Thursday, December 18, 2008

IBM's prototype STT MRAM device spins your bits right round, baby, right round

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/ibms-prototype-stt-mram-device-spins-your-bits-right-round-bab/

IBM's prototype STT MRAM device spins your bits right round, baby, right roundIf you're a frequent reader you're surely well aware of the potential of spin torque transfer memory, or STT-MRAM, and how spin-polarized magnetic currents (and the electrons they love to caress) might hold the potential to revolutionize storage as we know it. If you can't get your noggin around the concepts, know the potential: a new type of memory that will be cheaper, faster, and more efficient than current RAM, while also having the flash-like ability to retain data without power. IBM, who first floated the idea last year, is now sharing some more details about its prototype device that, while only able to store 4Kb of data (roughly half the text of this post in ASCII), is said to be able to retain that for 10 years. There's still no word on when we might be able to buy some of the stuff for our home computers, or when it'll be able to hold something a little more impressive (like maybe a whole post), but we're guessing it'll be well into the next decade before your Three 6 Mafia MP3 collection starts ridin' spinning electrons that don't stop.

[Via MRAM-Info]

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IBM's prototype STT MRAM device spins your bits right round, baby, right round originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec ! 2008 09: 49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 2:34 PM

VIA's Trinity Platform brings much-needed religious imagery to small form factor media acceleration

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/vias-trinity-platform-brings-much-needed-religious-imagery-to-s/


Not to be outdone by NVIDIA's move to accelerate netbook graphics with its new Ion platform, VIA just debuted its "Trinity" platform, which pairs a VIA Nano chip with a Media System Processor like the VIA VX800 and a discrete S3 Graphics PCI Express GPU. VIA is aiming this lineup at netbooks and mini-PCs, and are planning to power DirectX 10.1, HD video, Blu-ray playback and Windows Vista. Sounds fine and dandy to us, but unfortunately, like with NVIDIA, we're at the mercy of the manufacturers who will actually be stuffing this into their product -- and they've sure seemed gun-shy with Nano so far. Hopefully this can change some of that, Christian Bale is only half as badass at 15 fps QVGA.

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VIA's Trinity Platform brings much-needed religious imagery to small form factor media acceleration originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 2:34 PM

ASUS Galaxy 7 touchphone gets manhandled

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/asus-galaxy-7-touchphone-gets-manhandled/


Photos of the ASUS Galaxy 7 touchscreen phone have been popping up for months now, and due to a resemblance a certain Samsung device, it's been referred to more than once as an "Omnia-killer" (of course, we understand the urge, but we have to ask if it's even worth the effort). Now it looks like the folks over at Mobile Review have their hands on the thing, and they've been kind enough to share their thoughts. Right off the bat, they were disappointed to learn that plans for a 800 MHz processor had been scrapped in lieu of the far less exciting 528 MHz Qualcom MS7200A, but they then go on to give props to the phone's Glide interface (on par with TouchFlo3D, it seems) and its build quality -- the handset itself seems sturdy, well considered, and it even integrates some leather for that touch of "class" that only a dead animal can bring. Other than that, it's pretty much what you were expecting: a WinMob phone with a 5 megapixel camera, a 3.5-inch (800 x 480) display, 512MB memory, 4GB storage and a microSD slot. The phone should be available early next year.

[Via Wmpoweruser]

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ASUS Galaxy 7 touchphone gets manhandled originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 2:34 PM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-gets-mostly-official/


Well, here's a bit of a surprise. While most folks were only expecting NVIDIA to announce its GeForce GTX 295 graphics card at CES, the company has now come out and gotten official with it today, although it's still holding back on a few details until the big show. As rumored earlier this month, the card packs two 55-nanometer GT200 GPUs, a staggering 1,792MB of video memory, a total of 480 stream processors, and a not-too-ridiculous TDP rating of 289 watts. What's more, while they faced some restrictions from NVIDIA, the folks at bit-tech were able to run a few benchmarks on the card and found that it does indeed seem to live up to its promise of besting ATI's top-end Radeon HD 4870 X2. That appears to partly back up those early numbers that leaked out yesterday, although bit-tech is quick to point out that the card doesn't deliver the same performance leap seen when AMD rolled out its card. Still, they do seem to think that NVIDIA has a winner on its hands, assuming that it actually manages to meet (or even beat) the 4870 in terms of price. Hit up the link below for bit-tech's complete numbers, plus a few more.

Read - HotHardware, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Specifications Unveiled"
Read - bit-tech.net, "First Look: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 graphics card"
Read - Guru 3D, "GeForce GTX 295 Preview"
Read - PC Perspective, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Preview - Performance King Returns"

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 2:33 PM

BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone!

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/blackberry-storm-buyers-remorse-youre-not-alone/


We tried to warn you, but you just didn't want to hear it. "How bad could it be?" you muttered to yourself, as you handed over a summer's worth of lawn mowing money for a shiny new BlackBerry Storm. Pretty bad, as it turns out. Based on a pile of anecdotal evidence and hearsay, numbers as high as a 50% return rate have been bandied about. The software update certainly helped the situation, but there are still a lot of disappointed thumbs out there. So, how'd it go down on your end?

Update: So Verizon has hit up Boy Genius Report to clarify (well, maybe clarify) the situation: "The Storm has the lowest return rate of any of our PDAs and at this point in its life cycle, it has the lowest return rate of any PDA we currently sell." That kinda sounds like doublespeak to us -- if the Storm was really so thoroughly un-returned, couldn't they have said it in simpler terms? -- but that's about all we've got to go on at the moment.

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BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 2:33 PM

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