Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, February 25, 2008

Intel Planning 6-Core "Dunnington" Microprocessor [Rumor]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/240032222/intel-planning-6+core-dunnington-microprocessor

Dunnington%20GI.jpg According to the chaps at the Eclipse Developer's Journal (EDJ), Intel is planning a six-core microprocessor, which will go by the Dunnington moniker.

The six-core beast will be succeeded by the even meatier, Nehalem micro-architecture, which will support greater than eight cores. The work regarding the Dunnington project is still under wraps, but our friends at EDJ insist Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year—we'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments. [EDJ via The Inquirer]

Wiperless Windshield Concept Brings Minimalism to Your Vehicle [Concepts]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/240463121/wiperless-windshield-concept-brings-minimalism-to-your-vehicle

Hidra%20Concept%20GI.jpg Leonardo Fioravanti of the awesome vehicle design house, Pininfarina has put together a prototype car, called Hidra, which has a windshield that negates the necessity for conventional wipers. The design relies on aerodynamics and surface treatment alone, which will supposedly be enough to keep a fly-away tree branch from obscuring your line of vision. The chemical treatments applied are where the autonomous cleaning action really happens, and they actually sound quite interesting.

The first layer deals with the sun and water; it prevents harmful rays entering and has hydrophobic properties, ensuring water is repelled away. The second layer incorporates nano dust, and the treatment gives the screen the ability to "push" dirt away to the edges of the glass surface, which in turn relies on the third layer; a receptor surface that alerts the nano dusted glass to do its self-cleaning business when grime is detected. Finally, an electrically conductive material is applied, which passes on electricity to power the entire mechanism.

Apparently, this could be mainstream in five years, but for us it makes more problems than it appears to solve; e.g. Would it really remove our aforementioned fly-away tee branch? Would we receive an electric shock if we touched it whilst it was cleaning? What does it do with the dirt at the edges of the windshield? Why doesn't someone make a fully functioning Millennium Falcon? So many questions, so few physical windscreen wipers on the Hidra concept car. [Sparking Tech; la Repubblica]

Green Freedom turns the air's CO2 into auto-powering fuel

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/239965554/

Tired of the air not doing enough for you? Well, a new project called Green Freedom -- headed up by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory -- seeks to improve air's contribution to our planet. The new technology would provide a method of extracting CO2 from the air and then converting the gas into fuel for cars or airplanes -- thus creating a renewable energy source. The process uses a form of electrochemical separation to siphon juice out of the typically non-partying carbon dioxide, yet has a low environmental impact with a small waste-stream output. The plan calls for the use of existing plants, which will stem the need to build new facilities, enabling the environmental footprint to remain relatively small. Clearly, it's not being put into general practice yet, but it's a hopeful taste of things to come.

[Via Inhabitat]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Movies on a flash drive not apt to boom anytime soon

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240121919/

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Earlier this month, we disagreed that HD movie downloads would trump HD DVD / Blu-ray disc purchases in the not-too-distant future, and now we've got yet another clever alternative on deck that just doesn't have the makings of a winner. While it seems that consumers still prefer something tangible when purchasing movies, we can't help but agree that flicks on flash drives just wouldn't work. Aside from the prohibitive cost to pop out a standard DVD on a flash chip versus a disc, the idea of having customers flock to some sort of movie download kiosk to refill memory cards with new releases just seems absurd. Sure, we understand how this could sound marginally appealing from the sidelines, but we just can't imagine all those DVD cases at your favorite big box retailer getting swapped out with movie-filled SDHC cards anytime soon.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Samsung puts the kibosh on SSD reliability worries

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240181088/

Filed under: Storage

If you're one of the (apparently) many out there scared half to death not over what's residing in your closet at night, but that your recently purchased SSD will wear itself out in no time flat, here's a little reassurance. According to Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, a flash device rated at 100,000 write cycles can write 100,000 times "to every single (memory) cell within the device," and of course, it won't continuously write to the same cell over and over thanks to a process dubbed wear leveling. In case you still needed a tad more evidence, he also stated that "a pattern could be perpetually repeated in which a 64GB SSD is completely filled with data, erased, filled again, then erased again every hour of every day for years, and the user still wouldn't reach the theoretical write limit." So, now that we've had that cleared up, why not tell us more about those 250GB MLC-based SSDs that could land before 2009 dawns?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments