When Quake, a first-person shooter video game, developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive came out in 1996, it was a breakthrough, transformative, disruptive milestone in PC gaming and has been a legend and foundational example ever since. Quake II release one year later had improved graphics and game mechanics and was an all-time hit—21 years ago. Run, … Read more
Last summer, Scientists from EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) in Switzerland announced they had developed a method to control exciton flows at room temperature. That in and of itself was a pretty big deal. In the latest development, they have discovered new properties of these quasiparticles that can lead to more energy-efficient electronic devices and have found … Read more
You never paid for it— shut up
Further evidence that AMD is at the top of its game came with the company’s keynote at CES this year. The company took a keynote spot for the first time while Intel let the opportunity pass. CES CEO Gary Shapiro, who seems to be ageless, introduced Lisa Su, and couldn’t have done a better job if he had worked for … Read more
Although the economic conditions have improved across the board, the PC market is not growing. It remains flat, to decline. Why?
The preliminary results for 2018 PC shipments shave been released. Gartner reports that PC shipments declined 4.3% from last quarter and 1.3% from the same quarter the previous year. Why? If you look at the history of PC shipments, you can see they stopped growing and started declining in 2012. History of PC shipments since their introduction The PC market … Read more
Jensen Huang's press conference presentations are always predictable yet surprising. Predictable because you know he’s going to be wearing one of his 270 black leather jackets (and rumors that he sleeps in them is not completely true—only on airplanes), and predictable because he’s going to be excited about what he has to say. Surprising because you never really know what the … Read more
“Audi thrives to bring the most exciting, yet the safest automobiles when we vision the drive of tomorrow,” said Alfons Pfaller, head of Architecture & Platform Development E/E at Audi. “Samsung has been a valued technology partner over the past few years and we are extremely pleased to have the Exynos Auto V9 power our next-generation platform that will shape … Read more
This is the latest installment of a series of short articles about graphics chips, controllers and processors, that changed the course of the computer graphics (CG) industry — The TI TMS34010 and VRAM introduced in 1986 by Texas Instruments. In 1984 Texas Instruments introduced TI’s VRAM, the TMS4161. he TMS34010 and VRAMs are related but not in the way one … Read more
For all you people planning to give semiconductors as presents, AMD’s latest APUs arrived just in time for the holiday. AMD says its new Athlon 220GE and 240GE processors with 4 processing threads and Radeon Vega Graphics represent the most advanced entry-level processors AMD has ever created. The new processors enable 720p esports gaming out-of-the-box and with the Zen processor … Read more
2019 will see the introduction of three new GPUs, the first change in the GPU landscape in over 18 years. Nvidia lead the change with their Turing architecture introduced in late 2018. We’ve written about it extensively, but its noteworthy aspects relative to graphics are its hardware ray tracing engine, and the use of AI to do anti-aliasing. Samsung lifted … Read more
We, along with just about anyone with a keyboard and internet access, reported on Intel’s comments at its Architecture day about its forthcoming GPU. In the rush to scoop something, anything, interesting or possibly even meaningful about Intel’s promised GPU, the news and pundits have decided Intel has branded it as the Xe chip. It hasn’t. What Intel actually said … Read more
