space than today’s RDIMMs.
"We would see this working its way to commercial (corporate) solutions as early as 2012, with significant volumes in 2013. These kind of technologies will start to work their way toward the consumer space in 2015, 2016,"
8.16 PFlops Japanese K-computer is now world's fastest !
Japanese ‘K’ Computer Is RankedArchitecture based on scalar system
The K Computer, built by Fujitsu, currently combines 68544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores—almost twice as many as any other system in the TOP500. The K Computer is also the fourth most energy-efficient systems on the list at 825 Mflops/watt. It also consumes the most raw power—a whopping 9.89 megawatts
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: 50M cores for Exaflops? Next year ORNL Titan with its 20 PFlops will dwarf it. That is tragedy of supercomputers. TO be at the top very short period of time. And a lot of time and efforts to get there.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Oracle wants billions of dollars from Google in Java lawsuit !
Siemens fixes industrial flaws found by hacker
The patches, released Friday, mark Siemens' first response to a high-profile computer security incident since the Stuxnet worm, which was discovered a year ago circulating on computer networks in Iran.
US Warns of Problems in Chinese SCADA Software
The vulnerabilities were found in two products from Sunway ForceControl Technology, a Beijing-based company that develops SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) software for a wide variety of industries, including defense, petrochemical, energy, water and manufacturing, the agency said.
AMD's Trinity vector+scalar architecture
Thursday, June 16, 2011
30 years of first PC with no graphics support !
The monitor has a 11.5-inch wide green monochrome CRT .
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Let's compare it with the latest Samsung Chromebook:
- Motherboard: $86.37
- 12.1-inch LCD: $58
- Battery: $48
- 3G module: $42
- SSD storage: $28
And no Microsoft inside, like in the first PC !
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
AMD promises 10 teraflop notebooks by 2020
The next step towards that 17-elephants-in-your-laptop future, Bergman said, is the Bulldozer-based Trinity – and he just happend to have a notebook running a Trinity APU ready for a demo.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Well, provided AMD survives till 2020.
Invisibility carpet cloak can hide objects from visible light
Most of the invisibility cloaks that have been demonstrated to date conceal objects at frequencies that are not detectable by the human eye. Designing invisibility cloaks that can conceal objects from visible light has been more challenging due to the strict material requirements. But in a new study, researchers have fabricated a carpet cloak that can make objects undetectable in the full visible spectrum.
In the current study, the researchers used a technique called quasi conformal mapping (QCM) to conceal an object with a height of 300 nm and a width of 6 µm underneath a reflective “carpet cloak.”
In the current study, the researchers used a technique called quasi conformal mapping (QCM) to conceal an object with a height of 300 nm and a width of 6 µm underneath a reflective “carpet cloak.”
Myth busters: Are 100x GPGPU Aplication Speedups For Real?
Monday, June 13, 2011
PAnasonic's new Lumix G3 camera
2020 via time machine: networks and systems
I had the privilege of keynoting the inaugural IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium last week in Hong Kong, where I listened to the world’s leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials project what the world will look like in 2020.
1,1 THZ Network
More recently, the world’s first 1 THz solution was delivered to a university in Japan, which is investigating the behavior of meta-materials.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Global Internet Traffic Expected to Quadruple by 2015 !
Global Internet traffic is expected to quadruple between 2010 and 2015, according to data provided to Mashable by Cisco.
By that time, nearly 3 billion people will be using the Internet — more than 40% of the world’s projected population. On average, there will be more than two Internet connections for each person on Earth, driven by the proliferation of web-enabled mobile devices.
Internet traffic is projected to approach 1 zettabyte per year in 2015 — that’s equivalent of all the digital data in existence in 2010.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Future is obviously in clouds.
By that time, nearly 3 billion people will be using the Internet — more than 40% of the world’s projected population. On average, there will be more than two Internet connections for each person on Earth, driven by the proliferation of web-enabled mobile devices.
Internet traffic is projected to approach 1 zettabyte per year in 2015 — that’s equivalent of all the digital data in existence in 2010.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Future is obviously in clouds.
War games: Military to buy 400K PCs during the next 5 years
The military branch intends to buy more than 400,000 PCs and 15,000 tablet devices during the next five years.
Of the tablets the Marines seek to buy, 7,220 are commercial devices, while the other 7,880 are ruggedized tablets, which are typically more expensive because they are built to withstand harsh weather conditions and significant wear and tear.
Of the tablets the Marines seek to buy, 7,220 are commercial devices, while the other 7,880 are ruggedized tablets, which are typically more expensive because they are built to withstand harsh weather conditions and significant wear and tear.
I.B.M. Researchers Create High-Speed Graphene Circuits
In the past I.B.M. has created stand-alone graphene transistors, but not complete electronic circuits.
The integrated circuit operates as a broadband radio-frequency mixer at frequencies up to 10 gigahertz.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: We should wait years for more complex graphene circuits, but that is it. Silicon went this way since the 60ies.
The integrated circuit operates as a broadband radio-frequency mixer at frequencies up to 10 gigahertz.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: We should wait years for more complex graphene circuits, but that is it. Silicon went this way since the 60ies.
Odyssey 2012: I had a tablet dream even in year 1994 !
In year 1994 Fidler wrote:"I do believe for the first time we will begin seeing an alternative to ink on paper," Fidler says. "It may be difficult to conceptualize the idea of digital paper, but, in fact, we believe that's what's going to happen."
"An important part of this evolution is the emergence of the electronic tablet," the video says. "Tablets will be a whole new class of computer. They'll weigh under 2 pounds. They'll be totally portable. They'll have a clarity of screen-display comparable to ink on paper. They'll be able to blend text, video, audio, and graphics together. And they'll be part of our daily lives around the turn of the [21st] century."
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Around the turn of 21st century? Well, that was an idea before success of Win95 next year 1995. Then the tablet dream has been delayed the whole 10 years. Quite enough for Intel and Microsoft to build their empires in the meantime. In 2012 DRAM demand for tablets would be measured in billions of Gigabits.Sales are predictably likely to increase and by this time next year no one at IHS will be surprised to find that Apple paid out more than $17.5bn for semiconductors in 2011.
In 2014, after 20 years of dreaming, almost all should hold and use their tablets. And they'll really be part of our daily lives, like currently mobile phones are. In a striking parallel, Space Station was conceived in 1993. Just as in Mars rover concept case, compare the wheels growth. However, tablet is just a PC concept shrink.
In 2014, after 20 years of dreaming, almost all should hold and use their tablets. And they'll really be part of our daily lives, like currently mobile phones are. In a striking parallel, Space Station was conceived in 1993. Just as in Mars rover concept case, compare the wheels growth. However, tablet is just a PC concept shrink.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
ASUS all in one PC
Intel's 2nd generation Knights Corner 48 cores processor revealed
Intel's 32nm CMOS scaling: From 8,3Ghz 83mW down to 297Mhz 540 μW
Voltage 4 times, frequency 25 times, power 160X.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Intel fab explosion injures 7, say reports !
Four were hospitalized, one with serious injuries, according to a Bloomberg report that quoted Intel spokesperson Bill Calder as its source. The injuries varied from concussions to shrapnel wounds according to a Reuters report that quoted Chandler Fire Department Battalion Chief Brad Mille, as its source.
Boeing layoffs
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
RSA offers to replace SecurIDs after Lockheed hacking
RSA offers to replace SecurIDs after Lockheed hacking
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Lockheed is the maker of the F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets as well as warships and other multibillion-dollar arms systems sold worldwide.
Other big corporations have suffered from major hacking attacks recently, including Sony Corp and Google.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Lockheed is the maker of the F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets as well as warships and other multibillion-dollar arms systems sold worldwide.
Other big corporations have suffered from major hacking attacks recently, including Sony Corp and Google.
Japan confirms world's biggest meltdown ever: 3 nuclear reactors melted
However, BAD HARDWARE WEEK was first in the whole world who had said that.
The nation's watchdog, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), now says it believes 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere in the first week -- compared to its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels.
The nation's watchdog, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), now says it believes 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere in the first week -- compared to its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels.
Quantum computing: Dwave is not alone !
Dwave computing is based on minimizing computing energy. Now, Del Rio and colleagues have shown mathematically that this negative conditional entropy is the equivalent of extracting heat from the surroundings, or cooling.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: In practice? Pretty far away. The main heat source currently is believe it or not, ... wire energy dissipation. Than switching energy dissipation.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: In practice? Pretty far away. The main heat source currently is believe it or not, ... wire energy dissipation. Than switching energy dissipation.
Monday, June 06, 2011
E-waste Manhattan: 1 billion pounds of computer junk recycled in CA
E-waste law reaches a milestone: 1 billion pounds of computer junk recycled in California
That's more than any other state has recycled -- and amounts to roughly 20 million TVs and computers kept out of landfills in a 6 years. Weight of one and half Empire State building. In 60 years more than 15 such a bulidings ! Manhattan of e-junk.
That's more than any other state has recycled -- and amounts to roughly 20 million TVs and computers kept out of landfills in a 6 years. Weight of one and half Empire State building. In 60 years more than 15 such a bulidings ! Manhattan of e-junk.
AMD Betting Everything on OpenCL, ARM deal is questionable
AMD Betting Everything on OpenCL
BT: You said earlier that AMD's betting on GPGPU, and in a way you could say that Nvidia's similarly betting on ARM with the development of Project Denver and its Tegra platforms. Would AMD consider developing an ARM CPU too?
SM: Our boss John Taylor recently did some interviews with other publications where he said that obviously we're looking at what's best for AMD, and how we could proceed with that, and we are going to be investigating different paths. At this moment we're not working on any of those, but we're definitely looking at what type of user experiences are going to be in the market, and we're going to be making decisions based on that.
BT: You said earlier that AMD's betting on GPGPU, and in a way you could say that Nvidia's similarly betting on ARM with the development of Project Denver and its Tegra platforms. Would AMD consider developing an ARM CPU too?
SM: Our boss John Taylor recently did some interviews with other publications where he said that obviously we're looking at what's best for AMD, and how we could proceed with that, and we are going to be investigating different paths. At this moment we're not working on any of those, but we're definitely looking at what type of user experiences are going to be in the market, and we're going to be making decisions based on that.
Why not Intel?? Prototype Tablets with Intel Atom Processors Benchmarked, Proved Hot and Slow
Intel Claims It's Already Beaten ARM Without Shipping a Single Phone Chip
Jason Mick (Blog) - February 15, 2011 12:20 PM
Prototype Tablets with Intel Atom Processors Benchmarked, Prove Hot and Slow
ASUSTek's Eee Transformer Pad, powered by NVIDIA's dual-core Tegra 2 ARM CPU proved the most powerful tablet in most benchmarks.
Jason Mick (Blog) - February 15, 2011 12:20 PM
Prototype Tablets with Intel Atom Processors Benchmarked, Prove Hot and Slow
ASUSTek's Eee Transformer Pad, powered by NVIDIA's dual-core Tegra 2 ARM CPU proved the most powerful tablet in most benchmarks.
Steve Wozniak: Humans will soon surrender to machines
Friday, June 03, 2011
Phase-change memory device Moneta
A University of California, San Diego team will next week demonstrate a phase-change memory solid state storage device that's thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than the best solid-state drives (SSDs).
"Designing storage systems that can fully leverage technologies like PCM requires rethinking almost every aspect of how a computer system's software manages and accesses storage. Moneta gives us a window into the future of what computer storage systems are going to look like, and gives us the opportunity now to rethink how we design computer systems in response."
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: 64GB ?
Thursday, June 02, 2011
AMD's 28nm Krishna based Ultra notebook by mid 2012
We're on the verge of a great, great depression
According to Yastrow, Wall Street is having a rather hard time moving forward with ultra-low yields as the U.S. economy sputters.
Google disrupts massive phishing campaign
Google has detected and disrupted a massive phishing operation that apparently originated in Jinan, China.
The campaign affected the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.
The campaign affected the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Cisco predicts internet device boom
The number of internet connected devices is set to explode in the next four years to over 15 billion - twice the world's population by 2015.
The company said consumer video will continue to dominate internet traffic.
The company said consumer video will continue to dominate internet traffic.
AMD demos 32nm Trinity Buldozzer
ARM President Says Royalties from Microsoft to Begin in 2012
Intel's 14nm Broadwell in 2014
Followed by the 14 nm Broadwell in2014 (the die shrink of Ivy Bridge successor Haswell).
14 nm Atom dubbed Airmont in 2014.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Seems that we will see flood of mobiles until 2014. FIN FET enables easy scale into 14nm.
14 nm Atom dubbed Airmont in 2014.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Seems that we will see flood of mobiles until 2014. FIN FET enables easy scale into 14nm.
