Categoria: HardwareSoftware

Zachary Quinto version

Plans are already under way for Vulcan Next, the follow up to Vulcan.

The Khronos Group recently gave a presentation at SIGGRAPH 2016 about the state of Vulkan, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES. While there were no major announcements, the presentation confirmed that a new version of Vulkan—dubbed Vulkan Next is on the way, and laid out a roadmap of various features to expect.

Some of what is coming include improved support for multiple graphics cards. Vulkan Next will also be more optimised for virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with more efficient multi-view rendering and direct screen access.

Other important new features on the roadmap are cross-API and cross-process sharing, subgroup instructions, generalised renderpass / subpass dependencies, and a more rigorous memory model. Those probably won’t mean all that much to you unless you’re a game-engine developer.

The core specification is still being worked on, and some of these features may be made available as optional “extensions” that fill gaps in Vulkan. There’s no announced release date for the final specification.

“Coolpix W100 è una fotocamera con sensore da 13,2 megapixel in grado di scendere fino a 10 metri di profondità sott’acqua e operare fino a -10°C, non temendo neppure cadute da altezze fino a 1,8 metri. L’ottica ha un movimento interno e non esce dal corpo macchina durante uso: offre zoom ottico 3x”

Tra le fotocamere rugged non c’è molta fantasia in termini di design: Nikon con la sua nuova Coolpix W100 ha però voluto provare a staccarsi dalla massa. Lo fa riprendendo il design della fotocamera (anch’essa resistente ad acqua e cadute) per bambini Coolpix S30, che faceva dell’ottica montata in posizione centrale uno dei suoi punti di forza. Coolpix W100 è una fotocamera con sensore da 13,2 megapixel in grado di scendere fino a 10 metri di profondità sott’acqua e operare fino a -10°C, non temendo neppure cadute da altezze fino a 1,8 metri. L’ottica ha un movimento interno e non esce dal corpo macchina durante uso: offre zoom ottico 3x.

Offre registrazione di filmati Full HD e stabilizzazione elettronica VR. Sul retro troviamo un monitor LCD TFT da 6,7 cm e 230k punti, mentre per condividere subito le proprie immagini la funzione Nikon SnapBridge, grazie alla tecnologia Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), sincronizza automaticamente le immagini con il proprio smartphone o tablet ovunque ci si trovi. Interessanti le colorazioni sbarazzine che Nikon ha scelto per la sua fotocamera, che comprendono anche una veste a tema subacqueo molto giocosa e di sicuro impatto per i bambini.

Don’t get too excited –  it costs a bomb

Samsung is shipping its PM1633a SSD which has 15.36TB of storage space however you are not going to get much change out of $ 10,000.

Samsung now has the drive available at select retailers but at $ 10,000 it is one of the most expensive SSD storage drives around. Pricing seems to vary too with CDW asking $ 10,311.99 while SHI wants $ 9,690 on pre-order. There is a 7.68TB flavour but that is $ 5,700.

The SSDs are based around 16 of Samsung’s 256Gb TLC 3D V-NAND memory chips. These chips make a 512GB package which are then scaled up. The biggest drive uses 32 of those packages to build the largest of the PM1633a SSDs. The is a new controller specifically for this drive to increase the performance offered. The 15.36TB SSD offers sequential read performance of up to 1200 MB/s and sequential write performance of up to 900 MB/s using a SAS-12Gbps interface.

Random read operations are 195,000 and write speds are 31,000 IPOPs. Those wanting to spend less money and needing less storage can get 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB, 3.84TB, and 7.68TB models.

Although it looks pricey, actually it works out being cheaper for business running massive data centers. Power consumption is around 11W active and 4.5W idle for the SSDs.

Opinion It’s on some kind of a roll – bacon roll, sausage roll?

It takes a lot of money to make and sell microprocessors  – it always has done and it probably always will, but it seems to some that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is burning an awful lot of that rare commodity.

That’s according to analysts at Kasteel Research which believes that AMD’s liquidity is deteriorating and it’s burning cash “like a high roller billionaire” – whatever that is.

Nevertheless, looking at the position as objectively as possible, AMD has several irons in its fire including one that will challenge Intel at the high end, just like the old Opteron days.

AMD, according to Kasteel, got an injection of $ 351 million from its JV with Nantong Fujitsu so it’s got about one billion in the bank. High roller billionaires typically have several billions to play with when they’re partying like it’s 1999.

It seems to need a billion dollars a quarter if it’s playing its cards right on the green baize.

Analysts at Kasteel describe AMD as “burning cash machine” and has a serious cash flow problem – compared to Netflix – which is, of course, a completely different kettle of fish.

To be fair to Kasteel, it does admit it is going to short AMD in the next two or three days.

As an outsider limey, I believe that this is what is called playing the stock market, and it’s a dangerous game and a different sort of gamble to the roll of the dice, to poker, or to playing billiards [what they?] for money.

Let’s face it, as the snap from AMD’s website shows, Dr Lisa Su knows that the only way her company will fare well is to take risks.  And although AMD has always been the underdog to the Great Chipzilla, it’s good for any corporation to have competition.

Otherwise we’d all be eating the same highly processed but probably extremely nutritive food, init?