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AMD has just published a massive patch-set for the Linux kernel that finally implements a HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) in open-source. The set of 83 patches implement a Linux HSA driver for Radeon family GPUs and serves too as a sample driver for other HSA-compatible devices. This big driver in part is what well known Phoronix contributor John Bridgman has been working on at AMD.********************** Heterogeneous System Architecture has been talked up for a while now by AMD as well as ARM vendors and now finally for open-source enthusiasts we can finally start seeing the advantages of the CPU and...

Rhode Island has become the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets. Why? Police are looking for storage devices that could contain child pornography. The dog, Thoreau, already appears to be up for the task as he assisted in his first search warrant search in June 2014 and found a USB thumb drive containing child pornography hidden four layers deep in a tin box inside a metal cabinet. Police will be able to use the storage drive finding dog on tough child porn cases where...

The Khronos Group this morning released an updated version of the OpenVX 1.0 provisional specification. OpenVX is the industry-developed hardware acceleration API for computer vision applications and libraries. As explained on the OpenVX page, "OpenVX enables performance and power optimized computer vision algorithms for use cases such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, automatic driver assistance systems, object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more. OpenVX enables significant implementation innovation while maintaining a consistent API for developers. An OpenVX application expresses vision processing holistically as a graph of function nodes. An OpenVX implementer can...

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/11/2014 08:46 AM | Source | 3 comment(s) ] I'M Intelligent Memory (oh and I'm not kidding with that name), a Hong Kong based fabless DRAM manufacturer, announces availability of the world's first 8 Gigabit (Gb) DDR3 components with a single chip-select, doubling the amount of memory per chip compared to other DDR3 DRAM devices on the market. Based on these new 8 Gb components, I'M is also introducing the first 16 Gigabyte (GB) DDR3 UDIMM and SO-DIMM memory modules with optional ECC error-correction.The JEDEC specification JESD79-3 has always allowed an 8 Gb density for DDR3...

Ostendo's Tiny Projectors Are Designed to Display Crisp Video, Glasses-Free 3-D Images Ostendo's CEO says that 'display is the last frontier.' Pictured, a company chip that can produce a hologram. Sam Hodgson for The Wall Street Journal In the future, virtual reality won't require strapping a bulky contraption to your head.Instead, imagine stepping into an empty room and then suddenly seeing life-size, 3-D images of people and furniture. Or looking down at a smartwatch and seeing virtual objects float and bounce above the wrist, like the holographic Princess Leia beamed by R2-D2 in the movie "Star Wars."A key to this...

Over the past week there has been quite a buzz in the scientific community over a Dutch experiment reliably transmitting data instantly between two electrons via quantum entanglement. While many reports are sensationalizing the discovery, referring to it as a breakthrough in ‘teleportation’, there’s something almost as exciting as physical transportation already proven possible in the experiment: instant communication! While scientists have reached a 3-meter(or 10-foot) range with a 100% success rate, worldwide implementation would revolutionize communication. Instant text messages, infinitely scalable internet bandwidth, and sub-millisecond(or even sub-measurable) latency. Even now, our fastest long-distance communication efforts are too slow to...

Scientists at MIT are using a new technique that could print responsive objects—from water pipes to sneakers—that adapt to their surroundings on their own.These days, 3D printing seems to be at the core of most new new research ventures, whether it's developing ways to print entire meals or recreating facial features to repair a patient's face. But Skylar Tibbits wants to up the ante: He's hoping 4D printing will be the thing of the not-so-far future. The name for his concept, Tibbits admits, was a bit lighthearted at first. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tibbits and researchers from the...

FX Series is finally making a comeback. In two years time. This surprising revelation was given by AMD at the APU 14 Conference in Beijing. Not only that, but AMD has avowed renewed vigor into establishing itself in the Chinese market, which it considers a very important region for die sales. Now we had already seen some FX labeled APUs in the Mobile Kaveri Lineup but the decision to revive the FX Series completely couldn’t come at a better time.APU14 Conference in Beijing – FX Series Making a Comeback in 2 Years, Establishing Focus on Chinese MarketWe dont really have...

The NFL could dismantle AT&T's $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV. According to a clause in a regulatory filing for the purchase, AT&T has the right to walk away from the deal if DirecTV can't renew its agreement with the NFL

The third iteration of Ubuntu Kylin released just last month and has already reached 1 million downloads. All versions are a desktop replacement based on Ubuntu Linux specifically geared toward Chinese users. The name Kylin comes from a FreeBSD operating system that was originally built for the Chinese Government between 2001 and 2013, and during its final years was rebranded as NeoKylin and moved to the Linux kernel. Ubuntu Kylin 14.04 Since Ubuntu Kylin follows the same release schedule as stock Ubuntu, last months release was based on Ubuntu 14.04 and is Kylin’s first LTS release. Canonical has teamed up...

Impressive, Japanese NHK is announcing a true 133-megapixel camera sensor. The cmos-module can record video in an 8K resolution, the successor to Ultra HD at 4K. According NHK the sensor will be unveiled the 29th of May for a wide audience. The company already shared that is has the 133 MPixels sensor and a Bayer rgb color filter merged together into one package design.By handling all RGB color information on one chip the overall size for its design will be smaller opposed to existing 8K camera's which pretty much alll are using three 33 Megapixel sensors, one sensor per color-channel.The new...

Opinion: Two recent cave-ins leave no doubt they are done for With two major cave-ins in the past few weeks, Microsoft is screaming at the top of its lungs about how irrelevant it is. If you didn’t understand the fall of Microsoft from powerful monopolist to computing afterthought, let SemiAccurate explain it to you. For the past few decades, Microsoft has been a monopoly with one game plan, leverage what they have to exclude competition. If someone had a good idea, Microsoft would come out with a barely functional copy, give it away, and shut out the income stream of...

Sony is making some waves in (believe it, or not) magnetic tape technology. Reaching a maximum capacity of an astounding 185TB, Sony hit a world record in data density of 148GB per square inch. This massively outpaces the current industry standard LTO variants’ density rate of 2GB per square inch as well as maximum capacity by a factor of 70. This means that my entire collection of Ultrium 3s at 800GB could be contained on a single cartridge of Sony’s new tape with space for another 13 years worth of backups.My Ultrium 3 800GB Tape Collection Sony detailed the fine...

AMD Signs Architectural License Agreement With ARM Holdings SAN FRANCISCO—Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Monday disclosed new dimensions to a high-profile strategy shift, including plans to make its first original chip designs based on technology licensed from ARM Holdings PLC.

Chip maker AMD wants the world to know that it is not just dabbling in ARM processors, but rather intends to make ARM chips peers to its X86 products. At an event in San Francisco today, the top brass of the company revealed the full extent of its “ambidextrous computing” strategy, which includes an effort code-named “SkyBridge” that will see future X86 and ARM processors have the same pin-outs.AMD also announced that it has become a full ARMv8 architecture licensee of ARM Holdings, which will allow it to create its own custom ARM core designs. On the server front,...

***************** AMD has just announced their Opteron roadmap for 2014-2016 at the Core Innovation conference which unveils the upcoming Project Skybridge and K12 architecture based family of APUs and SOCs. The new roadmap reveals the ambidextrous design framework which brings computing to several form factors in the dense server market.AMD Announces 2014-2016 Roadmap – 20nm Project SkyBridge The Project Skybridge is AMD’s next generation ambidextrous computing architecture that allows x86 Cores and ARM cores to be pin-to-pin compatible allowing the motherboard to run off both SOCs and APUs. The Project Sky-Bridge will feature the new family of APUs and SOCs...

Flash will save everyone of us Toshiba has launched of its 15nm process technology at least for 2-bit-per-cell 128 gigabit (16 gigabytes) NAND Flash memory. The technology will kill off second generation 19nm process technology and full production with the new technology next week at Toshiba's Fab 5 in Yokkaichi.Chips based on the new processing technology will have better peripheral circuitry technology. They will have the write speed as chips formed with 19nm process technology, but boost the data transfer rate to 533 megabits per second which is 1.3 times faster, particularly if it is going downhill with the wind behind...

Samsung researchers have developed a new method of synthesising graphene, which they claim could accelerate the commercialisation of the so-called 'miracle material', for use in electronic devices. Graphene is one of the thinnest, lightest, strongest and most conductive materials know to man, consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure. Its versatility means that it can potentially support a wide variety of applications in electronics, including flexible displays, wearables and other next-generation electronic devices.

Seagate introduced Backup Plus FAST portable drive; the world's first portable 4TB storage device, providing twice the capacity and speed of existing external portable drives. This new Seagate Backup Plus FAST drive features a super speed USB 3.0 interface to deliver transfer speeds up to 220MB per second, making it the perfect companion for a field photographer or filmmaker looking to quickly move large files to backup."With Backup Plus FAST, Seagate has taken a very mature product category and has delivered innovative enhancements to address the real world challenges of our customers," said Rajesh Khurana, country manager, India & SAARC,...

Seagate announced it is now shipping the world's fastest 6 TB hard disk drive (HDD) - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4. Boasting industry-leading performance, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 is an important step forward in scale-out data infrastructures delivering supersize storage and enterprise reliability to meet the explosive growth of corporate and cloud-based data centers."Unstructured data growth is doubling exponentially and will propel the digital universe to reach 16 Zettabytes of data by as early as 2017. This will cause cloud service providers to look for innovative ways to store more within an existing footprint while lowering...