vr-zone tech news for the geeks dec 2011 issue 2

105
December 19th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone 21 Google first unveiled its self-driving car in Oct 2010 and the company has applied for a patent on a "landing strip" technology which allow the cars to go into auto mode as well as to find parking spots. The patent has been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on 13 December. According to sources, the "landing strip" is more than an embedded sensor in the ground, be it radio, QR code, or some other means of transferring information to the car. The key is the information and how the car uses it. Although Google's self-driving cars use GPS technology to orient themselves, but in certain situations a GPS signal may not be obtainable. The patent also suggests that user could give a set of instruction to the vehicle that commands it to drive itself to specific location. Microsoft comes to AMD Bulldozer rescue: Windows Update speeds up things Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/microsoft-comes-to-amd-bulldozer- rescue-windows-update-speeds-up-things/14256.html December 19th, 2011 AMD Bulldozer is, to say so, unusual in its modular dual-core block architecture compared to the current X86 processors. To extract more performance out of it, Microsoft now has a kernel patch for for its client and server OS. Ever wondered why some benchmark results on Bulldozer and its server version, Interlagos, look not just too low but outright weird? Part of the explanation was that the fancy modular architecture, where two integer and one FP block share one L2 cache and instruction scheduler, wasn't really supported that well by the current operating systems. Add to it the Pentium 4- style long pipeline and high latencies, and you got a problem. Microsoft now has a kernel update solution that solves one part of the problem, at least - if you go to http:// support.microsoft.com/kb/2592546/ knowledge base page, you'll notice that there is a patch for Windows 7 and for Windows Server 2008 R2. This patch updates the thread management logic in the OS at the kernel level for the Bulldozer, and - interestingly - proclaims it as a multithreading feature. With this update, Windows sees each BD dual core block as A SINGLE MULTITHREADED CORE, contrary to AMD's official positioning. Therefore, BD is seen as a 4-core, 8- thread chip, rather than a fully 8-core processors. This update, nevertheless, brings a definite single-digit % performance jump in lightly threaded applications, but it is still good though as it helps the CPU fight higher speed grades of Intel processors in benchmarks. So, naming or no naming confusion, go ahead and have it, if you're one of the early Bulldozer users.

Upload: vr-zone-com

Post on 28-Jan-2015

118 views

Category:

Technology


3 download

DESCRIPTION

VR-Zone is a leading online technology news publication reporting on bleeding edge trends in PC and mobile gadgets, with in-depth reviews and commentaries. Our inquisitive team of journalists cover key international events like CES, CeBIT, MWC, Computex and local exhibitions like CommunicAsia, IT SHOW, PC SHOW, COMEX and SITEX.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 19th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

21

Google first unveiled its self-driving car in Oct 2010 andthe company has applied for a patent on a "landing strip"technology which allow the cars to go into auto mode as well asto find parking spots. The patent has been approved by the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office on 13 December. According tosources, the "landing strip" is more than an embedded sensorin the ground, be it radio, QR code, or some other means oftransferring information to the car. The key is the informationand how the car uses it. Although Google's self-driving cars useGPS technology to orient themselves, but in certain situationsa GPS signal may not be obtainable. The patent also suggeststhat user could give a set of instruction to the vehicle thatcommands it to drive itself to specific location.

Microsoft comes to AMDBulldozer rescue: WindowsUpdate speeds up thingsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/microsoft-comes-to-amd-bulldozer-

rescue-windows-update-speeds-up-things/14256.html

December 19th, 2011

AMD Bulldozer is, to say so, unusual in its modular dual-coreblock architecture compared to the current X86 processors. To

extract more performance out of it, Microsoft now has a kernelpatch for for its client and server OS.

Ever wondered why some benchmark results on Bulldozer andits server version, Interlagos, look not just too low but outrightweird? Part of the explanation was that the fancy modulararchitecture, where two integer and one FP block share one L2cache and instruction scheduler, wasn't really supported thatwell by the current operating systems. Add to it the Pentium 4-style long pipeline and high latencies, and you got a problem.

Microsoft now has a kernel update solution that solvesone part of the problem, at least - if you go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592546/ knowledge base page,you'll notice that there is a patch for Windows 7 and forWindows Server 2008 R2.

This patch updates the thread management logic in the OSat the kernel level for the Bulldozer, and - interestingly- proclaims it as a multithreading feature. With thisupdate, Windows sees each BD dual core block as ASINGLE MULTITHREADED CORE, contrary to AMD'sofficial positioning. Therefore, BD is seen as a 4-core, 8-thread chip, rather than a fully 8-core processors. This update,nevertheless, brings a definite single-digit % performancejump in lightly threaded applications, but it is still goodthough as it helps the CPU fight higher speed grades ofIntel processors in benchmarks. So, naming or no namingconfusion, go ahead and have it, if you're one of the earlyBulldozer users.

Page 2: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

1

VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks!VR-Zone | Stuff for the Geeks is a bi-weekly publicationcovering the latest gadgets and stuff for the geeks.

Silicon Image team upwith Onkyo to deliver MHLequipped A/V receiverSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/silicon-image-team-up-with-onkyo-to-

deliver-mhl-equipped-av-receiver/14331.html

December 22nd, 2011

New connectors and interfaces always cause problems whenit comes to hardware compatibility and the Mobile High-definition Link or MHL is one of those interfaces that is farfrom widely adopted on anything but smartphones to date.That seems to be set to change, as Silicon Image, one of thedriving forces behind the MHL standard has teamed up withOnkyo to deliver A/V receivers with MHL support.

New connectors and interfaces always cause problems whenit comes to hardware compatibility and the Mobile High-definition Link or MHL is one of those interfaces that is farfrom widely adopted on anything but smartphones to date.That seems to be set to change, as Silicon Image, one of thedriving forces behind the MHL standard has teamed up withOnkyo to deliver A/V receivers with MHL support.

In practical terms the MHL interface is a combination ofHDMI and USB 2.0 and the advantage it has over a pure HDMIinterface is that the device you connect up a smartphoneequipped with MHL to can power your smartphone. So farit's mainly HTC, LG and Samsung that has adopted the MHLinterface while Samsung and Toshiba have a handful of TVmodels that supports it. The downside is of course that youneed a dongle to connect your phone to an HDMI port, but itlooks like this might just start to become less of an issue.

Onkyo didn't reveal a lot of details in the press release about itsnew receivers as the company is planning on unveiling themat CES in a few weeks' time. What we do know though isthat Onkyo is using Silicon Image's latest MHL chipset withsupports something called InstaPrevue. This is a picture-in-picture solution for HDMI and MHL which allows a smallpreview window of other attached devices to be overlaid overwhatever is being displayed on the TV, must as you can dochannel previewing on some TV sets.

The question is how much life MHL has now since the USB-IF announced the audio/video devices class, as this allowsyou to do everything that MHL does, but presumably withoutthe need of extra chips on the mobile device side. That said,MHL is already a somewhat established standard, but as weknow, it's never clear cut which standard will end up beingthe dominant one and it's not always the best one that's thewinner.

Intel said to be droppingSandy Bridge CPU pricesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-said-to-be-dropping-sandy-

bridge-cpu-prices/14330.html

December 22nd, 2011

With Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors expected tolaunch in April of next year, it appears that Intel is alreadyconcerned about having too much stock of its current SandyBridge processors and is as such planning on reducing theprice on at least is mobile Core i3 and Core i5 processors. Whatisn't clear is if Intel is planning on doing the same for thedesktop parts or not.

With Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors expected tolaunch in April of next year, it appears that Intel is alreadyconcerned about having too much stock of its current SandyBridge processors and is as such planning on reducing theprice on at least is mobile Core i3 and Core i5 processors. Whatisn't clear is if Intel is planning on doing the same for thedesktop parts or not.

Digitimes is reporting that Intel has apparently told itsnotebook partners that the company is about to drop theprocessor pricing by some 10 to 15 percent depending onmodel, although for some reason the high-end Core i7's areapparently not part of this discount deal.

As to how much of an impact this will have on the finalproduct is a different matter, as many notebook makers arealready offering very cheap notebooks with Core i3 and Corei5 processors and although we're expecting that some of thisdiscount will be passed on to consumers, we don't think we'llsee an equal reduction in price of the final product.

Even so, it might be worth hanging on for Ivy Bridge if you'renot in a rush to get a new notebook, as the new processors dooffer some advantage over Sandy Bridge, although most arenot CPU performance related. As we've seen in the many leaks

Page 3: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

2

to date, the overall platform as a whole is better than SandyBridge and the cost isn't expected to be any higher than whata Sandy Bridge equivalent product costs today.

AMD marketing chief stepsdown, offers predictions for2012Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-marketing-chief-steps-down-

offers-predictions-for-2012/14329.html

December 22nd, 2011

AMD's Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice PresidentNigel Dessau is leaving the chipmaker to work on a book, buthe has made some interesting predictions for the year ahead.

AMD's Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice PresidentNigel Dessau is leaving the chipmaker to work on a book, buthe has made some interesting predictions for the year ahead.

Dessau said that he is excited about the prospects for AMD,and with the upcoming Radeon HD 7970 and its all-starreviews we are just as excited. However, he said that he hadreached a crossroads and decided to pursue the next phase ofhis career outside of the company.

This next step will focus on a book based on his website, the3 Minute Mentor, where he delivers career advice in threeminute podcasts.

Dessau has worked at AMD for four years, leading themarketing team that has helped keep AMD in a prominentposition within the industry. He will stay on to help in thetransition to a new head of marketing.

Before he departs from the company he made a numberof predictions about what will happen in 2012, including a

consumer boom in the cloud led by Apple, high consumerdemand for natural user interfaces, and potential micro-segmentation of the industry that will lead the way to moreindividualised marketing strategies.

ASUS sued over "TransformerPrime" trademarkinfringementSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-sued-over-transformer-prime-

trademark-infringement/14325.html

December 22nd, 2011

ASUS is now in trouble for using the name "Transformer" and"Transformer Prime". Toy maker Hasbro has filed a lawsuitagainst the Taiwanese company over the trademark on thename that are more known for the toys, cartoons and movies.

The new ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android tabletwas showcased at the AsiaD: All Things Digital event inHong Kong, and has garnered great popularity from the nameit bears, but this has apparently also brought along sometroubles. Toy manufacturer Hasbro has sued ASUS for theuse of the name which they had trademarked, and stated thatthey will defend their brand. While the two companies andtheir products may be targeting different market, Hasbro doeshave a series of video games and accessories for PC and Xbox360 game console which are under the name “Transformer”,thereby providing the toy company with adequate relevancyto be concerned that consumers may be misled into thinkingHasbro had endorsed the ASUS product. As for now, Hasbro isrequesting for an injunction against ASUS, and a 21 day periodfor them to respond.

Elpida to begin merger talkswith NanyaSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/elpida-to-begin-merger-talks-with-

nanya/14328.html

Page 4: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

3

December 22nd, 2011

Elpida Memory is to begin talks in January with rivalDRAM maker Nanya Technology on a possible merger asthe companies struggle to cope with falling prices and toughcompetition.

Elpida Memory is to begin talks in January with rivalDRAM maker Nanya Technology on a possible merger asthe companies struggle to cope with falling prices and toughcompetition.

The Japanese and Taiwanese chipmakers have been losingsubstantial market share to larger rivals like Samsung, whichnow rules 45 percent of the market, making it difficult for thesmaller companies to survive, particularly with DDR3 DRAMprices dropping from $1.50 in July to just $0.90 in October.

A report in the Nikkei Business Daily suggested that the twocompanies would begin merger talks next month in a bid torestore profitability and curb their shrinking market share.Elpida denied it had made any formal announcement in thisregard, however, and said it was considering multiple options,including refinancing debt and requiring advance payment forproduct orders.

Elpida is in third place in the DRAM market with a 12.1 percentmarket share, behind Hynix' 21.5 percent, while Nanya is infifth place with just 3.6 percent. Elpida saw a revenue declineof 29.8 percent in the third quarter, while Nanya experiencedan even larger revenue drop of 36.7 percent.

However, the possibility of a merger could be held up bylegal battles between the two companies over the allegedinfringement of patents, not to mention a partnership betweenNanya and Micron, another rival to Elpida.

Sony develops paper-poweredbattery prototypeSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sony-develops-paper-powered-battery-

prototype/14327.html

December 22nd, 2011

Sony has developed a battery prototype that generateselectricity from shredded paper, an achievement that couldlead to more environmentally-friendly electronic products.

Sony has developed a battery prototype that generateselectricity from shredded paper, an achievement that couldlead to more environmentally-friendly electronic products.

Sony unveiled the technology at the Eco-Products exhibition inTokyo, where a fan was powered by scrap paper and cardboarddropped into a mixture of water and enzymes, which was thenshaken.

The bio-batteries turn waste paper into sugar by using theenzyme cellulase, and when the resulting glucose sugar iscombined with oxygen and other enzymes it turns it intoelectrons and hydrogen ions, which are used to generateelectricity.

"Using a 'fuel' as simple as old greetings cards - the sort ofcards that millions of us will be receiving this Christmas - thebio battery can deliver enough energy to power a small fan,"said Yuichi Tokita, senior researcher at the Sony AdvancedMaterial Research Lab. "Of course, this is still at the veryearly stages of its development, but when you imagine thepossibilities that this technology could deliver, it becomes veryexciting indeed."

The technology could give people another incentive to recyclepaper, cut down electricity costs, and help move the industrytowards renewable and sustainable power, but it will likely beyears before a powerful enough bio-battery is developed foruse with, for example, mobile phones. However, the potentialto recharge your smartphone with a bit of newspaper while onthe go is an interesting and useful possibility.

Page 5: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

4

Scientists make self-repairingchip breakthroughSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/scientists-make-self-repairing-chip-

breakthrough/14326.html

December 22nd, 2011

Researchers are close to developing self-repairing electronicchips, which could revolutionise the technology industry andeven lead to safer space travel.

Researchers are close to developing self-repairing electronicchips, which could revolutionise the technology industry andeven lead to safer space travel.

Scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign succeeded in creating a circuit that, when cracked,heals itself by releasing a conductivity-restoring liquid metal,which brings the circuit back online in less than a second.

The technology works by housing the healing liquid within thechip, and if the chip is damaged it should also damage theliquid container, releasing the liquid so that it can fill in anygaps and restore the flow of electricity.

Tests using gold and glass circuits with microcapsulescontaining the metallic liquid eutectic gallium-indium showeda drop of voltage to zero when cracked and a return to almostfull voltage within one millisecond. These devices retainedtheir conductivity for months after the damage and repair.

The breakthrough could affect every sector of technology,resulting in super long-lasting products. The scientists alsobelieve it can help with satellites and space travel, since this isan area where manually repairing and replacing electronics isextremely difficult, expensive and time-consuming.

Intel Shows Its Atom-basedAndroid Smartphone andTablet PrototypesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-shows-its-atom-based-android-

smartphone-and-tablet-prototypes/14321.html

December 22nd, 2011

Faced with continuous decline of its Atom series of processors,the semiconductor giant from Santa Clara is showcasingconcept smartphone and tablet designs for 2012.

By all standards, Intel had a dream year - the companyachieved record revenue and record profits. However, therewas one dark spot on otherwise, a spotless record: Atom lineof products.

Intel Atom was introduced in 2008 as a byproduct of Intelreceiving back the P55C core from US Army. The secondbyproduct of that heavily modified and optimized core wasLarrabee graphics core, which got canceled and is now knownas a HPC-accelerator Knights Bridge / Knights Corner. IntelAtom enjoyed a lot of success in 2008-2010, with a lot ofanalysts writing stories about the rise of netbooks and hownetbooks will mark the end of PC as we know it. Soundsfamiliar, right?

Fast forward to third quarter of 2011: Intel posted excellentsales and profit results, but the company also marked a 32%decline in sales of Intel Atom platform. Indeed, when we lookat Atom as a whole, the product actually declined by over 60%during 2011 alone - as tablets took over the hearts and mindsof consumers, sales of netbooks came to a screeching halt.

Intel's answer to tablets is known for quite some time:Intel's second SoC design codenamed Medfield (first onebeing Cedarview, D2x00 Series). Medfield is manufactured in32nm process node and is consisted out of single Atom coreoperating up to 1.9GHz clock, integrated graphics subsystem(it is not known which one, but current Atoms utilize PowerVRSGX545), Image Signal Processor, memory controller and

Page 6: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

5

chipset features. Do note that SGX545 is more powerful thanSGX543MP2 used inside the Apple's A5 Dual-core chip.

On IDF Fall 2011, Intel showed its prototypes of smartphoneand tablet designs, but the Android operating system was notready for the limelight. Few months after, Android 2.x and 3.xlong gone and the company is optimizing for Android 4.x IceCream Sandwich operating system.

You can expect the first smartphone and tablet designs comingin the first half of 2012. Second half of 2012 will see theappearance of Windows 8 tablets, where Intel will arguecompatibility with full set of applications on Windows 8. Bearin mind that ARM-based tablets won't be able to run softwarecompiled for the X86 instruction set.

Still, Medfield is just the introductionary part and we'renot surprised ARM vendors are sound asleep at the marketacceptance. Real headache for every member of ARMecosystem is coming on CES 2013, the 22nm Silvermont -completely new Atom architecture, which will go hand in handwith the next-generation 22nm Haswell architecture for high-performance computers.

The Bluetooth SIG leaks SonyEricsson LT28at detailsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/the-bluetooth-sig-leaks-sony-ericsson-

lt28at-details/14324.html

December 22nd, 2011

Sony Ericsson has had its fair share of troubles this past year,but it looks like the company is about to rebound come next

year, even ahead of its move to killing off the Ericsson partof its brand name. Details of an upcoming model called theLT28at have leaked courtesy of the Bluetooth SIG and it lookslike Sony Ericsson is planning to launch at least one seriouslyhigh-end handset next year.

Sony Ericsson has had its fair share of troubles this past year,but it looks like the company is about to rebound come nextyear, even ahead of its move to killing off the Ericsson partof its brand name. Details of an upcoming model called theLT28at have leaked courtesy of the Bluetooth SIG and it lookslike Sony Ericsson is planning to launch at least one seriouslyhigh-end handset next year.

The expected spec of what will be an as yet un-namedXperia handset targeted for AT&T in the US includes a 4.55-inch Reality display with 1280x720 pixel resolution, LTE, a13Megapixel backside illuminated camera sensor and a 720pfront facing camera for video calls. Other features include802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, although only 2.1 + EDRand strangely enough support for the Chinese TD-SCDMAstandard.

According to the Xperiablog we can expect to see a 1.5GHzdual core processor of unknown origin. The Xperiablog alsomanaged to track down a few photos snapped in what appearsto be San Francisco by the LT28at and although they’re not atfull resolution, they’ll give you a good idea of the kind of qualityyou can expect from the 13Megapixel BSI camera. Hopefullythere will be a non US version of the LT28at and there’s reallyno reason as to why Sony Ericsson wouldn’t have a versionwith similar spec without LTE. The Xperiablog is expecting theLT28at to be unveiled at CES, so we’ll just have to wait and seewhat will happen in a few weeks’ time.

In related news, Sony Ericsson has announced that it’ll berolling out its Android 4.0 updates for this year’s Xperiahandsets from late March next year with some models gettingthe updates a bit later in April or May. Full details can be foundon the Sony Ericsson product blog.

Canon Singapore announcesCanonSGLens, free iOS app fordigital SLR photographersSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/canon-singapore-announces-

canonsglens-free-ios-app-for-digital-slr-photographers/14323.html

December 22nd, 2011

Page 7: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

6

With this iOS app, Canon photographers can now accessall the information including specifications on digital SLRlens, learn about the physics behind capturing an pictureetc. The CanonSGLens app is free to download and is availableon the Apple iTunes App store.

Canon Singapore has unveiled CanonSGLens, the company'sfree iOS app for digital SLR camera users. Available fromtoday on the Apple iTunes App store, the app features detailedlens specifications of all Canon digital SLR lenses that aresold in Singapore. The application also contains a uniqueinteractive simulator that allows users to compare the fieldof view between two camera-lens combinations, using thecurrent list of Canon EOS digital SLR cameras and lenses. TheCanonSGLens is designed to help beginners and professionalphotographers. Beginners can learn more about the physicsbehind capturing an photo, while professionals can make useof features like the depth-of-field calculator to help themachieve optimum focus.

App Features- Highly visual interactive simulators

- Bookmark your favourite pages

- Add your own notes to any page

- Content optimized for both portrait and landscapeorientations

- No Internet connection required

Featured Content- Detailed lens specifications of all Canon EF and EF-S lensessold in Singapore

- Compare lens specifications side by side, with differencesindicated

- Compare high resolution MTF charts

- Compare high resolution lens construction diagrams

- Field of View simulator featuring multiple photos takenof the same scene in Singapore using different camera-lenscombinations

- Depth of Field simulator

- Depth of Field calculator

- In-depth topic with interactive simulators explaining howaperture and shutter speed affect exposure, depth of field, andmotion blur in the various exposure modes

CanonSGLens is available on the Apple iTunesApp store - http://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/canonsglens/id490527073?ls=1&mt=8

Nikon Singapore launches twonew Facebook applicationsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/nikon-singapore-launches-two-new-

facebook-applications/14322.html

December 22nd, 2011

Nikon Singapore has announced the launch of two Facebookapplications “Where’s the 1?” and "Psych'd by Nikon” contestswhereby users stand to win attractive prizes including NikonCOOLPIX camera and Nikon 1 J1 with the 1 NIKKOR VR10-30mm f3.5-5.6 lens.

“Where’s the 1?” is a contest whereby you only have to answerfour questions correctly by looking for the hidden Nikon 1in the picture. If you have spotted all four cameras correctly,you stand a chance to win the Nikon 1 J1 and 1 NIKKOR VR10-30mm f3.5-5.6 lens. However, note that there is no lifelinein this game, and you can only play it once a day. There will be anew set of questions and cameras for you to search every week,and you can play up to once a day to increase your chancesto win the Nikon 1 J1 camera. The contest runs now till 19January 2012.

"Psych'd by Nikon" was launched in the beginning ofDecember, and the app is an easy-to-play contest to find outwhich Nikon COOLPIX suits you. Just answer a few simplequestions and you can discover the Nikon COOLPIX camerathat best suits your needs and lifestyle, and find out if it is trueto your personality. One lucky winner with the most referrals

Page 8: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

7

via share will stand to walk away with a Nikon COOLPIXcamera.

Does PCIe 3.0 matter fortoday's GPUs? We test withthe Radeon HD 7970Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/does-pcie-3.0-matter-for-today-s-gpus-

we-test-with-the-radeon-hd-7970/14306.html

December 22nd, 2011

For months now, certain smaller motherboard manufacturershave been hyping up PCI Express 3.0 compatibility andbenefits to ignorant users, even going to the point of bashingone another with libelous advertisements (lol hammer smashmotherboards into bits). Since the latest Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors and AMD's Radeon HD 7970 officially supportsthe new signalling standard, we put that to the test to see if itdoes improve things.

The following is rephrased and quoted from Wikipedia's PCIExpress entry:

The much delayed PCIe 3.0 standard is supposed tobring signal transfer bitrates to 8GT/s (double that ofPCIe 2.0) and a number of optimizations for enhancedsignaling and data integrity, including transmitter andreceiver equalization, PLL improvements, clock data recovery,and channel enhancements for currently supported topologies

The BIOS on our favourite ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (X79)allowed us to select the PCIe signalling standard for our tests(Editor's note: yes we did use the latest 1004 bios which hasthe CPU Microcode and PCIe 3.0 fixes)

PCIe 3.0 Benchmarks:

PCIe 2.0 Benchmarks:

Page 9: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

8

Our conclusions? Only a <1% miniscule benefit thanks totighter clock timings and PLL improvements - today's highend GPU like the HD7970 and GTX590 barely even saturatePCIe x8 lanes (4GB/s). Perhaps we might see a different storywith decent solid state storage setups and CPU interconnects.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review[Part 3/3]: Overclocking,Benchmarks and ConclusionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-part-33--

overclocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308.html

December 22nd, 2011

In the final part of our review, we look into the overclockingabilities of the 28nm 'Tahiti XT' GPU, run extensive butrelevant performance tests, and give an objective conclusionof the AMD Radeon HD 7970.

Overclocking

The overclocking potential of the Radeon HD 7970 has beenmuch vaunted in the recent leaks and it certainly didn'tdisappoint. Even without any software or hardware voltagemods, we managed to bring the CPU core from the default925MHz up to the maximum 1125MHz that CCC would allow.We also turned memory up to 1500MHz and Power Control to+20% to prevent throttling.

Testing with FurMark - with the fan left at auto, it was stillspinning silently and temperatures maxed out at a comfortable86 degrees celcius

The updated GPU-Z 0.5.7 allows you to read card informationoff the 7970's SMBIOS

Page 10: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

9

Every increment on the way, we went the extra mile to ensurethat there was actually scaling (and not bs throttling). Withclocks like these on stock voltages and cooling, you'll wonderhow much higher it can go when software or hardware voltagemodifications together with better cooling are applied to thiscard. Looks like the 28nm process die shrink did pay off...

Check also

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review[Part 2/3]: The Card Design(Hardware Components andCooling)Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-part-23--

the-card-design-hardware-components-and-cooling-/14286.html

December 22nd, 2011

The AMD Radeon HD 'Tahiti XT' 7970 features a redesignedPCB, 3GB of GDDR5 384bit memory ring bus configurationand an optimized heatsink design.

The dashing looking Radeon HD 7970 measures 11.5 incheslong (29.21cm), which should fit in most modern day gamingcases

PCI-SIG approved 8+6 pin power connectors for up to 300Wof power consumption

No PCB Backplate on this reference card - hopefully the actualretail units will have them as they do provide some shieldingagainst accidental metal contact short circuits

More than a dozen screws binding the card to the heatsink -which was a nuisance when we disassembled it

Page 11: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

10

3-way Crossfire connectors are still present, as are the dualBIOS Switch for flash experiments

Dual-link DVI, HDMI and Mini-DP ports for up to 6displays. The half-height exhaust grill design from 58xx/69xxcards is gone and replaced with a full height panel, whichshould help reduce air turbulance.

Check also

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review[Part 1/3]: Meet Tahiti XT fromthe Southern IslandsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-part-13--

meet-tahiti-xt-from-the-southern-islands/14307.html

December 22nd, 2011

After a year of less than stellar CPU launches (Bulldozer)and the fallout from the massive company-wide layoffsand manufacturing delays, AMD and their fans finally havesomething to cheer about this holiday season. Built on theradical 28nm 'Graphics Core Next' architecture and numerousanother innovations, the US$549 Radeon HD 7970 flexes itconsiderable muscles in the high end enthusiast GPU market.In the first of a three part review, supercomputing expert andin-house Serbian Nebojsa Novakovic gives his take on what thenew architecture will bring..

When AMD unveiled its GCN - Graphics Core Next - newgeneration graphics processor architecture as a part of itsFSA - Fusion System Architecture - at the last June's FusionDeveloper Summit in Seattle, it was quite a surprise: thenext-in-line future GPU was to be transformed into a generalpurpose compute coprocessor, with far more flexibility andaim at wider range of applications well beyond graphics only- and, not to forget, easier memory space sharing with theCPU. Half a year later, the first implementation of this newarchitecture already sees the light.

The Radeon HD7970 is the fastest single GPU card todayin most of 3-D graphics runs, but its compute powerimpresses, too: 3.8 TFLOPs peak single precision FP and,more importantly, 947 GFLOPs double precision FP at thedefauly 925 MHz clock. Since the card overclocks easily byanother 10% or so without even changing any voltages, youcan, for the first time, easily have a true (peak) Teraflop DPFP engine in the PC. The 384-bit GDDR5 memory path with3 GB RAM gives some 260 GB/s bandwidth to feed all thatperformance, with sufficient local memory for larger datasetsthan before. And, in those moments when the GPU doesnothing, the idle power drops to below 3 Watts - not bad at all.

Page 12: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

11

How did it achieve all this performance? The firstimplementation of GCN is based on the same 'Compute Units'that we described post-AMD Summit in June, 32 of themin this chip. Each compute unit, able to execute code frommultiple kernels at once, is a processor by itself, in a sensea full-fledged 'core', the way we describe cores in generalpurpose processors. So, each compute unit has a vector andstandard scalar processor core, plus a texture block withfiltering and fetch units, all this with local registers, 64 KBdata share memory and 16 KB L1 cache with 64 bytes/clockbandwidth. The branching and scheduling units complete thepicture.

The cache hierarchy is intriguing here: each set of fourcompute units shares an extra 32 KB scalar data cache plus 16KB instruction cache, backed by a common L2 cache, whichtotals 768 KB in the HD7970 chip across all compute units.This L2 then interfaces to the memory controller. A GlobalData Share unit is there to enable sync among all computeunits at the L1 cache level. This is far more complex cachearchitecture than what you'll see in today's general purposeCPUs, by the way.

In addition to compute units, there are still dedicatedprocessing elements for 3-D graphics. Dual Geometry Units,as well as eight render back ends, plus the usual videoacceleration hardware, complete the chip here. And yes, thesystem interface is PCIe x16 v3, finally.

Now, how does GCN in HD7970 achieve, as AMD claims,much better actual use of the underlying resources comparedto the previous generation? First, you'll notice that thechip architecture looks far more symmetric and simplerto understand than the GPUs of the past, which shouldtranslate to the programs being able to use it more efficently.Also, the separate dual asynchronous compute engines helpschedule multiple tasks in parallel with the graphics commandprocessor, while dual direct memory access (DMA) engineshelp in fetching and sending data fast, able to saturate 16 GB/s over PCIe 3 to the system itself.

In some tests, like AES256, the resulting improvements inactual performance are over four times, but even many othershave speed jumps higher than the theoretical FP speed boostfrom the 6970 to the 7970. Two times is a regular occurencein many GPU compute benchmarks here. And, very critical forthe computing usage, the FP here is fully IEEE754 compliantwhile, if aiming for workstation or compute server use, youhave ECC protection all the way, for both DRAM and SRAMmemory.

The new architecture should finally enable easy GPUmultitasking, not just many processes on one GPU, but alsoone task being spread across multiple GPUs, something thatHPC users would welcome a lot - and high end PC users as well,since, say, 4 GPUs in Quad CrossFire could be used for morethan just gaming FPS.

In summary, GCN in AMD Radeon HD7970 went a stepfurther than Nvidia did in its current 'Fermi' GeForcegeneration in getting the GPU to become a more versatilesystem compute coprocessor. There are still further steps totake in getting the GPU even closer to the CPU, including thememory sharing and interconnect, however the improvementsseen in this brand new chip should be a good note toboth Nvidia and Intel, the latter with its Knights Corneraccelerators, on the way forward.

Check also

ASRock launches AtomD2700 and D2500 mini-ITXmotherboardsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asrock-launches-atom-d2700-and-

d2500-mini-itx-motherboards/14316.html

December 22nd, 2011

Page 13: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

12

The ASRock related news aren't over quite yet, as alongsideits high-end boards, the company has also unveiled three newentry level Atom mini-ITX motherboards, all with Intel's newD2x00-series of Atom processors. One of the new modelssports the 1.86GHz Atom D2500, while the other two comeswith the 2.13GHz Atom D2700.

The ASRock related news aren't over quite yet, as alongsideits high-end boards, the company has also unveiled three newentry level Atom mini-ITX motherboards, all with Intel's newD2x00-series of Atom processors. One of the new modelssports the 1.86GHz Atom D2500, while the other two comeswith the 2.13GHz Atom D2700.

Starting at the bottom we have the AD2500B-ITX which is arather plain, almost dull looking board with a large passiveheatsink covering the CPU and a really tiny one covering theNM10 chipset. The board has, rather unusually a pair of SO-DIMM slots, although as the new Atoms can accept up to 4GBof RAM, albeit in single channel mode, the two slots are at leastsomewhat useful.

There's also a pair of SATA 3Gbps ports, a single PCI slotand a pair of headers for four USB 2.0 ports. The rear I/Oconsists of a range or ports that feel more like 1991 than 2011with two PS/2 ports, a serial port, a parallel port, a D-subconnector, four USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100Mbit Ethernet portand 5.1-channel audio via three jacks. Overall not the mostimpressive board we've seen recently.

Moving up we have the AD2700B-ITX which swaps in theAtom D2700 over the D2500, but it's not the only change.Although the board layout remains identical to the AD2500B-ITX, the AD2700B-ITX was upgraded with both GigabitEthernet and a pair of USB 3.0 ports making it an interestingboard for a home server.

The third and final board is the most interesting of the threeand it's called the AD2700-ITX, a confusing similar name, butan entirely different board in many ways. Although you'd beforgiven for thinking it's yet more of the same if you take aquick glance at the top down view of the board, ASRock hasoverhauled the rear I/O entirely.

Here we're looking at a single PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports,two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio withoptical S/PDIF out and a D-sub, DVI and HDMI port. Thegeneral board layout is otherwise mostly the same, althoughthere's a pin-header for a parallel port and a serial port notpresent on the first two models, but that's the only differencewe can spot. We checked the manual quickly as we wanted tofind out about the display connectivity and the good news isthat both the DVI and HDMI port can be used simultaneously.The manual also suggested that there might be a version withthe Atom D2500 of this board, although without USB 3.0 andwith slower 10/100Mbit Ethernet.

One funny thing in ASRock's specifications is with regardsto the GPU which ASRock lists as “Built-in Intel PowerVRSGX545” which isn't entirely true as the GPU is by ImaginationTechnologies and Intel calls it the GMA 3650 or GMA 3600depending on which processors we're talking about. If nothingelse, ASRock has at least triple confirmed things for us. Onceagain we don't have any word on availability and pricing, butwe'd expect these boards to be out shortly.

Page 14: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

13

ASRock does more affordable8-DIMM X79 motherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asrock-does-more-affordable-8-dimm-

x79-motherboard/14315.html

December 22nd, 2011

We're not quite sure we're following ASRock's X79motherboard line-up as the company has introduced the X79Extreme6/GB, a model inferior to the X79 Extreme7, yetsomehow packing more features and a bundle. The bundle isASRock Game Blaster, the same card that comes with the X79Extreme9.

We're not quite sure we're following ASRock's X79motherboard line-up as the company has introduced the X79Extreme6/GB, a model inferior to the X79 Extreme7, yetsomehow packing more features and a bundle. The bundle isASRock Game Blaster, the same card that comes with the X79Extreme9.

The X79 Extreme6/GB is a peculiar board and we're not quitesure what ASRock was thinking about when the companydesigned the board. So ok, it "only" has three x16 PCI Expressslots compared to five for the X79 Extreme7, but at least all ofthe ones on the X79 Extreme6/GB are usable. There are also asingle x1 PCI Express slot and two PCI slots, although strictlyspeaking, only one of the PCI slots can be used if you have apair of graphics cards with dual slot coolers fitted to them.

Moving on we're missing a couple of extra SATA 6Gbps ports,but the X79 Extreme6/GB still manages four SATA 3Gbps andfive SATA 6Gbps ports, more than enough for most users. TheVRM heatsink is smaller, but the phase count is the same andthe X79 Extreme6/GB still sports tantalum capacitors. It alsohas two extra DIMM slots over the X79 Extreme7, but you only

get two front USB 3.0 ports rather than four, again a non-issuefor most people.

Looking at the rear I/O we have two PS/2 ports, four USB3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, an eSATAport, a Gigabit Ethernet port, 7.1-channel audio with opticaland coaxial S/PDIF out and a clear CMOS button. Thedifference here is very minor as the only missing feature isthe secondary Gigabit Ethernet port compared to the X79Extreme7. However, because the X79 Extreme6/GB comebundled with the Game Blaster, you get a second GigabitEthernet port through it, if you chose to install it.

It might sound stupid to suggest that you shouldn't, but dueto the slightly moronic slot layout of the X79 Extreme6/GB,if you're using all three x16 PCI Express slots, then it's verylikely that you won't be able to use the Game Blaster card,as it requires a x1 PCI Express slot. That said, not that manypeople are running three way SLI or CrossFireX, so this is mostlikely not going to affect that many buyers of this board, butit's still a peculiar omission in the design by ASRock. Beyondthe additional Gigabit Ethernet controller, the Game Blasteralso features a Creative Sound Core3D audio chip which addsduplicate set of 7.1-channel audio with optical and coaxialS/PDIF out, which once more makes us wonder about whatASRock was thinking about when they designed this board.

We don't know when the X79 Extreme6/GB will be available,nor how much it'll cost, but in theory it should end up beingsimilarly priced to the X79 Extreme7 due to the closeness infeatures and the additional cost of the bundled card.

ASRock set to launch Fatal1tyX79 Professional motherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asrock-set-to-launch-fatal1ty-x79-

professional-motherboard/14314.html

December 22nd, 2011

Page 15: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

14

We're still not sold on the whole Fatal1ty brandingfrom ASRock, but the upcoming Fatal1ty X79 Professionalmotherboard from the company is definitely a competitorwhen it comes to high-end X79 motherboards. It's by far notthe most feature rich X79 motherboard out there, but it stillhas enough features to make it an attractive choice for thosethat are digging the colour scheme and branding.

We're still not sold on the whole Fatal1ty brandingfrom ASRock, but the upcoming Fatal1ty X79 Professionalmotherboard from the company is definitely a competitorwhen it comes to high-end X79 motherboards. It's by far notthe most feature rich X79 motherboard out there, but it stillhas enough features to make it an attractive choice for thosethat are digging the colour scheme and branding.

The board hasn't been officially unveiled as yet, but pictures ofthe Fatal1ty X79 Professional appeared over at TechPowerUpgiving us a good idea as to what to expect. The good news isthat the active cooling fan on the chipset is gone, althoughunlike other high-end X79 boards, ASRock didn't botherwith a heatpipe connecting the chipset heatsink to the VRMheatsinks. Speaking of the VRM, we're looking at tantalumcapacitors, although we don't know much else about the designof it for now.

The board has four x16 PCI Express slots in a dual x16 or quadx8 configuration and there's also a single x1 PCI Express slotand two PCI slots. ASRock went with a standard four DIMMlayout on this board and there are four additional SATA 6Gbpsports in addition to the two from the chipset, as well as fourSATA 3Gbps ports. Other features includes a header for twofront USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire header, a Post80 debug LEDand power and reset buttons.

Around the rear we have a PS/2 port, four USB 3.0 ports,five USB 2.0 ports, a Fatal1ty USB mouse port, two eSATAports, a FireWire port, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audiowith optical and coaxial S/PDIF out and a clear CMOS button.A bracket for the front USB 3.0 ports is supplied with theboard, but the rest of the bundle isn't clear at this point. Noword on pricing or availability, but we wouldn't expect it to betoo long.

SSD prices are falling fasterthan HDDSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ssd-prices-are-falling-faster-than-

hdd/14312.html

December 22nd, 2011

Solid state drives (SSDs) are dropping in price much fasterthan hard disk drives (HDD), according to figures released bywebsite uptime monitoring firm Pingdom.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are dropping in price much fasterthan hard disk drives (HDD), according to figures released bywebsite uptime monitoring firm Pingdom.

The report shows that average HDD prices fell from $56.30/GB in 1998 to $0.075/GB in 2011, while average SSD pricesfell from $40/GB in 2007 to $2.42 this year. The lowest pricesrecorded this year are $0.053/GB for HDD and $1.50/GB forSSD.

While SSDs remain very expensive, the difference betweenthem and HDD prices has dropped considerably over the lastnumber of years. For example, in 2007 SSDs cost 120 times theequivalent HDD storage, whereas that number has dropped tojust 32 times more expensive in 2011.

Page 16: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

15

That trend is set to continue, with SSD prices likely to followHDD ones in a downward plummet, likely helped by theshortage of HDDs on the market at the moment. For example,SSD prices are currently the same on a per GB level as HDDprices were in 2002, suggesting we're only a few years awayfrom an affordable alternative to HDD.

Pingdom predicts that in 2012 the average price for HDDswill fall to $0.54/GB, a drop of around 28 percent, though itcould be artificially bloated by the current market drought.SSD prices should drop to $1/GB, a significant decrease ofaround 33 percent on this year's prices.

While SSD prices are unlikely to ever match that of HDD, itlooks like SSDs are as much party to Moore's Law as anythingelse is in the technology industry.

BlackBerry maker RIM refusedAmazon acquisition offerSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/blackberry-maker-rim-refused-

amazon-acquisition-offer/14311.html

December 22nd, 2011

Amazon attempted to buy BlackBerry maker Research InMotion (RIM), but the latter turned down the offer and similarones made by other companies, it has been revealed.

Amazon attempted to buy BlackBerry maker Research InMotion (RIM), but the latter turned down the offer and similarones made by other companies, it has been revealed.

The online bookstore turned tablet computer maker hired aninvestment bank during the Summer to review a potentialmerger with RIM, according to Reuters, but it ultimately failedto make a formal offer.

RIM's co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, do notwant the company to be bought, however, despite facingplummeting market share as Apple and Android devicescontinue to grow. They want to sort out RIM's problemsinternally, including focusing on BlackBerry Messaging andrestructuring the company, rather than relying on a moresuccessful company like Amazon to do the job for them.

RIM did not rule out licensing deals or commercialpartnerships, however, and this could be an area where RIMbenefits from the growth of other companies. ApparentlyAmazon is still in talks with RIM over this. If Amazon wasable to push a BlackBerry Kindle for businesses, or some othercombination of their assets, both firms could reap significantrewards.

Samsung and Microsoft have also considered bids for RIMat some point, but interest is likely waning as the companystruggles to stay relevant, particularly with the lengthy delayof its BlackBerry 10 platform.

Microsoft wins patent caseagainst Motorola MobilitySource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/microsoft-wins-patent-case-against-

motorola-mobility/14310.html

December 22nd, 2011

Microsoft has won a patent battle against Motorola Mobilityover the infringement of a patent used in its smartphoneproducts, which could result in a sales ban in the US.

Microsoft has won a patent battle against Motorola Mobilityover the infringement of a patent used in its smartphoneproducts.

Page 17: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

16

An International Trade Commission (ITC) judge gave apreliminary ruling that Motorola had infringed one of sevenpatents that Microsoft made claims for. The ruling will haveto be confirmed in April of next year, but generally speakingmost ITC preliminary verdicts are given the green-light by afull ITC panel.

The patent in question relates to several techniques toschedule meetings and synchronise group calendars, aparticularly useful feature for the mobile enterprise sector,which Android has been expanding into.

Microsoft had previously filed a similar complaint with theEuropean Patent Office, but the latter dismissed the caseas it deemed that the technology in question was 'obvious'.Microsoft is appealing that decision, and the ITC ruling couldimpact on that appeal.

The ruling follows a similar verdict by the ITC yesterday whichwill result in a sales ban on HTC products found to infringe anApple patent. While both Motorola and HTC have technicallylost their cases, they will be pleased that only one of themultiple claims was validated.

Microsoft already licenses technology to HTC, Samsung andother Android supporters, but the case against Motorola haspotentially huge repercussions for the rest of the smartphoneindustry using Google's operating system, particularly sinceGoogle bought the mobile division of Motorola earlier thisyear.

Microsoft is attempting to get a sales ban put in place against anumber of infringing Motorola phones, including the Droid 2,Droixd X and Backflip. However, Motorola could escape sucha ban by dropping the feature from its devices.

Rambus settles stockholderlawsuit for $10.85 millionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/rambus-settles-stockholder-lawsuit-

for-10.85-million/14309.html

December 22nd, 2011

Rambus has settled a lawsuit taken against it by a stockholderfor $10.85 million, marking a rare turning of the tables in thecompany's frequent legal battles.

Rambus has settled a lawsuit taken against it by a stockholderfor $10.85 million, marking a rare turning of the tables in thecompany's frequent legal battles.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2008 by investor StuartJ. Steele, who claimed that Rambus had not correctly datedand accounted for stock option grants prior to 2006, with themajority of these occuring between 1998 and 2001.

The case would have went to court in March 2012, but Rambusdecided to settle out of court for $10.85 million instead,suggesting it was not confident of winning.

This is an ironic twist of fate for the intellectual propertycompany, which is usually on the other end of lawsuits. It hasgained notoriety for its numerous lawsuits against a numberof chipmakers, primarily over patents relating to memorytechnology like DRAM. These included Micron and Hynix, aswell as high profile cases against Samsung and Nvidia, whichhave usually gone in favour of Rambus.

The payout today is relatively minor in the grand scheme ofthings, but it will likely put a smile on the faces of those whobelieve Rambus is abusing its extensive patent collection tosecure lucrative licensing deals.

AMD launching new A-seriesAPUs for desktop and mobileSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-launching-new-a-series-apus-for-

desktop-and-mobile/14305.html

Page 18: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

17

December 22nd, 2011

Not quite in time for the holiday shopping season, AMD hasannounced that it will be launching no less than 13 new APUs,of which five are new desktop models and the rest are mobile.Most of the new models are slight speed bumps, but the longawaited unlocked K SKU for desktop is finally here.

Not quite in time for the holiday shopping season, AMD hasannounced that it will be launching no less than 13 new APUs,of which five are new desktop models and the rest are mobile.Most of the new models are slight speed bumps, but the longawaited unlocked K SKU for desktop is finally here.

The potentially two most interesting models for consumerson the desktop side are the A8-3870K and the A6-3670K,both being the first multiplier unlocked APUs from AMD. Weshould point out that the GPU core is also unlocked on thesemodels and we're of course looking at a pair of 100W TDPchips here. Neither apparently have a turbo frequency, so it'sup to the user to overclock these two APUs if more than stockclock performance is wanted. These models will only be soldin retail box as far as we can tell.

The other three desktop models, the A8-3820, A6-3620 andA4-3420 are all 100MHz speed bumps over the current modelsand nothing else appears to have changed. Much the sameapplies to the new mobile APUs, with the only exception beingthe A4-3305M which appears to only have a higher clockedGPU at 593MHz compared to 444MHz for the A4-3300M,although for some reason it has a lower Radeon core (readshader) count at 160 compared to 240, so it's likely to have aslower GPU regardless of the higher clock speed.

As for pricing, well, AMD didn't provide any, but the A8-3870Kis meant to have an MSRP of US$135 and the A6-3670K shouldretail for around US$115. That said, both models are listedfor pre-order on Amazon where the A8-3870K is going for US$160 and the A6-3670K for US$137 with a list price of US$149.99 for the A8-3870K and US$129.99 for the A6-3670K,so in other words, both models are currently retailing for morethan the list price which is fairly unusual for processors. Bothmodels are expected to arrive on the 26th of December, withthe rest of the desktop line-up to follow. The mobile modelsare already shipping in various notebook products.

MSI announces GT780DXgaming laptopSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/msi-announces-gt780dx-gaming-

laptop/14304.html

December 22nd, 2011

MSI has recently unveiled their new powerful gaming laptop,which comes in the form GT780DX. The gaming powerhouseclaims to pack second generation Intel Core i7 quad coreprocessor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570M discrete graphics cardwith 3GB GDDR5 memory, as well as SteelSeries keyboardand high-end Dynaudio and THX TruStudio Pro for superbsystem, video and audio performance.

The MSI GT780DX gaming laptop features the latest IntelCore i7 quad core processor and latest Nvidia's top-endGeForce GTX 570M discrete graphics card with 3GB GDDR5memory, which boast superior gaming experience, even whenrunning the latest games in high resolution and high detailsettings. On top of that, the MSI gaming notebook also sportsfour DDR3 memory slots that can provide an unprecedented32GB memory. It also comes with RAID 0 accelerated dualhard disk architecture which doubles hard disk storagecapacity, while increasing read-write speed by 70%.

Incorporating the company's proprietary Turbo Drive Engine(TDE) technology, just one touch of the luminescent Turbohotkey located above the keyboard instantly revs up thesystem performance. The GT780DX also features MSI's ownpowerful Cooler Boost technology to rapidly reduce systemtemp to enhance system stability. The GT780DX is equippedwith 17.3-inch full high definition display and comes withCinema Pro technology for a rich, vibrant colors, as well ashigh quality Dynaudio and THX TruStudio Pro to providecrisp, and cinematic-quality audio. In addition, MSI hascollaborated with gaming equipment manufacturer Steelseriesto create a keyboard for the GT780DX that is rugged with LEDbacklighting. No word as to the pricing and availability for thisgaming monster at press time.

Page 19: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

18

StarHub to offer free previewof over 140 TV channels forthe New YearSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/starhub-to-offer-free-preview-of-

over-140-tv-channels-for-the-new-year/14303.html

December 22nd, 2011

Good news to those of you who are staying at home thisfestive season, and has a StarHub cable TV box at home.The Singapore info-communications provider is offering freepreviews of over 140 TV channels for customers and theirfamilies.

From 30 December 2011 (12pm) to 3 January 2012 (6am),StarHub customers will have free access to over 140channels ranging from world news, Chinese infotainment,sports, movies to education, entertainment, kids, lifestyle andinternational programmes. During this period, StarHub TVwill carry exclusive countdown events such as the Taipei 2012Countdown Party on TVBS Asia (StarHub TVChannel 828)that let viewers usher into the New Year.

Other key highlights include Kim Jong-Il: The ForbiddenBiography on HISTORY (StarHub TV Channel 501), Koreanboy band 2AM Concert on E City (StarHub TV Channel825), blockbuster movies such as Inception on HBO (StarHubTV Channel 601) and Let The Bullets Fl on STAR ChineseMovies (StarHub TV Channel 866). Nickelodeon (StarHub TVChannel314) will also be featuring a Spongebob Squarepants48 hours Marathon Special for the young viewers.

In addition, all 32 channels on StarHub TV on Mobile will beavailable to StarHub Mobile postpaid and prepaid customers.StarHub TV on Mobile customers with the supported handsetscan simply sms <LIVETV> to 6757 for postpaid and <SHTV>to 6757 for prepaid to access the 32 free channels. Viewers canrefer to www.starhub.com/freepreview for more details.

Note: The free preview is not extended to STAR ChineseMovies 2, STAR Chinese Movies HD, Cricket Group, RediGold,Horse Racing Channel, On-Demand Channels and Video-On-Demand titles.

Chinese high end CPUs arenow in the game - details: Part1Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-high-end-cpus-are-now-in-the-

game--details-part-1/14302.html

December 22nd, 2011

Last week's report on CPUs, mentioning the Chinese new-generation entries, did raise some waves on various onlineforums. Here's a bit more on some of those processors.

China has now officially gone deep into the core of highend computing, way to the deepest level - designing andmanufacturing its own CPUs - to complete the whole verticalstack from the processor to the application. That includeshaving own designs covering everything from smartphone tosupercomputer, based on three main architectural families:ARM, MIPS and Alpha.

Our last week's report, and its coverage of the ChineseCPUs, has sparked quite a few online comments on variousforums, from those of encouragement and seeking morediversified CPU futures, to outright dismissal of these chipsas copies or inferior designs, or not having, out of all things,X86 architecture - widely regarded as the worst ever CPUarchitecture from a design point of view - as a 'proof of truecapability'.

Well, let's take a look at the three chosen main architectureshere. ARM, MIPS and Alpha are all native RISC architectures- meaning simple, symmetric, orthogonal instruction sets withonly a few addressing modes and options, uniform instructionformat and easy scalability to both wide cores, multi-coresand a range of speeds from low power to top performance,with much lower gate count required than any X86. SinceChina doesn't want to depend on Western software stack forits public and, especially, government use, it doesn't need torely on X86 as this architecture's winning chip is softwarecompatibility with hundreds of thousands of past applications.

So, why bother with the X86 complexities - both technical andlegal - then? The internal market is more than good enoughto, coupled with Linux and other open source stacks, providecomplete solutions and the volumes required to justify theseprocessors even commercially over long run.

Talking about legality: No, these are not fakes or illegal copiesright now. The ARM and MIPS processors made in Chinaare fully licensed by the relevant ARM and MIPS IP owningconsortia, while the Shenwei Alpha-compatible chip is basedon Digital (DEC) IP that is well over 15 years old now - quiteironic for a CPU that matches the best current X86 processorsbased on 2010 IP and in 2 generations later process.

MIPS - Dragon's Progeny

Page 20: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

19

Loongson (Godson) is the name for the Chinese MIPSprocessors, developed by Institute of Computing Technology(ICT) at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Sciences, with Prof HuWeiwu being the design leader. Prof Hu also happens to be adeputy at National People's Congress, which surely is helpfulin gaining support for the overall project. For the past 9 years,the effort is run as a joint venture between the governmentand private enterprises through a company called BLX, apartnership between CAS and Jiangsu Zhongyi Group.

There were 3 major generations of these processors up to now,with the latest one - Loongson 3B - being an 8-core 1.05 GHzCPU, with each CPU having a 256-bit vector FP unit as well.Despite the low clock and 65 nm process, the efficient 4-wayout-of-order cores and vector units with dual 256-bit FP opsper core per cycle, allow Loongson 3B to reach 16 GFLOPsper core at 1 GHz, some 130 GFLOPs peak FP rate in doubleprecision at 1.05 GHz clock. For a comparison, the 3.3GHzCore i7 3960X with AVX would achieve some 160 GFLOPspeak in DP, while the Westmere (Core i7 990X) and BulldozerCPUs would be at not more than two-thirds of this - Core i7990X is at 90 GFLOPs peak, and AMD FX8150 at some 110GFLOPs peak, all in DP. And, oh yes, the Loongson 3B achievesthis performance at just 40 watts TDP, less than one third ofthe above competing CPUs.

Something even more interesting is that Loongson 3B hasover 200 extra instructions in a separate box, which doesn'taffect the main core integrity, that speed up execution of X86software when using QEMU translator. The benefit of this, at a5% die area cost, is running lots of X86 software at near nativespeeds - an approach that Alpha perfected over a decade agowith FX!32 software that enabled Alpha Windows NT to runmany X86 titles at the time at high speed.

Anyway, since the core is reasonably efficient already, thenext step for Loongson 3 is a 16-core version in 28 nmprocess, expected sometime in min 2012. The minor coreimprovements will be there in addition to a much higher clockrate, around 1.6 GHz, as well as larger L2 cache, greater thanthe current 4 MB. The 2 x 64 KB per core L1 caches areexpected to stay on.

What about the software? Several major Linux distros do run- including Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva and China's own RedFlag. The BSD OS ports are done quite a while ago, as wellas Windows CE port. Since there are quite a few consumerdevices based on the previous Loongson / Godson processors,who knows, one day we may even see Android and Windows8 ports, although there doesn't seem to be much pressure felton the Chinese about it.

In the second part, we cover Alpha, ARM and China's owninstruction set attempts.

Be Quiet Straight Power E9CM 580W PSU ReviewSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/be-quiet-straight-power-e9-cm-580w-

psu-review/14301.html

December 22nd, 2011

Be Quiet is company originating from Germany and forthe past several years has been creating computer relatedproducts for enthusiasts. The company offers a very long list ofproducts, yet their primary focus lies on high quality and silentpower supply units. It is a power supply unit that we will put tothe test today, the 580W version of the highly popular StraightPower E9 CM series.

Be Quiet is company originating from Germany and forthe past several years has been creating computer relatedproducts for enthusiasts. The company offers a very long list ofproducts, yet their primary focus lies on high quality and silentpower supply units. It is a power supply unit that we will put tothe test today, the 580W version of the highly popular StraightPower E9 CM series.

Manufacturer features and specifications

· Extremely quiet operation thanks to SilentWingsTechnology

· Extremely efficient and economical operation - 80PLUSGold certification for top efficiency of up to 93%.

· ErP ready. Stand-by energy consumption <0.3W.

· Active clamp + SR technology for highly efficient andstable operation.

· Four independent 12V rails.

· Modular cable management system with numerousconnection options.

· Maximum protection of components (OCP, OVP, UVP,OPP, OTP and SCP).

· 5 years manufacturer‘s warranty.

Continuous power (W) 580Peak power 500 ms (W) 650Form factor ATX 12V ATX12V Version 2.31Form factor EPS 12V EPS12V Version 2.92Modular cable management YesSpecial technology Active Clamp + SRVoltage (Vac) 100 - 240Frequency (Hz) 50 - 60Input current (A) 8 - 5PFC ActivePF Power factor at 100% load 0.99

Page 21: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

20

Compliant to Intel C6 mode YesPower consumption instandby (W)

<0.3

Average life time (h / 25°C) 300.000Operating temperature (up to- °C)

40°C

Kindle Fire has higher adimpression growth than AppleiPadSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/kindle-fire-has-higher-ad-impression-

growth-than-apple-ipad/14300.html

December 22nd, 2011

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, a rival to the iPad, has seen adimpression growth of 19 per cent per day, a higher growth ratethan that experienced by Apple's device following its launch.

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, a rival to the iPad, has seen adimpression growth of 19 per cent per day, a higher growth ratethan that experienced by Apple's device following its launch.

Apple currently sees ad impression monthly growth on itsiOS platform of just seven percent, significantly lower thanAmazon's tablet, according to mobile ad network MillennialMedia. Even the higher figures experienced by Apple in itslaunch days were not as high as that seen by the Kindle Fire.

A major factor in the growth is the fact that Amazon is sellingad-subsidised versions of the tablet and other Kindle devices,which cuts back the upfront costs, but brings in plenty ofadvertising revenue. This likely more than makes up for theslight loss Amazon is experiencing on the Kindle Fire in termsof manufacturing costs.

Another reason for the rapid growth is because the KindleFire is extremely new and launched in the run up to thebusy Christmas shopping season, but the figures are still veryimpressive and suggest it could really give the iPad a run forits money.

Android still has the largest market share for ad impressions,taking up 50 percent. iOS is at 30 percent, while RIM'sBlackBerry is at 17 percent. If Amazon keeps up with its highgrowth pace, however, it could become a major contender toboth RIM and Apple.

Star Wars: The Old RepubliclaunchesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-

launches/14299.html

December 22nd, 2011

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) launches today,delivering an MMO (massively multiplayer online) experiencemade by renowned game developer BioWare set a long timeago in a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) launches today,delivering an MMO (massively multiplayer online) experiencemade by renowned game developer BioWare set a long timeago in a galaxy far, far away.

The game, which is BioWare's first venture into the worldof MMOs, has been in development for five years and isrumoured to have cost a whopping $130 million, making it oneof the most expensive computer games to date.

The pivotal feature that differentiates SWTOR from otherMMOs, such as World of Warcraft, is story, the “fourth pillar”to the progression, exploration and combat pillars found inother games. While some games like Lord of the Rings Onlinego very far to deliver a compelling storyline, they pale incomparison to the sheer scope, complexity and immersionfactor of BioWare's effort, which is fully voice-acted.

Page 22: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

21

BioWare is not ignoring the other three pillars, however, asthere is plenty of progression to be found in the 50 levels, eightclasses, 16 advanced classes, three skill trees per advancedclass, multiple companions, starships, crafting, group contentand raids, to name but a few of the numerous features.

There's lots to explore too, with 19 worlds to visit and plans tohave upwards of 500 worlds by 2025.

Combat is the bread and butter of the game, with most of ittaking place on the ground against artificial enemies or real-life people in player-versus-player (PVP) warzones and in openworld PVP, but there's also space combat to break up themonotony.

“Today represents an amazing milestone for BioWare, EA andStar Wars fans everywhere and we are confident it has beenworth the wait,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare.“The support and resources going into Star Wars: The OldRepublic are not ending today. The innovations we’re bringingto the category are just the start of a journey and ongoinginvestment in our players that will grow, evolve and transformbased on player feedback over the weeks, months and yearsahead.”

The game comes with 30 days of access to the servers, afterwhich a subscription is required, costing $14.99 (€12.99/£8.99) per month, $41.97 (€35.97/£25.17) for three months,or $77.94 (€65.94/£46.14) for six months.

May the Force be with you.

Sony sells 321,400 units ofPlayStation Vita in two daysSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sony-sells-321-400-units-of-

playstation-vita-in-two-days/14298.html

December 22nd, 2011

Sony has sold 321,400 units of its PlayStation Vita handheldgaming device in the first two days of its Japanese launch,making it a strong contender to Nintendo's 3DS.

Sony has sold 321,400 units of its PlayStation Vita handheldgaming device in the first two days of its Japanese launch,making it a strong contender to Nintendo's 3DS.

The healthy launch figures come from research firmEnterbrain, which said that the 3DS sold 371,00 units in itsfirst two days, nearly 50,000 more than Sony's latest effort.Sony is still doing well, however, particularly considering thefact that Nintendo is the market leader in this sector.

Sony is hoping to beat the 3DS sales overall, however,particularly since Nintendo suffered from sharp drops in salesas the initial launch hype died down. This is likely due to theshift to mobile gaming as smartphone sales boomed and thefact that 3D is more of a gimmick feature than something thateveryone is interested in.

The Vita is the successor to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) andis backwards-compatible with PSP games, a feature that willhelp secure it some additional sales. Sony has sold 73 millionPSPs to date, a number it will likely be very happy with for theVita.

The device will launch in Hong Kong and Taiwan within thenext few days and in the US, Europe and Australia in lateFebruary.

HTC phone ban in US as Applewins patent battleSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/htc-phone-ban-in-us-as-apple-wins-

patent-battle/14297.html

December 22nd, 2011

Page 23: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

22

Apple has won a legal battle against HTC over the infringementof a mobile phone patent, which will result in a sales ban of anumber of HTC devices in the United States of America.

Apple has won a legal battle against HTC over the infringementof a mobile phone patent, which will result in a sales ban of anumber of HTC devices in the US.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that HTChad infringed one of the 10 patents that Apple claimed it wasusing without permission. The patent in question relates to adata tapping user interface feature, which lets users make useof embedded data.

Despite the loss, HTC said it was “very pleased” with the resultand intends to respect it. This surprising reaction comes fromthe fact that HTC sees the overall verdict as being made in itsfavour, since nine of the patent claims were dismissed.

HTC said that the ban will cause minimal disruption for thecompany, as it would simply remove the feature from all of itsphones. It also suggested that it might develop a workaroundto achieve the same effect of the feature within the next fourmonths.

This result is the latest in a series of legal conflicts betweenApple and rival smartphone and tablet manufacturers, mostnotably Samsung, which recently secured a reversal to anearlier ban of its Galaxy Tab in Australia.

The HTC ban will come into effect in the US from 19 April,2012, which is plenty of time for the company to alter itsexisting phones.

Could the Radeon HD 7970 beup to 60 percent faster than aGTX 580?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/could-the-radeon-hd-7970-be-up-

to-60-percent-faster-than-a-gtx-580-/14296.html

December 22nd, 2011

One thing is clear, we're not far from the official unveiling ofAMD's next generation of graphics cards, as more and moredetails are appearing on a wide range of websites and we'venow gotten the first indication on performance, in normalizedfigures courtesy of AMD. There are no actual numbers andwe'd take this with a grain of salt, but if this is anywhere evenclose to the real deal, then it's good news for AMD.

One thing is clear, we're not far from the official unveiling ofAMD's next generation of graphics cards, as more and moredetails are appearing on a wide range of websites and we'venow gotten the first indication on performance, in normalizedfigures courtesy of AMD. There are no actual numbers andwe'd take this with a grain of salt, but if this is anywhere evenclose to the real deal, then it's good news for AMD.

Alongside with the normalised performance figures we havemore slides that covers the Radeon HD 7970 in as muchdetail as AMD has been willing to share, many of which we'vealready seen. AMD has come up with some novel new featuressuch as DDM audio or discrete digital multi-point audiowhich allows the HDMI and DisplayPort's to simultaneouslyoutput multiple independent audio streams. With the abilityto stream dual HD video streams from one graphics card, thiscould potentially be used for watching two videos at once ontwo different displays where each screen had its own audio.

For gamers we'll be seeing support for HD3D, i.e. 3D glassescombined with AMD's Eyefinity multi-screen technology withsupport for up to three screens running in 3D. AMD hasalso added several tweaks to Eyefinity itself and we'll no seesupport for combined resolutions of up to 16k x 16k. Ontop of that AMD has added customizable bezel compensationand various new grid configurations to allow for easiercustomization for the user.

Page 24: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

23

But the most interesting slide is one that's really blurry andhard to read, although thankfully someone cleaned it up andmade it comprehensible and hopefully also still correct. AMDis expecting a performance lead of somewhere between 25and 60 percent compared to Nvidia's GTX 580 which is nosmall claim to make, especially when one of the games with 60percent performance improvement happens to be Civilization5 which isn't exactly beating Nvidia's hardware using currentAMD graphics cards.

Games like Alien versus Predator and Crysis 2 should seeabout 25 to 35 percent increased performance and as we saidat the beginning of this article, we'd take these numbers witha sprinkle of salt or two, as they are after all AMD's ownnormalized numbers. Even so, if AMD can come close to whatthe company seems to be promising, then the Radeon HD 7970is going to be an interesting, albeit expensive graphics card andsomething to give Nvidia a challenge for its next generationcards to battle it out with. It's only a couple of days to go untilwe know how close these numbers really are, but consideringthe major changes AMD has done to its GPU architecture we'dbe surprised if we didn't see a major performance boost, butyou can read more about that in our previous piece.

HIS announces the Radeon HD6930, kits it out with IceQ XcoolingSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/his-announces-the-radeon-hd-6930-

kits-it-out-with-iceq-x-cooling/14295.html

December 22nd, 2011

It appears that the much rumoured Radeon HD 6930 isthe real deal, as at least one manufacturer has announced acard based on the budget high-end GPU from AMD. HIS hasannounced its version of the Radeon HD 6930 called the 6930IceQ X and it appears to be identical to HIS' 6950 card withthe same cooling in terms of overall design.

It appears that the much rumoured Radeon HD 6930 isthe real deal, as at least one manufacturer has announced acard based on the budget high-end GPU from AMD. HIS hasannounced its version of the Radeon HD 6930 called the 6930IceQ X and it appears to be identical to HIS' 6950 card withthe same cooling in terms of overall design.

The main difference is of course a lower shader count (orStream Processors in AMD speak), although HIS doesn'tspecify the exact number, it is believed to be 1280, down from1408 in the Radeon HD 6950. The 6930 also loses out oneight texture units compared to the 6950, but retains all ofthe ROPs. Unlike the Radeon HD 5830 which had a higherclock speed than the Radeon HD 5850, the 6930 is actuallyclocked marginally slower than the 6950 with the GPU coreat 750MHz versus 800MHz. The memory is also clocked200MHz slower at 4.8GHz (effectively) compared to 5GHz.AMD has apparently placed an upper clock limit for partnercards as well where the GPU cannot be pre-overclocked toanything higher than 790MHz, although the memory clock isallowed to go up to 5.1GHz (effectively).

There have been some questions as to where this card fits intoAMD's line-up of cards and judging by some slides posted overat Expreview, AMD is targeting the Radeon HD 6930 as a morefeature rich version of the Radeon HD 6870, going as far asstating that it gives Cayman level features at Barts level pricing.We have yet to see any pricing of Radeon HD 6930 cards, butas luck has it, Expreview did get their hands on a PowerColorcard and ran it through some benchmarks at least. Comparedto the Radeon HD 6950 we're looking at an average of about sixpercent slower with 3DMark 11 and Dirt 3 showing the biggestperformance difference of close to 10 percent, with Left 4 Dead2 showing the least at about 1.5 percent.

Page 25: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

24

Compared to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560 Ti the difference isslightly higher at about seven percent advantage to Nvidia, oralmost 10 percent on average with PhysX enabled. Here somebenchmarks actually show a minor performance advantagefor AMD when PhysX is disabled, but in the worst casescenarios such as Batman Arkham Asylum the 6930 is over30 percent behind, or some 14fps. According to Expreviewthe PowerColor card they looked at is meant to be some 20percent cheaper than an equivalent Radeon HD 6950, so ifyou must have a VLIW4 card with EQAA, dual BIOS andAMD PowerTune, but can't afford a Radeon HD 6950, thenthis might be what you've been waiting for. That said, wewouldn't bother with this card at all if you're looking at buyinga new graphics card now, as AMD is coming out with the7000-series shortly which is expected to deliver vastly superiorperformance, although once again the price is an unknownfactor that might make this a good budget buy for gamers.

SingTel launches LTE mobilebroadband service forconsumer and business usersSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/singtel-launches-lte-mobile-

broadband-service-for-consumer-and-business-users/14294.html

December 22nd, 2011

This afternoon, SingTel announced the launch oftheir commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobilebroadband which claims to be the first LTE service inSingapore to be made available for consumer and businesscustomers.

Today, SingTel announced the launch of their LTE mobilebroadband service for consumers and business users. CalledBroadband on Mobile Prestige 75, the LTE service claimsto offer theoretical download speeds of up to 75Mbps andtypical download speeds between 3.4Mbps and 12Mbps. Themobile Internet access is said to be more than three timesfaster than existing 3G-based services, with one-fifth of thenetwork latency. At launch, the outdoor coverage in thecentral financial district and other areas that experiencehigh data usage include - Shenton Way, Orchard, City Hall,Marina Bay, River Valley, Tanglin, Newton, Novena, Kallang,Rochor, Outram, Tanjong Pagar, Jurong West, Boon Lay,Bukit Panjang, Bedok and Changi.

In-building coverage is available in major shopping mallssuch as Ngee Ann City, Plaza Singapura, Ang Mo Kio Hub,Tampines Mall, West Mall, Parkway Parade and Jurong IMM.Office buildings such as Republic Plaza and Temasek Towerare also covered. The service will fall back to SingTel’s 3G-based service when users roam outside the LTE coverage area.

Broadband on Mobile Prestige 75 will initially be availablefor USB dongle modems only, and will be enhanced inthe near future to support LTE-enabled smartphones andtablets. Existing 21Mbps 3G Broadband on Mobile Premium21 customers can upgrade to LTE with a top-up of S$10 permonth. According to SingTel, the operator is progressivelyexpanding the network, and it expects to provide LTE coveragefor 80 per cent of mobile data users by end of 2012.

SingTelBroadband on MobilePrestige 75 LTE Price PlanPrice (including GST) S$69.90/monthData Bundle 50GB 3G data (21Mbps) +

10GB LTE dataExcess Charges $0.512/MB, Capped at

$94.16/monthDownload Speed Theoretical: 75Mbps Typical range: 3.4Mbps to

12Mbps

Page 26: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

25

Comes with free LTE dongleand free Wireless@SG(3Mbps)

3G Mobilebroadbandplan

Theoreticalspeed

Typicaldownloadspeed range

Price

Classic 3.6 3.6Mbps 0.8Mbps to2.1Mbps

S$29.90

Priority 7.2(with PriorityPass)

7.2Mbps 1.4Mbps to3.7Mbps

S$40

Premium 21(with PriorityPass)

21Mbps 1.7Mbps to4.8Mbps

S$59.90

Oppo to launch Find 2 with10-megapixel camera andAndroid 4.0 ICS?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/oppo-to-launch-find-2-with-10-

megapixel-camera-and-android-4.0-ics-/14293.html

December 22nd, 2011

Chinese electronics company Oppo may not be a well-knownname, but their Find X903 is a stylish phone with slideoutkeyboard and endorsed by famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio.The company may be planning to launch a new smartphone,supposedly called Find 2, which has a 10-megapixel built-incamera and runs the latest Google Android 4.0 Ice CreamSandwich.

OPPO Electronics Corp., Ltd is an electronics manufacturerbased in China with product lines including MP3 players,portable media players, LCD TVs, DVD and Blu-ray Discplayers, as well as mobile phones. The stylish Oppo Find X903

with slide-out keyboard, was launched in August and wasendorsed by famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio. According toonline sources, the company is developing a new smartphonecalled Find 2, which may incorporate Qualcomm 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage, 4-inchIPS touchscreen, 10-megapixel rear and 1-megapixel frontcameras, and run Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwichoperating system. No details as to how much the OPPO Find 2will retail, and its availability, though it is expected to be aboutthe same price tag as the Meizu MX's range of smartphonesof similar specifications - 2,999 yuan (or approximately US$472).

AMD named one of 10 mosttrustworthy companies inAmericaSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-named-one-of-10-most-

trustworthy-companies-in-america/14285.html

December 22nd, 2011

AMD certainly had quite a turbulent year. The year startedwith Dirk Meyer being ousted as the CEO, Thomas Seifertconsolidating the company as interim-CEO and Rory P. Readsweeping the broom, firing off 12% of the company. That kindof approach has its benefits.

Following the big sweep, which resulted in 12% of the companybeing let go, Samsung jumping through the air with joy ofgetting several brilliant CPU architects (former Fusion APUheads) and radical moves such as firing a Chief MarketingOfficer, the company is looking up and about.

Next Decate Inc, a company behind Trust Across America,self-pronounced "think tank dedicated to unraveling thecomplexities of trustworthy business behavior" announced theresults of their second annual study, in which semiconductorcompanies played a big role.

The Top 10 Most Trustworthy Companies in America in 2011are:

1. Smithfield Foods (SFD), a global food company (http://www.smithfieldfoods.com)

2. Xcel Energy (XEL), a regional supplier of electric powerand natural gas (http://www.xcelenergy.com)

3. Nike, Inc. (NKE), a global marketer of athletic footwear,apparel and equipment (http://www.nikeinc.com)

4. Dole Food Company (DOLE), the world's largestproducer of high quality fruits and vegetables (http://www.dole.com)

5. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor designinnovator (http://www.amd.com)

Page 27: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

26

6. Allergan (AGN), a global technology-drivenmulti-specialty healthcare company (http://www.allergan.com)

7. Temple-Inland (TIN), a low-cost corrugatedpackaging and building products company (http://www.templeinland.com)

8. Herman Miller (MLHR), a designer and manufacturer offurniture (http://www.hermanmiller.com)

9. Texas Instruments (TXN), a developer of analog, digitalsignal processing, and semiconductor technologies(http://www.ti.com)

10. Lexmark International (LXK), a provider of printingand imaging products and software solutions (http://www.lexmark.com)

Two semiconductor giants, Lexmark and Texas Instrumentsappeared in 2010 as well, while AMD makes a debutappearance on the impressive fifth spot, only two spots belowNike. The companies are ranked using the FAST method, andaccording to the researcher, no company achieved the perfectscore of "100", though. In fact, majority of companies didn'tmanage to achieve 90. Trust Across America the companieshave no say in the process, and aren’t even informed they're inthe running.

FACTS method is split in "Financial Stability andStrength, Accounting Conservativeness, Corporate Integrity,Transparency, Sustainability".

Then again, a question ponders in our heads… if FACTS isreally a valid method of calculation, where in the world arecash cow companies such as Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Vodafone,Verizon and others? The answer to that question is very simple- they failed in one or more segments of FACTS.

Or... we'll simply leave you to be the judge.

Bose launches first soundbarsystems in SingaporeSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/bose-launches-first-soundbar-systems-

in-singapore/13747.html

December 22nd, 2011

Bose is renowned for their headphones, speaker systems andTVs. Today, the company announced the launch of theirfirst soundbar systems in Singapore - the Lifestyle 135 homeentertainment system and the CineMate 1 SR digital hometheater speaker system.

Atlas Sound & Vision, distributor of Bose, has introducedthe first soundbar systems from Bose - the Lifestyle 135home entertainment system and the CineMate 1 SR digitalhome theater speaker system. Incorporating proprietary Bosetechnologies, both system claim to offer a new level of audioperformance and placement flexibility for soundbar solutions,delivering home theater sound from one elegant speaker array,and a new wireless Acoustimass module. The Lifestyle 135system includes a media console for up to six high definitionsources (four HDMI inputs), an AM/FM tuner, and a dockfor the Apple iPod or iPhone. Featuring the proprietary BoseUnify intelligent integration system, the media console actsas a central hub and makes connecting devices to the consoleconvenient. The CineMate 1 SR system attaches directly tothe TV with just a cable. Both soundbar set-ups feature aprogrammable remote that controls the system and nearly anyconnected source, from a Blu-ray Disc player to a cable box.

PhaseGuide Technology: Immersive Sound From One VisibleSpeaker

The Lifestyle 135 system and CineMate 1 SR systemrepresent the first Bose speakers to feature breakthroughPhaseGuide sound radiator technology, originally used in thecompany’s revolutionary VideoWave entertainment system –the industry’s first high-definition television that integratesa complete home theater sound system behind a 46” 1080pLCD display. Combined with proprietary TrueSpace digitalprocessing circuitry, PhaseGuide technology transforms thelistening experience: discrete sound can be heard in placeswhere there are no speakers. The new Acoustimass moduledelivers low notes with cinematic impact. Smaller thanprevious Bose Acoustimass modules, its wireless link allows itto be hidden,completely out of sight.

Soundbar Setup: Horizontal, Vertical, Anywhere in the Room

Unlike conventional soundbars, the Lifestyle135 andCineMate 1 SR systems have true placement flexibility - theycan be positioned near the TV, and in two orientations.Bose FlexMount automatic placement compensation senseswhether the speaker has been placed horizontally on a table,or mounted vertically on a wall. It then automatically adjuststhe sound, offering users two choices for soundbar setup withthe same assurance of spacious, natural sound. The mediaconsole included with the Lifestyle135 system serves as the

Page 28: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 22nd, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

27

hub for home entertainment sources. The exclusive Bose Unifyintelligent integration system makes connecting devices to theconsole effectively mistake-proof. With Bose ADAPTiQ audiocalibration technology, the system can deliver optimal soundin any room. It first recognises where the system is located,then compensates for how the acoustics of the space affect itsaudio quality – customising the sound for the room’s uniquesize, shape, even furnishings.

Pricing and Availability

The Bose Lifestyle 135 home entertainment system and theBose CineMate1 SR digital home theater speaker system areavailable for S$4,999 and S$2,999 respectively. They can bepurchased from the Atlas Experience Audio Visual Boutique@ TripleOne Somerset, and Bose @ Millenia Walk.

Page 29: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

1

VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks!VR-Zone | Stuff for the Geeks is a bi-weekly publicationcovering the latest gadgets and stuff for the geeks.

First Looks: MSI Big Bang-XPower II (X79) MotherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/first-looks-msi-big-bang-xpower-ii-

x79-motherboard/14361.html

December 27th, 2011

One of the most belated X79 motherboard has finally arrivedin our labs! MSI's Big Bang-XPower II (MS-7737) is a militarythemed and feature packed monster, designed to be theultimate board for both extreme overclockers and gamers. Wetake a first look before our full review next month...

Front of what is a VERY glossy and rainbow coloured box

Back End

MSI Big Bang-XPower II (X79) Motherboard - XL-ATX, 7 PCIeslots, 8 DIMMs

Back of motherboard. Notice the solder points of the PCIeslots - only the 1st and 5th slot will get full x16 PCIe lanesconnectivity, while the rest get x8 lanes

Page 30: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

2

I/O Panel - PS/2 port, 6 USB 2.0, 4 USB 3.0 (NECD720200AF1), Firewire-800 (VIA VT6315N), Dual GigabitLAN (Intel 82579V and Intel 82574L) and 7.1 Channel AudioPorts (more on this later)

Documentation and O/C Guide

SLi bridges, SATA Cables, Extenders for voltage monitoringand other common stuff

GIGABYTE Issues RecallNotice On X79 UD3, UD5,G1.Assassin 2 MotherboardsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/gigabyte-issues-recall-notice-on-x79-

ud3-ud5-g1.assassin-2-motherboards/14360.html

December 27th, 2011

Gigabyte announced a general recall of three of its front-line socket LGA2011 motherboards from the markets, theX79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2, following increasingcomplaints of burnt CPU VRM even under stress appliedrelatively-moderately overclocked setups.

In a move that puts a large chunk of its socket LGA2011motherboard lineup in jeopardy, Gigabyte announced ageneral recall of the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, andG1.Assassin 2 X79 motherboards, responding to an increasingnumber of complaints from overclockers that their boards'VRM weren't able to keep up with the stress they'resupposed to cope with. Last week, an overclocker from Taiwan"japan0827" from the XFastest community posted a videoon YouTube showing how the CPU VRM of his X79-UD3motherboard popped up in smoke when subjected to stress.

Page 31: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

3

This issue could have been caused by bad firmware tocomplement the board's CPU VRM, and bad-quality VRMcomponents in general. In its latest press release issued on itsChinese site, Gigabyte offered two remedies. First, it issueda BIOS update for existing owners, which prevents this fromhappening. It does so, however, by thottling the CPU when it'sunder extreme stress, making these boards practically uselessto overclockers, and is only recommended for those who runtheir setups with mild overclocking that isn't voltage-assisted.The second remedy, of course, is an unconditional return forreplacement. Overclockers can send their burnt boards, aswell as healthy ones that are prone to this issue, for a freereplacement, when corrected boards are available.

Meanwhile, Gigabyte will be pulling its affected X79motherboards off shelves worldwide, and replace them withcorrected boards that will most likely be revisions of existingmodels that will sufficiently advertise the issue as beingcorrected.

LG Fantasy Windows MangoPhone with 4-inch IPStouchscreen leakedSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lg-fantasy-windows-mango-phone-

with-4-inch-ips-touchscreen-leaked/14359.html

December 27th, 2011

Even though Microsoft has announced the new WindowsMango operating system, it seems that only Samsung and HTChave came up with the new smartphones at launch. However,a new LG Windows Phone has recently been leaked and isreported to sport a 4-inch IPS display.

The LG Spectrum Android 4G "world phone" may belaunching soon, but news of the Korean manufacturer havinga Windows Phone in development has been leaked. CalledLG Fantasy, the Windows Phone will feature a 4-inch IPStouchscreen display and is the company's third WindowsPhone; sibling to the LG Optimus 7 and LG Quantum. Fromthe leaked photo, the LG Fantasy has the standard buttonlayout below the display - back, home and search - and willrun the latest Windows Mango operating system. According tosources, the LG Fantasy could show its face at the upcomingCES 2012, and launched in Q1 next year.

LG showcases 55-inch OLEDdisplaySource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lg-showcases-55-inch-oled-

display/14358.html

December 27th, 2011

LG has announced the development of a 55-inch OLEDdisplay which claims to be less than 5mm thin, consumes lesspower and has higher than 100,000:1 contrast ratio comparedto the conventional LCD panels.

Page 32: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

4

LG has come up with a new 55-inch OLED display whichclaims to less than 5mm slim, consumes less power andhas higher than 100,000:1 contrast ratio as well as 1,000times faster response speed than LCD panels. The LG OLEDpanel incorporates color filters for the light-emitting elementsof white OLEDs to provide accurate color display, whilecompetitor Samsung uses a method in which red, green andblue light-emitting elements are applied. The company plansto showcase the new 55-inch OLED panel at the ConsumerElectronics Show (CES) 2012 at Las Vegas next month.

Intel's 32nm "Medfield" MobileChip Surprising Performance,Power Consumption LeakedSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-s-32nm-medfield-mobile-chip-

surprising-performance-power-consumption-leaked/14355.html

December 27th, 2011

As the launch of next-generation Atom mobile platform looms,Intel is making more and more semi-public and public noiseabout the new, first true SoC (System-on-a-Chip) from theirlabs.

According to our conversations with various sources insideIntel, the company is taking the task of "becoming mobile" veryseriously. First and foremost, Intel went through an internalreorganization and merged four distinctive business units intoone: Mobile Communications, Mobile Wireless, Netbook &Tablet PC and Ultra-Mobility.

Known as "Mobile and Communications", this new businessunit is headed by Mike Bell and Hermann Eul. The firstproduct coming out of this newly formed division is a 32nmchip called Medfield. Medfield is the codename for Intel'sfirst true SoC and first true highly-integrated-solution, sinceold Intel mentality liked to speak about "vertically integratedplatforms" without explicitly mentioning just how much chipsyou need in order to have a functional platform (we allremember two-chip "platforms" that require 4-5 chips towork).

Be that as it may, Intel's "Medfield" chip is the first true SoCwhich will compete against Apple's A-Series, NVIDIA Tegra,Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Texas InstrumentsOMAP and the likes. Out of all the chips mentioned above, onlySamsung's Exynos is currently manufactured in 32nm process,just like Medfield.

Few weeks ahead of the official launch, we now have firstperformance numbers of "Medfield Tablet Platform". Theactual development has an x86 processing core operating at1.6GHz, 1GB LP-DDR2, WLAN/Bluetooth/FM Radio chip ofunnamed manufacturer, 10.1", 1280x800 resolution screenand eMMC/micro-SD card for removable storage.

The benchmarks were performed on Honeycomb (Android3.x) while the shipping products will utilize the Ice CreamSandwich (Android 4.x) operating system.

So, what the performance is?

Intel Medfield 1.6GHz currently scores around 10,500 inCaffeinemark 3. For comparison, NVIDIA Tegra 2 scoresaround 7500, while Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 scores8000. Samsung Exynos is the current king of the crop, scoring8500. True - we're waiting for the first Tegra 3 results to comethrough.

There are more tests being mentioned to us, but needless tosay - Intel should have a competitive part... at least as far asperformance goes. The second and more important part is howmuch power does it actually consumes.

As it stands right now, the prototype version is consuming2.6W in idle with the target being 2W, while the worst casescenarios are video playback: watching the video at 720p inAdobe Flash format will consume 3.6W, while the target forshipping parts should be 1W less (2.6W).

Page 33: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

5

Can Intel achieve these performance targets in shipping partswith all the limitations that mass-manufactured parts have -only time will tell.

Upcoming Dual Xeon E5Socket 2011 boards: Howabout 4 x 16 PCIe slots,native?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/upcoming-dual-xeon-e5-socket-2011-

boards-how-about-4-x-16-pcie-slots-native-/14357.html

December 27th, 2011

Some 3 months from now, the new-generation Dual Socket2011 Xeon platform will be out now. What to do with the 80PCIe 3.0 lanes on it?

Sometime in March, after the widely known delays, the DualSocket 2011 processors and boards - the Xeon E5 'Romley'platform - should finally be out. One interesting new featureis, of course, 80 PCIe 3.0 lanes in total on each of those boards,as each chip has 40 of them. That is, of course, in addition toPCIe 2.0 lanes going to the I/O chips.

Now, you could obviously have four full x16 v3 PCIe slotsthere for quad graphics card setups, as well as an extra pairof x8 slots for, say, superfast SSD enterprise card and aninterconnect board, but will any boards actually implementthat, and what can be supported on them if you want to set upa parallel graphics rig?

The EVGA SR-X mainboard is the only one known up to nowto have the support for both SLI and CrossFire among the DualSocket 2011 offerings expected at launch, including of coursequad-GPU modes of both parallel graphics combinations.Other boards expected, such as Intel 'Crown Pass' , have evenmore slots than the SR-X, but, as of now, are only expected tosupport CrossFire from AMD - including the quad mode - atlaunch. Intel's mobo is, in a way, more flexible slot-wise thanthe EVGA one as you can put in four full double-width GPUs attheir own x16 slots, and still have one more PCIe slot availablefor other things such as DSP sound or SSD or whatever. And, ithas full 16 DIMM slots for DDR3-1600+ memory. Either way,both boards are gigantic size wise, Intel is also there this timewith the 14 x 15 inch format.

Worried about GPUs that are on PCIe lanes from differentCPUs communicating slowly? Well, don't worry so much.Remember there are TWO QPI links between those Xeon E5's?Each running at 8 GT/s, the same raw lane speed as PCIev3, for better sync? The 64 GB/s interprocessor bandwidthprovided by these two links should support a fair bit of inter-GPU communication in this case, in parallel with the inter-core comms from both CPUs.

Anyway, can't wait to see the new stuff - especially if Inteldoes come out with the unlocked SKUs of these Xeon E5's atlaunch...

Creative's Sound Core3D getsnekkid in front of the cameraSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/creative-s-sound-core3d-gets-nekkid-

in-front-of-the-camera/14353.html

December 27th, 2011

Remember that "quad core" sound chip Creative announcedback in September? Well, the first reviews are starting to comein now and we're finally getting a look at the actual chip. Itturns out that we were almost right in suspecting that theSound Core3D wasn't quite what Creative made it sound like.

Remember that "quad core" sound chip Creative announcedback in September? Well, the first reviews are starting to comein now and we're finally getting a look at the actual chip. Itturns out that we were almost right in suspecting that theSound Core3D wasn't quite what Creative made it sound like.

Page 34: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

6

The chip is in fact nestling underneath the "heatsink" on theboards, but it's a rather tiny chip as unveiled by Impress PCWatch. The model name is CA0132 and for those that care, it'smade in Taiwan. The chip we initially presumed was the SoundCore3D is labelled CA0113 and is made in Korea, althoughwe're not quite certain what the functionality of it is, especiallyas this chip is missing from ASRock's Game Blaster card, whichco-incidentally was also torn down. ASRock also seems to beusing higher quality capacitors than Creative.

What's more is that the Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional is usingexactly the same PCB as the standard Recon3D, with the onlyaddition that we could spot being a pair of red LED lights. Youdo of course get a red rather than blue "heatsink" and thatshielding with a window in it. It's actually quite amusing to seethat ASRock has managed to squeeze in a lot more on its card,yet the PCB is about half the size.

Sadly our Japanese is more than lacking, but our gist of thearticle on Impress PC Watch seems to suggest that anyone thathas an X-Fi card should hang on to it, as the Sound Core3Dis not a step up. Apparently for voice chat/calls the SoundCore3D is the better choice, but in terms of audio quality andfor gaming it can't keep up with the older X-Fi based cards.It's not hard to see why when you take into consideration thatwe're talking about a far simpler chip here judging it solely onits size and packaging. Considering the pricing – at least inSingapore – is identical between the new Sound Core3D cardsand their older X-Fi siblings, we know what we'd get.

Source: Impress PC Watch (in Japanese)

Intel hoping that the NASmarket will save Atom, if allelse failsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-hoping-that-the-nas-market-will-

save-atom-if-all-else-fails/14352.html

December 27th, 2011

We've already reported on Intel's upcoming CentertonAtom SoCs that are expected to arrive around Q2 next year,but it seems like this might be the saviour of Intel's Atomprocessors in the long run. This is one of the few marketspaces where Intel can really compete with ARM, as anARM processor in a NAS doesn't generally offer the kindof performance an x86 chip can, not even that of an Atomprocessor.

We've already reported on Intel's upcoming Centerton AtomSoCs that are expected to arrive around Q2 next year, but itseems like this might be the saviour of Intel's Atom processorsin the long run. This is one of the few market spaces whereIntel can really compete with ARM, as an ARM processor ina NAS doesn't generally offer the kind of performance an x86chip can, not even that of an Atom processor.

Digitimes is reporting that Intel is shifting a lot more of itsfocus towards Centerton which is designed for the NAS andentry-level server market. As a single chip SoC this is anideal chip for this market space, although an external storagecontroller is still needed. At least Intel has been smart this timearound and offered plenty of PCI Express lanes so a wide rangeof add-in storage controllers could be added for various marketsegments.

Intel already holds a fair share of the NAS market with its Atomprocessors, but most are far from ideal as we're looking attwo or three chip solutions with poor support for anything butsoftware RAID. This is something Centerton would address byallowing third party storage controllers to be used and we havea feeling Intel will have some solutions of its own to pair of upwith the new Atom chips.

It's a logical move as there has been a sharp drop in the salesof netbooks, even though Intel will have a new platform readybefore the end of the year which should be more appealingto consumers thanks to full HD video playback and HDMIconnectivity to mention a couple of key features Intel hasfinally added. We'll see how things unfold for Intel, as thecompany should finally be making a big push into the tabletand smartphone market come next year, but the company isgoing to have a rough time staying competitive here against thelatest generation of ARM processors which are also expectedto arrive next year.

Samsung is hoping for 2012to be the year of transparentLCDsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-is-hoping-for-2012-to-be-the-

year-of-transparent-lcds/14351.html

Page 35: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

7

December 27th, 2011

Ahead of CES Samsung has been busy pimping all sorts oftechnologies, but it seems like the company is very seriousabout transparent LCDs and in this case we're looking at largescreen applications. We're not sure if the world is ready for thistechnology as yet and it looks like we've got a while to go untilit's anywhere near to become mainstream.

Ahead of CES Samsung has been busy pimping all sorts oftechnologies, but it seems like the company is very seriousabout transparent LCDs and in this case we're looking at largescreen applications. We're not sure if the world is ready for thistechnology as yet and it looks like we've got a while to go untilit's anywhere near to become mainstream.

Samsung is trying to convince the world that it needs toimplements its LTI460AP01 transparent LCD into variousmovie like solutions, although so far it seems like most ofthe applications are in fact for the advertising industry. TheLTI460AP01 isn't quite on par with your average 46-inchLCD display in terms of resolution either, as it only manages1366x768 compared to 1920x1080 for your average LCD TVthese days, but that's kind of beside the point here.

One of the selling points according to Samsung is thefact that as long as there's enough daylight/artificial light,there's no need to switch on any kind of backlight. As youmight've figured out by now, the backlight is the most powerhungry component in an LCD screen and Samsung claimsthat the LTI460AP01 uses only 10 percent of the electricityof a comparable LCD panel with backlight. That said, theLTI460AP01 isn't void of backlight, as it can be switched onwhen there isn't enough light coming from behind the panel.

So far we've seen mostly what we feel is fairly tacky attemptsat selling and promoting transparent LCDs where objects areput behind the panel in a way that they can be seen as a part ofwhat is usually some kind of advertisement being displayed onthe screen and Samsung's demo pictures are more of the same.Now we're sure that there are applications where a transparentLCD would indeed be useful and we're hoping for a day whenyou can connect your smartphone wirelessly to such a display

that replaces the windows in mass transit trains for some largescreen browsing, although we're most likely having slightly toohigh hopes here.

Sony and Samsung part wayson LCD partnershipSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sony-and-samsung-part-ways-on-lcd-

partnership/14350.html

December 27th, 2011

The two consumer electronics giants Sony and Samsunghas decided to part ways on their joint LCD manufacturingbusiness, S-LCD with Samsung taking the reins. This doesn'tcome free for Samsung though, as the company is paying afair amount of cash up front to Sony to take over the LCDmanufacturing business on its own.

The two consumer electronics giants Sony and Samsunghas decided to part ways on their joint LCD manufacturingbusiness, S-LCD with Samsung taking the reins. This doesn'tcome free for Samsung though, as the company is paying afair amount of cash up front to Sony to take over the LCDmanufacturing business on its own.

Samsung has agreed to pay Sony a cash lump sum of aroundUS$940 million for Sony's 50 percent in the joint venture;not exactly a small sum of money, but this is only part of theagreement between the two companies. As it happens, the twocompanies have signed a strategic agreement where Sony willsource LCD panels from Samsung, although at market price.Sony's press release suggests that this is a good thing for Sony,as the company no longer needs to be worried about the actualmanufacturing process or the cost of running the factories.

Sony will still be working with Samsung on the researchand engineering side of things to bring out better and moreadvanced LCD panels and as such Sony will still have somelevel of control in terms of the products that Samsung willbe manufacturing. The deal is set to be closed by the end ofJanuary as long as it passes the approval procedures by thevarious regulatory authorities.

Club3D Radeon HD 6870 X2Review - Two Barts XT goagainst the big boysSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/club3d-radeon-hd-6870-x2-review--

two-barts-xt-go-against-the-big-boys/14349.html

December 27th, 2011

Page 36: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

8

What happens when you slap two mid-range Barts XT (Radeon6870) GPUs on a single board? Not too shabby at all...

Netherlands based Club3D products are mainly distributedand sold in Europe and Indonesia - so our predominentlyAmerican and Singapore readers won't find them on localshelves.

The 12 inch (30.48cm) long Radeon HD 6870 X2. Its coolingsolution, dubbed "CoolStream", uses 6 heatpipes and 2 silentfans to dissipate heat

Needs 2 x 8 pin PCIe power connectors

2 Mini-DP, a DVI-D and DVI-I and a single HDMI port.

Accessories and Documentation. The card also comes with afree copy of the DiRT3 racing game

Page 37: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

9

Chinese high end CPUs arenow in the game - details: Part3 - ARM and othersSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-high-end-cpus-are-now-in-the-

game--details-part-3--arm-and-others/14348.html

December 27th, 2011

In this final part of the Chinese CPU development coverage,we look at the local ARM processor flavours, as well as China'sown instruction set attempts aimed at the general market.

While MIPS and Alpha were at the forefront of RISC highend architecture development, the sole Europe-developedsurviving instruction set architecture, ARM, was from the verystart in 1985 aimed at the entry level - whether it was theBBC micro home computer successor then, or the myriad ofsmartphones and netbooks today. The Chinese have embracedARM architecture as well for this part of the market, withseveral licenses up to now. These cover the full spectrum ofconsumer devices, from smartphones and tablets to netbooks,DTV settop boxes and car gadgets.

The Fuzhou-based RockChip offers Cortex A8-based customARM CPUs and SoC chips for personal entertainmentdevices. Their newest RK29xx is the first chip to decodeGoogle's WebM VP8 in hardware. The 1.2 GHz CPU with 512KB L2 cache also has an integrated 60 million polygons/s GPUas well as DSP-accelerated 1080p playback and encoding inmost formats. It supports tablets and smartphones with up to1280x800 displays. A dual-core version is supposedly underdevelopment as well.

The Hangzhou-based NationalChip licensed the ARM over3 years ago, with specific focus on derivatives for digitalentertainment, mainly digital TV sets and set-top boxes.Considered as one of top ten Chinese IC design companiesby EETimes China, the company offers GX1100, 1200, 1500,and 3000 families of integrated SoC-approach components fordigital entertainment.

Then, the Shanghai-based Leadcore Technology, the chipdesign arm of Chinese communications equipment companyDatang Group, is working on custom ARM processors basedon the Cortex-A9 MPCore, the ARM Mali-400 MP graphicscore and Cortex-A9 optimization pack for the TSMC 40 nm lowpower process technology. Their focus is putting together uniand dual-core versions of such chips with its own basebandchip to target high-end smartphones based on the China's 3Gstandard, TD-SCDMA.

Another Shanghai company, Brite Semiconductor Corp., afabless startup founded in 2008, has licensed most majorARM processor cores, including Cortex, ARM9, ARM11 andMali on a long term arrangement. The license also coversCoresight debug and trace technology and peripherals that arecompliant with the AMBA on-chip bus. Brite provides designservices to electronics companies and works with SMIC, the

Page 38: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

10

local foundry, on the manufacturing side. They have alreadysuccessfully output 40 nm chips from this foundry earlier thisyear.

Yet another company from 'New New York' of Asia,Shanghai InfoTM Micro-electronics, has licences the ARM11processor core, Cortex-A5 and Cortex-A9 processor cores andthe Mali300 and Mali400 GPUs for 3-D enabled mobilecomputing devices to be manufactured by Shuoying DigitalScience & Technology (China) Co. Ltd. which is its both ownerand main customer. They also have multicore ICs ready as ofnow.

In Zhuhai , AllWinner, focusing on HD media semiconductors,took the ARM Cortex-A8 processor and the Mali-400 MPGPU for their own HD-enabed procssors to be used witha range of Android OS-based tablets, smart TVs, personalmedia players, eBooks, smart media boxes, IP cameras andautomotive multimedia gadgets. The Allwinner TechnologySoC designs are available since this past summer.

Finally, we look at the ultimate approach - designing yourown instruction set from ground up, a venture few dare totry, especially these days since X86 is pre dominant for thepast decade across the board. ICube, a Shenzhen company,created the Harmony Unified Processor Technology, whichis supposed to tightly integrate two different processortypes, CPU and GPU, into one unified core - soundssomewhat like AMD Fusion approach, but with a freshinstruction set optimised from scratch for the purpose. Thistechnology consists of the Multi-Thread Virtual Pipelineparallel computing core (MVP), an independent instructionset architecture (ISA), an optimizing compiler and the AgileSwitch dynamic load balancer.

Even though these are big-named things reminiscent ofwhat you see in servers, ICube's technology is actually usedin small SoC solutions for the hand-held computing andcommunication market, with a focus on the Android OS. Theinitial product, ICube IC1, is a 600 MHz dual core 32-bitSoC with 8 threads (4 per core) in parallel and 5160 DMIPsdeclared throughput, a 70 million polygon/s, 600 Mpixel/sGPU, and a host of integrated features such as FullHD displaydriver up to 1920x1200 with HDMI/DVI, a camera interface,720p video acceleration, 5.1 audio, memory card, USB, 3G andWifi connectivity.

What's interesting here is not only the fine grained CPUmultithreading with OpenMP and Pthread (both used inHPC and general SMP apps a lot) support , but also the

GPU support for Data parallel, Task parallel, and Functionparallel computing with minimised interrupt and contextswitch overhead due to multithreading, and heterogeneousGPGPU applications with both OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenCLsupport. Each core has 64KB I-Cache , 64KB D-Cache, 64KBSRAM and 32-bit GPR file, 8-channel DMA and 16-sourceinterrupt controller. Each core only takes 3.0 mm2, includingmemory, with operating power of about 300mw.

The built in support both homogeneous (OpenMP and such)and heterogeneous (OpenCL and such) parallel programmingAPIs through native compiler and MVP drivers is quite agood news here, as a new ISA needs the easiest possibleprogramming enablement to ensure software support.

In summary, China is covering the ground well at themainstream level as well, ensuring a well varied supplyof CPUs for all classes of consumer devices, having ARMcompatibility yet local cost, design and manufacturing control.At the same time, going for its own instruction sets is the nextfrontier.

Images Credits to Products of Respective Vendors

Chinese high end CPUs arenow in the game - details: Part2, AlphaSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-high-end-cpus-are-now-in-the-

game--details--part-2-alpha/14347.html

December 27th, 2011

Earlier, we looked at the background of Chinese high endmicroprocessor effort, as well as the most widely known ofthem, the Loongson MIPS family. In this second part, we coverAlpha.

Alpha was, for the long time around the turn of the century, theFormula 1 of microprocessors with its very simple, elegant yetextremely scalable RISC architecture focused on raw speed,and pure 64-bitness without any 32-bit modes or compatibilitybaggage. Between 1993 and 2001, the time of its untimelymurder, it owned the majority of performance records,especially when it came to the processor performance - DEC(Digital Equipment Corp) system designers were sometimestoo stingy with the memory and I/O systems, allowing othervendors to occassionally win the accolades in those tests. Themost well known of those cores, the one that had the highestcomparative performance advantage vs the competition, was21164 a.k.a EV 5 family, which span three semicon processgenerations - 0.50, 0.35 and 0.25 microns.

The most widely spread volume-wise was the 0.35 micron21164A in 1996-7, reaching up to 667 MHz, and beating thecontemporary 266 MHz Pentium II by over two times in mostbenchmark tests of the time. The 21164 core, a simple but very

Page 39: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

11

high clock-optimised four-issue in-order design with two FPops per clock, was also the most performance efficient of allAlphas, taking some 25 Watts at 667 MHz vs 75 Watts forthe 600 MHz Pentium III 'Katmai' which followed few yearslater, still at lesser performance. The subsequent Alpha cores,such as 21264 EV6, brought up to double the performanceper-clock, however at three times the power consumption perclock, a point very important when looking at the choices madelater in this story.

The 21264 out-of order core was also scaled across threeprocesses, including derivatives made by Samsung, the majorAlpha architecture licensee. It, and its successor 21364 EV7,carried the performance torch until 2002 or so, well afterAlpha's further public development was stopped. Do note thememory and I/O interconnect revolution with the EV7 - whilethe core was basically the same EV6 type, the on-chip 1.75 MBL2 cache, a 10-channel integrated Rambus memory controllerwith humongous memory bandwidth basically matching thatof the L2 cache and enabling that cache to act as a low latencybuffer for the memory system, and four parallel 6.4 GB/scoherent interconnect links to other 4 processors, scaling up to512 sockets with directory support, were a revolution for year2000 computing. Such things were only seen in PCs 5 yearslater with HyperTransport from AMD first, later followedby QPI from Intel. BOTH THESE INTERCONNECTS AREDERIVED FROM OVER A DECADE-OLD ALPHA EV7.

Add to that more. The 21464 EV8, aimed for release in2002 if things continued as originally planned, was to bethe first processor with eight-issue wide superscalar out-of-order symmetrically multithreaded core, and we mean fourthreads out of each core here. The 'EV9' 21564 design wasexpected to add multi-core and huge, wide vector unit - upto 1 KILOBYTE wide - capability to the mix, enabling wellover 100 GFLOPS DP floating point performance per core for2004 timeframe. Remember, we are only now reaching suchcapabilities in late 2011, and need 6 to 8 cores for that. Anyway,the multithreading and vector enhancements designed wellahead of their time into the EV8 and EV9, never saw the lightof the day in the open market.

In the late nineties, China saw the value and capability ofAlpha, and built a number of Alpha systems, some of themvery large for the time. It also fully licenced the Digital /Tru64 UNIX and related software stack, including getting thefull source code, from Compaq after the latter bought DECthen, giving China the critical software control part. At thesame time, having seen the business instabilities linked tothe Digital-Compaq-HP transition, China seems to have beenworking on having its own Alpha flavour.

After over a decade of work and three generations of CPUs,Jiangnan Reseach Lab has shown the ShenWei (Sunway)SW-3 processor, the Chinese flavour of Alpha, not in a smallworkstation, not in a server, but in no less than a hugepetaflop-class supercomputer machine in Jinan, Shandong -the Sunway BlueLight MPP, this past October. The CPU itselfruns for over a year in a variety of systems, but displayingit running a petaflop machine was probably the best PR onecould get, especially since foreign supercomputing dignitaries

such as Jack Dongarra, the man behing TOP500 list andLinpack FP benchmark.

SW3 aka SW1600 is a 16-core, 64-bit RISC processor, witheach core looking a lot like an improved version of the 21164AEV56 Alpha core, plus vector FP unit extension added toeach core. While the initial speed range was 1 to 1.2 GHzin the 65nm process, the standard speed grade is a 1.1 GHzchip with 141 GFLOPs DP FP performance. The speed set forthe Bluelight Petaflop machine's Top 500 run was 975 MHz,though. The quad-channel 128-bit DDR3 on-chip memorycontroller offers 68 GB/s bandwidth - yes, equivalent to 8channels of DDR3-1066 server RAM.

The L1 and L2 cache sizes are still rather minuscule for modernCPUs, being kept at the original 21164 sizes of 2 x 8 KB L1 and96 KB L2, however it has enabled both very small cores andalso very, very low cache latencies, down to two clock cycles forL1. You can see the CPU block diagram here.

As mentioned before, 21164 core was the most power efficientof all Alphas, and also one of the most power/performance 64-bit high end CPU cores of all time, excluding the mainstream,entry level or embedded processors. So, the choice of that corefor all these years by the Chinese, although they obviously - asthe Loongson case shows - had plenty of resources to improve

Page 40: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

12

the EV6 or even EV8 cores if they wanted to - seems to proveright at this point. Remember Intel's Knights Corner, or theAMD GCN GPU architecture for compute?

The Knights Corner, being a compute version of theabandoned Larrabee project, uses a core even simpler - andslower - than Alpha 21164, basically a 64-bit version of the oldPentium, enhanced with much higher bandwidth, to act as afeeder to a vector unit behing it that provides very very fast FP.Stick a 50-odd of those on one chip, with the right cache andinterconnect in between, and you got a good accelerator. TheCompute Units in the AMD 7970 aren't that much different,although they are based on a native optimised architecture,rather than cumbersome X86.

So, in the Shenwei SW3, you have a simple, well proven 4-way (still double the issue of Pentium or Atom per cycle)superscalar in-order core with very small die footprint fortoday's processes, yet improved and with enhanced bandwidthto feed a simple, AVX-like throughput vector unit. What's thevector unit's speed then? If you normalise the speed to 1 GHz,it'd give you 8 GFLOPs DP per core, or 8 flops per cycle - notbad at all for a 2010 chip using an enhanced 1995 core! All thatat very low, below 40 watts (official figures not available) persocket power consumption despite the old 65 nm process.

And, the sustained performance and power consumption inthe Sunway Bluelight petaflop system were the proof of thepudding: the water-cooled 9-rack machine has 8,704 ShenWeiSW1600 processors (only 8,575 of them ran the Top100bench at 975 MHz each) organized as 34 Super Nodes (eachconsisting of 256 compute nodes), 150TB main memory, 2PBexternal storage, peak performance of 1.07 PFLOPS, sustainedperformance of 796 TFLOPS, efficiency 74.37%, and totalpower consumption 1074KW, figures that compare very wellagainst competitive US supercomputer systems such as X86-based Jaguar.

What does the future hold for Shenwei? Well, it can eitherconfinue where the Alpha was stopped, moving to 8-issuecores (even in-order architecture can do it these days since thecompiler and scheduling evolved a lot over the past decade)and much faster FP per core, with fresh cache and memoryarchitectures , or just tweak the current core and pack moreof them in a single die at higher clock speeds as well, withwider vector units and more memory bandwidth to feed allthat, a bit like RISC cousin of Knights Corner, but a trueCPU here, instead of just an accelerator. Either can lead toteraflop-on-chip soon too, and either will require a rapid jumpin semiconductor process used, down to 32 nm or 28 nm nodes- just like Loongson is expected to do this coming year.

Keep in mind that Alpha left behind a strong software library,not forgetting the Alpha-based Cray T3 system series hereas well, and this includes one of the best UNIXes ever, aswell as great compilers, optimised libraries, and much more.Coupled with its own software base, China has sufficient

resources to confinue developing Shenwei on its own, withsufficient internal market. However, when it decides to go fullycommercial with the effort, there will be plenty of interestedpartners worldwide to embrace the old-new Formula 1 ofmicroprocessors yet again, this time with a far more stablesupplier, business wise, than DECompaq was.

The Part 3 will look at the ARM and native CPUs of China.

Photo Credits: it168.com

First Looks: Cooler MasterSilent Pro M2 1000W PowerSupplySource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/first-looks-cooler-master-silent-pro-

m2-1000w-power-supply/14345.html

December 27th, 2011

The original Silent Pro M series of power supplies from CoolerMaster was a cult hit with overclockers, thanks to its attractivepricing, decent efficiency and single 12V rail modular cabledesign. It is also the power supply that we feature in mostof our motherboard and graphic card reviews. We take anexclusive look at its 80+ Silver rated successor which will becoming out next year - Silent Pro M2 1000W.

Front of Box. The

Back of Box

Page 41: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

13

Specifications and ratings - 80A on a single 12v rail!

Modular PCIe/SATA molex cables

Corsair Force 3 90GB SSDdrive reviewSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/corsair-force-3-90gb-ssd-drive-

review/14346.html

December 27th, 2011

Corsair started off as one of the biggest RAM manufacturersbut today the company has diversified into several othercritical segments of the market. Lately the company has beena very big player in the SSD segment of the technology market,offering a very wide range of products and with ever increasingsales; especially after the Thailand catastrophe which tripledthe prices of mechanical drives. A month ago we reviewedthe fastest consumer SSD drive Corsair currently produces,the Force GT 180GB drive. Today we are going to thoroughlytest and review the 90GB version of the considerably cheaperForce 3 mainstream series the company offers, the Force 390GB SSD, a product primarily designed to be used as a stand-alone very fast OS/boot drive.

Corsair started off as one of the biggest RAM manufacturersbut today the company has diversified into several othercritical segments of the market. Lately the company has beena very big player in the SSD segment of the technology market,offering a very wide range of products and with ever increasingsales; especially after the Thailand catastrophe which tripledthe prices of mechanical drives. A month ago we reviewedthe fastest consumer SSD drive Corsair currently produces,the Force GT 180GB drive. Today we are going to thoroughlytest and review the 90GB version of the considerably cheaperForce 3 mainstream series the company offers, the Force 390GB SSD, a product primarily designed to be used as a stand-alone very fast OS/boot drive.

Manufacturer features and specifications

Page 42: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

14

· Interface: SATA 3 6Gb/s

· Storage technology: Asynchronous NAND

· Operating temperature: 0° C to +70° C

· Storage temperature: -20° C to +85° C

· Operating Humidity: 10% to 90% RH (0° to +40° C)

· Maximum Operating Altitude: 3,048 m (up to 10,000 ft.)

· Maximum Non-Operative Altitude: 12,192 m (up to40,000 ft.)

Unformatted Capacity 90 GBRead Performance (maxsequential)

550 MB/s

Write Performance (maxsequential)

500 MB/s

Random Write 4k (max) 85,000 IOPS (4k aligned)Form Factor 2.5”Interface Type SATA 3 6Gb/sOnboard cache NAOperating Temperature 0C to +70CStorage Temperature -20C to +85COperating Humidity 10% to 90% RH (0° to +40°

C)Storage Humidity 5% to 90% RH (-10° to +60°

C)Maximum Operating Altitude 3,048 m (up to 10,000 ft.)Maximum Non-OperatingAltitude

12,192 m (up to 40,000 ft.)

Star Wars: The Old RepublicPC MMORPG ReviewSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-pc-

mmorpg-review/14343.html

December 27th, 2011

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) launched this week andwe spent some time in game exploring what it has to offer andwhether or not you should free up some time to play in a galaxyfar, far away.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) launched this week andwe spent some time in game exploring what it has to offer andwhether or not you should free up some time to play in a galaxyfar, far away.

BioWare's online game is like many other MMOs, particularlythe leader in the field, World of Warcraft, but it also adds a lotto the table that other games lack, not to mention adding littletime-saving features throughout that make for a more pleasantgaming experience.

ECS Wi-Bridge does whatIntel's WiDi does on the cheapSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ecs-wi-bridge-does-what-intel-s-widi-

does-on-the-cheap/14344.html

December 27th, 2011

Intel has been pushing its WiDi/Wireless Display videostreaming over Wi-Fi technology for a while now, but thetechnology has to caveats, as not only does your notebook needto have one of a somewhat limited range of Intel Wi-Fi cards,but you also need to have a fairly costly receiver. ECS seems tohave solved both of these problems at once with its Wi-Bridgewhich appears to do everything that WiDi does, just withoutthe limitations.

Intel has been pushing its WiDi/Wireless Display videostreaming over Wi-Fi technology for a while now, but thetechnology has to caveats, as not only does your notebook needto have one of a somewhat limited range of Intel Wi-Fi cards,but you also need to have a fairly costly receiver. ECS seems tohave solved both of these problems at once with its Wi-Bridgewhich appears to do everything that WiDi does, just withoutthe limitations.

The Wi-Bridge itself might not be the most stylish piece ofhardware we've ever seen, but it's a rather unobtrusive lookingwedge of plastic with a small Wi-Fi antenna at the back. Thereare only three physical connectors, a power connector, anHDMI port and a side mounted USB 2.0 port. Details as towhat technology or even what chips are inside the Wi-Bridgeare things that ECS has conveniently left out at the moment,but it could be based on the Broadcom hardware we saw backin June at Computex which relies on Wi-Fi Direct.

Page 43: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

15

That said, ECS claims that the Wi-Bridge works with notonly notebooks, but also desktops, smartphones, tablets andeven USB flash drives, although presumably it doesn't streamfrom the latter over Wi-Fi. What we do know with regards tothe specifications is that the Wi-Bridge has 256MB of DDR2memory and 256MB of NAND flash and it currently supportsEnglish and Chinese.

The details on ECS' website are sadly in somewhatincomprehensible Chinglish, but as far as we can make it,the Wi-Bridge is meant to work with some kind of remotecontrol and/or wireless mouse to control the playback andit comes with some kind of PC software that we presumeis intended for this purpose. As with Intel's WiDi, the Wi-Bridge supports 1080p video playcak and ECS claims a rangeof 10-30m depending on the usual limitations of Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Bridge doesn't just allow you to stream video, butit can also be used to either mirror or extend your desktopwirelessly to a second display. ECS is suggesting that it's anideal solution for presentations and we'd say as much as itcould be an interesting solution for ceiling mounted projectorsif nothing else, especially if it works as well as ECS claims witha wide range of devices. No word on pricing or availability, butwe'd presume that ECS will be demoing the Wi-Bridge at CESin a few weeks' time and it should be a more affordable solutionthan Intel's WiDi either which way.

Sony's PS Vita arrives inTaiwan, lacks 3G, costs lessSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sony-s-ps-vita-arrives-in-taiwan-

lacks-3g-costs-less/14342.html

December 27th, 2011

In an unusual turn of events, Taiwan will get Sony's newportable games console – the PlayStation Vita – ahead of theUS, something of a rare occasion as Taiwan is rarely seen asa key market for gaming consoles. Although Taiwan is onlygetting the Wi-Fi version for the time being units are availablefor purchase now and are expected to ship on Monday.

In an unusual turn of events, Taiwan will get Sony's newportable games console – the PlayStation Vita – ahead of theUS, something of a rare occasion as Taiwan is rarely seen asa key market for gaming consoles. Although Taiwan is onlygetting the Wi-Fi version for the time being units are availablefor purchase now and are expected to ship on Monday.

The standard retail price without any games for the Wi-Fiversion of the PS Vita in Taiwan is NT$8980 (US$296/S$383), slightly cheaper than the expected retail price of the Wi-Fi model in Canada which is expected to be the equivalent ofUS$299. The reason we're comparing it to the Canadian modelis that the US will get the 3G model initially, just like Japan.

However, buying a games console without games doesn't makea lot of sense, so you can also pick up various bundles thatcome with a selection of games (one per bundle), a 4GBmemory card and an accessory pack for NT$11,350 (US$374/S$485). Oddly enough, the bundle with Dynasty Warriors:Next is an additional NT$300 (US$10/S$13) than the otherbundles.

Radeon HD 7990 coming in Q1,sports 6GB of GDDR5Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/radeon-hd-7990-coming-in-q1-

sports-6gb-of-gddr5/14341.html

Page 44: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

16

December 27th, 2011

If the Radeon HD 7970 just didn’t cut it for you, it seems likeyou won’t have to wait long for AMD’s dual GPU card whichshould be known as the Radeon HD 7990, as it’s expected toarrive in Q1. So far not much is known about the specs, apartfrom the fact that the card will have two "Tahiti" GPUs andapparently 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

If the Radeon HD 7970 just didn’t cut it for you, it seems likeyou won’t have to wait long for AMD’s dual GPU card whichshould be known as the Radeon HD 7990, as it’s expected toarrive in Q1. So far not much is known about the specs, apartfrom the fact that the card will have two "Tahiti" GPUs andapparently 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

The Radeon HD 7990 has so far been known as the "NewZealand" and will as the Radeon HD 6990 sport a pair of GPUson a single card. The clock speeds will most likely be slightlylower for each GPU than that of a single GPU card, as despitethe die shrink to 28nm we’re not exactly looking at a halvingof the heat output by the new GPUs.

The for AMD new 384-bit memory interface should have 6GBof GDDR5 memory attached to it, as it’s hard to see AMDgoing for half the memory per GPU compared to the RadeonHD 7970. This adds up to more memory dedicated to a singlegraphics card than what you get in the average PC today.

Another interesting aspect is of course AMD’s new ZeroCorepower saving technology which should hopefully allow one ofthe GPUs on the card to be powered down entirely when it’s notneeded. This should allow for a significant power saving whennon GPU intensive tasks are being performed on the computera Radeon HD 7990 card would be fitted to. We’ll just have towait and see how things develop, but it looks like we don’t havetoo long to wait and if nothing else, AMD seems to be timingIntel’s Ivy Bridge platform pretty well here too, as there shouldhopefully be a decent amount of cards in the retail market bythen.

Source: TechPowerUp

Targus first with DisplayLinkUSB 3.0 based notebook dockSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/targus-first-with-displaylink-usb-3.0-

based-notebook-dock/14340.html

December 27th, 2011

If you're looking to add some more connectivity options toyour USB 3.0 equipped notebook, then Targus might havewhat you've been looking for in the same of its USB 3.0 dualvideo docking station. The key feature here is that it sportsDisplayLink's new USB 3.0 touting chipset which enablessupport for much higher resolutions than its USB 2.0 offerings

If you're looking to add some more connectivity options toyour USB 3.0 equipped notebook, then Targus might havewhat you've been looking for in the same of its USB 3.0dual video docking station. The key feature here is thatit sports DisplayLink's new USB 3.0 touting chipset whichenables support for much higher resolutions than its USB 2.0offerings.

The USB 3.0 dual video docking station has – as the namesuggests – a pair of display connectors, in this case a DVIand an HDMI port and Targus claim support for resolutionsof up to 2560x1600, the highest possible from DisplayLink'sDL-3900 series of chips. The DL-3900 also sports built insupport for Gigabit Ethernet and audio, two features Targushas taken advantage of by adding an Ethernet port around theback and a pair of audio jacks on the right hand side of thedocking wedge.

The dock also gives you a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a total offour USB 2.0 ports. We should point out that the bandwidthis of course shared between all the various ports on the dock,so don't expect full speed out of the USB 3.0 ports. Still, thisis a compromise we're sure a lot of users are willing to livewith. There's also a security lock slot and a power connectorto be found on the dock. Targus supplies a 6A power adapterwith the dock and two of the USB ports provides extra powerand can be used for charging devices without the need of anotebook being connected to the dock.

The only downside is that Targus is hoping that you'll bewilling to shell out US$199 on the dock, not exactly cheap forwhat's on offer, but at least it's a convenient solution for thosethat need it. In all fairness there are very few options and this isas far as we're aware, the first product based on DisplayLink's

Page 45: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

17

DL-3900 chip and as such the first USB 3.0 based "graphicscard" to support resolutions up to 2560x1600.

Vietnamese store makesChristmas tree from 2,500mobile phonesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/vietnamese-store-makes-christmas-

tree-from-2-500-mobile-phones/14339.html

December 27th, 2011

A Vietnamese electronics store is getting in the festive moodwith a 15-foot Christmas tree made from 2,500 old mobilephones.

A Vietnamese electronics store is getting in the festive moodwith a 15-foot Christmas tree made from 2,500 old mobilephones.

Westcom Electronics, in the city of My Tho in the TienGiang province, erected the tree not just to celebrate theholiday season, but to raise awareness about environmentalissues, including the disposal of hazardous waste materials likemobile phones.

With new phones coming out on a regular basis and manypeople getting one for Christmas, old phones can often end upin a dump, rather than being recycled. These devices usuallycontain toxic heavy metals that can cause significant harm topeople, wildlife, and the environment, making it increasinglyimportant that they are disposed of in a safe manner.

It took 10 staff to build the tree over a two week period, whichmakes for a significant investment, but it appears to be payingoff, as upwards of 800 people visit the site on a daily basis,which is both good news for the environmental campaign andthe store's publicity.

The tree will be auctioned off in 2012, with the proceeds goingto charity. A larger mobile phone Christmas tree is beingplanned for next year.

Source & Image Credit: Associated Press

GIGABYTE X79-UD7Overclocking ReviewSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/gigabyte-x79-ud7-overclocking-

review/14332.html

December 27th, 2011

Let’s take a look at GIGABYTE's latest top dog overclockingLGA2011 motherboard, the X79-UD7. It is equipped with slotconfiguration for quad SLI, a new IR digital PWM with a 16phase VRM, tons of cool overclocking features all in an XL-ATX form factor. Follow us as we go over every single feature,test out GIGABYTE's new UEFI BIOS, and overclock this badboy. We will do a comparison of stock VS a typical high endoverclock for 24/7and see how much performance we gain. Solet’s take a look at what GIGABYTE has dished out as their newOC board!

Introduction:

Today we venture into the world of GIGABYTE's LGA2011top overclocking board, the X79-UD7. With all the dazzle oftheir X58A-OC GIGABYTE has produced a quite similar beastin terms of features and specs. The X58A-OC was a boardtargeted towards overclockers and only overclockers, sincethen we heard that GIGABYTE sales decided that a boardwith the -OC moniker wouldn't sell well. So now it looks likeGIGABYTE has replaced their traditional UD7 with a sort

Page 46: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

18

of hybrid. The X79-UD7 doesn't carry many more featuresthan the other boards when it comes to connectivity, butit is unique in its own right. Equipped with only 4-DIMMscompared to the UD5's 8, and with the ability to run quadGPU configurations in an XL-ATX (1 expansion slot more thanregular ATX) package, the UD7 is an overclocker's dream orso it seems. If you owned or saw the original X58A-OC you'vewitnessed GIGABYTE's finest OC board with the exception ofthe X58A-UD9. When you look at the X79-UD7 you see anuncanny resemblance to the X58A-OC. It might be because ofthe orange/black color scheme, or the frequency buttons andread points, or maybe the hefty VRM and dual 8-pin powerconnectors that give it away but the X79-UD7 is an X79-OC indisguise.

The X79 chipset has all the goodies one could ever imagine,except for a few things. First off it is missing USB 3.0,something we hope to see with Intel's Z77 chipset. Second itis missing all of those SAS/SATA6GB/s ports we saw at IDF!That was a lot of SATA/SAS and now we have none of it,we basically have a redo of the Z68 chipset just without SSDCaching and iGPU support. What is more interesting aboutthe LGA2011 platform is what is the CPU has in store for us.Even though the current LGA2011 CPU's lack virtualizationand PCI-E 3.0 certification, they still have many features.Quad channel memory controller with supreme overclockingabilities is a plus as is PCI-E 3.0 which can't be claimed untilthe second stepping gets PCI-SIG certification. We seem totake for granted the 40 PCI-E lanes and native Quad SLI/CFsupport. With LGA2011 we have Intel moving back to satisfythe overclocker, of course not how we would like, but BLCKstraps are nothing to push to the side. Today we will take a lookat GIGABYTE’s top LGA2011 board for overclockers, let’s seehow it does.

Specifications:

CPU Support 1. Support for

Intel® Core™ i7processors in theLGA2011 package

2. L3 cache varies withCPU

Chipset Intel ® X79 Express ChipsetMemory 1. 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM

sockets supportingup to 32 GB of systemmemory* Due to Windows 32-bit operating systemlimitation, when morethan 4 GB of physicalmemory is installed,the actual memory sizedisplayed will be lessthan 4 GB.

2. 4 channel memoryarchitecture

3. Support for DDR32133/1866/1600/1333/1066MHz memory modules

4. Support for non-ECCmemory modules

5. Support for ExtremeMemory Profile (XMP)memory modules

(Please refer "MemorySupport List" for moreinformation.)

Multi-GPU Support Support for 4-Way/3-Way/2-Way AMD CrossFireX™/NVIDIA SLI technology

Expansion Slots 1. 2 x PCI Express x16slots, running atx16 (PCIEX16_1,PCIEX16_2)* For optimumperformance, if only onePCI Express graphicscard is to be installed, besure to install it in thePCIEX16 slot.

2. 2 x PCI Express x16slot, running at x8(PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2)* The PCIEX8_2 slotshares bandwidth withthe PCIEX16_2 slot.When the PCIEX8_2slot is populated, thePCIEX16_2 slot willoperate at up to x8mode.

Page 47: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

19

(All PCI Express x16slots conform to PCIExpress 3.0 standard.)

3. 3 x PCI Express x1 slots(All PCI Express x1 slotsconform to PCI Express2.0 standard.)

Storage Chipset:

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/sconnectors (SATA3 0/1)supporting up to 2 SATA6Gb/s devices

2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/sconnectors (SATA22/3/4/5) supporting upto 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices

3. Support for RAID 0,RAID 1, RAID 5, andRAID 10* When a RAID setis built across theSATA 6Gb/s and SATA3Gb/s channels, thesystem performanceof the RAID set mayvary depending on thedevices being connected.

2 x Marvell 88SE9172 chips:

1. 4 x SATA 6Gb/sconnectors (GSATA36/7/8/9) supporting upto 4 SATA 6Gb/s devices

2. Support for SATA RAID0 and RAID 1

LAN 1 x Intel GbE LAN(10/100/1000 Mbit)

Audio 1. Realtek ALC898 codec

2. High Definition Audio

3. 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel

4. Support for

Dolby® Home Theater

5. Support for S/PDIF OutUSB Chipset:

1. Up to 14 USB 2.0/1.1ports (8 ports on theback panel, 6 portsavailable through theinternal USB headers)

2 x Fresco FL1009 chips:

1. Up to 4 USB 3.0/2.0ports (2 ports on theback panel, 2 portsavailable through theinternal USB header)

FireWireGIGABYTE UniqueFeatures

1. Support for @BIOS

2. Support for Q-Flash

3. Support for XpressBIOS Rescue

4. Support for DownloadCenter

5. Support for XpressInstall

6. Support for XpressRecovery2

7. Support for EasyTune* Available functions inEasyTune may differ bymotherboard model.

8. Support for Smart 6™

9. Support for eXtremeHard Drive (X.H.D)

10. Support for ON/OFFCharge

11. Support for Cloud OC

12. Support for 3TB+Unlock

13. Support for TouchBIOS

14. Support for Q-ShareBack Panel I/O Ports 1. 1 x PS/2 keyboard/

mouse port

2. 1 x CPU overclockingbutton

3. 1 x BIOS switch button

4. 1 x Clear CMOS button

5. 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports

6. 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports

7. 1 x RJ-45 port

8. 1 x optical S/PDIF Outconnector

9. 5 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out,Rear Speaker Out, SideSpeaker Out, Line In,Mic In, Line Out)

Internal I/O Connectors 1. 1 x 24-pin ATX mainpower connector

2. 2 x 8-pin ATX 12Vpower connectors

Page 48: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

20

3. 2 x PCIe powerconnectors

4. 6 x SATA 6Gb/sconnectors

5. 4 x SATA 3Gb/sconnectors

6. 1 x CPU fan header

7. 6 x system fan headers

8. 1 x front panel header

9. 1 x front panel audioheader

10. 1 x S/PDIF Out header

11. 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers

12. 1 x USB 3.0/2.0 header

13. 1 x Clear CMOS jumper

14. 1 x power button

15. 1 x reset button

16. 1 x onboard voltagemeasurement module

17. 1 x Gear button

18. 1 x CPU BCLK Downbutton

19. 1 x CPU BCLK Upbutton

20. 1 x CPU Ratio Downbutton

21. 1 x CPU Ratio Up button

22. 1 x Trusted PlatformModule (TPM) heade

BIOS 1. 2 x 64 Mbit flash

2. Use of licensed AMI EFIBIOS

3. Support for DualBIOS™

4. PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SMBIOS 2.6, ACPI 2.0a

Support Disc DriversGIGABYTE Utilities

Norton Anti-VirusForm Factor XL-ATX Form Factor; 32.4cm

x 25.3cm

Siemens to fix vulnerabilitiesin industrial control systemsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/siemens-to-fix-vulnerabilities-in-

industrial-control-systems/14338.html

December 27th, 2011

Siemens has revealed that it is developing security fixesfor a number of vulnerabilities in its industrial controlproducts, which could be used by hackers to knock out criticalinfrastructure like electricity grids, water supplies, oil rigs,hospitals and nuclear facilities.

Siemens has revealed that it is developing security fixesfor a number of vulnerabilities in its industrial controlproducts, which could be used by hackers to knock out criticalinfrastructure like electricity grids, water supplies, oil rigs,hospitals and nuclear facilities.

One of the vulnerabilities, exposed by security researcher BillyRios, allows hackers to bypass password protections on webinterfaces, breaking down the most basic layer of security onthe control systems. Rios said that this authentication bypasscould be used by anyone with basic skills, not just experiencedhackers.

Siemens industrial control systems are used throughout theworld in a wide variety of industries. The potential risksassociated with them were first highlighted in 2010 when theStuxnet virus infected Siemens control systems used by Iran,crippling its nuclear facilities.

While the Stuxnet incident is believed to have beenorchestrated by a government, security researchers arebecoming increasingly concerned that hacker groups couldtarget essential infrastructure and cause significant damage,such as a potential threat to the world's oil supply.

Siemens said that it has not yet seen any exploits of thesevulnerabilities, but it has developed some fixes for them andwill release a security update in January.

Page 49: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

21

G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-16008GB CL9 Dual ChannelMemory Kit ReviewSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/g.skill-ripjawsx-ddr3-1600-8gb-cl9-

dual-channel-memory-kit-review/14336.html

December 27th, 2011

Today we take a look at a very well priced 8GB dual channelmemory kit from G.Skill. This kit has decent timings for an8GB kit, and we will put it through its paces in terms ofoverclocking and tweaking. Follow us as we test this memoryand see how it does.

G.Skill is well known for making great memory, not onlysome of the best overclocking memory, but also memory ata great price. They are a company that prides themselvesin the quality of their product, from their high-end to themainstream products they don't fail to please their customers.Today is no different as this sub $50 8GB memory kit has somedecent characteristics, timings of 9-9-9-24 1T and an operatingvoltage of only 1.5v.

Rambus and Broadcom signpatent licensing agreementSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/rambus-and-broadcom-sign-patent-

licensing-agreement/14337.html

December 27th, 2011

Rambus has secured a patent licensing agreement withBroadcom over the use of integrated circuit (IC) technology,marking yet another of the company's lucrative deals.

Rambus has secured a patent licensing agreement withBroadcom over the use of integrated circuit (IC) technology,marking yet another of the company's lucrative deals.

Broadcom, which makes semiconductors for the wirelessand broadband communications industry, agreed to payintellectual property holder Rambus to use its patented ICtechnology for the next five years.

The deal also resolves all outstanding claims between thetwo companies, including a lawsuit Rambus filed againstBroadcom for alleged patent infringement last December.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement withBroadcom, a global leader in the semiconductor industry,”said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general managerof the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. “We arecommitted to continuing the development of innovativetechnologies to help our licensees deliver great products to themarket.”

Rambus has gained a questionable reputation in the industryfor its numerous lawsuits against chipmakers, includingSamsung and Nvidia. In a rare twist of fate Rambus was forcedto pay out $10.85 million earlier this week over incorrectlydated and accounted for stock option grants.

The financial details of the Broadcom deal were not disclosed,but it likely involved a large up front payment to settle theoutstanding legal dispute and a yearly fee to continue using thetechnology.

Does PCIe 3.0 matter fortoday's GPUs? We test withthe Radeon HD 7970Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/does-pcie-3.0-matter-for-today-s-gpus-

we-test-with-the-radeon-hd-7970/14306.html

Page 50: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

22

December 27th, 2011

Update 23/12: We updated our original article from yesterdaywith more background information and included LuxMark(OpenCL) for completeness. Doesn't change the conclusionsthough... For months now, certain smaller motherboardmanufacturers have been hyping up PCI Express 3.0compatibility and benefits to ignorant users, even going tothe point of bashing one another with libelous advertisements(lol hammer smash motherboards into bits). Since the latestIntel's Sandy Bridge-E processors and AMD's Radeon HD7970 officially supports the new signalling standard, we putthat to the test to see if it does improve things.

The following is rephrased and quoted from Wikipedia's PCIExpress entry:

The much delayed PCIe 3.0 standard is supposed tobring signal transfer bitrates to 8GT/s (double that ofPCIe 2.0) and a number of optimizations for enhancedsignaling and data integrity, including transmitter andreceiver equalization, PLL improvements, clock data recovery,and channel enhancements for currently supported topologies

Updated Notes:

• Sandy Bridge-E/X79 does support PCIe 3.0, but it is notofficially validated by PCI-SIG yet

• We did use the latest 1004/1005 BIOS for the RampageIV Extreme which has latest CPU Microcode and PCIe3.0 fixes

• We've now thrown in LuxMark (OpenCL transferintensive benchmark) in the screenshots below, whichstill shows the same results (minicule difference).

• For our upcoming Crossfire review, we will include F@Hand Bitcoin benchmarks. If there are any other computeheavy benchmarks you would like to see, put them in thecomments section below

• An AMD rep got in touch with us - to verify theactive PCIe signalling standard, simply run a PCIConfiguration Space Viewer like R/W and look for the0x88 offset. Values are 0x1 = 1.0 speed, 0x2 = 2.0 speed,0x3 = 3.0, speed 0x0 = undefined

The BIOS on our favourite ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (X79)allowed us to select the PCIe signalling standard for our tests(Editor's note: yes we did use the latest 1004 bios which hasthe CPU Microcode and PCIe 3.0 fixes)

PCIe 3.0 Benchmarks:

Page 51: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

23

PCIe 2.0 Benchmarks: Our conclusions? Only a <1% miniscule benefit thanks totighter clock timings and PLL improvements - today's highend GPU like the HD7970 and GTX590 barely even saturatePCIe x8 lanes (4GT/s). Perhaps we might see a different storywith decent solid state storage setups and CPU interconnects.

Western Digital announcesWD TV remote control appfor improved media playernavigationSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/western-digital-announces-wd-tv-

remote-control-app-for-improved-media-player-navigation/14334.html

December 27th, 2011

Western Digital has announced a WD TV remote control appfor Apple iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Android mobile devices,which offers WD users improved media player navigation.

Western Digital has introduced the WD TV Remote app thatis designed to improve the navigation experience for WD TVLive and WD TV Live Hub users by turning their Apple iPhone,iPod touch, iPad, or Android compatible mobile device into

Page 52: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 27th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

24

an advanced feature remote control for their WD TV. The WDTV Remote allow users to navigate the wide variety of digitalmedia easily, from entertainment services such as Vimeo,Dailymotion, TuneIn Radio, Deezer, Facebook and YouTube,as well as personal videos, photos or music.

The app also provides all the features of the standard WDTV remote control along with several advanced features,including a gesture pad to help navigate menu screens andservices, as well as QWERTY keyboard support for text entryand search functionality. The Remote app is available inmultiple languages, including English, Chinese Simplified,Chinese Traditional, Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish,Italian, French, Russian, and Portuguese.

The WD TV Remote app is free to download from the AppleiTunes App store, and will soon be available on the AndroidMarket. It works with WD TV Live with firmware releaseversion 1.05.18 or WD TV Live Hub updated with firmwarerelease version 3.01.19.

LG to introduce new IPSmonitors at upcoming CES2012Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lg-to-introduce-new-ips-monitors-at-

upcoming-ces-2012/14333.html

December 27th, 2011

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 at LasVegas is about two weeks away, and LG will be there tointroduce their new IPS monitors with high resolution, wideviewing angles as well as 3D viewing capabilities. The modelsinclude the DM92, DM82 and DM52 series, and the D43 3Dmonitor.

LG will be showcasing their 2012 IPS monitor line-up at theConsumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month.The new IPS monitors which include the DM92, DM82 andDM52 series, and the D43 3D monitorclaim to offer highresolution, wide viewing angles and immersive 3D viewingexperience. The DM92 series features a premium design byemploying the slim bezel of LG’s technology and design-driven

CINEMA SCREEN that comes with the lustrous chrome stand.The 27-inch display is great for users who want to access fileson their PC, play some games or watch their favorite movies.Incorporating an IPS panel, the DM92 series enables greaterdepth, consistent color and brightness at wider viewing anglescompared to conventional 3D displays.

The 23-inch DM82 series exhibits a chic and futuristic design,with a metallic neck supported by a square, slim base. It claimsto offer superb 3D display quality, with accurate color tonesfrom almost any viewing angle. The monitor also comes with 7-watt built-in speakers to provide great multimedia enjoyment.The 27- and 23-inch DM52 series offers versatility andefficiency in a flexible package. In addition to the IPS panel andimmersive 3D experience, the DM52 series provides a rangeof connectivity options including HDMI and USB for content-sharing with external devices. The LG D43 monitor claims tobe optimized for 3D. It incorporates SUPER Resolution andvivid colors through the 3D effect mode for amazing picturequality. The D43 can convert 2D content into 3D without anyadditional software and with a 3D hot key, users can easilyadjust and control the depth of 3D images.

The LG 2012 IPS monitor line-up will be available globallystarting February 2012.

Page 53: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

1

VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks!VR-Zone | Stuff for the Geeks is a bi-weekly publicationcovering the latest gadgets and stuff for the geeks.

AMD's next-gen GPU familycodenamed Sea IslandsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-s-next-gen-gpu-family-

codenamed-sea-islands/14391.html

December 30th, 2011

While Southern Islands is only just beginning to roll out, arecently ex-AMD ASIC designer's Linkedin profile reveals thepossible codename for AMD's next-gen GPU family - SeaIslands.

While Southern Islands is only just beginning to roll out, arecently ex-AMD ASIC designer's Linkedin profile reveals thepossible codename for AMD's next-gen GPU family - SeaIslands.

During his tenure as MTS Design Engineer at AMD, AlexanderShternshain worked on Evergreen and Northern Islands -branded HD 5000 and HD 6000 families, Fusion APUs -Ontario (C/E Series), Llano (A-Series) as well as Krishna,whose fate is unknown. The final two GPU families mentionedare Southern Islands - which we already have come to know asRadeon HD 7000 family - and the future family, Sea Islands.

Unlike the rather vague codenames of Northern Islands andSouthern Islands, Sea Islands directly refers to the chain ofislands on the USA's Atlantic coast. We can thus expect theindividual chips from the family codenamed along the lines ofthe prominent islands in the region.

Sea Islands, if that is indeed the final codename, is still a longway away - possibly late 2012/early 2013 at the earliest - whilethe rumour mill is still digesting Southern Islands. We canexpect AMD to build on the GCN architecture with Sea Islandsas TSMC's 28nm process matures.

Apple developed touchscreenphone prototype in 1983Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/apple-developed-touchscreen-phone-

prototype-in-1983/14390.html

December 30th, 2011

Apple developed a prototype for a touchscreen phone as farback as 1983, but decided not to go through with it, a decisionthat ultimately led to the iPhone's release many years later in2007.

Apple developed a prototype for a touchscreen phone as farback as 1983, but decided not to go through with it, a decisionthat ultimately led to the iPhone's release many years later in2007.

The prototype was developed by Hartmut Esslinger, founderof Frogdesign, which helped design numerous Apple products,including the IIc computer, the first Apple product to featurethe snow white colour that became iconic of the company'sdesign principles.

The phone looks like a traditional landline, with a built-intablet screen that is operated by a stylus, a feature that SteveJobs dropped from the original iPhone design. It looks prettydated and the screen is particularly dull and unimpressive, butthe fact that the technology could have been released so longago opens a lot of 'what if' questions.

The phone industry could have been a very different place ifApple released this product in the 1980s, but it was probablya wise decision to hold off, as the market was likely not readyfor it. It would have almost definitely have been expensive,which is no surprise for Apple, but likely a lot more so than

Page 54: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

2

the iPhone, given the general lack of availability of suchtechnology at the time.

With such a potential high price tag, and the lack of consumerloyalty built by the success of the iPod, this device could havebeen a major flop, which could have made Apple think twiceabout developing the iPhone.

Source and Image Credit: Ubergizmo

US telcos given immunity toaid government eavesdroppingSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/us-telcos-given-immunity-to-aid-

government-eavesdropping/14389.html

December 30th, 2011

US telecommunications companies have been given legalimmunity to help the government eavesdrop on citizens'telephone conversations and emails, raising major concernsover the impact on user privacy.

US telecommunications companies have been given legalimmunity to help the government eavesdrop on citizens'telephone conversations and emails, raising major concernsover the impact on user privacy.

A three-judge panel at the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appealsupheld the decision made by a lower court in relation toa surveillance law passed in 2008 after 33 lawsuits werefiled against telecommunications companies like AT&T, SprintNextel, Verizon and BellSouth.

The consolidated case was taken by the Electronic FrontierFoundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, whichclaimed that the firms in question were violating the law andcustomers' right to privacy. They expressed disappointment atthe court's decision.

The judges said they were concerned that allowing litigationwould encourage companies not to help the government inlawful intelligence gathering requests, which the governmentclaims it needs to make in other to protect national security.

The decision could have repercussions for similar proposalsin other countries throughout the world, which will likelymeet with staunch opposition from increasingly privacy awarecitizens.

PlayStation Vita salesplummet after one weekSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/playstation-vita-sales-plummet-after-

one-week/14388.html

December 30th, 2011

Sales of Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console haveplummeted from 321,400 in week one to just 72,000 in weektwo, significantly less than rival Nintendo's 3DS.

Sales of Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console haveplummeted from 321,400 in week one to just 72,000 in weektwo, significantly less than rival Nintendo's 3DS.

Sony enjoyed healthy sales for the initial two days following itslaunch in Japan, but the following week saw a sharp decline,suggesting the Vita might not have much staying power.

To put the figures into perspective, 371,000 3DS units weresold in its launch week, dropping to 210,000 in week two. Adrop is to be expected after the initial flurry of sales, but theVita sales decline is much sharper than that of the 3DS.

The solution will likely involve following in Nintendo'sfootsteps. When it saw a big sales drop it cut the price of the3DS from $249.99 to $169.99, only a few months after theinitial release. Sony has priced the Vita at $250 for its Februaryrelease in the US, which means it will need to drop the price

Page 55: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

3

considerably if it is to drum up sales, particularly when its rivalis significantly cheaper.

Nintendo also released some major game titles like SuperMario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, which helped the 3DSrecover some sales. The 3DS sold 484,000 units in the pastweek compared to the Vita's 72,000, which raises significantquestions about how well Sony's latest handheld console effortwill do.

Intel to launch graphics-lessSandy Bridge CPUsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-to-launch-graphics-less-sandy-

bridge-cpus/14387.html

December 30th, 2011

In a last minute attempt at getting rid of some more SandyBridge processors, Intel will be launching three new SKUs, oneof which will be the rumoured Core i5-2550K. The big newshere isn't actually the new models themselves, but the fact thatnone of the three new models feature built in graphics.

In a last minute attempt at getting rid of some more SandyBridge processors, Intel will be launching three new SKUs, oneof which will be the rumoured Core i5-2550K. The big newshere isn't actually the new models themselves, but the fact thatnone of the three new models feature built in graphics.

Besides the Core i5-2550K Intel is also planning on launchingthe Core i5-2380P and the Core i5-2450P where we presumethe P has something to do with the lack of an active graphicscore. We'd guess that these are parts where the graphics corewasn't working properly, but where the rest of the chips werefully functional and as such Intel decided to launch a fewmodels without graphics. Although a lot of users don't use theIntel graphics that is now part of every single Sandy Bridgeprocessor to date, there are some downsides to this move asfor example you can no longer take advantage of Intel's QuickSync technology.

The Core i5-2380P is clocked at 3.1GHz, the same as the Corei5-2400 and it has the same Turbo Boost frequency of 3.4GHz.The Core i5-2450P is the odd one out here, as it's clockedat 3.2GHz with a top Turbo Boost frequency of 3.5GHz, inother words 100MHz slower than the Core i5-2500. The Corei5-2550K on the other hand is 100MHz faster than the Corei5-2500K at 3.4GHz with a top Turbo Boost clock speed of3.8GHz. All three models have 6MB cache, but none of themhave VT-d or TXT support, a feature all previous non-K SKUshave had in the Core i5 family.

Sadly we don't know when these models will launch, but we'dexpect them to arrive sometime early next year. We'd expect

the P SKUs to be priced slightly lower than models with builtin graphics, but we're not sure where Intel is planning onpositioning the 2550K, as in reality it's a lesser version to the2500K, so we'll see how Intel prices it and explains the lack ofintegrated graphics as a selling point.

AMD Radeon HD 7770, Core i53550K BenchmarkedSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7770-core-i5-3550k-

benchmarked/14386.html

December 30th, 2011

A forum poster at Chiphell has released benchmarks for asystem featuring two anticipated next-gen products - AMD'sRadeon HD 7770 and Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 3550K. The HD7770 featured is the reference design - identical to the previouspictures leaked. While the i5 3550K is as much part of thesystem, the benchmarks performed are 3D Mark and revealHD 7770's performance most.

A forum poster at Chiphell has released benchmarks for asystem featuring two anticipated next-gen products - AMD'sRadeon HD 7770 and Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 3550K. The HD7770 featured is the reference design - identical to the previouspictures leaked. While the i5 3550K is as much part of thesystem, the benchmarks performed are 3D Mark and revealHD 7770's performance most.

The system scores P3421 and X1077 in 3D Mark 11 using betadrivers. This puts HD 7770's performance well ahead of GTX550 Ti and even HD 6790 and just under HD 6850. HD 7770features the Cape Verde chip, with 896 SP or 14 CUs. Basedon the GCN architecture, HD 7770 is DX11.1 and PCIe 3.0compliant, and as we had previously seen, powered by a single6-pin PCIe connector. The poster suggests a TDP as low as90W-100W.

What we had not seen before is the reverse side of the PCB,which reveals 4 more memory modules. This suggests the

Page 56: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

4

HD 7770 might sport upto 2GB of GDDR5 memory - anunprecedented amount for a mainstream GPU. The memorywill be tied to a 128-bit memory interface, clocked at 1.125GHz. The core clock is a startling 1 GHz - the first commercialGPU to break the magic number in reference guise. Theexpected price is $150 with release in February 2012.

Meanwhile, the Core i5 3550K will succeed the popular Corei5 2500K in the >$200 market. It scores roughly 6500 in the3D Mark 11 Physics test which stresses the CPU. This pegs itjust ahead of FX-8150 and Core i5 2500K, while behind Core i72600K thanks to its lack of HyperThreading. However, actualgames tend to be much less threaded than 3D Mark 11 so theCore i5 3550K will continue to be the best value for gaming.Recent reports point to a release on April 8th 2012.

Interconnection dilemma:should Socket 2011 successorget one more QPI to spare?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/interconnection-dilemma-should-

socket-2011-successor-get-one-more-qpi-to-spare-/14385.html

December 30th, 2011

The full-blooded Socket 2011 CPUs have two QPI links oneach socket, to connect either doubly to another CPU, or eachconnect to one neighbouring processor. With so many pinsavailable, is there use for, say, one more QPI channel? Yes!

As mentioned here before, the dual-QPI Socket 2011 CPUs willhave two flavours: the dual-socket Xeon E5 2600 one will usethe two QPI channels in parallel to link the two processors atdouble bandwidth, while the otherwise identical quad-socketE5 4600 series will allow each of the two channels to connect toa different neighbouring processor, for a total of 4 processorsin a square layout config.

You notice here that, with only two QPI channels, there willbe no direct connections between the processors in oppositecorners of the quad CPU configuration, so any informationbetween will have to pass through the in-between CPUs,resulting in both added latency - up to 50 ns extra - as wellas the risk of congesting the QPI lanes if there is a lot ofinter-processor traffic. The Xeon E7 series in the Socket 1567,which in the current 10-core Westmere-EX generation has 4QPI links per chip, doesn't have that problem even in 8-socketconfigurations. However, it has much higher memory latencyand somewhat lower memory bandwidth per CPU due to itsuse of memory bridge/hub chips between the CPU and DDR3channels to maximise the capacity. On the other hand, the E7has - besides much higher price - also more RAS features notrequired for workstations or supercomputing, but critical forservers.

So, if wanting a good quad-socket system based on Intel stuffin mid-2012, the user will have to decide between the E5with fast cores and good memory bandwidth with low latency,but potentially lacking sufficient interprocessor bandwidthfor heavy duty SMP jobs; and the E7 with more and slowercores and somewhat slower memory system, but darn goodinterprocessor bandwidth and more RAS features.

I haven't yet seen the Xeon E5 Socket 2011 dual-QPI processorpin-out, but it was bugging me a bit whether there's enough pincount left there non-connected - if any, remember power andground pin counts go into many hundreds these days easily -to fit just one, one more QPI channel in some successor CPU.

It actually may not matter, since a Haswell-based midrangeXeon would probably have yet another new socket, but again,since Haswell desktop parts will still use DDR3 memory, andHaswell server & workstation parts may continue to do thesame rather than move to DDR4 yet, the justification to keepthe Socket 2011 may still be there.

Either way, the addition of third QPI channel wouldaccomplish two good things: first, for the midrange quad-socket parts, it would enable full proper direct point-to-point connectivity between all four processors, ensuring goodinterprocessor bandwidth no matter what. Then, for the tightlycoupled dual-socket systems in workstation and HPC use,where heavy inter-core communication is likely with newgeneration finely multithreaded software, an option of allthree QPI channels connecting the two CPUs together may beput to good use.

Think it's an overkill? Think again - even Ivy Bridge EP XeonE5 series chips will have 10 cores, and the Haswell oneswill obviously have no less than that. A total of 20 coreswanting to talk to each other a lot, and frequently, will useall those channels, especially if you also have a multi-GPUworkstation or HPC node where GPUs attached to either CPUcommunicate across the QPI between themselves.

There's actually one more important usage model potential,even in those dual-socket systems. This third benefit is obvious- Intel is likely to have a QPI-based successor to its KnightsCorner accelerator processor someday soon, for true coherentshared memory processing between the multi-core CPU andmany-core accelerator. The accelerator would then be ableto address all the CPU's system memory directly and atlow latency as if it is another CPU then, assuming it has acompatible memory management hardware, of course.

In this case, the third QPI link would be used for that purpose,so each CPU would have one direct QPI connection to theaccelerator, in the same fashion as Xeon 5500 and 5600 dual-socket 1366 processors have separate parallel, direct QPI linksto the north bridge. At the same time, the other two QPI linkswould still link the two CPUs in parallel at high bandwidth.

In the end, such addition wouldn't impair the sales of thetop-end enterprise E7 CPUs, as those have their commercialmarket anyway, and, well, they could also have even more QPIchannels in the future if need be... but, for the workstations

Page 57: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

5

and supercomputing nodes using mostly the E5 series chipsand their successors, it may be beneficial, as we have bseenhere.

Tablets and e-readers signalend of real booksSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/tablets-and-e-readers-signal-end-of-

real-books/14384.html

December 30th, 2011

Tablet computers and e-readers may put an end to realpaper-based books, according to a number of studies on thecontinuing growth of the ebook market.

Tablet computers and e-readers may put an end to realpaper-based books, according to a number of studies on thecontinuing growth of the ebook market.

The US Book Industry Study Group (BISG) found that close tohalf of those who bought both print and digital books wouldabandon the hard copies for just the ebook versions, providedthey were released within three months of the physical version.

Juniper Research projected that ebooks would make $3.2billion this year, and that this figure would more than triple to$9.7 billion by 2016.

Much of the success of the ebook market can be attributed tothe tablet and e-reader boom in 2010 and 2011, largely due tocompanies like Apple and Amazon, with the latter enjoying itsbest Christmas for Kindle sales this year.

Initial concerns over reading books on a digital device havelargely dissipated, particularly with the Kindle E Ink display,which does a relatively good job at imitating real paper,

helping avoid glare and eye strain associated with traditionalscreens.

Price appears to be a dominant factor in the move to ebooks,with digital versions of a book costing a fraction of their real-world price. Normal paperbacks can cost several dollars toprint, even moreso for print on demand titles, which drives upprices. Tack on warehouse storage costs and delivery charges,and it is no surprise that both companies and consumers arebeginning to prefer ebook versions, which often cost as littleas $0.99.

Analysts at both Gartner and Creative Strategies believe thatit is only a matter of time before ebooks replace ink-and-paper books completely, though the shift might only apply toyounger generations.

While ebooks are certainly set to boom further, and will likelybecome the dominant form of reading, it is unlikely thattraditional hard copies will die out altogether. In many casesthey will remain a collector's item, while there will also be alarge number of people who prefer the touch and smell of thegenuine article.

Google adds SVG and CSSGPU acceleration to ChromeSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/google-adds-svg-and-css-gpu-

acceleration-to-chrome/14383.html

December 30th, 2011

Google has added new GPU acceleration features to its Chromeweb browser, following in the footsteps of Microsoft andInternet Explorer 9.

Google has added new GPU acceleration features to its Chromeweb browser, following in the footsteps of Microsoft andInternet Explorer 9.

The Chromium 18 build features a flag that enableshardware acceleration for vector-based SVG graphics and CSSfilters, opening the doors for potentially amazing visuals atgroundbreaking speeds on websites in the future.

The SVG and CSS GPU acceleration support works onWindows, Mac, Linux and Google's Chrome OS, but it is stillconsidered largely experimental, with few websites supportingthe feature.

Page 58: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

6

Unfortunately this addition does not appear to offer anynoticeable increase in browser performance, with Tom'sHardware reporting instability and crashes in some of itsWebViz HTML5 benchmarks.

While it is still early days for the technology, it is likely that wewill see further hardware acceleration added to popular webbrowsers as competition between Google, Mozilla, Microsoftand others continues to push the boundaries of browserspeeds.

GoDaddy boycotted over SOPAanti-piracy stanceSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/godaddy-boycotted-over-sopa-anti-

piracy-stance/14382.html

December 30th, 2011

Thousands of website owners, including Wikipedia, havepledged to boycott web hosting firm GoDaddy over its supportof the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), despite the companychanging its mind on the controversial anti-piracy law.

Thousands of website owners, including Wikipedia, havepledged to boycott webhosting firm GoDaddy over its supportof the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), despite the companychanging its mind on the controversial anti-piracy law.

GoDaddy, which is the largest hosting service in the world,initially gave its support for SOPA, but u-turned aftermounting pressure from users and other companies. Manyhigh-profile internet-based companies, including Google,Facebook, Yahoo and eBay, are staunchly opposed to the Act,citing fears that it will lead to widespread internet censorship.

A boycott organised for today on Reddit is set to go aheadregardless of GoDaddy's decision, with the service alreadylosing over 37,000 domains in a two-day period. That numbercould skyrocket as the official boycott gets underway, butGoDaddy is hoping to halt its losses by offering domaindiscounts.

Among those who are withdrawing their domains fromGoDaddy are Wikipedia, Lolcats owner the CheezburgerNetwork, and image hosting service Imgur.

"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, whichis why GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions tothis legislation - but we can clearly do better,” said WarrenAdelman, CEO of GoDaddy.

GoDaddy previously lost numerous users after its founder andformer CEO, Bob Parsons, posted a video of him killing anelephant while on holiday in Zimbabwe.

Amazon Kindle enjoys recordChristmas salesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amazon-kindle-enjoys-record-

christmas-sales/14381.html

December 30th, 2011

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet computer and Kindle e-readersenjoyed record Christmas sales, with over a million sold eachweek throughout December.

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet computer and Kindle e-readersenjoyed record Christmas sales, with over a million sold eachweek throughout December.

Kindle devices sold so well that they took the top three slotson Amazon's best seller charts, with the Kindle Fire in firstplace, Kindle Touch in second place, and the classic Kindlecoming in third. Of course, Amazon was able to aggressivelyadvertise the devices on its website, in addition to offeringsubstantial discounts for ad-subsidised models, which keptthem as affordable as possible.

Kindle sales were not limited to the US version of Amazoneither, as they were also the best-selling products on the UK,German, French, Spanish and Italian websites.

Page 59: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

7

“We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making thisthe best holiday ever for Kindle,” said Jeff Bezos, founder andCEO of Amazon.

The Kindle Fire, Amazon's significantly cheaper alternativeto Apple's iPad, was the best-selling product on Amazon'smobile website and through Amazon's mobile apps, which isnot altogether surprising given that mobile users will likely belooking to buy portable devices.

Kindle book gifts were up 175 percent over the period fromBlack Friday to Christmas Day compared to the same period in2010, with Christmas Day itself being a record day for Kindlebook downloads, showing that ebook sales are continuing tothreaten the long-term survivability of paper books.

Mid-Range X79 Boards' VRMTested, Equally Stable, EquallyFlawedSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/mid-range-x79-boards-vrm-tested-

equally-stable-equally-flawed/14380.html

December 30th, 2011

On Wednesday, Taiwanese tech community site XFastest rana public event where it tested five similarly-priced mid-rangesocket LGA2011 motherboards for CPU VRM performanceand stability. This comes at a particularly-important time forGigabyte, when it's faced with CPU VRM problems that it'sdealing with. The results are in.

On Wednesday, Taiwanese tech community site XFastest rana public event where it tested five similarly-priced mid-rangesocket LGA2011 motherboards for CPU VRM performanceand stability. This comes at a particularly-important time forGigabyte, when it's faced with CPU VRM problems that it'sdealing with. The results are in.

In the event, XFastest compared the ECS X79R-AX, MSIX79A-GD45, ASRock X79 Extreme4, ASUS P9X79, andGigabyte X79-UD3. Earlier this week, Gigabyte issued a press-release in which it acknowledged that some of its X79-UD3motherboards may have got damaged by users as a result ofbad firmware. It offered free replacements to affected users,and strongly recommended others to update the BIOS of theirX79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2 motherboards to thelatest one available on the company's support website. It iswith this on the backdrops, that XFastest ran this public test.It recieved quite some attention from the local media, somecompany representatives were also present to witness theevent.

XFastest set a common test bench with common components,which included Intel Core i7-3930K processor, KingstonHyperX memory, Antec PSU and high-performance CPUcooler. The test itself involved subjecting the motherboards'VRM to extreme stress, and measuring stability, performance,and VRM temperatures. This was done by setting CPUcore voltage to 1.4V, maxing out the motherboards' load-line calibration (aggressive V-droop correction), and runningmulti-threaded Prime95 stress test.

Page 60: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

8

The parameters on which the motherboards were evaluated onwere:

• CPU VRM temperature, measured using a thermal probeattached to the VRM heatsink

• CPU Speed

• CPU voltage, effectiveness of the load-line calibration

• CPU temperature, measured using software

Apple set to announce twonew versions of iPad inJanuary?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/apple-set-to-announce-two-new-

versions-of-ipad-in-january-/14379.html

December 30th, 2011

Apple may be planning to announce two new iPads atthe iWorld (formerly MacWorld) on 26 January next year.According to online sources, the two tablet devices are said tobe designed for the mid- and high-end markets.

Apple is planning to unveil two new iPads at iWorld next year.According to sources, the iPad 2 is competing directly with

Amazon's Kindle Fire in the price-sensitive market segment,while the new tablets are designed for the mid- and high-end segments. The upcoming iPad models will feature 9.7-inch screens with QXGA resolution (1,536 x 2,048 pixels) anddual-LED light bars for improved brightness. Apple would alsocontinue to contract Samsung to manufacture its quad-core A6processors, which will be used in the next-generation iPads.

Traffic simulation systems ofthe future: a special kind ofsupercomputer?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/traffic-simulation-systems-of-the-

future-a-special-kind-of-supercomputer-/14378.html

December 30th, 2011

The worst-ever MRT metro line disruption in Singaporeaffected hundreds of thousands; can custom supercomputersimulation systems cushion the impact of such disasters in realtime?

This month's massive disruption of Singapore's two main - andoldest - metro lines, the North-South and East-West MRT, wasthe worst in the city's metro system history. The compoundingof smaller disruptions on the other two lines in the sameweek didn't help either. Whether the two old lines should bere-dug and replaced with underground maglev metro, wherethe wear and tear like the one with 'claws' and 'sleepers'stops happening, or the signalling systems need change too, isanother issue beyond our scope here.

But, is there a way for high performance computing to helpmanage such disruptions in real time, and analyse the possiblepassenger impacts down to the minute detail?

Here's a simple scenario: in a city of 5 million like Singapore,suddenly, really, suddenly, the two main metro lines stopworking. Say, half of the population which is around the twolines' corridors is affected. How to avert the chaos and have theextra bus or other resources deployed exactly there where thetraffic needs it, to avert the total transport collapse?

Let's go back to that number of 5 million inhabitants. Let'ssay that each inhabitant, as a person, is an entry in a giantdatabase - the Big Brother datacentres, like the Google orFacebook ones, already do it anyway on a global scale. In thecase of Singapore's EZ Link, or Malaysia's Touch'N'go, thatdatabase can easily be filled with the transport history of eachcard holder across a long period of time. Same for the carregistration plates tracked via electronic road pricing gantriesand such. Add to it the age, income, car ownership and house& work/study location, and you can perfectly well estimatea person's traffic movement during a weekday or weekendon any given day or time. That draws a sort of 'movementdiagram' for each of 5 million persons on a given day.

Page 61: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

9

Such database entry for each person can grow up to 100kilobytes in size, and, since we got to keep such stuff in memoryfor full-speed analysis and modeling, it means roughly 500GB of main memory, times 2 for space to create alternatemodels, and we talk about a terabyte RAM machine with asmany cores as you can throw at them, since it is highly parallelwork. That little slim 4-CPU terabyte Xeon E5 mainboard fromyesterday's story comes to mind here...

Now, with such system, containing the movement data of allthe population and their vehicles, and where they want togo next, we can automatically identify any hot spots in thecase of any specific malfunction or shutdown and, in realtime, divert the extra resources exactly to these 'hot spotsof the moment'. No, it doesn't replace the extra metro linesthat, maybe, Singapore should have built much earlier whenit was way cheaper to construct - rather than pouring moneyinto Western investment banks or assets - but, anyway, a fastcomputer for a quick fix, when the problems arise, is alwayswelcome.

Windows Phone updates,Tango and Apollo, comingsoonSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/windows-phone-updates-tango-and-

apollo-coming-soon/14377.html

December 30th, 2011

After the launch of Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mangooperating system in October, the company is already planningfor the new update next year. And it seems that details of thenew updates have been leaked, codenamed Tango and Apollo.

Windows Phone users can look forward to more featuresand improvements next year. According to a leaked roadmap(which is accurate as of October), Microsoft has been planningfor its upcoming Tango and Apollo updates 2012. The Tangoupdate, targeted in Q2 2012, is said to be focused on deliveringlow-cost Windows Phone to go against iPhone and Androidphones. However, this could also mean that Tango could be aremovable of features that most budget users would probablynot require. Apollo, on the other hand, claims to be a majorupdate for smartphones that could include support for LTE,high resolution displays and even dual-core processors. Butthe Apollo update won't be coming so soon; it is expected to beavailable in Q4 2012.

Intel changes configurableTDP specs of Ultrabook IvyBridge processorsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-changes-configurable-tdp-specs-

of-ultrabook-ivy-bridge-processors/14376.html

December 30th, 2011

Although good news in a way for Intel, it seems that thedemand for its Ultrabook specific Ivy Bridge processors havebeen much higher than Intel initially anticipated and thecompany has as such had to make some changes to theconfigurable TDP of said processors. It appears that thecompany can't meet its earlier targets, at least not if it's goingto be able to provide large enough quantities of the CPUs.

Although good news in a way for Intel, it seems that thedemand for its Ultrabook specific Ivy Bridge processors havebeen much higher than Intel initially anticipated and thecompany has as such had to make some changes to theconfigurable TDP of said processors. It appears that thecompany can't meet its earlier targets, at least not if it's goingto be able to provide large enough quantities of the CPUs.

The changes aren't big and the nominal TDP remains at 17Wand the same goes for the highest configurable TDP for thesechips which stays at 25W. However, the lowest configurableTDP has been increased from 13W to 14W and the same goesfor the low frequency mode. In addition the low power modehas increased from 11W to 12.5W.

This might seem trivial, but for some notebook makers thiscould potentially mean a re-design of the cooling system, notexactly a non-trivial change. It's likely that Intel has pickedchips that would otherwise have been binned differently, butdue to the high demand the company had to bin them as U-series processors. Currently Intel is planning on launching itsIvy Bridge Ultrabook platform sometime in May and the newTDP changes aren't likely to have a huge effect for most of itspartners as there's still plenty of time to make any changes thatmight be needed.

Page 62: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

10

Genesys Logic launches USB3.0 webcam controllerSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/genesys-logic-launches-usb-3.0-

webcam-controller/14375.html

December 30th, 2011

USB 3.0 adoption might be moving slowly forward in thePC industry, but more and more peripherals are starting toappear in the market and if Taiwanese Genesys has anythingto do with it, then we'll all be using USB 3.0 webcams soonenough. The company has announced its new GL3620 USB 3.0webcam controller and it looking at demoing it at CES in earlyJanuary.

USB 3.0 adoption might be moving slowly forward in thePC industry, but more and more peripherals are starting toappear in the market and if Taiwanese Genesys has anythingto do with it, then we'll all be using USB 3.0 webcams soonenough. The company has announced its new GL3620 USB 3.0webcam controller and it looking at demoing it at CES in earlyJanuary.

We have in fact seen a very early prototype demo but this wasusing an FPGA instead of the actual finished silicon and to befrank, we weren't impressed. However, Genesys wasn't usingthe best of sensors for the tech demo and it'll be down to thewecam manufacturers to pick a suitable sensor to show of thecapabilities of the GL3620.

The chip is capable of delivering uncompressed 1080pvideo at 30fps, something that shouldn't put too muchstrain on the USB 3.0 bus. Apparently a key feature isthat the GL3620 supports isochronous transfer mode whichapparently guarantees the bandwidth between the webcamand the host controller.

Thanks to a built-in motion JPEG encoder the GL3620 is alsobackwards compatible with USB 2.0. The built in HISP orhardware image signal processor as Genesys calls it, allowsthe GL3620 to turn the raw RGB data into interpolated YUVvideo and it can also do things like bad pixel correction, imagescaling, gamma correction and image quality enhancementamong other things.

The GL3620 won't go into mass production until the secondquarter of next year, but Genesys will be demoing it at CESalongside its GL3520 USB 3.0 hub, its GL3321 USB 3.0 toSATA 3Gbps bridge and its GL3220 USB 3.0 memory cardreader, all of which are already available.

Ivy Bridge reportedlylaunching on the 8th of AprilSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ivy-bridge-reportedly-launching-on-

the-8th-of-april/14374.html

December 30th, 2011

As we've already reported, Intel is about to launch Ivy Bridge inearly April and although we didn't specify a date in our earlierstories, Digitimes has now confirmed the April 8th launch datethat we'd previously heard. This information is apparentlycoming from Taiwanese PC makers and we'd say it's prettymuch spot on, unless Intel makes some last minute changes tothe launch schedule.

As we've already reported, Intel is about to launch Ivy Bridge inearly April and although we didn't specify a date in our earlier

stories, Digitimes has now confirmed the April 8th launch datethat we'd previously heard. This information is apparentlycoming from Taiwanese PC makers and we'd say it's prettymuch spot on, unless Intel makes some last minute changes tothe launch schedule.

Not all CPUs and chipsets will launch on the 8th of April, assome models alongside with the business chipsets are expectedon the 13th of May according to Digitimes. Most of the desktopCPUs will be available in April, although on the mobile sideonly the quad core Core i7 models are expected to arrive inApril, with all other models launching at a yet unspecified date.

It's not entirely clear why Intel is staggering the launch likethis, but as we know, Intel is trying to empty its Sandy Bridgeinventory and this might very well be part of the reason. Oneinteresting piece of information that Digitimes did provide isthe cost of the chipsets, with the Z77, HM77 and UM77 comingin at US$48, followed by the H77 and HM76 at US$43, the Z75and HM75 at US$40 and finally the business orientated B75at US$37. The corporate level chipsets start at US$53 with theQS77 followed by Q77 and QM77 at US$48 and the Q75 at US$40.

This puts the chipset pricing at a similar level to the 6-serieswhere the Z68 chipsets has a list price of US$48 with theH67 at US$43, the P67 at US$40 and the B65 at US$37. Thesame goes for the mobile parts where the HM67 is listed atUS$48 and HM65 at US$40, although the UM67 is actuallya bit pricier at US$50. That said, these are all list prices andmay not reflect what the actual motherboard and notebookmanufacturers are paying Intel.

As expected, Intel launchesCedar Trail-M Atom'sSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/as-expected-intel-launches-cedar-trail-

m-atom-s/14373.html

December 30th, 2011

Page 63: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

11

We're fairly certain that none of our regular readers aresurprised to see the arrival of Intel's Atom N2600 and N2800Cedar Trail-M based Atom processors today, as we reportedabout it launching at the very end of the year over a month ago.That said, no products will be available for at least a coupleof weeks, although we'd expect that the first Cedar Trail-Mnetbooks will be shown off at CES.

We're fairly certain that none of our regular readers aresurprised to see the arrival of Intel's Atom N2600 and N2800Cedar Trail-M based Atom processors today, as we reportedabout it launching at the very end of the year over a month ago.That said, no products will be available for at least a coupleof weeks, although we'd expect that the first Cedar Trail-Mnetbooks will be shown off at CES.

We've also covered most of the specifications of the N2600 andN2800 Atom processors in the past, but we'll do a brief re-cap here. The N2800 is a 1.86GHz part with its graphics coreclocked at 640MHz and it supports DDR3 memory at speedsof up to 1066MHz. The N2600 on the other hand is clockedat 1.6GHz with a 400MHz graphics clock and it only supportsslower 800MHz DDR3 memory. One other major difference isthat the N2600 can be cooled passively thanks to its 5W peakTDP, although Intel is apparently claiming an average powerconsumption of the processor and the NM10 chipset of under2W, whereas the N2800 has a TDP of 8W, although averagepower is meant to be less than 2.7W.

As we've already reported, Intel only managed to concoctDX9 drivers for the platform, at least as far as Windows 7is concerned, but we can apparently still expect a doublingof the 3D graphics performance over the previous generationof Atom processors. Not that this is going to make a hugedifference for most netbook users, but at least there shouldbe a decent increase in performance for casual gamers. Moreinteresting then is hardware decode support for H.264 videoand support for Intel's WiDi, albeit only at 600p.

According to Anandtech we can expect to see Cedar Trail-Mnetbooks with a starting price point of as little as US$199-229and part of the reason for this is that Intel itself has reducedthe price of the Atom processors compared to the previousgeneration. That said, these machines are likely to be verybasic and lack features such as WiDi. Intel's partners areapparently Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshibaand we've already seen examples of models from Asus andSamsung, despite the latter promising to pull out of thenetbook market in 2012.

Still, we'd rather pay a little bit more for an AMD Brazospowered machine, despite not having seen final hardwarebased on Cedar Trail-M, as AMD is likely to have the upperhand in terms of performance even though Intel has finally

Page 64: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

12

gotten Atom to the kind of level where it should have been fromthe beginning. Intel might have a more power efficient optionon offer, but there simply are too many things missing to makeCedar Trail-M a competitive platform.

Samsung and others settleLCD price-fixing case for $553millionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-and-others-settle-lcd-price-

fixing-case-for-553-million/14372.html

December 30th, 2011

Samsung and a number of other LCD display makers havesettled a price-fixing case for $553 million.

The seven firms involved in the settlement include Samsung,Sharp, Chimei Innolux, Hitachi, HannStar, Chunghwa PictureTubes and Epson Imaging Devices, all of which are accused ofconspiring to fix LCD panel prices between the years 1999 and2006.

Over $890 million has already been paid out by the companiesto settle previous antitrust cases, but the latest payment isaimed at resolving claims by indirect purchasers and eight USstates.

"This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field forbusinesses that abide by the rules, and left consumers topay artificially higher costs for televisions, computers andother electronics," said New York Attorney General EricSchneiderman.

Samsung will pay $240 million, Sharp will fork out $115.5million, and Chimei Innolux will hand over $110.3 million.Smaller payments are demanded of Hitachi, HannStar,Chunghwa and Epson, with the companies paying $39 million,$25.7 million, $5.3 million and $2.9 million respectively. Anumber of state penalties, up to $6 million per company, werealso applied.

Other companies accused of price-fixing, including AUOptronics, LG Display and Toshiba, have yet to reach asettlement, but will likely be forced to pay out millions ofdollars.

Chinese LG Display staff strikeover alleged pay racismSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-lg-display-staff-strike-over-

alleged-pay-racism/14371.html

December 30th, 2011

Staff at an LG Display factory in China have gone on strike overa dispute relating to alleged racism in the payment of end ofyear bonuses.

Staff at an LG Display factory in China have gone on strike overa dispute relating to alleged racism in the payment of end ofyear bonuses.

Reports suggest that upwards of 8,000 Chinese workers havejoined the strike at the Nanjing facility, accusing the SouthKorean electronics company of paying higher bonuses toKorean staff compared to local Chinese employees.

"We and the Nanjing city government are jointly negotiatingwith workers to smoothly reach an agreement and we expectthe problems to be resolved soon," said LG spokespersonClaire Ohm, according to Reuters. "Some of our productionhas been suspended."

This the latest worker dispute in China, where the rising costof living has prompted numerous protests and demands forhigher pay. Universally low salaries is one thing, but allegedfavouritism towards certain nationalities will unlikely go overwell with staff or customers.

Apple iOS and Android tied inChristmas salesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/apple-ios-and-android-tied-in-

christmas-sales/14370.html

Page 65: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

13

December 30th, 2011

Apple iOS and Android devices were popular Christmas giftsthroughout the world, with the two rivals virtually tied in theheated battle for holiday sales.

Apple iOS and Android devices were popular Christmas giftsthroughout the world, with the two rivals virtually tied in theheated battle for holiday sales.

There were 12 times more new devices using the mobileoperating systems form Apple and Google over the Christmasweekend compared to previous weekends, according to mobileapp analytics firm Localytics.

Despite the two platforms being roughly neck and neck, theirpopularity differed greatly from region to region. For example,Apple devices sold best in the US and Germany, while Androiddevices did better in South Korea and Sweden.

iOS devices were up 12.5 times, with a 14 times increase iniPhone sales, but a massive 21 times increase in iPods, showingthat Apple's classic music player still has some life in it.

Android's increase was not far behind at 12 times more sales,but Android now leads in more markets than Apple, ruling 14of the top 20 global markets, which will likely see it becomethe overall market leader in the months and years to come.

South Korea was a particularly strong victory for Android, witha lead of over 80 percent compared to iOS. Sweden and Japanalso saw huge gaps between the two, with Android leading by45 percent and 50 percent respectively.

AT&T buys Qualcommwireless spectrumSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/at-t-buys-qualcomm-wireless-

spectrum/14369.html

December 30th, 2011

AT&T has completed its acquisition of wireless spectrum fromQualcomm in a deal worth roughly $1.9 billion.

The telecommunications company expressed interest inbuying the spectrum in December 2010, but was held up byan investigation by the Federal Communications Commission(FCC). Approval was granted last week after AT&T withdrewits controversial bid to buy T-Mobile.

The 700 MHz spectrum was previously used by Qualcomm forits FLO TV system, a mobile TV broadcasting technology thatflopped and was eventually discontinued.

The spectrum will cover over 300 million people, giving AT&Ta significant boost to its Long Term Evolution (LTE) business.

This is particularly important given the general lackof spectrum telecommunications providers have beenexperiencing in recent years, resulting in numerous biddingwars and acquisitions. The continuing popularity ofsmartphones and tablet computers will ensure that spectrumdemand remains strong in years to come.

Spire hack allows Siri to runon jailbroken iOS 5 devicesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/spire-hack-allows-siri-to-run-on-

jailbroken-ios-5-devices/14368.html

December 30th, 2011

A new hack, called Spire, is said to allow Siri voice assistant torun on almost all jailbroken iPhone or iPad on iOS 5. And thebest thing is, that is legal.

Siri is one of the popular features of the latest Apple iPhone4S, and it seems that a fully functioning port of the voiceassistant is available on almost all jailbroken iOS 5 devices.

Page 66: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

14

Developed by Chpwn and Ryan Petrich, the new hack knownas Spire, allows Siri to run on jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS,third-gen iPod touch, fourth-generation iPod touch and first-generation iPad. And it seems like it is legal. The Spire app isfree and available to download from the Cydia app store andtakes about 100MB of space, and users are advised to connectto a Wi-Fi network when downloading the app.

Samsung to debut GALAXY SIII at Mobile World Congress2012?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-to-debut-galaxy-s-iii-at-

mobile-world-congress-2012-/14367.html

December 30th, 2011

News of the next-generation GALAXY smartphone is out, andit is likely to be the Samsung GALAXY S III. And the Quad-core phone may be showcased at the Mobile World Congressin Barcelona next year.

According to Korean media ETNews, the new Samsungsmartphone, GALAXY S III, will be equipped with a Quad-coreprocessor; possibly the Samsung's Exynos 4412 processor,a 32nm quad-core chip based on the ARM Cortex A9architecture. Other specifications include 4.6-inch SuperAMOLED Plus touchscreen display (1280x720), supports LTEnetwork, 12-megapixel rear camera that can capture full highdefinition 1080p video, and runs Google Android 4.0 IceCream Sandwich.

It was also reported that Samsung is developing 3Dcapabilities on the smartphone, though there's no details asto what extent will the new phone be equipped with thetechnology. The company could come up with a separatesmartphone, rather than incorporate it to the GALAXY S III,and called it the Samsung GALAXY S 3D. We can only wait

and see when Mobile World Congress arrived in February nextyear.

More on Xeon E5: Terabyte ofRAM even at midrange?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/more-on-xeon-e5-terabyte-of-ram-

even-at-midrange-/14366.html

December 30th, 2011

There will also be a quad-CPU enabled Xeon E5 Socket 2011version, a quarter later from now. How much memory can ittake? How about a terabyte?

Two QPI links on Socket 2011 CPUs do enable connectingeach processor to TWO other ones, if you accept lesser inter-processor bandwidth compared to just dual-link pairing of twoCPUs alone. There will be a separate Xeon E5-4600 seriescovering that particular market segment, which sits betweenthe high end dual-socket E5-2600 and the enterprise RAS-enhanced even higher end E7 series (those fancy 10-core 30MB L3 cache Westmere-EX chips and their followons).

These are good for uber-rendering workstations with manythreads, as well as SMP server jobs where high per-coreperformance is more important than RAS capability or hugeinterprocessor bandwidth - E7 series have, after all, four QPIlinks on each CPU for that purpose.

Now, since the maximum memory load on each Socket 2011processor is three DIMMs per channel, or 12 in total, it wouldallow for 48 DIMMs altogether on a quad processor board, asyou can see here on the 'Lizard Head Pass' S4600LH boardexpected from Intel. A truly lovely platform which, if goodliquid cooling system was there, could actually fit into 1Uplatform! Else, it's 2U, still not bad at all.

Now, remember those fancy Samsung - and other vendors' -32 GB LR-DIMMs at DDR3-1333 speeds and taking just like5 watts? Well, put 48 of them into this 'little' mobo, and yougot... umm... 1.5 TB RAM, yes. Now, inexpensive large memory

Page 67: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

15

data mining and analysis ops, not to mention simulations like,for instance, impact of MRT line failure on all the car and bustraffic in Singapore down to every person, vehicle and path- an increasingly more often required app here, it seems -become very real, especially when coupled with the current lowmemory pricing.

And, oh yes, there are 160 PCIe v3 lanes in total on suchplatform. Now, how about an extender box for an 8 x dual-GPU setup as an accelerator? A eight-set of liquid-cooled OCAMD HD7990 dual GPU cards could give you up to 15 TFLOPsof double precision power to assist those Xeons on board...

More Wi-Fi mice comingthanks to Wi-Fi DirectSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/more-wi-fi-mice-coming-thanks-to-wi-

fi-direct/14365.html

December 30th, 2011

We've already seen a few Wi-Fi mice from HP, although theseweren't as far as we're aware using Wi-Fi Direct to connect.A company called Ozmo has announced that it has had itsOZMO2000 wireless mouse reference design certified by theWi-Fi Alliance as a Wi-Fi Direct enabled solution onto whichits partners can base their own Wi-Fi Direct mice upon.

We've already seen a few Wi-Fi mice from HP, although theseweren't as far as we're aware using Wi-Fi Direct to connect.A company called Ozmo has announced that it has had itsOZMO2000 wireless mouse reference design certified by theWi-Fi Alliance as a Wi-Fi Direct enabled solution onto whichits partners can base their own Wi-Fi Direct mice upon.

One feature that stands outs with the Ozmo solution is the factthat the company supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. Thecompany has also added support for WPA2 and WPS to makepairing easy. Ozmo doesn't actually make any retail productsthough, but its OZMO2000 chip is ready to ship to its potentialpartners for implementation into Wi-Fi mice.

Interestingly Ozmo claims that its Wi-Fi solution offers twoto three times the battery life for the mouse compared toBluetooth mice and a much higher data rate – up to 24Mbps –if needed. The range should in theory be longer as well, but wecan't imagine too many scenarios where you need to be able touse a mouse 200-300m away from a computer.

One problem we can see though is that Ozmo charges US$3per OZMO2000 chip even in fairly large quantities, somethingthat's likely to put off potential partners, although surprisinglythe company issues a press release back in October stating ithad shipped one million chips back then. Apparently HP is oneof Ozmo's partners, alongside with Intel, Logitech and Targus.As such it's likely we'll see a driver upgrade for HP's Wi-Fimice in the near future with some Wi-Fi Direct support whichshould hopefully make HP's Wi-Fi mice a bit more reliable, as

we've seen a fair few users reports complaining about the micedisconnecting at random.

Source: Ozmo

MSI launches MultiConnectpanel and Voice GenieSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/msi-launches-multiconnect-panel-and-

voice-genie/14364.html

December 30th, 2011

A couple of new motherboard peripherals have been launchedby MSI, one of which we’d say is far more useful than theother. First up we have the MultiConnect panel which is a 5.25-inch drive bay unit that sports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth among itsfeatures, with the second one being MSI’s Voice Genie cardwhich allows you to control your PC by yelling at it.

A couple of new motherboard peripherals have been launchedby MSI, one of which we’d say is far more useful than theother. First up we have the MultiConnect panel which is a 5.25-inch drive bay unit that sports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth among itsfeatures, with the second one being MSI’s Voice Genie cardwhich allows you to control your PC by yelling at it.

The MultiConnect panel is an interesting spin on things asalthough it’s a chunky piece of plastic that slots into a spare5.25-inch drive bay in your case, it not only adds 802.11b/g/nWi-Fi connectivity, but also Bluetooth 3.0+HS, a pair of USB2.0 ports and if you have the right motherboard, an OC GenieII button. For one we’re not quite sure why MSI had to makeit so big, as it seems to waste a lot of space.

Secondly MSI missed a major trick here, the USB ports areonly 2.0, not 3.0 and considering that many chassis out thereshipped pre-USB 3.0 this would’ve been a much more usefuladdition. The Wi-Fi is also limited to 150Mbps and is a simpleUSB dongle hidden behind the plastic fascia. Admittedly it’sneater to have two dongles inside a drive bay than having apair of dongles sticking out the back of your PC, but we’re notsold on MSI’s overall implementation.

Page 68: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

16

As for the Voice Genie, well, this is a small PCB that slots into aPCI Express x1 slot (or any other PCI Express slot at that), butit doesn’t actually interface with the slots electrical connectors.Instead the Voice Genie card connects to a special pin-headeravailable on a selected few MSI motherboards which includemost of MSI’s Z68A models, the Big Bang Marshal and all ofMSI’s X79 motherboards.

At the rear of the card there’s a microphone connector, a pass-through to the mic connector of the onboard audio or soundcard and a small, sliding on/off switch. Once installed theVoice Genie allows you to issue voice commands to your PCin either English or “traditional” Chinese, although we’re notquite sure what the latter is in terms of a spoken language. Itsupports commands even if the system is powered down, so inother words you can now make your PC start without havingto touch it. MSI also claims that you can overclock the system,make it start applications and do a wide range of other thingsby simply issuing voice commands.

Luckily MSI has added an option to make your own customvoice commands, but this is limited to a mere eight commandsin total. In as much as we think this is an amusing piece of kitand potentially something very useful for handicapped people,we can’t see it being a huge seller for MSI. We’d also hope thatMSI comes to its senses and bundles a better microphone thanthe one in the pictures of the card, as it looks like a terriblepiece of kit.

Intel said to be lettingThunderbolt loose in AprilSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-said-to-be-letting-thunderbolt-

loose-in-april/14363.html

December 30th, 2011

There's no secret that Intel wasn't going to let Apple keepits Thunderbolt technology as an exclusive forever, but noreports are coming out stating that we can expect Thunderboltequipped PCs, notebooks and motherboards in April of nextyear. We've been hearing rumours for a while, but this is thefirst solid lead on an actual launch date.

There's no secret that Intel wasn't going to let Apple keepits Thunderbolt technology as an exclusive forever, but noreports are coming out stating that we can expect Thunderboltequipped PCs, notebooks and motherboards in April of nextyear. We've been hearing rumours for a while, but this is thefirst solid lead on an actual launch date.

As we already know, Intel is planning on launching Ivy Bridgearound this point in time and it's not a co-incident that thecompany is also trying to get some Thunderbolt equippeddevices out in the market at the same time. Digitimes isreporting that we'll see notebooks from Asus, various devicesfrom Sony and motherboard from Gigabyte with Thunderboltconnectivity.

Somewhat erroneously Digitimes is quoting Thunderbolt chipcost of more than US$20 a pop, a price that as far as we'reaware only applies to Intel's most expensive Thunderbolt chipknow as Light Ridge. This should be replaced at some pointnext year by Cactus Ridge which should prove to be a fair bitmore affordable. Cactus Ridge was meant to be ready in time

Page 69: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

December 30th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone

17

for Ivy Bridge, but Intel appears to have run into a few snagsand as such it has been delayed until sometime in Q2 of nextyear.

As such notebook manufacturers only has the choice of usingIntel's Light Ridge or the version of Eagle Ridge that Appleuses for the MacBook Air, but this chip only has half theThunderbolt channels of Light Ridge. For some reason Intelhas discontinued its standard version of Eagle Ridge already,so on the host side there's little other choice for the time being.

The good news in terms of growth of Tunderbolt device isthat Intel has finally finished off its Port Ridge peripheralchip, an affordable two PCI Express lane solution that drawsa mere 0.7W (compared to 2-3.8W for its other Thunderboltchips) and which will be far more affordable than previousoptions. This should hopefully see a growth in devices that useThunderbolt as an interconnect, although we still doubt it'll beprice competitive with USB 3.0 in many scenarios.

There are of course usage cases where Thunderbolt excelscompared to USB 3.0, least not for adding desktop expansioncards to a notebook, be it via a notebook docking station orsome kind of external enclosure. However, Thunderbolt is notthe most affordable route and we doubt there will be the samegrowth in Thunderbolt peripherals as there have been withUSB 3.0 peripherals, as the need for the kind of speeds offeredby the interface just isn't there for the majority of computerusers, yet.

Asus outs the Eee PC 1225BSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-outs-the-eee-

pc-1225b/14362.html

December 30th, 2011

Intel's Atom based netbooks might not be overly popular thesedays and to some degree AMD appears to have something todo with it thanks to the introduction of its Brazos platform.Asus is getting ready to launch a refresh of its 12-inch Brazospowered Eee PC 1215B with a slightly updated model called the1225B, although the differences are fairly small.

Intel's Atom based netbooks might not be overly popular thesedays and to some degree AMD appears to have something todo with it thanks to the introduction of its Brazos platform.Asus is getting ready to launch a refresh of its 12-inch Brazospowered Eee PC 1215B with a slightly updated model called the1225B, although the differences are fairly small.

The Eee PC 1225B comes with a choice of either an E450or a C60 APU, something latter models of the 1215B alsooffered. The biggest change is the screen which has beenshrunk slightly from 12.1-inches to 11.6-inches, althoughthe resolution has remained the same at 1366x768. Almosteverything else has stayed the same, but some minor changeshave been done and apparently Asus has fitted 2 or 4GB

of memory on board and only left a single DIMM slot forexpansion, one of the not so good changes.

You still get 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0+HS (apparentlyoptional on some models), a crummy 0.3Megapixel webcam,an HDMI port, a D-sub connector, Ethernet, a pair of audiojacks and a card reader. However, Asus has now upgraded atleast some models with a pair of USB 3.0 ports and rather thanoffering three USB 2.0 ports you know get one to go with thetwo USB 3.0 ports.

Oddly enough Asus is now rating the battery life at 7h insteadof 8h, despite offering what appears to be the same 6-cell56Wh battery pack. The weight has gone down slightly thanksto the smaller display, although this apparently only shavesoff a mere 10g if the specs on Asus' website are correct.TheEee PC 1225B is expected to launch in January and it'll beavailable in either glossy black and white or matte grey, redor silver, although we have a feeling the screen will be glossyeither which way.

Page 70: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

1

VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks!VR-Zone | Stuff for the Geeks is a bi-weekly publicationcovering the latest gadgets and stuff for the geeks.

MSI launches Big Bang-XPower II overclockingmotherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/msi-launches-big-bang-xpower-ii-

overclocking-motherboard/14419.html

January 3rd, 2012

MSI has launched its latest motherboard, the Big Bang-XPower II, offering plenty of overclocking goodness for theIntel X79 chipset.

MSI has launched its latest motherboard, the Big Bang-XPower II, offering plenty of overclocking goodness for theIntel X79 chipset.

The company claims that this board is its most powerful todate, building on the record achievements of the original BigBang-XPower, supporting Intel's latest second generation i7processors.

It is built with Military Class III components, such as DrMOSII, Super Ferrite Choke, Hi-c CAP and Solid CAP, allowingheavy duty use with an extended lifetime. An enhancedthermal design also ensures that no active cooling is required.

Overclocking is the name of the game for this motherboard,with the ability to run 4-way SLI or CrossFire via fourPCI Express Gen3 slots. Renowned overclocker Jon “Elmor”Sandström helped MSI bump up the overclocking abilities ofthe Big Bang-XPower II.

The board includes 8 DIMM slots, with support for up 128GBof RAM, significantly more than most people will ever need oruse, but helping to make the motherboard that little bit morefuture-proof.

Other features include Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 7.1 high-definition audio, six USB 3.0 slots, 10 USB 2.0 slots, two IntelSATA 6Gb/s and four 3Gb/s slots with RAID support, twoASMedia SATA 6GB/s slots, a multi-BIOS UEFI interface, andseveral buttons for easy overclocking and resetting.

LG unveils world's largestOLED TVSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lg-unveils-world-s-largest-oled-

tv/14418.html

January 3rd, 2012

LG will unveil a 55-inch OLED TV at the Consumer ElectronicsShow (CES) in Las Vegas next week, touting it as the largest ofits kind and the “future of TV technology”.

LG will unveil a 55-inch OLED TV at the Consumer ElectronicsShow (CES) in Las Vegas next week, touting it as the largest ofits kind and the “future of TV technology”.

The TV features a huge organic light-emitting diode (OLED)panel that is only 4mm thick and weighs just 7.5kg, utilisingthe technology used by many smartphones at a much largerscale.

With an infinite contrast ratio and speeds that are 1,000 timesfaster than LCD displays, it looks like OLED technology isdefinitely the way forward for the TV manufacturing industry.

It also comes with LG's 4-Colour Pixels, adding white to thetraditional RGB mix, and Colour Refiner, which enhances

Page 71: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

2

colour consistency across multiple viewing angles to improvehues and tones.

“Working closely with LG Display, we have a product whichnot only delivers on all the advantages of OLED overLCD but at a significantly lower cost than what could beachieved using existing OLED manufacturing technologies,”said Havis Kwon, president and CEO of LG Electronics HomeEntertainment Company. “OLED is clearly the future of homeTV entertainment and LG is very focused on making thisexciting technology as easy as possible for consumers toembrace.”

LG previously released 15-inch and 31-inch OLED TV models,but those sizes won't satisfy many home entertainmententhusiasts who will want something larger than 40 inches.We can likely expect something in the 60 to 70 inch rangewithin the next year or two, in addition to other sizes betweenthe existing ranges. Price will be an obstacle, however, evenwith LG's cheaper production method.

Barclays cuts Intel and otherchipmakers' ratingsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/barclays-cuts-intel-and-other-

chipmakers-ratings/14417.html

January 3rd, 2012

Investment firm Barclays Capital has downgraded a numberof semiconductor companies, including Intel, Freescale,Microchip, Applied Materials and Spansion, as demand isexpected to be lower than supply for the first quarter of theyear.

Investment firm Barclays Capital has downgraded a numberof semiconductor companies, including Intel, Freescale,Microchip, Applied Materials and Spansion, as demand is

expected to be lower than supply for the first quarter of theyear.

The companies saw their ratings cut from 'overweight' to'equal weight', market lingo for Barclays' belief that thesecompanies are no longer outperforming and are pretty muchon neutral territory, seeing negligible growth or remaining flat.

"First quarter should be the trough for semis given the ongoinginventory correction, coupled with supply chain constraints,due to muted end demand visibility," said C J Muse, an analystat Barclays, whom Reuters cited as being highly reliable.

Intel cut its fourth quarter forecast last month by $1billion, blaming the shortage of hard disk drives (HDD) forplummeting demand in the entire PC industry, but NomuraEquity Research claims there is more to Intel's revisedfinancial outlook than the HDD problem.

It was not all bad news for chipmakers, however, as Micron,LSI and Cymer were all upgraded from 'equal weight' to'overweight'.

Market recovery is expected in the second half of the year, withend of year growth of five percent, followed by six to eightpercent growth in 2013.

ASUS to launch the secondJay Chou edition laptop N45JSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-to-launch-the-second-jay-chou-

edition-laptop-n45j/14416.html

January 3rd, 2012

Page 72: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

3

It was about six months ago when ASUS announced the JayChou edition laptop N43SL, and it looks like the company isplanning to launch a second laptop endorsed by the Taiwanesecelebrity.

Last year, ASUS announced the Jay Chou Edition N43SLlaptop and very soon we would see the second Taiwanesecelebrity-endorsed notebook PC in the market. Unlike the firstmodel with a piano black finish, the new laptop N45J will bewhite with similar artistic designs printed at the back of thedisplay. The new design is said to be related to his upcomingalbum. The ASUS N45J will feature a 1600x800 resolutionscreen, second generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 processor, 8GBmemory, Nvidia GT555M graphics with choice of either 1GBor 2GB VRAM, SSD or hard disk storage options and Bang& Olufsen ICEpower audio technology that is found on theN45SF. Specifications would vary depending on country,although it is likely that this new laptop will be focused forthe Asia market. According to sources, the ASUS N45J JayChou edition laptop is scheduled to launch in mid January thismonth. No details on the pricing yet.

SmartDevices unveils SmartQTen2 Plus T13 9.7-inchAndroid tabletSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/smartdevices-unveils-smartq-ten2-

plus-t13-9.7-inch-android-tablet/14415.html

January 3rd, 2012

Chinese manufacturer SmartDevices has announced theirnew Ten2 Plus Android tablet. The tablet sports a 9.7-inchtouchscreen, runs Android 2.3 and retails at an unbeatableRMB999 (approximately US$160).

SmartDevices has recently unveiled their new SmartQ Ten2Plus T13 Android tablet. The touchscreen is said to be similarto that of the Apple iPad - 9.7-inch capacitive, IPS paneland has a pixel resolution of 1024×768. Internally, the T13is powered by a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor with 512MBDDR2 RAM and 8GB built-in Flash memory. It also has amicroSD card slot for expansion, and supports up to 32GB.Other features include 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 3G support, Bluetooth2.0+EDR and 2-megapixel front camera. The tablet also comeswith a 7500mAh Lithium-ion battery and runs Android 2.3Gingerbread. (Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is said to be inthe works). But the most impressive thing about the SmartQTen2 Plus T13 is its incredible price tag; it is selling at RMB998(or approximately US$160) which is value for what it offers.

Klipsch Mode M40 headphoneswith active noise-cancelling,lands in SingaporeSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/klipsch-mode-m40-headphones-with-

active-noise-cancelling-lands-in-singapore/14414.html

January 3rd, 2012

Tat Chuan Acoustic, distributor for Klipsch products inSingapore, has announced the availability of the Klipsch ModeM40 headphones. The stylish M40 claims to incorporateactive noise-cancelling technology and provides superbquality sound for audiophiles.

Page 73: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

4

The Klipsch Mode M40 is said to be the company's first activenoise-cancelling (ANC) headphones, designed to providesuperior audio performance. It claims to offer 45 hours of ANCon a single triple AAA battery, which is almost double thetime offered by other ANC headphone models currently in themarket, as well as serves as a high-quality stereo headphoneif you choose not to put in the batteries. Each of the ModeM40 lightweight ear cups are made of premium leather and aspecial high-density memory foam for long hours of listeningcomfort, and has an adjustable headband for secure fit. TheM40 comes with two detachable cloth cables, with one ofthem having a three-button remote and built-in microphonewith echo cancellation; users can make clear conversationsand control the music on their iPhone, iPad or iPhone devicesconveniently.

Priced at S$599 (inclusive of GST), the Klipsch Mode M40is available at all Apple Premium Resellers, and comes witha two-year warranty, AAA battery, microfiber carrying case,airline adaptor and 1/4-inch adaptor.

Samsung adds a dash of Wi-Fito new DualView cameraSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-adds-a-dash-of-wi-fi-to-new-

dualview-camera/14413.html

January 3rd, 2012

Digital cameras might very well be on the decline, especially asSmartphones are getting better and better cameras, but thatdoesn't stop the camera makers from shoving more and morefeatures into cameras. Samsung has announced an updatedversion of its DualView cameras and its latest model, theDV300F has gained Wi-Fi support for instant uploading ofyour pictures.

Digital cameras might very well be on the decline, especially asSmartphones are getting better and better cameras, but thatdoesn't stop the camera makers from shoving more and morefeatures into cameras. Samsung has announced an updatedversion of its DualView cameras and its latest model, theDV300F has gained Wi-Fi support for instant uploading ofyour pictures.

Samsung is so far the only company so slap an LCD displayon the front of one of its cameras for self-portraits, a cleverenough idea, although we're not sure if it's taken the worldby storm. To give consumers easier access to their pictures,Samsung has kitted out the new DV300F with Wi-Fi which inturn allows you to connect the camera directly to the internetand upload your pictures and videos to websites such asFacebook, Picasa and YouTube. You can also email picturesdirectly as well and luckily the camera appears to have somebasic editing options built in.

A much neater advantage that the Wi-Fi connectivity brings inour opinion is that Samsung has an auto backup feature whichwill upload the pictures to cloud storage services, althoughonly Microsoft's SkyDrive and Samsung's own AllShare Playservices are mentioned. In either case you would of courseneed to be connected to a Wi-Fi network, although hopefully asmartphone with a Wi-Fi enabled hotspot would do the job.

The camera itself doesn't really stand out as such with a16Megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom with a 25mm wide anglelens, but it should be vastly superior to any camera equippedphone we can think of. The DV300F will come in black, silver,navy and red, although Samsung didn't announce any pricingor launch date.

HP's Envy Spectre gets teaservideo, almost hereSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/hp-s-envy-spectre-gets-teaser-video-

almost-here/14412.html

January 3rd, 2012

Page 74: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

5

Apart from its Folio 13 it appears that HP has a second,somewhat larger Ultrabook coming which may or may not beknown as the Envy 14 Spectre. HP has released a short teaservideo of something simply called the HP Spectre.

Apart from its Folio 13 it appears that HP has a second,somewhat larger Ultrabook coming which may or may not beknown as the Envy 14 Spectre. HP has released a short teaservideo of something simply called the HP Spectre.

So far next to nothing is known about the new notebook, orpossibly Ultrabook as it may be and as you can see by yourselffrom the video below, HP doesn't exactly give away a lot ofdetails. Some details with regards to the bottom design leakedjust before Christmas, but even in that case it's not clear if it'sof the actual model that will be known as the Spectre or notand by now HP has had the FCC remove even those details.

It's clear that the Spectre will be a high-end product and we'dexpect something out of the ordinary from HP. The only thingthat seems to be agreed upon is that it should be a 14-inchnotebook of some kind and that it should arrive soon, maybeeven ahead of CES. We'll just have to wait and see what HPmanages to conjure up, but it's about time that HP brings outa high-end ultraportable notebook.

Wibtek first to show offalleged Z77 motherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/wibtek-first-to-show-off-alleged-z77-

motherboard/14411.html

January 3rd, 2012

Intel's partners aren't meant to be showing off any 7-series motherboards for a few days yet, but Chinese Wibtekapparently doesn't care much for Intel's restrictions and hasshown off its first Z77 based motherboard. For something froma smaller Chinese motherboard maker it's actually not a halfbad board, but it's not up there with the Taiwanese boardmakers in some areas.

Intel's partners aren't meant to be showing off any 7-series motherboards for a few days yet, but Chinese Wibtekapparently doesn't care much for Intel's restrictions and hasshown off its first Z77 based motherboard. For something froma smaller Chinese motherboard maker it's actually not a halfbad board, but it's not up there with the Taiwanese boardmakers in some areas.

The pictures got posted on Expreview and they're not exactlyhigh-resolution, but plenty of details can be seen nonetheless.The board is called the Hacker Z77 and apparently Wibtek hasjumped on-board the whole gun heatsink theme, albeit in alittle bit more discrete way. The heatsink is meant to be of a“desert eagle” design, although it looks more like some ray gunfrom a Sci-Fi movie to us. Heatsink design apart, Wibtek hasgone for a black on dark brown PCB in terms of slot and PCBcolours and everything looks quite well polished.

The board has 16 power phases for the CPU, although the CPUsocket area is quite crowded due in part to the large heatsink.The slot configuration consists of a pair of x16 slots where thesecond slot operates in x8 mode, a pair of x1 PCI Express slotsand two PCI slots. There's also a half-size mini PCI Expressslot located at the rear of the board which will accept a Wi-Ficard or similar. There are no less than 10 SATA ports in total,six of them SATA 6Gbps (four via two Marvell controllers) andfour are thus SATA 3Gbps.

Around the back of the board we find six USB 3.0 ports ofwhich four should be native ports to the Z77 chipset, a FireWireport, a Gigabit Ethernet port, 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out, an HDMI, DVI and D-sub connector and somethingelse that we didn't manage to identify above the first pair ofUSB 3.0 ports. The additional USB 3.0 ports appear to becourtesy of a VLI host controller and there are pin headers forwhat appears to be four front USB 3.0 ports as well as four USB

Page 75: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

6

2.0 ports and a FireWire port. The board also has power, resetand clear CMOS button located at the front.

There are markings on the board suggesting SLI andCoressFireX support and with the right CPU the board shouldsupport PCI Express 3.0. We should be seeing more 7-seriesmotherboards at CES next week and hopefully we'll seesomething a bit more exciting than the Hacker 77, even thoughon a whole it's not a terrible board. Hit up the source for a fewadditional pictures.

Can Asetek's Technology SaveBillions of Dollars and ReduceCarbon Emissions?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/can-asetek-s-technology-save-billions-

of-dollars-and-reduce-carbon-emissions-/14409.html

January 3rd, 2012

Asetek launched their concept of liquid cooling for highdensity servers to be used in datacenters. The idea of serverliquid cooling in datacenters is as old as the datacenter itself,but this time we're approaching the tipping point.

Every time we mention liquid cooling in datacenters, there isa string of skepticism about the durability of hardware andalleged danger of leaks.

At the same time, server hardware is the cheapest investmentfrom the whole datacenter budget sheet, since buildinga cooling system will eat up 40% of total build cost.Furthermore, largest portion of the monthly power bill willcome from running the cooling subsystem. How big is thiscost? Well, thanks to air cooling the server CPUs and GPUs,datacenters are now single largest consumer of electricity inthe United States, with the situation not being exactly "great"in other countries around the globe. What this does to carbon

emissions, only remains to be seen (since there are no reliabledata on carbon emissions from datacenters).

Enter Asetek. The company known for its legendary VapoChillphase-change system and the LCLC (Low Cost Liquid Cooling)OEM design that today ships in numerous computers suchas HP Z800 workstations or retail products such as CorsairH series, Antec Kuhler and many more is now entering theenterprise segment.

In order to satisfy the needs and worries of the datacenterdesigners the company launched not one but three liquidcooling products.

First and foremost, Asetek now offers closed liquid coolingfor single 1U rackable server, including cooling for both CPUand the GPU, as demonstrated on Supermicro GPU server.Named Internal Loop Liquid Cooling (ILLC), Asetek created acompact radiator cooled by eight low profile fans. This designdoes not require any adjustments to the datacenter, so it canbe retrofit into any server environment.

Page 76: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

7

If you are designing a new datacenter or remodeling theold one, Rack CDU (RCDU, Coolant Distribution Unit) is amultistage system which either connects high-performance 1Uand 2U servers with the delivery of fresh coolant to be chilledby the rack itself, or by using additional blade chassis systemcalled Sealed Server Liquid Cooling (SSLC).

The Sealed Server Liquid Cooling blade chassis fits 10 bladeswith quad-socket motherboards. Since liquid cooling is muchmore efficient than air, you can forget about the common 95WTDP limitation for the Blade CPUs and go with fully fledged130W, 150W TDP processors in the same space, increasingthe computing power density by up to 58.7%, as calculated byAsetek.

All of this solutions mean only one thing - death to thepower consumer of the datacenter, CRAC (Computer RoomAir Conditioning). Liquid cooling significantly reduces thecurrent need for heavy investing in the cooling infrastructure,leaving room for significant computing density improvements.

When it comes to redundancy, it is interesting to knowthat liquid cooling actually continues to work even if fansfail (most common situation for server technicians). Back to2003, I started to experiment with liquid cooling for the firsttime, using components from German Innovatek AG. One ofthings that I forgot was to switch two 120mm fans on, sothe system worked for three months (throughout the wholesummer) without the active exchange of heat. Yet, Pentium4 [email protected] and two liquid cooled Gainward GeForceFX 5900 boards operated at 60C without hassle. Once this"genius" figured the fans were off, the temperature dropped to32C for the CPU and 42C for the GPUs. You all remember thetemperatures on those parts if they were air cooled.

If you're a computer enthusiast, and run liquid cooling for aslong as you can remember - today is the day to celebrate -since you were right. Liquid cooling is better than air, and nowenterprise management can select best performing coolingsolutions for the datacenter.

Asus Eee Pad 7-inch tabletexpected at CESSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-eee-pad-7-inch-tablet-expected-

at-ces/14410.html

January 3rd, 2012

Back at CES last year, Asus showed off a device called the EeePad MeMo which later got a 3D suffix tucked onto its nameat Computex, however the device itself never made a retailappearance. Now rumour has it that Asus will be launching it,or rather a pair of reworked versions of it at CES.

Back at CES last year, Asus showed off a device called the EeePad MeMo which later got a 3D suffix tucked onto its nameat Computex, however the device itself never made a retailappearance. Now rumour has it that Asus will be launching it,or rather a pair of reworked versions of it at CES.

Notebook Italia has not only managed to dig out some briefspecifications, but also a picture of what is said to possibly bethe new device. We're still looking at a 7-inch display and wecan apparently expect a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. Thesource claims that there will be a 3D and a non 3D version ofwhat might still be known as the Eee Pad MeMo.

Page 77: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

8

The processors is rumoured to be a 1.2GHz Qualcomm chipand it should be paired with 16 to 64GB of flash memory. Otherfeatures include Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, although this ishardly surprising. Apparently we can look forward to a 7-inchTransformer tablet as well (of which the picture could be of), atleast if we're to believe Notebook Italia, although the site hassomething of a track record when it comes to Asus leaks andtheir authenticity. It's not long to wait, so we'll just have to seewhat happens next week.

WebOS developers say HPTouchPad was doomed fromstartSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/webos-developers-say-hp-touchpad-

was-doomed-from-start/14408.html

January 3rd, 2012

Developers who worked on WebOS have revealed that HP'srival to Apple's iPad, the TouchPad, was doomed from thestart, thanks to a number of design flaws.

Developers who worked on WebOS have revealed that HP'srival to Apple's iPad, the TouchPad, was doomed from thestart, thanks to a number of design flaws.

Paul Mercer, the former senior director of software at Palm,which HP acquired for $1.2 billion in 2010, said that hiscompany was ahead of its time and just was not able to achievethe ambitious outcome it aimed for with the mobile operatingsystem.

According to Mercer, who previously worked on a number ofApple products, one of the fatal mistakes of WebOS was itsreliance on the open-source software engine WebKit, whichultimately slowed down apps, making it less appealing to optfor WebOS over faster rivals like iOS and Android.

An unnamed former member of the WebOS app developmentteam said the main problem was not WebOS itself, buta leadership and engineering failure to secure outsideprogrammers to develop apps for it.

Another issue was the numerous shortcuts taken over thenine month development period it took to give life to WebOS,including leaving app development kits until the last minute,which were then overhauled twice, which meant programmershad to relearn how to make apps for the platform several times.

Other problems included a lack of staff to appropriately dealwith such a large-scale project, with particular difficultiesfinding programmers who really understood WebKit. Thisshortage led to a situation where the initial launch wasachieved, but updates and bug fixes could not be developed ata quick enough pace. When HP bought Palm many of the coreteam left, leaving the company with an even bigger manpowerproblem on its hands.

Given these blunders with the software it is no surprise thatthe TouchPad failed to compete with Apple and Google basedproducts. Mercer said that as long as WebOS depends onWebKit it will continue to linger far behind its rivals.

Google's Chrome browser toovertake Internet Explorer thisyearSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/google-s-chrome-browser-to-overtake-

internet-explorer-this-year/14407.html

January 3rd, 2012

Google's Chrome web browser will overtake Microsoft'sInternet Explorer (IE) this year, becoming the most usedbrowser across the world, according to figures by StatCounter.

Page 78: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

9

Google's Chrome web browser will overtake Microsoft'sInternet Explorer (IE) this year, becoming the most usedbrowser across the world, according to figures by StatCounter.

Currently Chrome has a market share of 27 percent, puttingit in second place behind IE, which still rules a healthy 38percent of the industry.

By June or July of 2012, however, Chrome is expected tooutgrow Microsoft's former glory. This will be particularlybad considering the year Chrome launched in, 2008, saw IEdominate the market with a 70 percent market share.

Mozilla's Firefox, which was once the most popular alternativeto IE, has dropped more than five percent since last year to25.27 percent, putting it in third place behind Chrome.

The remaining web browsers are significantly behind theothers, with Safari gaining a small increase from 4.79 percentto over six percent, and Opera coming in fifth place with nearlytwo percent.

The figures show how quickly and easily the market can changewhen new competition enters, especially if the establishedcompanies fail to adapt and push out better products.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Tri-FireResultsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-tri-fire-

results/14406.html

January 3rd, 2012

We are still missing one card for quadfire (Kim Jong-un aidesprobably hijacked the package for his Christmas present), buttill then, here are some 3-way Crossfire results...

Test Setup:

As the software voltage tool we used for our 1.26GHz coreoverclock yesterday didn't work with multiple cards, weclocked all the cards to 1100Mhz on the core and 1500Mhz on

the memory. We also flashed the R4E's latest 0001 bios, whichhas further PCIe 3.0 signal tweaks for the HD7970.

Results:

3DMark 11 v1.03 Performance Preset (single card scoresP9532)

3DMark 11 v1.03 Extreme Preset (single card scores X3219)

Page 79: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

10

Unigine Heaven 2.5 (single card scores 78.3fps)

Computemark (single card scores 6951)

Battlefield 3 (DX11) 1080p Ultra Preset

Going Hunting Single Player Level Fraps Runthrough

Verdict:

With such stellar performance already on 3 cards, we reallycan't wait for our 4th card to arrive and extended voltageoptions to be available for multiple cards! A quick check onour power meter showed around 900W power usage while inBattlefield 3 (quite the GPU waller) - which again outclassesprevious generation cards. AMD have really shut the door onits competitiors this time...

AMD Postpones Radeon HD7950 Until FebruarySource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-postpones-radeon-hd-7950-until-

february/14404.html

Page 80: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

11

January 3rd, 2012

When AMD pushed the introduction of the Radeon HD 7970from January 9, 2012 to December 22, 2011, the only thatactually launched were the reviews by selected press. Now,AMD is making sure the same thing does not happen with7950.

By all standards, the introduction of Southern Islands GPUarchitecture is proving to be a success: the first card, RadeonHD 7970 launched on December 22, 2011 with the worldwideavailability coming next week (on the original launch date:January 9, 2012).

However, while the Radeon HD 7970 is delighting us withthe performance achieved and fantastic overclocks on air (wecannot wait to see the water-blocks and LN2 cooling results),this was the first paper launch in ages. For reasons unknown,AMD introduced the part without actual hardware availability.

Knowing that this came from the company that openlycriticized its competitors in the past for doing so, we wonderedis AMD planning another paper launch in the form of valuepart, the Radeon HD 7950.

Not anymore: according to an e-mail from AMD, the companyis making sure that Radeon HD 7950 launches on the samedate as the retail availability, which is 1st week of February.That's right, no 7950 coming on January 9, 2012.

In a way, this is an appropriate delay as well since NVIDIAis widely expected to introduce its GK104, its first part basedon 28nm Kepler architecture in the last week of January or inearly February.

From the looks of it, even though we're still going throughthe hangover of New Years' party, 2012 is looking even moreexciting on the GPU front. It looks like 28nm process fromTSMC is nothing short of brilliant.

Quick Look: Sound BlasterRecon3D Fatal1ty ProfessionalSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/quick-look-sound-blaster-recon3d-

fatal1ty-professional/14401.html

January 3rd, 2012

Almost three months ago back in September of 2011, Creativeannounced their Sound Core3D™ "quad core" chipset, and ithas since featured in their latest gaming focused sound cardsand headsets as well as on motherboards like the ASRockX79 Extreme9. We got the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1tyProfessional PCIe sound card in our labs today to see if itpleases the audiophilles or the hardcore gamer groups.

Front of Box - one of the nicer boxes around

Back of Box - Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel's face only appearsonce here and his endorsement message. We also noticedan alarming lack of any technical specs like DAC/ADC SNRrating or sample rate/resolution - which even Taiwanesemotherboard makers are eager to boast about on their Realtekbased implementations.

Quick Start leaflet and Driver CD

Beamforming Microphone Array

Page 81: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

12

The Card - Metal housing with a plastic window. Uses a PCIe x1interface, which is good as legacy PCI slots are almost extinct

Colour coded outputs for 5.1 audio, 600ohm ampedheadphone jack and TOSLINK Optical In/Out ports

Hackers to build satellites tocombat internet censorshipSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/hackers-to-build-satellites-to-combat-

internet-censorship/14405.html

January 3rd, 2012

Hackers are working on sending their own satellites into orbitaround the Earth as part of an effort to combat the rising threatof internet censorship, and are also planning to put an amateurastronaut on the moon.

Hackers are working on sending their own satellites into orbitaround the Earth as part of an effort to combat the rising threatof internet censorship.

The Hackerspace Global Grid was revealed at the ChaosCommunication Congress in Berlin. The proposals includedeveloping and launching satellites in addition to a grid ofground stations for tracking them. The idea is to have theground stations built by individuals or small groups, dividingthe cost and control.

"The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let's takethe internet out of the control of terrestrial entities," saidhacktivist Nick Farr, who put out a call for contributions to theproject in August.

The major obstacle to this endeavour is funding. Hobbyistshave previously managed to get small satellites into orbit,but they are usually unreliable and difficult to track, whichwould be no good for the internet. Other obstacles includethe technical difficulties of low-orbit versus geostationarysatellites and the potential for governments to interfere withand disable satellites.

Three prototype ground stations are being planned for thefirst half of 2012. The group also hopes to give away workingmodels at the next Chaos Communication Congress, with theaim to keep ground station costs around €100, making itaffordable for many people to participate in this space project.

The hackers suggested they would even like to put an amateurastronaut on the moon within the next 23 years, though howfeasible this is remains in question, particularly given thetechnical and monetary barriers, as well as the potential safetythreat.

Page 82: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

13

The idea of making space open to more than just governmentagencies is an interesting and welcome thought, however, andcould pave the way to some of humanity's greatest triumphsand discoveries.

Haswell graphicsexpectations: A quantum leapor just another small stepforward?Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/haswell-graphics-expectations-a-

quantum-leap-or-just-another-small-step-forward-/14399.html

January 3rd, 2012

As the Ivy Bridge processors from Intel comes out four monthsfrom now, its graphics, with reportedly double the SandyBridge GPU performance, would have an impact on entry leveldiscrete GPUs. Will Haswell continue with the same majorperformance jump, or just some moderate improvements?

By now, we know that Ivy Bridge graphics, integrated in theCPU, will be quite a refresh compared to the current SandyBridge capabilities. The performance, DX11 compatibility, andhigh resolution multi-display capability should satisfy mostmainstream users' needs, somewhat reducing the entry-leveldiscrete GPU market at that point.

A year later, in early 2013, the next generation Haswellplatform should see the light of the day, again first in themainstream PC and mobile arena. Haswell will again includegrapghics enhancements, but how far are those likely to go?Here we share some insights on the graphics side of Intel's nextmajor X86 PC microarchitecture revision.

The 'Generation 7.5' graphics core in Haswell is, as thenaming convention hints, a 'point upgrade' of the seventhgeneration Ivy Bridge graphics engine. Up to 20 executionunits, each 128 bits wide, are to be supported, and these aresupposedly enhanced with a new GPU compute architecture.The other major additions include a new internal GPU cache,hierarchical Z, as well as improved encode & decode pipelinesfor more hardware formats.

A very interesting productivity enhancement is the processor'sability to simultaneously manage external display connectionboth by its own integrated graphics and the external PCIeGPU over up to two displays, avoiding the need for externalswitching hardware.

How about the performance? It seems that the initialperformance expectations aren't that high - compared toeach matching Ivy Bridge graphics level, we're talking ofmaybe 20% average performance improvement. Two possibleexplanations come to mind, one being that Intel team is happyenough with the Ivy Bridge graphics speed-up, and focusesinstead on features and power saving in Haswell (rememberthe power-focus on Haswell from their IDF keynote?), whilethe other one is that the actual speed-up is to be way higher,especially in the high-graphics GT3 version, and that futuredriver improvements should help as well.

We'll look more into the possible additional features andcapabilities expected from Haswell generation graphics overtime, however we also have to keep in mind that graphics is onecapability where AMD has very strong credentials, includingintegrating it on the CPU. If, say, Llano graphics is roughly 2xthat of Sandy Bridge (i.e. similar performance as Ivy Bridge),yet Haswell is another 20% or 70%, depending on the version,that would roughly match the performance of AMD 'Trinity'graphics, which is, however, due much earlier - at about thesame time as the Ivy Bridge itself. On the other hand, AMDis unlikely to have a Fusion integration with a Bulldozerfollow-on on the high end desktop yet by early 2013, so theonly competition that would beat Haswell at the time in theGPU department is another mainstream follow-on to 'Trinity',maybe in 20 nm GloFo process?

AMD Radeon HD 7970 VoltageMod - 1.26GHz flying on airSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-voltage-

mod--1.26ghz-flying-on-air/14398.html

January 3rd, 2012

One week ago, Santa Claus brought us the red themedAMD Radeon HD 7970, which practically smoked previousgeneration cards and showed great overclocking headroom.

Page 83: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

14

For our first feature in 2012, we sacrificed our holidayweekend to bring you an exclusive look at some benchmarkresults achieved with a slight voltage bump and coreclocks raised to nearly 1.26GHz. Stay tuned also for ourrecord breaking 4-way Crossfire tests which should bedone this upcoming week! Update: "Lousy" Furmark Results(settings: http://imgur.com/WAuyP) spotted by sharp eyedviewers - even on the other benchies and BF3 (which walls theCPU to 99%), didn't see the temps go above the magical 66degrees (toasty Singapore ambient), measured by onboard i2csensor and ma fingers.

If you recall our Radeon HD 7970 reference board review nottoo long ago, we got our card to overclock to 1125MHz core and1500Mhz memory, limited by a bios controlled clock ceilingand lack of voltage mod tools. Things changed on this NewYear's weekend though...

With core voltage bumped from 1.15v to 1.25v using publiclyavailable software and a special bios (9th Jan reveal), we gotthe core clock speed up to 1267MHz

Test Setup:

At 100% fan speed and overvolted, the GPU temps were stillonly a lukewarm 66 degrees celcius - which implies that thereference cooling solution could probably handle a lot morevoltage

Update 2/1/12: These were the latest Furmark 1.9.2 Xtremeburn-in settings used (http://imgur.com/WAuyP) - differentcard but same settings. Even on the other benchies and BF3(which walls the CPU to 99%), didn't see the temps go abovethe magical 66 degrees (toasty Singapore ambient), measuredby onboard i2c sensor and ma fingers.

3DMark 11 1.03 Performance Preset (stock is P8227)

Page 84: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

15

3DMark 11 1.03 Extreme Preset (stock is X2764)

Unigine Heaven 2.5 (stock is 69.6fps)

ComputeMark (stock is 5920 marks)

The 28nm process and new GCN architecture have really donewonders for the performance and frequency headroom (VR-Zone Legend Shamino has achieved way better - 1.7GHz+on LN2). Considering that the the temperatures were still inthe 60s on full load, we simply can't wait for the softwarecontrolled voltage ceiling (currently 1.25v on the softwarewe used) to be raised to push our clocks higher!. If youhave a 7970 and good soldering skills, visit Shamino's Lairat kingpincooling forums for his guide on the HD 7970measuring points and hardware vmods.

STAY TUNED FOR OUR POTENTIALLY RECORDBREAKING HD7970 4-WAY CROSSFIRE FEATURE THISUPCOMING WEEK!

Collins Dictionary nowavailable onlineSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/collins-dictionary-now-available-

online/14396.html

January 3rd, 2012

Famous English dictionary by Collins is now avaliableonline. The new beta website is designed to facilitate yourreferencing needs. Updates are on the way to expand the rangeof definitions and translated languages.

Collins English Dictionary is the first dictionary to publishtheir contents online. Previously available with a majorpublisher, the beta website allows user to search for wordsto match some 120,000 entries available for free, includinga list of possible leads for misspelled words. It supports

Page 85: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

16

translations to French, German and Spanish, available viathe tabs above the entry field. With an expanding range ofthe word definitions, the online dictionary will be addinganother 100,000 entries by March, along with translations to35 different languages. For a year and a half, the Scotland-based team had been preparing the online publication. Headof digital at HarperCollins, Alex Brown, said: “We’ve broughttogether the web designers’ creativity with our own experienceof language and how it’s used to create a really nice, userfriendly but sharply designed website.”

Sapphire Readies HD 7970with 1335 MHz GPU ClockSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sapphire-readies-hd-7970-with-1335-

mhz-gpu-clock/14397.html

January 3rd, 2012

We tend to be skeptical about AMD or NVIDIA claiming stellaroverclocking capabilities of their upcoming GPUs, but thistime, it seems AMD wasn't playing the same old PR games.Sapphire is readying a non-reference design HD 7970 graphicscard that boasts of 1335 MHz GPU clock speed. Out of the box!

You read that right, 1335 MHz GPU core clock speed, out ofthe box! A leaked company document belonging to AMD'sbiggest add-in board (AIB) partner, Sapphire, disclosed detailssuch as clock-speeds, of pretty much every non-referencedesign Radeon HD 7970 graphics card that company has, inthe works. These include Sapphire's using brand markers -Atomic, Toxic, FLEX, Vapor, and Dual-Fan. The cards thatcaught our eyes are "Atomic RX" and "Atomic WC".

Both "Atomic RX" and "Atomic WC" have the same exactclock speeds - 1335 MHz core, 5735 MHz (1433 MHz actual)memory. The "Atomic RX" could be an air-cooled model,while the "Atomic WC" could be a liquid-cooled one. Sapphirewill most likely use a closed-loop, pre-fitted water-coolingsolution.

Other variants include Toxic 3G, with 1125 MHz core,5600 MHz (1400 MHz actual) memory; FLEX 6G, with aflexible display output configuration of six mini-DisplayPortconnectors, AMD reference clock speeds of 925/5500 MHz(core/memory effective), but with a whopping 6 GB of memoryon board; VaporX 3G with 1010/5500 MHz (core/memoryeffective), Dual-Fan 3G, with a cost-effective double-fan coolerand AMD reference speeds; and "Da Original", which is thevanilla card that sticks completely to AMD reference boarddesign. Boy, are we excited.

Intel to offer seventh mobile 7-series chipsetSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-to-offer-seventh-mobile-7-series-

chipset/14395.html

January 3rd, 2012

Page 86: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

17

Quite unexpectedly we got our hands on details of a seventhmobile chipset for Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors, amodel that has us wondering what Intel is playing at. Thechipset appears to be another budget model, yet it offers someadditional features compared to chipsets with higher modelnumbers.

Quite unexpectedly we got our hands on details of a seventhmobile chipset for Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors, amodel that has us wondering what Intel is playing at. Thechipset appears to be another budget model, yet it offers someadditional features compared to chipsets with higher modelnumbers.

The chipset in question is the HM70 and it appears to besomething of a request from OEMs as it's something of a mixbetween the UM77 and the HM75. For starters it only has fourlanes of PCI Express 2.0, the same as the UM77 chipset, yet ithas support for two USB 3.0 ports, a feature lacking entirelyfrom the HM75. That said, it still only has half the USB 3.0ports of the other 7-series chipsets. Intel has also cut the totalnumber of USB 2.0 ports down to a mere six, again the sameas the UM77 chipset.

As we move down the feature list we find that the HM70 onlysports four SATA ports of which only one is SATA 6Gbps, oncemore mimicking the UM77. However, there's no support forRAID or Smart Response, something it shares with the HM75and HM76. Almost other features are present though withthe exception of Anti-Theft technology and the ones intendedfor corporate and business notebooks. We're not sure whyIntel would do a chipset without support for its Anti-Thefttechnology as this seems rather backwards.

What we don't know if package size or cost, but we'd guess thatwe're looking at pricing similar to the HM75, so somewherearound the US$40 mark. A very peculiar addition indeed,but a chipset we have a feeling we'll be seeing in a lot morenotebooks than the HM75, despite its omissions as we havea feeling that USB 3.0 will be a more appealing selling point

for the notebook makers than Anti-Theft technology andadditional SATA ports and PCI Express lanes.

Elpida samples 4Gbit Wide IOMobile RAMSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/elpida-samples-4gbit-wide-io-mobile-

ram/14394.html

January 3rd, 2012

2012 is so far looking like it'll be a great year for mobiledevices with plenty of quad core ARM implementationsarriving, higher resolution screens expected, faster flashstorage memory at ever increasing capacities and now, super-fast, low power memory, at least if Elpida has anything to dowith it. The company has announced that it has started to shipsamples of its new Wide IO Mobile RAM as well as its MobileDDR3 RAM in 4Gbit capacities.

2012 is so far looking like it'll be a great year for mobiledevices with plenty of quad core ARM implementationsarriving, higher resolution screens expected, faster flashstorage memory at ever increasing capacities and now, super-fast, low power memory, at least if Elpida has anything to dowith it. The company has announced that it has started to shipsamples of its new Wide IO Mobile RAM as well as its MobileDDR3 RAM in 4Gbit capacities.

Let's start with the Mobile DDR3 or LPDDR3 as it's alsoknown as (not to be confused with Low Voltage DDR3) whichis the next generation of "standard" DRAM to be used inmobile devices and it's a simple evolution from LPDDR2.We're looking at a doubling in the data rate from 800MHz to1600MHz, or from 3.2GB/s to 6.4GB/s if you prefer. LPDDR3still uses a fairly narrow 32-bit bus and it will be available insizes of 512, 1024 and 2048MB down the line, although initialsample shipments will be 512MB. LPDDR3 can of coursebe configured in dual-channel which effectively doubles thebandwidth and this is something we'd expect to see in somehigh-end tablets where PCB space restrictions aren't as muchof a concern as they are in smartphones.

So what about Wide IO Mobile RAM? Well, as the namesuggests it has a much wider bus than regular DRAM, in factits 512-bit wide, that's 16 times wider than that of LPDDR3 insingle channel mode. However, the operating speed is a mere200MHz, but thanks to the wide interface data transfer speedsstill hit 12.8GB/s. Elpida claims that the vastly lower clockspeed of Wide IO Mobile RAM allows for up to a 50 percentpower saving compared to today's LPDDR2. Just as with itsLPDDR3, we'll see capacities of 512, 1024 and 2048MB, butwith initial shipments being limited to 512MB modules.

The interesting thing here will be once clock speeds increase,as even fairly minor increases in the speed of Wide IO MobileRAM (they really need to come up with a catchier namethough) should result in big performance improvements.Hopefully we'll see a widespread adoption of Wide IO MobileRAM, but it's not clear how easy it is to add support for it for

Page 87: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 3rd, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

18

the SoC manufacturers, but it's clear that it would require adifferent memory interface than what is widely used today.

Lenovo gives us a sneak peekof its upcoming IdeaPad S110Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lenovo-gives-us-a-sneak-peek-of-its-

upcoming-ideapad-s110/14393.html

January 3rd, 2012

If a teaser video posted by Lenovo on YouTube is anything togo by, Lenovo should be one of the first companies to launcha Cedar Trail-M netbook, although Lenovo seems to haveditched the term netbook in favour of "mini notebook". TheIdeaPad S110 should feature the new Atom N2600 processoras well as a few other additions that most netbooks don't have.

If a teaser video posted by Lenovo on YouTube is anything togo by, Lenovo should be one of the first companies to launcha Cedar Trail-M netbook, although Lenovo seems to haveditched the term netbook in favour of "mini notebook". TheIdeaPad S110 should feature the new Atom N2600 processoras well as a few other additions that most netbooks don't have.

The video gives away the fact that the IdeaPad S110 will comein a choice of red, blue, white or black. It has a 10.1-inch screen,but this is apparently an HD resolution screen, although bythis we presume Lenovo means 1366x768 at the most. It alsocomes with an optional 720p webcam, USB 3.0 connectivity,Wi-Fi and optional 3G connectivity.

A few other features were also dug out thanks to some helpfulonline retailers that have already listed the IdeaPad S110 forsale and as such we know we can expect 1GB of RAM anda 320GB hard drive as standard. A bit sting in our opinionespecially considering how cheap RAM is these days, buttypical for a netbook. Lenovo also claims that the IdeaPad S110weighs in at 1.15kg and measures in at 16mm thick/thin andthat it comes with "long battery life for extended use" withoutgoing into any details.

We managed to dig up some official pricing and at least inCanada the list price excluding tax is CAD$299.99 (S$382)which isn't terrible, but one should take into consideration thatIntel is offering its Cedar Trail Atom processors at a muchmore affordable price than the previous generation with anAtom N2600 having an Intel list price of a mere US$42 whichshould be compared to US$86 for either of the Atom N550 orN570, a US$46 price difference that would be directly reflectedin the price of the actual device.

Asus to launch Atom D2500mini-ITX motherboardSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-to-launch-atom-d2500-mini-itx-

motherboard/14392.html

January 3rd, 2012

We've managed to dig out a few details of an upcoming mini-ITX motherboard from Asus featuring Intel's Atom D2500processor and although this isn't the most exciting platform inthe world, Asus has created something a little bit different. Infact, anyone looking at building a home server with some fancyfeatures might just want to consider this board.

We've managed to dig out a few details of an upcoming mini-ITX motherboard from Asus featuring Intel's Atom D2500processor and although this isn't the most exciting platform inthe world, Asus has created something a little bit different. Infact, anyone looking at building a home server with some fancyfeatures might just want to consider this board.

The model name is D25NM10-I/CSM and it's quite differentfrom the boards we've seen from ASRock, as Asus is targetingquite a different market segment. In reality this ought to be anindustrial PC motherboard judging by the fact that it has anLVDS connector, five serial ports (of which two are RS422/485compatible) and even a pin header for a parallel port. However,Asus has also included a PCI Express x1 and a mini PCI Expressexpansion slot, a DVI port and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet portsmaking this an interesting solution for a home server.

Other features include an on-board DC-DC converter, 5.1-channel audio, a pair of SATA ports, a total of eight USB 2.0ports (four via two headers), a PS/2 port, a D-sub connectorand a pin header for S/PDIF out. Sadly we don't have a pictureof the board, but we can imagine it being a fairly crampedboard considering the amount of features Asus has squeezedin. Intel has finally allowed for up to 4GB of 1066MHz DDR3RAM to be supported by its Atom processors and this furthermakes this a decent little server board.

The CPU is passively cooled and with an external poweradapter there's no noise from the PSU either. The onlylimitation as far as a server is concerned is the two SATA ports,but at least a PCI Express RAID card could be connected to thePCI Express slot if need be. The question is how much Asus isplanning on charging for this board, as we have a feeling it'llbe quite expensive due to all the industrial PC features, but wemight be wrong here. No word on when it'll be available, butwe'd expect it to arrive shortly.

Page 88: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

1

VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks!VR-Zone | Stuff for the Geeks is a bi-weekly publicationcovering the latest gadgets and stuff for the geeks.

SATA-IO announces DevSleepfor reduced power draw ofSATA devicesSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sata-io-announces-devsleep-for-

reduced-power-draw-of-sata-devices/14451.html

January 5th, 2012

We seem to be living in the age of power frugality when itcomes to mobile computing devices and although this is by nomeans a bad thing in most cases, we're starting to wonder if thetechnology companies aren't looking in the wrong directionsometimes. Now the SATA-IO is the latest organization tojoin with a new power saving feature called DevSleep which ismeant to help reduce the power of SATA devices.

We seem to be living in the age of power frugality when itcomes to mobile computing devices and although this is by nomeans a bad thing in most cases, we're starting to wonder if thetechnology companies aren't looking in the wrong directionsometimes. Now the SATA-IO is the latest organization tojoin with a new power saving feature called DevSleep which ismeant to help reduce the power of SATA devices.

According to Microsoft and Intel the two most power hungrydevices in a notebook is the hard drive and the display and it'sclear that the SATA-IO is trying to address the first one of thesetwo categories. What DevSleep enables is the ability for a SATAdevice such as an SSD or hard drive to more or less power itselfoff entirely when not in use. This is quite different from thevarious slumber modes currently available for SATA devices.

One problem with DevSleep is that new device and hostcontrollers would need to be made that supports DevSleep,as the PHY and other parts of the storage device would becompletely powered off when the device is in DevSleep mode.In DevSleep mode a SATA device is meant to draw less than5mW, yet have a response time of less than 20ms. This is a lotquicker than resuming a notebook from standby and shouldequate to a similar power draw. A SATA device today woulddraw in the region of 50-100mW in its lowest slumber mode,yet still take 10ms to respond, so the trade-off here is very small

in terms of what the user would notice in terms of delay, yetbig in terms of power saved.

An added bonus is that the host controller PHY would also bepowered down, saving further power. The problem here is thatit wouldn't work with today's SATA controller, as a DevSleepside-band signal would be needed to allow the host and deviceto communicate as to when to go to sleep and when to wakeup. As such it's not likely that we'll see DevSleep support inany SATA devices this year, although the information providedby the SATA-IO doesn't really explain what is needed to addthe extra side-band signalling, so it's entirely possible that thisis a very minor addition that could easily be implemented incurrent SATA hardware.

Google drops Intel in favour ofARM for Google TVSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/google-drops-intel-in-favour-of-arm-

for-google-tv/14450.html

January 5th, 2012

In a surprise to no-one move, Google or rather Marvell hascome clean on the fact that Google TV will be moving awayfrom Intel and onto ARM. The first new Google TV boxesshould be based on the Marvell Armada 1500 HD media SoCand should make a debut at CES next week.

In a surprise to no-one move, Google or rather Marvell hascome clean on the fact that Google TV will be moving awayfrom Intel and onto ARM. The first new Google TV boxesshould be based on the Marvell Armada 1500 HD media SoCand should make a debut at CES next week.

The Armada 1500 (also known as the 88DE3100) is a brandnew SoC from Marvell and an up to date version of the olderArmada 1000, a chip that found its way into some Blu-rayplayers among other things. The Armada 1500 sports a customPJ4B dual core ARM v6/7 processor designed by Marvellwhich is said to be Cortex-A9 compatible. Marvell claims2.61 DMIPS per MHz per core, somewhat faster than the 2.5DMIPS for a standard Cortex-A9 implementation. Accordingto the spec sheet, each core is clocked at 1.2GHz which givesus a performance of just over 6200 DMIPS. Marvell has alsoincluded Neon support and support for Intel WMMX in theArmada 1500.

Marvell has also added a 3D graphics core to the Armada 1500,although this is not an in-house design, as Marvell has licensedthe GC1000 from Vivante. According to Anandtech this is anOpenGL-ES 1.1/2.0 port with a core clock of 750MHz, but

Page 89: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

2

the details are fairly thin with regards to how this GPU corecompares to that seen in other Cortex-A9 SoC's. Marvell hasof course also included its own Qdeo post processing enginewith supports per-pixel 3D noise reduction and de-interlacing,scaling and a wide range of other post processing features.

Other hardware features include support for 32-bit DDR3800MHz memory, support for various types of Flash memory,HDMI 1.4 support, SATA 3.0 (we're not sure if Marvell refersto 3Gbps or 6Gbps here), 10/100Mbit Ethernet, SDIO, USB2.0 connectivity and interestingly support for digital videoinput. In the latter case it seems like Marvell is hoping for itsArmada 1500 to end up in some TVs and as such it would needto have HDMI inputs, although it will be interesting to see ifanyone will create a device that will allow for recording fromthe digital input.

Marvell has also included support for a ton of codecs in itsVMeta video engine and it can decode two streams at once.It handles just about every format out there including HighProfile H.264, VC-1 Advanced profile, DivX-HD, VP6/8 in HD,Real Video 9/10 up to 1080p and a bunch of other formats.We should point out that there's support for Blu-ray 3D video,although we don't expect this to be a feature of any newGoogle TV products, but it should as such also handle 3D TVbroadcasts. On the audio side of things the Armada 1500 willhandle multi-channel Dolby and DTS up to 7.1-channels.

Beyond Google TV, Marvell is also claiming support forAndroid and various Linux operating systems. The plannedimplementations are as we've mentioned Google TV, smartTVs, set top boxes of various kinds, Blu-ray players and allkinds of media players. Marvell appears to have a well featuredsolution here, albeit maybe not quite as flexible as an x86setup, but vastly cheaper. Marvell's own demo system that youcan see pictured above might not look that impressive, butremember that this isn't what Google's partners' products willlook like. Time will tell of Google TV 2.0 will be a success or not,but if the price can be brought down to something much morereasonable than the first generation hardware and if Googlecan put together slightly better software, then we see no reasonbar that of Google being shut out by the content providers thatthe new Google TV boxes shouldn't be a success.

Swedish file-sharing grouprecognised as a religionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/swedish-file-sharing-group-recognised-

as-a-religion/14449.html

January 5th, 2012

A file-sharing organisation has gained official recognitionin Sweden as a religion, an unusual move that could haverepercussions on the debate about the illegal downloading offiles.

A file-sharing organisation has gained official recognitionin Sweden as a religion, an unusual move that could haverepercussions on the debate about the illegal downloading offiles.

The Church of Kopimism considers “kopyacting”, or file-sharing, to be a religious service, despite most people seeing itas little more than a digital act.

Kopimism gained recognition as a religion just beforeChristmas after applying three times to the Swedishgovernment agency Kammarkollegiet. Not only is file-sharingconsidered its central sacrament, the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts for copying and pasting are viewed as sacredsymbols.

The group is run by Isak Gerson, a 19-year-old student ofphilosophy, who is now the spiritual leader of Kopimi, thepeople who follow the tenets of this new religion, whichdoes not explicitly support illegal file-sharing, but the generalfree exchange of information. There are likely millions ofunknowing adherents of Kopimism throughout the world.

While this might sound like something akin to the idea ofthe Jedi religion, it could have a monumental effect on thelegality of various laws against illegal file-sharing, as internetcuts and website blocks could be seen as religious persecution,a violation of a fundamental human right.

File-sharing remains one of the big debates of modern society,with widespread opposition to various proposed laws thatmany see as internet censorship. Political groups like thePirate Party have formed in recent years, and now advocatesof file-sharing can add the divine to their list of supporters.

Page 90: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

3

Apple hires Adobe executivefor iAd positionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/apple-hires-adobe-executive-for-iad-

position/14447.html

January 5th, 2012

Reports suggest that Apple has hired Todd Teresi, an Adobeexecutive, for its iAd advertising platform, an ironic moveconsidering the companies' past rivalry.

Reports suggest that Apple has hired Todd Teresi, an Adobeexecutive, for its iAd advertising platform, an ironic moveconsidering the companies' past rivalry.

Teresi previously held the role of vice-president of Adobe'smedia solutions group and is now working as vice-presidentof iAd, despite the lack of a formal announcement of theemployment shift.

The position opened up after the founder of Quattro Wireless,the firm Apple acquired and turned into iAd, stepped down,suggesting all was not well in Apple's mobile advertisingdivision.

The move is particularly interesting given strained relationsbetween the two companies after Steve Jobs dismissed Flashas outdated and insecure.

Apple launched iAd in 2010 in an attempt to monopolise onthe potential ad revenue that could be made from the boomingsmartphone and tablet sectors, an area that Google has beenquite successful in. Some believe iAd has failed to achieve whatApple set out to do, however, with criticisms over its high costand limited exposure.

“Charging premium prices and reaching only Apple devices is amuch harder sell,” said EMarket analyst Noah Elkin, accordingto Bloomberg. “That has been a huge stumbling block.”

This might explain why Apple brought Teresi on board, ashe has extensive experience in the media and advertisingsector, working for both Adobe's digital publishing businessand Yahoo's publishing sales. Whether or not he can turn iAdinto the number one mobile advertising business remains tobe seen.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 QuadCrossfireX: The Stock AirCooling ChampionSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-quad-crossfirex-

the-stock-air-cooling-champion/14444.html

January 5th, 2012

Armed with only our fists, we slayed the murderous firebreathing dragon and rescued the princess (actually the lastHD 7970 to complete our 4-way quadfire feature). This time,we have also included 5760x1080 Eyefinity tests in Battlefield3 and DiRT3, complete with videos!

Test Setup:

This time we've upgraded our CPU cooling to a XSPC RX360kit and clocked it higher at 4.8GHz (LinX 4gb 10 runs stable).Unfortunately we still couldn't get any of the availableoverclocking tools to set voltages or core clocks beyond1125MHz on simultaneously all 4 cards without running intoBSODs or weird artifacts, so we were forced to use therestrictive AMD Overdrive to run our cards @ 1100/1500MHz

Page 91: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

4

The Tests:

3DMark 11 v1.03 Extreme Preset(http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2480832)

3DMark 11 v1.03 Performance Preset(http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2480813)

3DMark Vantage Performance Preset(http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3788612)

Unigine Heaven Benchmark (hwbot.org Submission)

LuxMark OpenCL Benchmark Tool (single card scores 19238)

Page 92: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

5

Lenovo announces ThinkPadHybrid laptop and businessultrabookSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/lenovo-announces-thinkpad-hybrid-

laptop-and-business-ultrabook/14446.html

January 5th, 2012

Lenovo has announced its first ThinkPad Hybrid laptopand first business ultrabook, combining portability withenterprise-class features and power-saving options.

Lenovo has announced its first ThinkPad Hybrid laptop andfirst business ultrabook.

The 13.3-inch ThinkPad X1 Hybrid features manyimprovements over its predecessor, the X1, such as double theCPU speed and quadruple the GPU performance.

One of the more interesting elements of the X1 Hybrid isits instant media mode, which doubles the battery life to 10hours and effectively gives the laptop some PC functionality,explaining the 'Hybrid' name. This mode, which can beaccessed instantly by clicking an icon on the homescreen,utilises a Qualcomm dual-core processor, up to 16GB of RAM,and a custom Linux-based operating system. The battery canalso be charged up to 80 percent in half an hour.

The X1 Hybrid comes with some business features likeencrypted hard drives, remote management support, and afingerprint reader, in addition to having everything requiredfor voice and video conferencing.

The 14-inch ThinkPad T430u offers the portability of anultrabook with a number of useful business features, suchas Intel's Small Business Advantage productivity and securitytools. Users can choose from a variety of Intel Core processors,Intel integrated or Nvidia graphics, and an SSD or HDD. It alsohas a fast boot and resume feature and a battery life of up tosix hours.

The X1 Hybrid will be available in the second quarter foraround $1,599, while the T430u will come out in the thirdquarter for roughly $849.

Broadcom launches its first802.11ac Gigabit 5G WiFichipsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/broadcom-launches-its-first-802.11ac-

gigabit-5g-wifi-chips/14445.html

January 5th, 2012

It's already been five years since 802.11n arrived, althoughback then in its draft standard and things have progressedslowly since then, although some 450Mbps hardware startedto show up last year. This year looks set to be the launch forthe 802.11ac standard, also known as 5G WiFi which promisesGigabit speeds, better coverage, improved reliability and lowerpower usage and Broadcom looks set to be one of the first chipmakers for the new standard.

It's already been five years since 802.11n arrived, althoughback then in its draft standard and things have progressedslowly since then, although some 450Mbps hardware startedto show up last year. This year looks set to be the launch forthe 802.11ac standard, also known as 5G WiFi which promisesGigabit speeds, better coverage, improved reliability and lower

Page 93: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

6

power usage and Broadcom looks set to be one of the first chipmakers for the new standard.

We've already written about the 802.11ac standard, althoughthat was nearly a year ago and things seem to have progressedquicker than originally anticipated. To do a quick recap andcatch-up 802.11ac will operate on the 5GHz band, althoughoriginally it was said to operate at 6GHz and below, althoughno specific frequency was given. By now it's clear that 802.11acwill be using the same 5GHz band as 802.11a/n, althoughwith some significant differences. For starters 802.11ac willuse 80 and 160MHz channel width compared to a maximumof 40MHz for 802.11n.

802.11ac also supports twice as many MIMO spatial streamsas 802.11n (8 vs. 4), an increase of the QAM (Quadratureamplitude modulation) count from 64 to 256 and itwill support multi-user MIMO which allows for furtherincreased performance depending on the configuration of thetransmitting and receiving end. Not all devices will supportGigabit speed, as smaller devices are likely to end up muchslower than that due to the inability to fit enough antennas.This is one of the downsides of 802.11ac, as to reach reallyhigh speeds, at least two, preferably three or four antennasneed to be used, although eight antenna configurations arealso planned.

Broadcom has announced four new chipsets starting with theBCM43516 which is intended for PCs and other consumerelectronics devices. It's a single chip solution that offers speedsof up to 433Mbps using 80MHz channel width, dual-bandsupport with current Wi-Fi networks and a USB 2.0 interface.We'd say Broadcom is pushing it a bit here, as USB 2.0 hasa theoretical peak bandwidth of 480Mbps and although wewouldn't expect to see wireless speeds of 433Mbps, there isn'tmuch life left in the old USB 2.0 standard when it comes tonew high-speed wireless technologies.

Next up we have the BCM4352 and BCM43526 which supportstwo streams and speeds of up to 867Mbps. The feature setis the same here, although the BCM4352 has a PCI Express2.0 interface, while the BCM43526 gets to make do with USB2.0 and clearly will never reach its advertised speeds dueto the USB 2.0 bottle neck. That said, it's possible that theBCM43526 will still perform better than the BCM43516 insome environments thanks to its dual antenna configuration.The BCM43526 is intended for use in PCs, TVs and otherA/V products according to Broadcom, while the BCM4352 isintended for PCs, access points, routers and internet gateways.

The fourth and final product is the BCM4360 which supportsthree streams and speeds of up to 1.3Gbps. Interestingly it'sstill only using 80MHz per channel, so it appears that we'llhave to wait for 160MHz per channel to make an appearanceeither from one of Broadcom's competitors, or at a later pointin time. The BCM4360 uses a PCI Express 2.0 interface and isintended for use in PCs, access points, routers and gateways.

Broadcom will be demoing partner products at CES andjudging by the quotes in Broadcom's press release we canexpect products from Asus, Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link, Huawei,Lenovo, Motorola, Netgear, Ubee and ZTE that supports802.11ac. As to how many will actually use Broadcom'ssolutions is a different matter, but it looks like wirelessnetworking is set to get a significant speed boost this year, evenif wired Ethernet isn't likely to be disappearing any time soon.

More Cedar Trail Atom's onthe waySource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/more-cedar-trail-atom-s-on-the-

way/14443.html

January 5th, 2012

Page 94: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

7

Intel has only just gotten its Cedar Trail-M processors out ofthe door, but the company is already planning new, slightlyfaster models in the mobile space, as well as a new desktoppart. Intel has kindly leaked all the details of the threeupcoming models in a spec sheet that recently got updated andif you were considering getting a new netbook, it might verywell be worth holding off a little bit if you can wait.

Intel has only just gotten its Cedar Trail-M processors out ofthe door, but the company is already planning new, slightlyfaster models in the mobile space, as well as a new desktoppart. Intel has kindly leaked all the details of the threeupcoming models in a spec sheet that recently got updated andif you were considering getting a new netbook, it might verywell be worth holding off a little bit if you can wait.

The three new models are the D2550, N2650 and N2850. Thedesktop focused D2550 is clocked at the same 1.86GHz as theD2500, but Intel bumped the GPU clock speed from 400 to640MHz giving the D2550 the same GPU spec as the D2700.The increased GPU clock means that the D2550 will supportBlu-ray playback, something the D2500 doesn't. The overallTDP hasn't increased for the D2550, although according toIntel's spec sheet, the idle TDP is up, albeit a mere 0.02W.

As for the mobile parts, the N2650 has been given a fairlynominal speed bump of 100MHz, something that increasedthe TDP by 0.1W compared to the N2600. We should pointout that the N26x0 parts only supports 2GB of memory and assuch only a single DIMM, a move by Intel that we don't quiteunderstand.

The N2850 got bumped 140MHz, again a very smallperformance increase and as with the N2650 the TDPincreased by 0.1W, although in this case over the N2800.Interestingly Intel is listing the average power draw as 0.11Wless than the N2800 despite the higher clock speed. Both of thenew N models also supports DDR3L, something we're not sureif the first two models do and the spec sheet isn't clear here asit mentions the refreshed SKU which we presume is the N2650and N2850.

Intel Prepares for Ivy Bridge:EOLs 25 Desktop ProcessorsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-prepares-for-ivy-bridge-eols-25-

desktop-processors/14439.html

January 5th, 2012

The company is getting ready to unleash the 22nm Ivy Bridgeprocessors to the world by choosing to kill a lot of 32nmprocessors which currently make the desktop mix.

In order to prepare for the launch, the company announcedthe discontinuation (EOL, End of Life product status) for25 various desktop models based on LGA1155, LGA1156 andLGA1366 sockets. All of the EOL'ed models are based of 32nmWestmere and Sandy Bridge architectures:

As you can see, this is a thorough cleanup of all sockets,with LGA1156 and LGA1366 essentially being terminated (i7970, 980, 980X were all EOL’ed during 2011), simplifying thelineup to only feature the LGA1155 and LGA2011 sockets.

Arctic Comes Out with a newHigh-Performance Cooler forRadeon HD 7970Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/arctic-comes-out-with-a-new-high-

performance-cooler-for-radeon-hd-7970/14438.html

Page 95: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

8

January 5th, 2012

As the retail launch of Radeon HD 7970 approaches (January9, 2012), the ecosystem is forming around the product: liquidand air cooling solutions.

As the retail launch of Radeon HD 7970 approaches (January9, 2012), the ecosystem is forming around the product:while we already saw waterblocks from Slovenian EK andGerman Aqua Computer, Far East is waking up with the high-performance air cooling: this time around, news are comingfrom Hong Kong.

Arctic launched Accelero Xtreme 7970, a high-performancecooler featuring a combination of copper base, six copperheatpipes (6mm diameter), 84 aluminum fins and three92mm fans that operate from 900 to 2000 rpm, depending onthe mode selected. The copper base features a MX-4 thermalcompound, so you don’t need to look for additional high-performance TIM (Thermal Interface Material).

True, the potential show stopper is massive weight of theheatsink - at 653 grams or almost 1.5 pounds this triple-slotheatsink definitely requires to be mounted inside the case.

If you’re interested in getting a 3rd party cooling for yourprecious new 7970, this beast comes to market just beforeChinese New Year (shipping as of week starting January 30)for a price just below USD100 mark - $97.95 in the US, €73.83in European Union and 126 SGD in Singapore.

MSI announces new powerfulGT685 gaming laptopSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/msi-announces-new-powerful-gt685-

gaming-laptop/14442.html

January 5th, 2012

MSI has announced their new ultimate gaming laptop, theGT685, which features the second generation Intel Core i7quad processor, 32GB DDR3 memory, and Nvidia GeForceGTX 580M, the world's fastest discrete graphics card in alaptop.

This latest MSI gaming laptop features top-of-the-linehardware, including Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M, which claimsto be the most powerful discrete graphics card in a laptopthat provides superb display performance. The graphics cardboasts 384 more CUDAs than the previous generation, givingit 256-bit memory bandwdith and 2GB GDDR5 VRAM. Thistranslates to seamless experience with crisp and clear graphicsand more detailed 3D images, and you can enjoy seriousgaming without worrying that your laptop can’t keep up.

Powered by second generation Intel Core i7 quad-coreprocessor with support of Intel Turbo Boost 2.0, the GT685offers superb computing performance. On top of that, it comesequipped with four DDR3 memory slots to give a total of32GB memory, as well as RAID 0 accelerated dual harddrive architecture that can increase hard drive read speeds by70%. Other features include Dynaudio sound technology forfaithful stereo reproduction, THX TruStudio Pro technologythat provides cinematic-quality audio, and full high definition16:9 widescreen display. The MSI GT685 also comes with anHDMI port for your to output your videos on any large-screenLCD televisions.

HP unveils new consumerPCs, including Omni27, thecompany's first 27-inch all-in-one PCSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/hp-unveils-new-consumer-pcs-

including-omni27-the-company-s-first-27-inch-all-in-one-pc/14440.html

Page 96: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

9

January 5th, 2012

Just few days into 2012, HP has recently announced theirnew line of consumer PCs and a notebook docking monitorthat offer stylish design and superb performance. Among theproducts is the HP Omni27, which is the company's first 27-inch all-in-one PC.

HP Omni27 all-in-one PC

HP has announced their new line-up of consumer PCs,as well as notebook docking monitor with enhanceddesign, performance and convenience for consumers and

professionals. The HP Omni27 all-in-one PC is designedspecifically for users who want stylish design, simplicity andperformance. It has a brilliant 27-inch high-definition flatpanel display with edge-to-edge glass and can tilt up to25-degree to suit users' viewing preference. The all-in-oneclaims to be the company's first non-touch PC to featureHP’s Magic Canvas software, which allows the desktop toexpand horizontally and accommodate photos, videos as wellas applications.

With convenient features such as HP LinkUp Technology,users can easily access and edit content from a notebook PC on

the Omni27’s large display with little hassles. The HP Omni27

offers multi-core processors, advanced high definition (HD)graphics and up to 2TB of storage, and standard featuresincluding Beats Audio, Blu-Ray disc drive and optional TV

tuner. The HP Omni27 All-in-One PCs are expected to retail inAPJ at a starting price of approximately US$1,199.

HP Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9

The HP Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9 is the company’s mostpowerful Pavilion PC to date, with futuristic design andsuperb performance for users who enjoy content creation andimmersive gaming. It has an armor plating that extends acrossthe top and front of the bezel and attention-grabbing lightingin red, which makes the HPE Phoenix stand out among today’sdesktop PCs. The HPE Phoenix has room for up to 16GBof DDR3 memory and three internal hard drives, as wellas optional liquid cooling system to draw heat away fromhigh-performance processors. It also comes equipped withhigh-end discrete graphics cards that can support multipledisplays, while delivering amazing video performance andpicture quality. Gamers can enjoy RIFT Digital Collector’sEdition, the latest massively multiplayer online role-playinggame (MMORPG) from Trion. With every purchase of HPPavilion HPE Phoenix, users can download and enjoy freeaccess to RIFT for sixty days, and following that a monthlysubscription of around US$15 for continuous access to thegame. The HP Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9 PCs are expected tobe available from end January 2012 in APJ at a starting priceof approximately US$1,599.

Page 97: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

10

HP Compaq L2311c

The HP Compaq L2311c 23-inch Notebook Docking Monitoris targeted at mobile professionals who wants a desktopexperience via an easy connection with a USB cable to theirnotebook PC with a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port. The NotebookDocking Monitor sports a full high-definition (HD) LEDbacklit LCD display and features HP Smart AC Technologythat powers and charges HP notebook PCs while also detectingand regulating the capacity of the electrical current. It alsofeatures a built-in 720p HD webcam and is equipped with HPMyRoom business edition software and Cyberlink YouCam,a productive webcam tool that eases communication withco-workers and clients in any location. The HP CompaqL2311c is expected to be available in APJ at a startingprice of approximately US$319. The availability date will beannounced at a later stage.

The HP LV1911 and LV2011 are the latest LED backlit LCDmonitors that claim to provide business performance atbudget-friendly prices. The monitors come in attractive, slimform factors, and consumes lesser power compared to CCFLpanel monitors. The HP LV1911 and LV2011 have a 18.5- and19.5-inch respectively, offer VGA inputs, 3,000,000:1 dynamiccontrast ratios and 5ms response times. Both monitorsare expected to be available in APJ at a starting price ofapproximately US$125 and US$135, respectively.

Availability date for all HP products will be announced later.

AMD releases OEM Radeon HD7670Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-releases-oem-radeon-

hd-7670/14441.html

January 5th, 2012

AMD has quietly announced the second desktop product in itsRadeon HD 7000 range - HD 7670 for OEMs. There's nothingnew about the 7670 OEM however - it is simply a rebrandedHD 6670.

AMD has quietly announced the second desktop product in itsRadeon HD 7000 range - HD 7670 for OEMs. There's nothingnew about the 7670 OEM however - it is simply a rebrandedHD 6670.

The specifications and performance are identical to HD 6670.Both are based on Turks XT, featuring 480 VLIW-5 SP, 24TMU and 8 ROPs running at 800 MHz. Upto 1GB GDDR5at 4 GHz is mated to a 128-bit interface. HD 6670 held thedistinction of being the fastest graphics card not requiring anaddition PCIe connector (i.e. it draws all its power from thePCIe slot) which is what made it popular with OEMs. The HD7670 powers HP's upcoming Phoenix products and is likely toshow up in a few OEM desktops around CES 2012 time.

Of course this rebrand was expected considering previousreports and HD 7000M announcements. In addition OEMversions of HD 7500, 7400 and 7300 are all expected tobe rebrands, while HD 7700 up will feature GCN 28nmGPUs. Of course, the gap between HD 7600 and HD 7700will be disproportionate, and might create a gap in AMD'sRadeon HD 7000 line-up. Judging by NVIDIA's strategy wihGeForce 600M it is likely NVIDIA will also follow a similarstrategy - rebrands for entry-level to mainstream GeForce600M products.

For now, the HD 7670 remains an OEM only product.However, it may eventually make it to the retail market - asHD 6700 did.

Nakamichi introduces cube-sized "My Mini Plus" for musicon the goSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/nakamichi-introduces-cube-sized-my-

mini-plus-for-music-on-the-go/14437.html

January 5th, 2012

Small, portable speakers looked to be the in-thing these days.Japanese audio company Nakamichi has launched "My MiniPlus", a new range of stylish looking mini speakers with built-in radio in Singapore.

Renowned Japanese high fidelity audio company, Nakamichi,has launched a collection of stylish mini speakers with radiofor music lovers on the go. The cube-sized speaker, whichmeasures 5cm on every side and weighs 139g, claims to offerexceptional audio quality. The Nakamichi "My Mini Plus" fitseasily into your bag, charges via a USB connection to your PCor laptop and on full charge, it can provide up to five hoursof non-stop music playback. The speaker can also play musicfrom microSD card and it has built-in FM radio function foryou to listen to your favorite channel. Available in eight colors -Light Pink, Fuchsia, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, Lime Green, andSilver; The "My Mini Plus" by Nakamichi will be available atCK Tang, Technobay level 3, epi lifestyle, and other premium

Page 98: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

11

Nakamichi authorized reseller stores from mid January 2012at S$69.90 (inclusive of GST)

Nokia plans to launch Lumia900 at CES 2012Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/nokia-plans-to-launch-lumia-900-at-

ces-2012/14436.html

January 5th, 2012

The Nokia Lumia 900 Ace was recently spotted on Nokia Pulsewebsite which has the capacitive touch buttons that are placedcloser to the edge, compared to the Lumia 800. It was alsoreported that the Finnish company would be launching thephone at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 in Las Vegasnext week.

According to sources, Nokia will be announcing the new Lumia900 Ace (codenamed Eloko) at the 2012 Consumer ElectronicsShow (CES) next week. Weighing 160g, the phone is said tobe equipped with a 1.4GHz processor, 512MB memory and8-megapixel rear camera. The Lumia 900 will feature a 4.3-inch WVGA Nokia ClearBlack AMOLED display, which isslightly bigger than the 3.7-inch of the Lumia 800, althoughthe resolution is the same as its older sibling. It will also comewith 1830mAh battery, and runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mangooperating system. No word on the pricing or availability yet,though all could be revealed at CES next week. The company isalso expected to announce a mid-range device, the Lumia 719.

Intel WiDi to get cheaper,better and maybe inside TVsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-widi-to-get-cheaper-better-and-

maybe-inside-tvs/14435.html

January 5th, 2012

It's hard not to get a bit frustrated with Intel and its manyproprietary technologies, although at least a few things seemsto be changing slowly but surely when it comes to WiDi, Intel'svideo streaming technology over Wi-Fi. We've managed to digup a fair bit of news as to what to expect in 2012 from WiDi andsome things are being improved while others remain the same.

It's hard not to get a bit frustrated with Intel and its manyproprietary technologies, although at least a few things seemsto be changing slowly but surely when it comes to WiDi, Intel'svideo streaming technology over Wi-Fi. We've managed to digup a fair bit of news as to what to expect in 2012 from WiDi andsome things are being improved while others remain the same.

For starters Intel has decided to take advantage of Wi-FiDirect for the discover, pairing and connect part of WiDi whichshould make it easier for its partners that built the receivers.Intel will also be supporting Wi-Fi Display, but only for basicfeatures. If you want to be able to play back 1080p video,especially copy protected content, then you need full-on WiDisupport on the receiving end. This year Intel is also addingsupport for 3D video and 24fps video such as certain Blu-raydiscs. It will also be possible to set up an extended display overWiDi, something that could actually be quite handy in certainsituations.

One interesting thing is that Intel is planning on offering WiDisupport on desktops, a feature we can see at least a few peoplewanting. That said, if you were hoping for WiDi support in theupcoming Windows 8 tablets, then it looks like you're out ofluck, as this isn't likely to happen this year at least. Beyond thesmall adapters you've had to connect to your TV so far to getWiDi support, Intel is apparently hoping to get its technologyinto TVs, game consoles, Blu-ray players (really?) and variousother devices of which some will simply be able to have a pieceof software loaded to enable WiDi support.

We're still not sold on Intel's WiDi technology, mostly becauseso few notebooks in the grand scheme of things are sold withIntel Wi-Fi cards that support WiDi and this is one of thebiggest failings of the technology. We fully understand Intel'sargument here, but many notebook vendors would simplynot put Intel Wi-Fi cards in their notebooks due to the costdifference compared to the many other options available tothem. Still, if more Wi-Fi enabled devices will start to supportWiDi there's a chance that things will change, but we're hopingfor a more open standard to take over what Intel has started.

Roku goes tiny with itsupcoming Streaming StickSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/roku-goes-tiny-with-its-upcoming-

streaming-stick/14434.html

Page 99: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

12

January 5th, 2012

It's really a shame that Roku's products are only available inthe US due to the technicalities of streaming content over theinternet, something the traditional TV companies obviouslyare very much against even though they are allowing for it toa degree. The company has come up with a simple and elegantsolution that would turn any TV into a smart TV, without theneed of a clunky box.

It's really a shame that Roku's products are only available inthe US due to the technicalities of streaming content over theinternet, something the traditional TV companies obviouslyare very much against even though they are allowing for it toa degree. The company has come up with a simple and elegantsolution that would turn any TV into a smart TV, without theneed of a clunky box.

The device in question is called the Roku Streaming Stickwhich is said to be about the size of a USB flash drive, yetit packs so much more inside. Roku hasn't gone into toomuch with regards to the specific hardware, but the StreamingStick will feature an SoC, memory and Wi-Fi as well as somesoftware of course. However, unlike a USB flash drive theStreaming Stick sports an HDMI port, or rather an MHL port.If you remember, MHL or Mobile High-definition Link is acombo port that offers HDMI and USB in one.

In the case of TV's it appears that this port is a standard sizeHDMI port judging by the pictures from Roku and not a microUSB port as it is on smartphones. Plonk the Roku StreamingStick into a TV with one of these ports and you've got all thefunctionality of a Roku box without having to find space forthe box itself. The only problem we see with this is how youactually control the Streaming Stick unless it's done over Wi-Fi or some other wireless technology, as it would be hiddenbehind the TV and as such an IR remote wouldn't work.

Roku is expecting the Streaming Stick to retail for somewherebetween US$50-100 (S$65-130) when it arrives later this year,although Roku is also hoping to bundle it with some TVs. Oneproblem Roku has though is the small install base of MHLequipped TV's, but it shouldn't be too hard to make some kindof power adapter. We can see a lot of companies coming upwith their own versions of this, as if the technology can becompacted down to this size, why would you want a larger boxsitting around next to your TV?

Broadcom announces smartTV chipsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/broadcom-announces-smart-tv-

chips/14433.html

January 5th, 2012

Just ahead of CES, Broadcom has announced four newsolutions related to Smart TVs which will be displayed at theshow. Some of the chips are intended for integration inside theTV unit while others are destined for media streamers or whatBroadcom calls Over-the-Top media players.

Just ahead of CES, Broadcom has announced four newsolutions related to Smart TVs which will be displayed at theshow. Some of the chips are intended for integration inside theTV unit while others are destined for media streamers or whatBroadcom calls Over-the-Top media players.

It would seem that smart TV is not a sexy word any moreas Broadcom is using the term hybrid TV instead, althoughfor what it's worth, it's pretty much the same thing. What is

Page 100: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

13

common between all three of the new SoC's from Broadcom issupport for Broadcom's own Web 2.0 application framework,Adobe AIR, Qt and Android. This should allow for some variedimplementations from the device makers at least.

The most basic SoC is called the BCM7219 and as with itshigher-end siblings this is a 40nm chip (yes, SoC's are gettingsmaller and smaller too), although it lacks any really coolfeatures. That said, it'll handle 1080p HD video, both decodingand encoding which means that we should hopefully be seeingmore devices capable of recording HD video in the future.Moving up a step we have the BCM7220 which gains OpenGLES 2.0 support for 3D UI's and maybe even some casualgaming. The third and final model is the BCM7221 whichsupports 3D TV MVC (Multiview Video Coding) which meansthat it can handle 3D TV broadcasts/streams. It can also beset up to support video conferencing if the TV has a built incamera.

The three chips have been designed to support a wide range ofother technologies such as DLNA, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Display, NFC,HomePlug and bog standard Ethernet. Apparently Netgear isone of the first companies that are ready to get on board assoon as the new chips hit mass production as the companyis already working with Broadcom. As for other partnerswe'll just have to wait until CES, although half of the timeyou wouldn't know what chip is inside these type of devicesanyhow.

OCZ announces mSATA SSDfor Ultrabook hard drivecachingSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ocz-announces-msata-ssd-for-

ultrabook-hard-drive-caching/14432.html

January 5th, 2012

Being in the retail SSD market isn't a money maker and OCZhas been trying to work its way into the OEM market space forsome time. Now the company has announced a new mSATASSD under its Deneva 2 brand that the company is targetingtowards Ultrabooks for some Intel Smart Response cachingaction.

Being in the retail SSD market isn't a money maker and OCZhas been trying to work its way into the OEM market space forsome time. Now the company has announced a new mSATASSD under its Deneva 2 brand that the company is targetingtowards Ultrabooks for some Intel Smart Response cachingaction.

The mSATA version of the Deneva 2 (OCZ is already offeringstandard 2.5-inch SATA drives in the Deneva 2 series) isavailable in 30 or 60GB and OCZ claims that the drives havebeen optimized for Intel's Smart Response technology. It's

pretty clear from the small sizes of the SSDs that they weren'tintended as a main storage option.

The Deneva 2 drives sports a SandForce 2141 or 2181 controller(OCZ's website lists both options) and are as such SATA 3Gbpsdrives. The max read speed is rated at up to 280MB/s with thewrite speed following closely behind at up to 260MB/s. OCZapparently has a 120GB model as well as the company is alsotargeting the Deneva 2 series for embedded applications in theenterprise, industrial and automotive industry.

We've already seen Asus utilize mSATA SSDs from Adata,although these weren't intended for caching, but are in fact themain SSD of Asus' Ultrabooks. We're still not convinced thatIntel's Smart Response technology is the way forward though,especially as SSDs continue to come down in price whereasat the same time pricing for hard drives are likely to remainquite high for much of this year. So far SSDs seem favourablein Ultrabooks, but as prices come down, we'd expect to seemore hard drive equipped models and maybe this is when SSDcaching will come into play.

Samsung secures approval forChinese Flash memory plantSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-secures-approval-for-chinese-

flash-memory-plant/14431.html

January 5th, 2012

Samsung has been granted permission to build a Flashmemory chip plant in China worth in the region of 5 trillionwon ($4.5 billion) as the smartphone and tablet computermarkets continue to boom.

Samsung has been granted permission to build a Flashmemory chip plant in China worth in the region of 5 trillionwon ($4.5 billion) as the smartphone and tablet computermarkets continue to boom.

The Korean electronics giant announced the plan early lastmonth, but was forced to seek approval from the South Koreangovernment, which regulates foreign investment. The go-ahead was given this week on the provision that Samsung setup a committee to prevent potential leaks of its technology.

The location of the factory has yet to be decided. It will produceNAND chips using 20nm processing technology and will servethe growing Chinese market, which many see as a lucrativeregion for smartphone and tablet sales.

Page 101: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

14

Samsung dominates the NAND Flash market with a 40 percentshare, with many of the major players in the industry, such asApple, relying on it for memory chips.

Mass production at the Chinese factory is expected to begin inlate 2013, with plans to produce 100,000 wafers every month.

Google buys more IBM patentsSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/google-buys-more-ibm-

patents/14430.html

January 5th, 2012

Google has bought another 187 patents and 36 patentapplications from IBM in efforts to remain ahead of rivals likeApple in the bitter legal wars engulfing the industry.

Google has bought another 187 patents and 36 patentapplications from IBM in efforts to remain ahead of rivals likeApple in the bitter legal wars engulfing the industry.

The patents include several related to social networks, such asa system for using semantic networks and a method to identifycommon interests between users of a communication network.This is particularly interesting, as it means Google is preparingnew things for its social network Google+, which launched lastyear and became a viable alternative to Facebook.

There are also patents related to web applications and mobiletechnology, areas that Google has had major success in withits Chrome web browser and Android operating system.

It is not yet clear how much Google paid for these, but we canlikely expect it to be hundreds of millions of dollars. The movemight also signal plans to buy further patent stashes fromother companies, and perhaps more from IBM, throughout2012.

Google previously bought over 1,000 patents from IBM lastyear and a huge portfolio of around 25,000 patents in anacquisition deal with Motorola Mobility worth $12.5 billion.The company is still awaiting final approval from regulatorsbefore that acquisition can go ahead.

Google's patent spending spree is largely seen as an effort toprotect its interests, which have been threatened by a numberof lawsuits taken by Apple against its partners, such as HTCand Samsung. Google is quickly putting itself in a positionwhere it cannot be sued for technology it uses or can atleast counter-sue or offer a trade with some of its valuablecollection.

Official Launch of VR-ZoneChinese Edition - Attractiveprizes to be won!Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/official-launch-of-vr-zone-chinese-

edition--attractive-prizes-to-be-won-/14429.html

January 5th, 2012

VR-Zone is excited to announce the launch of our officialchinese edition @ http://chinese.vr-zone.com. To mark thiswatershed moment, we will be giving away to some luckyreaders an ECS X79 motherboard, Corsair power supply andSteelSeries products!

VR-Zone is excited to announce the launch our official chineseedition @ http://chinese.vr-zone.com, which will have its own

Page 102: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

15

editorial team (headed by industry veteran Chris Low) toproduce quality original content and translate selected piecesfrom our main site. Based in Taiwan where most of thegroundbreaking tech stories and product launches are at, theteam aspires to serve the rapidly growing North Asian market,and provide exclusive stories for our international readers.

Samsung announces launch ofnew smartphones and tabletsin SingaporeSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-announces-launch-of-new-

smartphones-and-tablets-in-singapore/14425.html

January 5th, 2012

On the first week of 2012, Samsung has announced their newlineup of smartphone and tablets which include the GALAXYNexus, Omnia W, GALAXY W, GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus andGALAXY Tab 7.7.

The Samsung GALAXY Nexus was announced in October tobe the world's first smartphone to run Google Android 4.0Ice Cream Sandwich. Equipped with a 1.2GHz processor, thephone features a 4.65-inch high definition Super AMOLEDdisplay and comes with various new innovations includingFace Unlock, photo taking with zero shutter lag as well asNear Field Communication (NFC). However, for those whoare eagerly waiting for the Samsung GALAXY Nexus willhave to wait a while longer. The company said that Androidsmartphone is expected to be available in February nextmonth.

While the GALAXY Nexus touts itself as the world's firstsmartphone with Android 4.0, this new Samsung GALAXYTab 7.7 claims to be the world's first tablet to feature theSuper AMOLED Plus display. The tablet is extremely slimand portable, measuring 7.89mm in thickness and weighing335g. It is powered by 1.4GHz processor with 1GB RAM and16GB storage. If that's not enough, the GALAXY Tab 7.7 hasa microSD card slot for expansion. The tablet runs GoogleAndroid 3.2 Honeycomb and has a 5,100mAh battery that canprovide up to 10 hours of video playback. Like the GALAXYNexus, the Samsung GALAXY Nexus will be available inFebruary.

Page 103: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

16

Samsung releases audiophile-grade dock speakersSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-releases-audiophile-grade-

dock-speakers/14426.html

January 5th, 2012

An audiophile-worthy speaker dock for iOS devices andGALAXY S smartphones will be joining the ranks of Samsungproducts soon. The Samsung DA-E750 may sport a hybridvacuum tube system akin to high-end audio equipment, butwill it make the cut amongst audiophiles?

Audiophiles will be glad to know that Korean companySamsung is offering a new speaker dock, the DA-E750, witha hybrid vacuum tube amplifier technology that will interfacewith both iOS devices and GALAXY S smartphones whilecharging their batteries. For those not certain of audiophilejargons, a vacuum tube amplification system is usually presentonly in premium audio systems, which is said to produce oneof the richest sound and has the best audio representation inclarity, despite the technology’s age. Sangchul Lee, senior vicepresident, Samsung Electronics says “As the leader in homeentertainment, we wanted to create products that are unique,highly-functional and beautifully designed, yet offer the crystalclear, rich sound that consumers can enjoy, regardless of theportable device they store their music on.” The 2.1-channelspeaker supports analog (composite) and USB inputs, as wellas wireless and Bluetooth audio playback, while thumpingaway with its built-in 100-watt subwoofer. More details maybe released at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show.

SiriusXM unveils Lynx, Androidportable satellite radioSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/siriusxm-unveils-lynx-android-

portable-satellite-radio/14424.html

January 5th, 2012

We have seen smartphones and tablet devices running GoogleAndroid mobile operating system. And apparently SiriusXMhas recently introduced their new Android portable satelliteradio called Lynx.

The SiriusXM Lynx claims to do everything you want it to- you can use it as satellite radio in the car or at home, orturn it into a portable player via a 3.5mm audio or Bluetoothheadphone. It supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity andcan record up to 200 hours of your favorite music. With "ShowFinder" electronic programming guide, you can access thecomplete list of what’s on over the next seven days by channel,with the ability to set reminder alerts when favorite shows arebeing broadcast. The SiriusXM Lynx will be available soon andpriced at US$250.

Fuji's mirrorless camera leaksagain ahead of next week'sunveilingSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/fuji-s-mirrorless-camera-leaks-again-

ahead-of-next-week-s-unveiling/14423.html

January 5th, 2012

We've already seen what was meant to be some picture ofan unfinished version of Fuju's upcoming mirrorless digitalcamera and now additional pictures have appeared, includinga full-on frontal shot of the camera. There are still a lot ofthings that aren't known about the camera, but one thingis certain, Fuji is really digging retro styling on its high-endcameras.

We've already seen what was meant to be some picture ofan unfinished version of Fuju's upcoming mirrorless digital

Page 104: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

17

camera and now additional pictures have appeared, includinga full-on frontal shot of the camera. There are still a lot ofthings that aren't known about the camera, but one thingis certain, Fuji is really digging retro styling on its high-endcameras.

The camera which is expected to be called the X1 or LX10should be officially unveiled next week at the PMA showwhich takes place at the same time as CES, although it won'tactually be launched until sometime in February according toPhotorumours. The camera looks set to be something quitespecial, at least as long as you don't mind the retro rangefinderstyling.

In the single picture of the camera we can see the 35mm f/1.4lens which was rumoured, something which should pleasemany a photographer. Fuji has included a viewfinder as wereported previously, although this is apparently not a hybridviewfinder as seen on the X100. We're also curious about theinclusion of what appears to be an LED light which might beintended for when you're shooting video with the camera. Wecould be wrong, but the picture seems to suggest that there isa pair of built-in microphones for stereo audio on each side ofthe LED. There's also what appears to be an auto focus lightjust below the viewfinder. We'll have to wait a few more daysto see what the official word is.

Update: The picture above is apparently not the real deal,but rather a mockup of what the camera might look like.Photorumors has a blurry picture from an odd angle of the realdeal.

Tranquil launches 4cm thinmedia center PCSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/tranquil-launches-4cm-thin-media-

center-pc/14422.html

January 5th, 2012

Intel's slim-ITX motherboard incentive appears to have spilledover into other markets than the all-in-ones that Intel targetedthe standard for initially. Tranquil PC, a UK company thatspecializes in low-noise media centers and home media servershas taken advantage of the form factor in its new 4cm thinMMC-12 system.

Intel's slim-ITX motherboard incentive appears to have spilledover into other markets than the all-in-ones that Intel targetedthe standard for initially. Tranquil PC, a UK company thatspecializes in low-noise media centers and home media servershas taken advantage of the form factor in its new 4cm thinMMC-12 system.

The system specifications aren't what we'd call mind blowing,but the MMC-12 should be more than capable at doing its job.The motherboard in question is Intel's own DH61AG and asthe name implies this is based on the Intel H61 chipset. Interms of connectivity you'll find a pair of USB 2.0 ports (bothhigh current), two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, a GigabitEthernet jack, a pair of audio jacks, a DVI port and an HDMIport. Oddly enough there's no S/PDIF connector on the boardwhich spoils things a little bit when it comes to media centerusage.

To the board, Tranquil has added a 35W Core i3-2100Tprocessor which is a 2.5GHz part, a single 4GB SO-DIMMand an 80GB mSATA SSD which we presume is also an Intelmade product. The system also sports a slot loaded DVDdrive and there's space for one internal 2.5-inch drive for alarger internal drive to compliment the SSD. The entire systemis powered by an external power adapter and it's passivelycooled, so this is a true zero noise system, despite its lowprofile. The downside you ask? Well, Tranquil wants a fairlysteep £649 (S$1,300) for the MMC-12, a steep price for whatin reality is a very basic PC, but in this case you're paying forthe custom chassis which you won't find elsewhere.

Asus promises Android 4.0 forTransformer Prime from nextweekSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-promises-android-4.0-for-

transformer-prime-from-next-week/14421.html

January 5th, 2012

For those lucky few that has managed to get their hands on anAsus Eee Pad Transformer Prime the company has announcedthat it will start rolling out Android 4.0 also known as IceCream Sandwich beginning on the 12th of January. On top ofthat, the company is working on a solution that will allow usersto unlock the bootloader, with one small caveat.

For those lucky few that has managed to get their hands on anAsus Eee Pad Transformer Prime the company has announced

Page 105: VR-Zone Tech News for the Geeks Dec 2011 Issue 2

January 5th, 2012 Published by: VR-Zone

18

that it will start rolling out Android 4.0 also known as IceCream Sandwich beginning on the 12th of January. On top ofthat, the company is working on a solution that will allow usersto unlock the bootloader, with one small caveat.

The details were posted on Asus' Facebook page and containsome confusion as it mentions an over the air update witha version number of 8.8.3.33 which will apparently improvethe auto focusing of the camera, the fluidity of the touchexperience and the APK capabilities in the Android market.Then it goes on to talk about the Android 4.0 upgrade whichis also an over the air update, but it's not clear if this containsthe aforementioned fixes or not, or if that's a separate updatefor those not wishing to move on to Android 4.0 as yet.

The post also contains a disclaimer about the GPS and the factthat it's not as good as people expected it to be. Asus is makingsome excuse about the metal chassis of the tablet blocking thesignal as well as the usual excuses as to why you wouldn't get agood GPS signal. Either which way it appears that the companyhas removed the GPS from the spec and it's now a feature thatis included but may not work to everyone's satisfaction. Oddto say the least.

As for the bootloader and the complaints about Asus lockingit down, Asus is making some fairly lame excuse about GoogleDRM, yet Google's own phones aren't locked down as tightlyas the Transformer Prime. Asus is also claiming that brickingis one of the reasons why Asus decided to lock down theTransformer Prime, but anyone that has tried to flash a recentAndroid device knows that it's relatively hard to brick it. Evenso, Asus will apparently be offering a tool that unlocks thebootloader, but this means that you can no longer watchGoogle video rentals and other similar DRM'ed content onyour tablet. Not a big loss in our opinion, but it might be forsome.

Toshiba to promoteTransferJet at CESSource: http://vr-zone.com/articles/toshiba-to-promote-transferjet-at-

ces/14420.html

January 5th, 2012

You may or may not be familiar with TransferJet, a technologythat allows for short range wireless data transfer speeds of upto 560Mbps using the 4.5GHz band. So far there isn't much interms of devices that supports the standard, but Toshiba andthe TransferJet consortium are set to change this at CES wherethey will be showing off a range of new devices that supportsthe technology.

You may or may not be familiar with TransferJet, a technologythat allows for short range wireless data transfer speeds of upto 560Mbps using the 4.5GHz band. So far there isn't much interms of devices that supports the standard, but Toshiba andthe TransferJet consortium are set to change this at CES wherethey will be showing off a range of new devices that supportsthe technology.

Toshiba's press release didn't reveal too much about thespecific devices, but we can apparently expect tablets, laptopsand smartphones featuring TransferJet. As you'd expect,Toshiba is one of the driving forces behind TransferJetalongside Sony, but many other companies are standingbehind the technology including Canon, JVC, Nikon, Olympus,Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung and Sony Ericsson to mentiona few of the promoters of the standard. So far most of thecompanies are Japanese and this is part of the reason why thetechnology hasn't taken off.

Another reason is the relatively high cost and this iswhat Toshiba is hoping to address with its new LSI, theTC35420 which is a single chip solution for TransferJet thatincorporates bot the IC and the RF part. This should notonly help simplify the implementation, but also help drivedown cost, although at US$5 a pop in sample quantities onecan hardly accuse Toshiba for selling the chips on the cheap.Compare this to a USB 3.0 host controller which by now we'dexpect to be below US$2 in large quantities and you can seewhy TransferJet is struggling a bit.

Actual transfer speeds of TransferJet are close to that of USB2.0 at 375Mbps (USB 2.0 has a theoretical data speed of480Mbps), so as long as you don't mind plugging in a cable,there are much faster alternatives. In as much as we're all forease of use, it's hard to justify the extra cost and getting slowerspeed than a wired connection can offer at lower cost. Still,it'll be interesting to see what Toshiba and the TransferJetconsortium will demo at the show.