When Qualcomm introduced its PC clone that could run Windows and apps, people got curious. Was it just a Chromebook competitor or was there something new going on? Intel tried it with PDAs back in 1999 with StrongARM, but Microsoft didn’t get it then and made a half-hearted offering of a stripped-down OS, not the real Windows, and people weren’t … Read more
The chip that changed the world
Unless you lived in Texas in the 70s
This could be an entertaining or totally aggravating, lawyer invoking party game—ask when the personal computer was invented. Someone did—ask that is. There’s a charming site located in Seattle called Blinkenlights Archeological Institute. It was established in 1997 to excavate, preserve, research, and present interesting and historically significant computing devices. The website, http://www. blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml, lists seven qualifications of what constitutes … Read more
It was integrated circuits that made Moore’s observation possible. You can’t scale something unless you have the thing, and six-foot-six Jack Kilby gave us that thing—the integrated circuit. Fifty-six years ago, in a little lab on Forest Lane, Dallas Texas Kilby asked the basic question: “Why do we need the wires? If I make parts out of all of the … Read more
Without Dr. Kilby, none of us would know each other
Image courtesy Movieclips.com Imagination Technologies has introduced its latest ray tracing IP, the IMG CXT for its flagship B-series GPU IP. The announcement marks the debut of Imagination’s PowerVR Photon ray tracing architecture. Photon, says Imagination, is the industry’s most advanced ray tracing architecture, bringing desktop-quality visuals to mobile and embedded applications. The biggest news is that it has already … Read more
Earth day 2021. (Source: Nasa Earth) How do you know if an airplane will fly, a nuclear boom will explode, or what Jupiter is made of? You take a bazillion tons of data (that’s how we measure data in today’s zettascale of data creation) and create a simulation that generates a visualization of it. Weather and climate change forecasting, … Read more
Qualcomm Technologies has introduced four new mobile platforms—Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G, 695 5G, 480 Plus 5G, and 680 4G—which the company claims will enable increased performance and capabilities across its high-, mid-, and entry-tiers. The company reports that there is: significant traction and momentum across all Snapdragon tiers. Qualcomm is betting that by bringing improved features from the Snapdragon 8-series … Read more
Some retro some new
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) Standard version 1.5. It retains all key features of the previous specification while adding additional capabilities and performance such as an improved panel self-refresh protocol coupled with enhancements to VESA’s Adaptive-Sync protocol. VESA says it should result in added power savings and improved motion image quality. For devices such as … Read more
The era of exascale is here. With it comes an immense amount of computational power coupled with the merging of HPC and AI. And all that is enabling researchers to tackle grand challenges once thought beyond reach. Jumping into the lofty world of HPC and AI, AMD has introduced its Instinct MI100 accelerator and claims it is the world’s fastest … Read more
