Welcome to the second edition of the Week in Review of 2011. This week was CES 2011 so we have tons of cool new gear to talk about. One of the coolest DIY projects I have ever seen is the Return of the Jedi lightsaber made by Bradley Lewis. He made the thing out of machined aluminum parts and it has a removable blade.
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- Motorola DROID 4 vs DROID RAZR MAXX vs entire Verizon Android lineup
- HP Z1 Workstation hands-on
- Join in on SlashGear’s WIMM Spring Developers Project!
- The PS Vita Will Be Sony’s Last Portable
- Why I Don’t Want to Imagine A World Without A DVR
- SlashGear 101: Windows 8 on ARM
- SlashGear 101: Android@Home
- Motorola DROID 4 Hands-On and Unboxing
‘CPU’ Stories
SlashGear Week in Review- Week 2 2011
NVIDIA’s “Project Denver” to Build Custom CPU Cores for Personal Computers & Supercomputers
NVIDIA has officially announced their "Project Denver" endeavor, which is designed specifically for building custom CPUs around the ARM architecture. The company plans on expanding on the ARM-based performance, and manufacturing their own CPUs that will go into personal computers, servers, to workstations and supercomputers. It's been known internally as "Project Denver," and now it's public, falling in suit with the other CES 2011 announcements that NVIDIA has made public.
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NVIDIA push Tegra 2 for Superphones plus Tegra Zone app
Tegra 2 isn't new, but NVIDIA is hoping that 2011 will be the year that the dual-core mobile processor comes into its own. Last we heard of "superphones" it was Google trying to brand their Nexus One as such; now NVIDIA is seizing on the title to describe devices packing multi-core CPUs, speedy GPUs and frugal power requirements, the first device being LG's Optimus 2X. To help users pair up superphones with apps worthy of Tegra 2, NVIDIA is also launching its own software tool.
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Intel push Core 2011 chips for entertainment; Intel Insider 1080p HD movie store
Intel made its Sandy Bridge based 2011 Core i3, i5 and i7 processors official earlier this week, but it's still making a song & dance about them at CES 2011 today. More than 500 desktop and laptop PCs using the chips are expected to debut in 2011, with features like Intel Quick Sync Video - for speedy transcoding - and WiDi 2.0. Meanwhile there's also Intel Insider, a hardware feature of the chips for purchasing and renting 1080p HD movies on their PC.
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AMD Fusion is Here, Bringing Better Performance and Battery Life For Notebooks
AMD has announced the availability of two new chips that will fall into its Brazos platform for lightweight notebooks. Consisting of the Zacate, and Ontario, these chips promise both better performance and battery life and come in single and dual-core configurations.
VIA Nano X2 dual-core super frugal chip gets official
AMD and Intel aren't the only company with new, dual-core processors on the mind. VIA has announced its latest chip, the VIA Nano X2, offering two out-of-order x86 cores, native 64-bit support and an 800MHz bus, intended for energy efficient desktops, all-in-ones and notebooks.
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AMD Fusion APUs get official: DirectX 11, 1080p HD & 10hr battery life
AMD has officially launched its Fusion APU series, a hybrid range of CPU/GPU chips incorporating both into a single die. Targeted at ultraportables, notebooks and netbooks, the new AMD E-Series "Zacate" and C-Series "Ontario" APUs each use the Bobcat CPU core, and AMD reckon they're capable of DirectX 11 graphics, UVD3 video acceleration, 1080p HD playback, 2D conversion to 3D and up to 10hrs battery life depending on system.
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Freescale i.MX 6: up to 1.2GHz quadcore chips for tablets/smartphones
Manufacturers often get criticized for showing off new hardware at CES and then not shipping it for months, but new chips are even more frustrating; they can take a year or two to go from fanfare to retail. Freescale is whetting our appetite with the new i.MX 6 series, a range of single, dual and quad core application processors based on up to four ARM Cortex A9 cores, each motoring along at up to 1.2GHz. The company reckons the single-core i.MX 6Solo, dual-core i.MX 6Dual and quad-core i.MX 6Quad are up to five times as fast as the current-gen chips.
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Notion Ink Demos Adam Leaves System and Desktop
Tonight comes the newest installment in the EDEN system of demos, this one VII and the first one to be done direct from the screen via the HDMI out to a computer at Notion Ink. This means a much better looking quality video, but still without sound. Improving ever so steadily! This video features a look at the Leaves system of working with the tablet and a tiny glance at the desktop. Leaves take each of your apps (apps that are ready to work with Leaves, of course) and turns them into sort of big widgets. They say that since things like feeds, Tweeting, Facebooking, and changing a song aren't full-fledged apps in themselves, they shouldn't need a full app open! Enter Leaves - or panels, if that's what you'd like to call them. Check it out!
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Researchers at University of Glasgow Create 1,000-Core Processor
Lead by researcher Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede, a team of scientists have used the technology found in Field Programmable Gate Arrays, or FPGAs, to create a 1,000-core processor. At this point, they've effectively created a proof of concept that can perform almost 20 times faster than "modern computers." To add to the possibility of this new processor finding its way to the real world eventually, it seems that Intel has been playing around with the idea, very recently, and believe that a processor of that magnitude is certainly "feasible."
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MacBook Pro and “mainstream” new size iMac tipped for 1H 2011
With Intel's second-gen Core processors expected early in 2011, it doesn't seem too great a leap to assume that Apple will be all over the new chips for their mobile and desktop lines. We've already heard that Apple is testing the Sandy Bridge processors in the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro models; now DigiTimes is claiming their supply chain sources expect new systems - including a new iMac targeted at the mainstream - in the first half of next year.
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Gigabyte and SOYO AMD Zacate mainboards leak
Motherboards from two manufacturers using AMD's Zacate Fusion APU have leaked, headed to low-cost desktop PC systems in 2011. Gigabyte's GA-E350V-USB3 mainboard showed up at X-bit labs, while the SOYO brand has seemingly been revived for an unnamed Zacate 'board spotted at Expreview. Both use the 1.6GHz dual-core AMD E350 CPU.
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REVIEWS
VIDEOS
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