Robert Dow

Dell at Gamescom

Gamescom saw the introduction of new products from Dell under the brand name of Alienware and Dell. Dell used the event to preview new products coming soon in the September 2018 time frame.  Dell showed two new Dell monitors and Alienware gaming laptops & desktops. Dell launched its 24-inch and 27-inch monitors with  AMD Freesync support for a smooth gaming … Read more

KAIST research explores fast 3D design through gestures

In between 2D and 3D, there is space—space that humans can understand visually and can often communicate gesturally but challenging for pen and paper. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has revealed the work they’ve done to enable 3D sketching that takes advantage of people’s spatial understanding. Researchers Bae Seok-Hyung, Kim Yongkwan, Sang-Gyun An, Joon Hyub Lee … Read more

AMD’s latest console design goes to China…and will probably stay there

Taking its place alongside the competition: The new console from Zhongshan Subor was exhibited at the China Joy gamer show. Photos from AnandTech show the new console displayed alongside the PS4. (Source: AMD) AMD’s latest semi-custom design was announced at China Joy in Shanghai when Chinese hardware manufacturer Zhongshan Subor unveiled a new console based on a new AMD processor. … Read more

Happy Birthday Intel

Intel celebrates its 50th year as an on-going enterprise. Fifty years ago, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel with a purpose: to ponder what might be possible. Intel’s anniversary is officially July 18, 2018, but it’s a company born at the dawn of the technology industry—the advent of the integrated circuit. Since then Intel's impact has been felt through … Read more

Development of the VPU

With the advent of AI, image recognition, and neural networks, there has been the emergence of a new category of processor, or functionality broadly known as a visual processing unit, or VPU. The name belies the real importance of the function and so we prefer to refer to it in the awkward term of VPU and neural network accelerator, which … Read more

Talent Wars

The revolving doors in Silicon Valley are nothing new, but within the last two or so years the migration at the superstar techno level has been particularly intense—especially in the GPU and CPU space. Some recent examples: Martin Ashton served as EVP of PowerVR Multimedia IP at Imagination Technologies Group Plc until December 1, 2016 where he was instrumental in … Read more

Handheld Gaming Console — the Tragedy of Sinclair ZX

In March 2016, we wrote about the Retro Computer’s Sinclair ZX Spectrum handheld game machine—The Vega+. If you had any interest or involvement with computers in the eighties and nineties, chances are you heard of, and probably owned, a device from Sinclair. The Cambridge-based Clive Sinclair and his many re-named companies developed famous low-cost, low-power but amazingly useful devices for … Read more