Eye-Fi SD card cracked, splayed

Posted Mar 18th 2008 8:12AM by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Wireless, Storage

Damn, that's a lot of technology packed into the tiny wireless Eye-Fi SD card. We're used to seeing cellphones and laptops stripped to the silicon bone but this is something special. Just look at that tiny 2GB Samsung NAND chip and even tinier Atheros ROCm 802.11b/g WiFi module. Hit the read link for all the techie gore.

[Thanks, John R.]

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Luxim wants to brighten your block with ultra-powerful plasma lightbulbs

Posted Mar 18th 2008 9:58AM by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sure, we all enjoy a Tic Tac from time to time, but what if that minty Tic Tac were also able to generate the same amount of light as an industrial LED? You probably wouldn't want to ingest that, though according to the company Luxim -- known to us for its work in the A/V world -- you might want to stick it in a streetlight. Apparently, the company has created a micro-sized bulb that uses 250 watts of power, but outperforms a 400 watt LED. Gas inside the tiny bulb is electrified by a component called a puck, which heats the gas into plasma and produces light, allowing a sizable chunk of energy to become light rather than heat -- thus the ultra-bright performance. Inside the mint-sized bulb the gas reaches 6000-degrees Kelvin -- or about the surface temperature of the Sun -- producing 140 lumens per watt, or roughly ten times that of a standard lightbulb. Really, it's quite bright. Still, a Tic Tac would probably be more refreshing. [Via CNET]

Luxim's 250W Tic-Tac Sized Bulb Blows Away 400W LEDs

Luxim's new bulb may only be the size of a Tic-Tac, but this little bugger can crank out way more light at 250 watts than a traditional 400 watt LED. It can achieve this feat thanks to gas that is heated inside the bulb via electrical energy delivered to it by a "puck." As the gas turns to plasma, the bulb is illuminated. However, since most of the energy is not lost to heat, the light can reach a high level of brightness. In fact, it can produce up to 140 lumens per watt which is twice that of an LED and around 10 times that of a standard bulb. Impressive. Hit the link to see the light in action. [CNET and Luxim]

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Intel details the Larrabee next-gen hybrid CPU / GPU

Posted Mar 18th 2008 4:54PM by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Although they've gotten better recently, Intel's integrated graphics chipsets have never gotten a ton of love -- the underpowered 915 chipset is at the heart of the whole "Vista Capable" debacle, for example -- but it looks like the company's about to make a strong play to be your new pixel-pusher of choice with the new Larrabee graphics chip. Based on the x86 instruction set, the new chip isn't just limited to GPU duties, but can serve as a general-purpose processor as well. Early 16-core versions have been developed with max speeds of over 2GHz, but the design can apparently scale to thousands of cores in the future. The plan is first to release Larrabee chips as separate graphics units in Q4 of this year, but early next year we should see both laptop and desktop-oriented 45nm Nehalem processors with the Larrabee tech built right in. That should beat AMD's Fusion processors to market -- looks like the race is on. Read - PC Perspective roadmap article with Intel slides Read - DailyTech roadmap with Larrabee details

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Sony XEL-1 hands-on

Posted Mar 18th 2008 11:44PM by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

It's one thing to swoon all over Sony's 3-millimeter thin XEL-1 OLED while being keenly observed by likely armed guards. It's another to bust this baby out in the comfort of one's home. Our comrades over at the Spanish branch were able to do just that, and of course, they snapped a few glamor shots before ruining its allure with fingerprints. Curiously enough, their model arrived sans an Ethernet port -- needless to say, we're still waiting to find out the story behind that. Grab anything that can work as a drool rag and hit up the gallery below.

Gallery: Sony XEL-1 hands-on

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InnoDisk intros 128GB FiD 2.5-inch SATA 10000 SSD

Posted Mar 15th 2008 11:54PM by Darren Murph

Filed under: Storage

If you were impressed with OCZ's latest 2.5-inch SSDs, chances are you'll be thoroughly enamored by InnoDisk's FiD 2.5-inch SATA 10000. 'Course, it's certainly not the first 128GB solid state disc we've seen, but it does boast a rugged metal enclosure and promises sustained read / write rates of up to 110Mbps / 90Mbps. Reportedly, this SLC NAND flash drive will see its way out to samplers later this month, and it should start shipping in volume sometime during Q2.

[Via FarEastGizmos]

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