OCZ Firmware Update Fixes "Dirty" SSDs In Its Spare Time [Ssds]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/f0fBYZEBoB8/ocz-firmware-update-fixes-dirty-ssds-in-its-spare-time

Modern SSDs might not "fragment" in the same way your old 9GB FAT32 drive did, but they've got their own, possibly worse problems. OCZ, along with Indilinx, say they've got a "garbage collection" firmware that'll clear things right up.

Here's how it works, in terms that you may or may not understand:

The flash memory used on today's SSDs is comprised of cells that usually contain 4KB pages that are arranged in blocks of 512KB. When a cell is unused, data can be written to it relatively quickly. But if a cell already contains some data—no matter how little, even if it fills only a single page in the block—the entire block must be re-written.

In layman terms, that means that the way many SSDs write data is sloppy, and leaves all kinds of useless junk all over the place, which later causes slowdowns when it is needlessly rewritten. OCZ has a firmware update that apparently fixes this while the drive is idle, and HotHardware says it's actually worth a nice little performance boost. So congratulations, OCZ SSD owners! Even better news?

Virtually all SSD manufacturers have incorporated, or soon will incorporate, garbage collection schemes into their drives' firmware that actively seek out and remove the garbage data.

All this before most people have even used these things. [HotHardware via Engadget]

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What Is This? [Image Cache]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/FVUR8rt0YYM/

Jelly fishes attacking an undersea monster? That would be cool, but the reality is much simpler, and more beautiful: It's an helianthus annuus.

It's a sunflower (I had to look that up too). Japanese artist Macoto Murayama creates these beautiful illustrations of flowers, highlighting their geometry. Intriguing, delicate work. [Creators Bank via Pink Tentacle]

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ATI Stream vs. Nvidia CUDA Graphics Accelerated Deathmatch [Graphics]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/6Sb4mcSVmdg/ati-stream-vs-nvidia-cuda-graphics-accelerated-deathmatch

The eternal graphics war: ATI vs. Nvidia. With the rise of GPGPU computing, if you're deciding who to fall in line with based on their graphics-accelerated platforms—Stream or CUDA, respectively—PC Perspective's done the dirty benchmarking work for you.

It actually boils down fairly simply to a mixed bag: ATI's Stream tends to be outright faster and pulls more of the load off of the CPU, but Nvidia's CUDA tends to produce better quality results. Interestingly, PC Perspective seems to like ATI's Avivo video transcoding application more than they used to, saying they're impressed by its simplicity. But which side are you on? [PC Perspective via Engadget]

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Draganfly X4 UAV: Tiny, Camera-Packing, UFO-Looking 'Copter Is Cheaper Than Ever [Helicopters]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9aYvU7Tugcs/draganfly-x4-uav-tiny-camera+packing-ufo+looking-copter-is-cheaper-than-ever

Draganfly's series of photo/video-based UAVs have always been awesome, but they've also been more of a pipe dream than anything else. The X4 is smaller than the X6, but the smaller size also comes with a 25% price cut. Yes!

Like the X6—featured in Giz Gallery 2008—the X4 is a carbon fiber-bodied UAV with four carbon fiber rotating blades. The 680-gram (with battery) copter is capable of using a still/video camera (in this case, a Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot), an infrared camera and a low-light camera, all of which can be controlled from the ground. The X4 also features three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, three magnetometers and a barometric pressure sensor, and the controller is based on an OLED touchscreen. The X4 only has four motors to the X6's six, but that comes at a big boon to the pricey 'copter: The X6 checked in at about $15,000, and the X4 should be more like $10,000.

So yeah, this thing is still super expensive. But it's also just about the best heli-cam we've ever seen, capable of flying both indoors and in inclement weather (up to 18mph of wind). Check out these videos at Draganfly's site to get a real sense of the true badassery of the copter. [Draganfly]

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Genome Sequencing Gets 99.9833% Price Cut [Dna]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/yTxIWRCLrkM/genome-sequencing-gets-999833-price-cut

Dr. Quake of Stanford University only needed $50,000 and a month's time to complete a genome sequencing process which previously took $300 million, over 250 people, and several years. How cheap would Windows 7 be with this guy's cost-cutting?

Dr. Stephen Quake and his team used a "commercially available, refrigerator-sized instrument called the Helicos Biosciences SMS Heliscope" to sequence Quake's genome.

This machine, also known as a single molecule sequencer, is incredible. Instead of needing to generate thousands upon thousands of copies of a person's DNA, it chops the fundamental units of DNA, the bases, into short strands, slaps them onto a specially treated glass plate, and proceeds to read the sequences.

After these steps are completed, a series of computers will assemble all the DNA strands into a genome while comparing it to previously compiled genomes. According to an algorithm used by the team, this sequencing process results in genomes which are about 95% complete. (This is on par with previous sequencing technology.)

While Quake's research is important in what it represents: genome sequencing could become something used by regular health care providers to diagnose genetic predispositions to diseases (or maybe just figure out if someone's genetic code "contains a form of a gene that has sometimes been associated with increased disagreeability"), it also does something curious: in shows a far larger decrease in cost than Moore's law alone would suggest. The combination of better processing with a far better algorithm resulted in this dramatic progress over the past eight years and we can't wait to see how the implementation of improved algorithms will continue to affect this trend. [Business Wire]

Photo by Helicos

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