In an interview with the Gaming Business Review, an online site ran by M2 Publishing, Tim Sweeney detailed recent developments in Epic Games, as well as his visions of the future.

The interview obviously took place during Game Developer’s Conference 2015, which is traditionally held in San Francisco, CA. We highly recommend that you head there and read the whole interview, but we could not miss out on a question that is shaping the industry right now:

GBR: How big do you see virtual reality becoming over the next five to ten years as a business?

TS: Virtual reality and Augmented Reality will literally change the world. They will be the next computing platform.  There’s a market for billions of these devices because everybody who has a smartphone today will — perhaps in as much as decade from now — much prefer entertainment in a completely immersive experience that takes advantage of your entire field of view and has full body input through miniaturized cameras and other technologies.  But we’re in the early days of it now.  Let’s be clear, everything is in the development kit stage.  It is for early adopters and what we’re seeing now is really just the Palm Pilot to the platform that will evolve into something iPhone-like in its quality.

There’s no point in denying it, after seeing billions of dollars earned by 3D movies which rely on ‘cheap tricks’ to achieve depth (try finding animated feature movies without 3D being the ‘default’ option), next step will bring us technologies such as Microsoft Hololens, production versions of Facebook-owned Oculus VR (John Carmack keynote) and second-generation Google Glass, which is developed in near-secrecy by the search giant and a practical monopoly in glasses, Italian giant Luxottica.

After operating for almost 20 years as an independent studio, Epic Games made waves across the gaming and development community when they accepted an investment from Tencent Holdings (HKG:0700) last June (2014). The Chinese powerhouse paid up $330 million for 48.4% of the company, setting the valuation just a bit below $680 million.

Tim Sweeney continued to be the CEO, while his lifelong business partner Mark Rein still continues as in his role of Vice President.  Not selling themselves outright like idSoftware did with ZeniMax Media, Epic Games continues to be independent studio, consisting out of product (games) and technology development units. Their recent announcement about making Unreal Engine ‘free’ opens a path for even more ‘premium freemium’ titles which base their revenue model on microtransactions.

The post Tim Sweeney: Virtual Reality will Literally Change the World appeared first on VR World.

If there is one summer movie you should seriously consider, the answer just might be a movie starring Adam Sandler, whose career pitches him competing against Rob Scheider for ‘worst summer movies ever’.

Pixels (2015) Movie Poster shows Pac-Man eating San Francisco

Produced by Chris Columbus, Pixels pitches an unlikely story that Carl Sagan and his Cosmos documentary series ended in a NASA project that was destined to destroy us all – Voyager 1 and 2 carried messages of humanity, and code for computer games of the era. Aliens got the message, figured we’re challenging them to war and sent back… what we send them. In a larger form.

Can Adam “Grown Ups 1-2-…” Sandler, Peter “Game of Thrones” Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan and other star-studded cast prevent the games from eating us all? Watch the trailer to see the cameo appearance of no other than prof. Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man.

See the trailer here:

The post Is Pixels Adam Sandler’s Best Movie Yet? appeared first on VR World.

Singapore and Taipei (Taiwan) – March 17, 2015: In conjunction with the start of Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Biopolis Singapore, we are proud to announce the return of one of industry legends to the ever-hot computing arena. Dr. Thomas Pabst is joining VR World as Industry Fellow, a newly formed think tank of opinion leaders which can share their wealth of experience and positively influence new developments.

In 1996, Dr. Pabst founded Tom’s Hardware as one of the first globally recognized technology publications. Over the next 11 years, Dr. Pabst built a media organization which spans across North America, Europe and Asia.

In a new role as an Industry Fellow, Dr. Pabst will work closely with Mr. Nebojsa Novakovic and Mr. Theo Valich, founders and publishers of VR World media publications on building an independent organization focused solely on evolving the global media scene. “We view the world of tech media as stagnant and predictable”, said Mr. Valich. “The way how the current media scene operates stipulates a direct relationship between the allegedly independent news outlets and vendors using third party marketing and PR agencies which dictate what content is allowed to be published… or face expulsion from the limited number of media/blogging/analyst-turned-blogger/journalist seats.”

“The arrival of Dr. Pabst is just the beginning of a new think tank which will operate independently of PR and marketing agencies, focusing on predicting and depicting future technology trends. The world where organizations maximize every available fund in the budget can only be enabled by enabling an open path between ideas turning into projects,  projects turning into technology, technology turning into products and ultimately positively impacting the world around us,” Mr. Novakovic added. “With Tom’s unparalleled understanding of the PC ecosystem and its key vendors on both sides of the Pacific, we are on board to lead the next generation charge.”

VR WORLD Pte. Ltd. plans to expand the newly established think tank enabling new industry initiatives. More announcements are to follow.

Contact:

Mr. Sam Reynolds
Email. Sam@vrworld.com
Web. www.vrworld.com
Twiter. @vrworlddotcom

###

VR WORLD Pte. Ltd. is an independently owned dynamic consulting and media company, which publishes VRWorld.com as well as specialized publications for scientific and business community. Headquartered in Singapore with outlets in California, Croatia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, VR WORLD works on delivering news, analysis, interviews and reviews from the dynamic world of ‘computing everywhere’.

A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) is the lead agency for fostering world-class scientific research and talent for a vibrant knowledge-based and innovation-driven Singapore. A*STAR oversees 18 biomedical sciences and physical sciences and engineering research institutes, and six consortia & centers, located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis as well as their immediate vicinity. A*STAR supports Singapore’s key economic clusters by providing intellectual, human and industrial capital to its partners in industry. It also supports extramural research in the universities, hospitals, research centers, and with other local and international partners.

The post VR World Names IT Industry Veteran Dr. Thomas Pabst as Fellow appeared first on VR World.

When it comes to marketing proneness, Taiwanese (and other Far Eastern) vendors often were afraid of their own shadow, not to interfere with lucrative OEM deals that western vendors utilized to the full extent: you may build your own stuff, but we contract you to build our stuff and you shall not interfere with that.

For good portion of it, the said mantra is true to this date, with Far Eastern industry giants still afraid to speak out, even though they now do almost everything for Western vendors such as Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) – without Foxconn (TPE: 2354) (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro), Pegatron (TPE: 4938) (iPhone), Asustek’s (TPE: 2357)  China facility, Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX) and Quanta (TPE: 2382) (MacBook an MacBook Air) – you would not be able to buy your favorite product from Cupertino (Designed in California, Made in China / Taiwan).

Not anymore – Asustek recently found balls of steel (that corporate move to Singapore seems to have helped) and decided to ditch the fear of the West and go for the jugular.

In two infographics, Asus attacked Apple’s products, pushing its design and manufacturing capabilities.

First ad attacks the MacBook and pitches its Zenbook:

ASUS North America tries to prove ZenBook is a thinner (and better) product than Apple MacBook. And 50% cheaper.

Second picture goes for the Golden jugular, pardon, Apple:

Golden Apple (Watch) is not the solution. We (our ZenWatch) is.

Who knows, perhaps Asian tigers will start challenging its former and current customers on more fields than just the price. After all, the key to selling a product is something that Far East still has trouble understanding – it’s not about the physical product, it’s about the experience.

Still, a ballsy move Asus. Ballsy indeed.

The post Asus’ Balls of Steel vs. Apple’s Golden MacBook and Watch appeared first on VR World.

Electronics manufacturing is a very labor-intensive process, employing a combination of robotic and chemical processes and treatments, manual labor but above all – it is a very dislocated process.

Over the course of past 15 years, we managed to witness the manufacturing changed in its scale, employing tens of millions of people and massively reducing time to market. Still, the process takes a lot of time, and not all can be done as efficiently as possible.

There are two base components of any piece of electronic equipment on the market: chip and PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and revolution is coming to both: IBM / GlobalFoundries is working on bringing flexible wafers from the domain of concept to a mass produced parts (still, we’re 5-6 years out), while Voxel8 just launched a 3D printer that can print PCBs.

Both innovations come from the East Coast: IBM/GlobalFoundries and the University of Albany, while Voxel8 is a hardware startup founded by Dr. Jennifer Lewis, Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

During CES 2015, the company introduced its first publicly available multi-material printer that among others, can lay the conductive silver ink. Yes, a 3D printed multi-layer PCB is becoming a reality. Do not expect your next graphics card or mobile phone to be 3D printed, as precision needed is on the very leading edge (some might say over the leading edge) of what industry can make.

However, this $8,999 3D printer should enable numerous 3D printed products from the world of Internet of Things (Machine-2-Machine, embedded electronics or IoT in marketing speak).

You can see more about the product in a video below:

The post 3D Printing Electronics is a Reality Now: Meet Voxel8 appeared first on VR World.

The next big battle for consumers is transportation. Forget about living room, your own pocket, your bedroom, the house in general – it’s cars, planes, shopping malls and the way how to interact with the world.

Thus, it is of no surprise that CES 2015 featured an interesting announcement, almost hidden behind the limelight of all the TVs, mobile phones etc. The announcement was that LG Electronics (KRX:066570) will become the default supplier of 4G LTE connectivity systems for General Motors (NYSE: GM). If you ever owned a GM car, you’re well aware of its ‘OnStar’ service.

OnStar Service to get 4G LTE connectivity

After multiple providers, very well known in the consumer space, it looks like LG Electronics won a global contract, to supply as much as 10 million cars (factor in at least 5-10% overhead for spare parts) annually. It is not known who is the chipset provider, but there’s no doubt LGE’s silicon unit will push for as much of their own chips as possible.

LG Electronics is a known automotive supplier, but this is as good as it gets – OnStar 4G LTE is coming to all the cars in General Motors gamma, regardless of are we talking about Cadillacs, Vauxhall/Opel etc. Expanding OnStar globally requires the use of 4G LTE technology, and the way how we will use cars as hotspots only goes to show that Tesla Motors started something big, and incumbents are working hard on catching up.

OnStar used to be a simple telematics service, but now is rapidly expanding its capabilities, bringing a whole new layer of connectivity usage. OnStar will now push key stats from the car, spare parts life, recommended service intervals and many more to consumers, while in case of product recalls etc. the service could notify all the owners of affected vehicles, reducing time to service.

The service originally started in North America, and recently started to expand in Europe. Over the course of next two years, GM will expand OnStar almost globally with focus on Europe and China.

According to Tim Nixon, Chief Technology Officer for OnStar, the company plans to put OnStar in no less than 50 cars across its brands by the end of the year (expect major announcements in Detroit, Geneva, Beijing and Frankfurt).

First vehicle to launch using this new improved service is the brand new 2016 Chevrolet Volt (leaked images courtesy of Motorauthority.com), to be officially introduced at the Detroit Motor Show. The car will also debut as 2^nd Generation Opel Ampera in Europe.

The post LG Electronics Enters Automotive with a General Motors Global Win appeared first on VR World.

Regardless of what you might think about the origins on The Pirate Party, there’s no denial that the movement resulted in a substantial number of votes across Europe. While it’s almost a given that the Pirate Party would have no success in U.S. (we doubt the well-lobbied legal system would refuse the registration of such political option) and many other ‘advanced’ parts of the globe – in Europe the situation is different.

The Pirate Party managed to enter European Parliament and several parliaments across Europe, and immediately begun with its campaigns to modify copyright laws. In a recent post on TorrentFreak, Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party highlighted perhaps a key highlight in a short, not-even-decade old political initiative.

As noticed by Falkvinge, it is strange that the mainstream media failed to report that Julia Reda, representative of German Pirate Party is currently working on revising the copyright law in the European Union:

“The collateral damage to liberties has been immense, and has spilled far outside the net. In the US, people are complaining that copyright monopoly law is now unintentionally preventing them to modify items they legally own, such as cars or games consoles. They’re absolutely wrong: that was the exact intention with the most recent round of revisions to copyright monopoly law – to limit property rights and to lock people out of their own possessions. (The copyright monopoly is, and has always been, a limitation on property rights.)”

One such example of how EUCD and DMCA legislations were used was Neste Oil’s attack on Greenpeace by threatening the internet provider of Greenpeace. Then again, Europe always had different approach to copyright when it compares to the U.S. In 2005, European Commission refused to accept software patents which are at the core of many lawsuits in the U.S. and in front of the WTO.

If we forego the political boasting of the post, Falkvinge revealed that a Pirate Party member of the European and German parliament is working on the “European Union’s official evaluation of the copyright monopoly, and listing the set of necessary changes.”

What those changes might be remains unknown at this point in time, but if European Union adopts the report on April 16, 2015 (it needs a majority vote to pass), we just might see a very interesting change in dynamic in negotiations between MPAA / RIAA-led U.S. negotiators and the European Union. As a reminder, right now the members of U.S. is trying to create not just Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), but to create a single market between U.S. and the E.U.

Even if they fail in this attempt, there’s no denying that Pirate Party is creating an impact of copyright legislature. Time will tell how hard MPAA / RIAA-backed lobbyists can reply.

The post Pirate Party to Contribute Writing Copyright Laws in Europe appeared first on VR World.

According to a picture recently published by Kenny Lin, CEO of Thermaltake Technology, the company is getting ready to announce its ultimate product, another take on the successful collaboration with the BMW Design studios in California.

The company did not release any official information about the part, with the exception being a higher-than-usual price tag due to the type and quality of materials used. The name “Titanium Edition” comes from the material being used and it will probably end up being a sight to behold.

When the original Level 10 appeared on the market, it was one of first, if not the first PC case to make mainstream media, from fashion magazines such as Vogue to news TV stations worldwide. Collaboration between BMW Design studio and Thermaltake was named as the perfect marriage between German efficiency and precision in design, American no-holds-barred attitude and a Far Eastern vendor that wanted to break away from generalizations associated with quality and originality.

First Level 10 ended up being sold out, and some eBay auctions even went into four figures but Thermaltake focused on making more mainstream versions of the part, which reduced the price, but quality as well.

Level 10 Titanium Edition should make a return to highest echelons of quality, and we wonder how many hours will pass before the whole 500 unit run ends up being grabbed by the collectors and design aficionados alike.

The post Thermaltake’s Ultimate Remake: Level 10 Titanium appeared first on VR World.

From the legendary movie ‘Grand Prix’ in 1966 to controversial Breaking Bad TV series, TAG Heuer watches are presented as objects of desire. Today’s ad campaigns feature select number of actors, race drivers, F1 teams, pilots and the like, all touting the precision brought by TAG Heuer. Yet, the most precise watch you can buy is one of digital, not the analogue kind. Secondly, there is not one, but two generations of people that are growing up using a mobile phone to check for time, reducing the need for watches in its entirety.

Not even a week after Apple’s event, Reuters passed the comments made by Jean-Claude Biver, founder of Hublot and current head of watchmaking for LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) . His statement “We want to launch a smartwatch at TAG Heuer, but it must not copy the Apple Watch.” confirmed that the LVMH concern will make a smartwatch using the TAG Heuer brand. We believe this will not be just one product but a ‘platform’ which guarantees its reappearance in multiple watches not just in TAG Heuer, but across LVMH brands. Furthermore, the company is also pushing its electronics team to create another six-figure smartphone to rival Vertu.

Today, most avid watch buyers are ones that grew up in 1980s, with Casio G-Shock and Swatch creating a generation of buyers that are in their 30s and 40s – going for the collectable editions with prices measured from thousands even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Generation growing up today would probably skip on watches entirely, until we start seeing wearable devices such as FitBit followed by Pebble, LG and Samsung smartwatches, and now Apple entered the frame with its Watch (does the lack of ‘I’ means Apple’s 2015 phone will simply be called – Apple Phone? Apple Pad?). All of the smartwatch/wearable device push from the manufacturers is bringing horologie back into fashion, and if you are a smart manufacturer (pun intended) – you will have to react.

We don’t expect the smartwatch to make appearance before annual watch gathering in Baselworld (March 19-26, 2015) while the new smartphone is planned to make an appearance at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (March 2-5, 2015).

All in all, luxury giant LVMH is reacting. The question is, how long until every other watch vendor starts following? We can only hope they won’t engage into a race to the bottom, like the standard consumer electronic companies.

The post LVMH Brand TAG Heuer to Launch Smartwatch in 2015 appeared first on VR World.

When we look at the world of covering technology today, we see that (unfortunately) most of the media and worse, paid up blogs and forum shilling tactics, are smothering the information which the public should receive.

It is hard to get information when technology sites have to live off selling ads in exchange for a set number of awards per year (in all of its five and a half years, Bright Side of News* received plenty of those offers from Far East), or even worse, unmarked advertorials.

We all live in a period of time when the amount of respect for a profession of journalism is at an all-time low. To make the matters worse, everyone can state even the craziest conspiracy theory and hope for a “repeated truth” syndrome to take place. Quite often, false news will get even the most brilliant engineers go on a self-destructive tangent.

When looking to invest in an organization, you’re often met with shady business practices. In media, this typically means journalists and bloggers (based in foreign offices) are doing visa runs because the parent company often doesn’t even legally exist in a territory from where the content is created. Then, an investor will face off difficulties with due diligence when the contracts signed with off-shore authors are illegal in the countries where the parent companies are.

As you can read, with this type of structure it is almost impossible to pass due diligence check from any serious investor. And from my stand point, there are only two options: cry over spilled milk, or put the money where the mouth is and create a working framework where people are respected from both sides of the fence. Products, technologies and maintaining the integrity of the said individuals is of paramount importance.

Our New Framework

Starting today, we are executing a roadmap which will see us split into three directions. Bright Side of News*, which 1.67 million of you came to trust, is going to evolve to cover the financial aspect of the industry.

What does a technology or a product mean for you? Should you invest in companies that we report on – that advice is not something we can legally do – we can give you our honest opinion, and we will not hold stock in companies we report about. Especially not when it comes to shorting the stock to make a quick buck (something which AMD is especially fragile from, and Intel barely made an escape from that zone). For any potential investor looking to come to technology, we would advise you to read The Wolf of Wall Street first amongst others.

We are expanding our focus from United States to cover what is really going on in countries which you read on the sidelines, but no one actually goes there and reports how it will affect you. We live in a global economy and you deserve coverage from everywhere.

West (Coast) Meets (Far) East

As of this moment, we are setting up offices throughout the Asia-Pacific (including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Taiwan and Shenzhen). Coming on board to report from Taipei will be Sam Reynolds as well as Chris Low and Han-Wei Tsai for BSN*’s new Chinese section.  A roster of reputable technology journalists with bylines you will recognize will be complimenting their coverage from around the world.

Now is a time of transition, so Bright Side of News* will be a temporary home for two teams of journalists as we put the finishing touches on a new publication. As you might notice, content will be temporarily in both English and Chinese for the next couple of weeks.

Next, we are launching several new business units, including Special Industry Groups (SIGs), which will work hard with the key industry players to bring new technology to the market in the most compatible way. In order to stay true to our path of independence and unbiased views, any technology we deliver on the market will not be directly reviewed by us (as an actual product we will write about what makes the technology tick).

Instead, we will launch a program that puts the technology in the hands of people. We want to hear what you think about the products and technologies that are coming to market.

Over the past two years, BSN* hosted several dozen giveaways where we tried to remove the regional locks which were the bane of most readers, and I cannot express my gratitude to over 2000 people that wrote to us about having a fair approach and often paying hundreds of dollars in shipping cost to the winner. Come to that, I believe the craziest package we ever sent was to a Swedish doctor working in Botswana. How in the world he ran a 3D Mark Vantage benchmark of a diesel generator, we’ll leave that one for you.

Thus, let’s move on together. I wish to thank you for five and a half years of supporting our efforts to remain independent and unbiased, and let’s jointly work on many more years to come.

Thank You,

Theo Valich
Co-Founder and Publisher, Bright Side of News*

The post Editorial: New Era Ahead appeared first on VR World.

In aircraft business, fuel efficiency is the key metric upon which airlines rise and fall. Good example of successful strategies are gulf carries, all of whom are abandoned older planes in favor of brand new ones, which significantly reduce the fuel consumption. For example, a passenger on Emirates Airlines flies as much as 87 mpg, while older aircraft belong to the sub 60 mpg range (numbers are derived from seat miles per gallon metric).

GE Leap-1 engine promises new era in fuel efficiency, with almost 7000 units on order.

The key to fuel efficiency relies on components that reached its limits in terms of conventional manufacturing. At the 2014 Farnborough International Airshow, GE Aviation, a division of General Electric announced that it plans to build and open a completely new manufacturing facility in Alabama. The new manufacturing plant will build aircraft engine parts using 3D Printers. More precisely, a new fuel nozzle which cannot be manufactured using conventional methods.

This move makes GE Aviation the second large aerospace manufacturer to commit to 3D printing. The announcement comes few weeks after Elon Musk made a splash at the Dragon V2 manned spacecraft launch, stating that several key rocket parts will be manufactured using 3D printing. However, GE is the first manufacturer that is launching a large-scale, volume production of fuel nozzles build using this revolutionary manufacturing method.

This is one of almost 130,000 fuel nozzles that will be created with 3D printing in a new Fab.

The nozzles will be used in CFM International Leap-1 engine, which is the default powerplant for the next-generation of Boeing’s narrowbody planes, 737 MAX, an engine option for the Airbus A320neo series, as well as the Chinese Comac C919 planes (if they ever take off). Overall, GE Aviation needs to manufacture around 130,000 fuel nozzles for the new engines alone (excluding spares), probably making this part the highest volume 3D printed part… for now.

The post General Electric Bids its Fuel Efficient Future on 3D Printing appeared first on VR World.

As Computex is getting ready to open its doors in and around Taipei, the capital of Taiwan – more products are leaking to the surface. Thanks to a Spanish e-tailer PCComponentes, we learned of one such product coming to the market comes from the States, in the form of Crucial’s Solid State Drive (SSD).

Crucial’s Retail box for the MX100 SSD

MX100 line of SSDs will mark the beginning of the end for memory chips produced using the 20nm process. While the 128GB drive will carry the 20nm MLC NAND memory chips, 256GB and 512GB models will feature brand new 16nm NAND flash from Micron. According to Micron,

“Our 16nm NAND technology is not only the leading Flash process, but it is also the most advanced processing node for any sampling semiconductor device. It improves on our award-winning planar cell design to create a highly compact storage solution.

Our advanced 16nm technology is also enabling a new 128Gb MLC device for applications that demand high-capacity storage in small form factors— including consumer SSDs, removable storage (USB drives and Flash cards), tablets, ultrathin devices, mobile handsets, and data center cloud storage.”

Micron’s 16nm MLC NAND Flash memory chip

Translated into regular English, a single 16nm chip features no less than 16GB of storage space. Should you wish to integrate this into an ultrabook of the latest type, you’ll be pleased to know that the drive in fact is a 7mm thick 2.5″ drive, featuring an 9mm adapter as well (if you buy a retail packaged unit).

The company stayed clear of LSI / Avago / Seagate / SandForce one more time, and utilizes Marvell’s 88SS9189 controller. This means the drive will connect using a convetional SATA-III (6Gbps), meaning the drive cannot achieve higher transfer speed than 600MB/s up and down. Naturally, the real stated numbers are far lower than that.

All three drives are capable of sequential reading of 550MB/s. Write speeds vary by drive (given the amount of memory chips used for the drive). 128GB SSD comes with the smallest number of NAND flash chips and it achieves barely 150MB/s write, while 256GB drive tops at 330MB/s. The big hitter is the 512GB model, with 500MB/s write speed.

These drives won’t be fastest in the class, but the 16nm process might help 256 and 512GB drives to achieve longer life span.

The post Crucial to Launch SSDs with 16nm Memory Chips appeared first on VR World.

Even though my first personal computer using liquid cooling from German Innovatek some 12 years ago, this ultra-efficient cooling concept encountered troubled times while breaking into the overly conservative market.

Good example of just how inefficient the industry is the supercomputer i.e. HPC arena. If you ever visited a supercomputer center, you?ll see that for example, high-end IBM Watson or Deep Blue are using liquid or even phase change cooling systems. However, the moment you come down to the dominating world of x86 servers, we see that 99.9% of all servers are air cooled. Read: not efficient.

Thus, unless you ?pull a Google? and turn a former mill into a liquid cooled supercomputer center using sea water, you?re bound to spend a boatload of money on inefficient air conditioning. It is obvious that the industry has a problem and perhaps for the first time now, we are seeing what change in system design you can achieve if you deploy liquid cooling inside your server. During the GPU Technology Conference, Penguin Computing launched its new Relion 2808GT; ultra-dense GPU server capable of supporting no less than eight Tesla K40 boards – thanks to liquid cooling.

Cooling Xeons, Tesla GPUs… CoolIT Rack DCLC shows promise.

In a 2U form factor, Penguin?s Relion 2808GT managed to combine two liquid cooled Xeon E5 series processors with eight liquid cooled Tesla K40 boards for a grand total of 120 processors (23,040 CUDA cores) and 96GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory. Performance wise, we?re talking about a single 2U box delivering no less than 34 TFLOPS of single-precision and over 11 TFLOPS of double-precision.

This is amount of compute power we are used seeing in a 4U box, which means liquid cooling from CoolIT Systems enabled Penguin to double the compute power while reducing the total cost of operation. The company claims that the Rack DCLC can address 86% of total server heat and reduce the facility air cooling requirement to 14%.
Given that the cost of building a datacenter is mostly in air conditioning (quite often, a two year bill for AC alone is higher than the cost of hardware), if you would design the building around the liquid cooled Relion 2808GT and its future iterations, you could reduce the cooling capacity to 30% of original specification and still have twice as much cooling capacity than with conventional air cooled servers. Penguin Computing claims they deliver 24% OPEX savings per year.

While Penguin is not the only player in this arena, we view this product to have a better chance of mainstream acceptance than esoteric concepts we?ve encountered, such as submerging the racks in mineral oil.

The post Watercooling is a Revolution for Supercomputers… Ready? appeared first on VR World.

In its historical headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA AMD gathered financial analysts and press to announce their latest product for the professional graphics market. Hosted by Matt Skynner, Raja Koduri and David Cummings, the event was streamed live to the interested audience.

AMD FirePro W9100 vs. the competition: It is very clear what does AMD thinks about its latest hardware.

And the audience is quite large ? the arrival of 4K world-wide and 8K in Japan is driving the demand for more compute power than ever before, with the average of six to twelve times the compute requirements than with ?regular? Full HD video. That?s more than one order of magnitude from the Standard Definition video and the demand for the sold-out competitor, Nvidia Quadro K6000 12GB speaks for itself.

AMD FirePro W9100 will star in the upcoming professional conferences such as the 2014 NAB in Las Vegas and ISC in Germany.

AMD themselves experienced record growth and revenue last year, and FirePro W9100 is their crown jewel for the 2014 ? gunning to knock the incumbent Quadro line-up from its pedestal. FirePro W9100 brings 2.7 TFLOPS of double-precision compute and over 5TFLOPS of single-precision, pairing a fully-unlocked Hawaii GPU chip with an unprecedented 16GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory.

Raja Koduri showed a slide that claims FirePro W9100 owns the competition in SolidWorks 2014

At the same time, the card supports no less than six 4K panels, or two 8K panels at the same time. As the world is turning towards the complete solution and the component manufacturers are no longer as relevant as they were ijn the past, AMD unveiled a complete solution for the market:

Probably the biggest announcement: AMD Visual SuperComputer

Years after NVIDIA introduced their Maximus platform, AMD is coming to the market with an unprecedented amount of compute power. This computer will come to market through AMD’s selected partners:

• Boxx Workstations
• Mouse Computer
• Silverdraft
• SuperMicro
• Tarox
• Versatile Distribution Services
• Wortmann AG

The computer is based on up to two 8-core Intel Xeon E5 v2 series processors, with 32 to 256GB of DDR3 system memory, and almost unheard – 64GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 video memory. The display capabilities are second to none, as you can drive no less than 24 4K panels  (or up to eight 8K panels with 24fps+ performance).

This clearly sets the stage for AMD as the company exits recovery mode and prepares to go for the high margin business. Time will tell if AMD sales team can support this level of performance and requirements of this fast paced ecosystem. From the looks of it, they’re doing better and better.

The post AMD's New FirePro card is a Beast with 16GB of Memory! appeared first on VR World.

There?s no doubt that pressure is rising in the social media balloon ? the latest news come from Facebook, which signed an agreement to spend a good portion of its balance sheet to acquire WhatsApp, a very popular messaging app.

WhatsApp was seen as one of threats to Facebook as the application gained popularity over its simplicity and fast performance on the widest array of smartphones on the market. The app proved extremely popular in emerging markets where most users cannot afford an extensive data usage plan or face high SMS text costs.

Under the terms of acquisition, the overall cost to Facebook is set at massive 19 billion US dollars divided in just 4 billion in cash, 12 billion in common stock and additional 3 billion in restricted stock. The restricted stock comes with a standard time expiry clause, meaning the founders and employees of the company need to stick around for some time in order to get the extra three billion dollar payday. Even though majority of media reported this as a 16 billion dollar acqusition, the additional $3 billion commitment is still a very big part of the deal. 

The deal is subject to various approvals, and If something would happen to prevent the acquisition, Facebook would have to pay a hefty good bye letter – $1 billion in cash. However, given the amount of money WhatsApp employees and executives have on the table (4 billion cash at the day of acquisition), it is hard to imagine that two friends (Mark Zuckerberg and Jan Koum know each other well) would endanger this acquisition.

The question now remains – will Facebook leave WhatsApp alone (like they did with Instagram), or will the company start modifying the popular chat service. All we know is that 19 billion dollars is a nice chunk of money for getting more data out of those 450 million (and growing) users, who all have to upload their phone contacts to WhatsApp servers.

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Lenovo is on a mission to become the alternative not just to Dells and HP?s of this world, but also wants to gun for Apple products. This is the shortest summary of our conversations with several executives at the company which made great strides in 2013 and does not look back. The Lenovo team sees Ultra HD as an opportunity to build a great equalizer and rams past the competition no matter the cost, which should result in a sea of very price competitive products with high-end features.

Good example is ThinkVision Pro2840m. This is a 28? TN panel that will retail for only $799, which is exactly 400 dollars less than a product with the same panel from Philips (UltraClear 288P http://www.usa.philips.com/c/pc-monitor/22098/cat/en/ ). Lenovo aims to beat both Dell and Philips by delivering product at such a low price ? even though it offers the same connection capabilities as the competition (DisplayPort, mini-DP, HDMI and MHL ? good news for owners of Galaxy Note III).

The future is ‘almost here': An all-in-one PC running Google Android 4.4 ‘KitKat’ on Tegra K1 for a lower price than an Apple iMac.

Second product uses the same panel as the Pro2840m, but pairs it with Nvidia Tegra K1 in what is the first design win for Nvidia with the new part. ThinkVision 28 4K2K is a 28? All-In-One with a 10-point touchscreen, running Google Android 4.4. This is as close as Google has come to becoming a desktop product and should the price be what we were told it will be, both iMac and other AIO?s are in trouble. Miracast technology is supported, but the connectivity features of this PC are what is expected of a 2014 device: WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC. Can Google become a desktop OS vendor courtesy of Tegra K1 and Lenovo? That remains to be seen.

Finally: A 4K Laptop. Less than 1" thick, this touchscreen model is guaranteed to turn some heads.

Lastly, after many announcements of ?almost there? products such as Retina Display on Apple MacBooks (2560×1600 and 2880×1800), 3K displays on Samsung, HP, Dell and MSI and its own Yoga 2 (3200×1800), Lenovo is the first vendor out the door with a 4K notebook. Lenovo Y40 and Y50 are 14? and 15.6? notebooks with an optional Ultra HD panel (3840×2160) featuring either AMD Radeon (Y40) or Nvidia GeForce (Y50) graphics. Starting price for a baseline FullHD model with AMD Radeon graphics is $699, and will scale up to high $1xxxx with a 4K panel and GeForce GTX.

All in all, Lenovo selected CES 2014 to make a very strong case for its products. What we could not extract from the people we talked to is the way how they created their product matrix, but it?s quite clear that the Chinese giant looked at all of their competitors and decided to outspec them and sacrifice short term profitability for long term market gain.

The post CES Attack: Lenovo 4K Display for $799, 4K Laptops and Tegra K1 Android Desktop appeared first on VR World.

The industry of cables for consumer electronics is truly an industry of its own and often provides controversy. Arguments how digital signal is the same in every cable and mysteries how some HDMI cables can work through years and changing standards (and vast majority can?t) spice up conversations among enthusiasts and consumers worldwide.

However, a subsidiary of TongFang Global, a large conglomerate decided to change the definition of the meaning HDMI Cable. The company wants to build its SEIKI / SEIKI Pro brands by offering competitive pricing for its TVs and naturally, the challenge they found was a very visible lack of 4K content online and off-line. In order to resolve the issue, SEIKI partnered with Marseille Inc., a Silicon Valley firm known for its ?soft hardware approach? to 4K. End result is a very compact and unobtrusive product called SEIKI U-Vision, an HDMI cable with a built-in 4K upscaler.

Unlike many upscalers, this cable comes with Technicolor 4K Image Certification, guaranteeing the quality of an upscaled image. U-Vision takes a signal from your 1080p device (be that mobile phone, tablet, PC, Blu-ray player) and upscales it to Ultra HD resolution for playback on a TV. Every owner of SEIKI 4K TV will receive this cable for free, while other interested customers can purchase the cable for about 40 dollars in retail/e-tail. We spoke with the company representatives and they told us that U-Vision is not vendor locked, so you can use it on other products as well. We watched several pictures and couple of movies and didn?t notice any visual anomalies (TV was running in 3840×2160 resolution at 24 Hz).

The only caveat for the U-Vision HDMI cable is the fact that requires USB power, which should not present a problem for a vast majority of 4K TV?s on the market. Still, before purchase check to see if your TV has a USB port up to around 20cm from the HDMI port. Owners of SEIKI TV?s shouldn?t worry, as all 4K devices have a USB port quite close to the HDMI one.

The post SEIKI Launches (R)evolutionary 4K Upscaling HDMI Cable appeared first on VR World.

One of probably most important people in the industry (that you never heard off) decided to add another semiconductor company to his resume. After ATI, AMD, GlobalFoundries and Intel, his next destination is San Diego.

Jon Carvill’s last job at Intel was trying to get the message of Intel Media business division out, but numerous delays and corporate inability to achieve a deal with content providers lead to a decision that Intel decided to start shopping it around. It looks like Jon got bored with the continuous roadmap slip ups and questions from media and analysts. Or worse, an uninformed Board of Directors. Before Intel Media, Jon worked in Investor Relations to get Intel’s smartphone message out.

Prior to joining Intel, Jon Carvill worked at ATI Technologies and AMD, as well as being one of key members of the team that worked on the Mubadala Abu Dhabi – AMD (Mubadala now owns a double-digit percentage of AMD) and ATIC – AMD – GlobalFoundries deals. As it usually happens, the former and not-forgotten AMD management wasn’t keen on awarding people that saved that company’s destiny and kept extracting money from the company until AMD almost filed for Chapter 11 (bankruptcy).

Qualcomm’s Anand Chandrasheker was in the news for all the wrong reasons: Eight-cores are dumb, who needs 64-bit? Picture credit: Engadget

After learning that Jon is leaving Intel from a very reliable and up-the-ranks sources, we managed to scoop up where his next destination is. San Diego and Qualcomm. Qualcomm looked for a person that can save the company image after Anand Chandrasekher (another ex-Intel executive) made Intel-style blunders such as "Eight-core CPUs are dumb", "who needs 64-bit anyways" (when commenting Apple’s A7 chip). That comment burned Qualcomm’s reputation to the point where Anand was ‘asked to disappear’. As we all know, when AMD announced its 64-bit instruction set (AMD64 or x86-64), Intel banged on the same drum, claiming that no one needs 64-bit for desktop. At the same time, Intel was developing "Yamwhill" technology, or licensed version of AMD’s technology.

The challenges Carvill and the rest of PR / IR (Public Relations, Investor Relations) faces at Qualcomm are numerous. The company is nowhere with the next-generation nodes and plans to live ‘la vida loca’ in TSMC’s 28nm node (while the competition migrates to 20nm and 14XM), 64-bit plans are as vague as possible and at the same time, the market does not seem to understand just how big Qualcomm is and is starting to focus on the negatives.

The challenges facing Qualcomm are numerous and we’re not surprised to learn that the company tried to acquire top talent from AMD, Nvidia and other companies. However, with all respect to the individuals that were interviewed for the job, perhaps Jon Carvill is the best man for the job.

The question is, what will the focus of Qualcomm’s new message will be? One thing is certain, focus has to be on ‘no more short-sighted, bridge-burning statements’.

Mr. Carvill was unavailable for comment at press time. We have also reached out to Qualcomm for comment and have no received any comment at the time of publication.

The post Exclusive: Key Industry Insider Jon Carvill Leaves Intel for Qualcomm appeared first on VR World.

Couple of quarters ago, AMD launched its Never Settle bundling program with one simple purpose; buy their GPU, get AAA titles for free. Now, AMD is launching a similar program for their processors.

AMD’s latest promotion

Models on sale are as follows:

• $199.99 – AMD FX-8350 CPU, Vishera, 8-Core, 4.0GHz Clock
• $159.99 – AMD FX-8320 CPU, Vishera, 8-Core, 3.5GHz Clock
• $119.99 – AMD FX-6300 CPU, Vishera, 6-Core, 3.5GHz Clock
• $109.99 – AMD FX-4300 CPU, Vishera, 4-Core, 3.8GHz Clock
• $139.99 – AMD A10-6800K APU, Richland, 4-Core, 4.0GHz Clock, Radeon HD 8670D
• $109.99 – AMD A8-6600K APU, Richland, 4-Core, 3.9GHz Clock, Radeon HD 8570D
• $74.99 – AMD A8-6400K APU, Richland, 2-Core, 3.9GHz Clock, Radeon HD 8470D
• $129.99 – AMD A10-5800K APU, Trinity, 4-Core, 3.8GHz Clock, Radeon HD 7660D
• $99.99 – AMD A8-5600K APU, Trinity, 4-Core, 3.8GHz Clock, Radeon HD 7560D
• $64.99 – AMD A6-5400K APU, Trinity 2-Core, 3.8GHz Clock, Radeon HD 7540D

If you buy one of ten selected APUs and CPUs, you will receive Ubisoft’s FarCry 3: Blood Dragon (not to be confused with the retail FarCry 3) and SimCity from Electronic Arts. Those two games retail for $14.99 and $39.99, bringing the total value of the bundle to $54.98.

Things get interesting when you check the prices of the APUs and CPUs that AMD has on offer – the cheapest processor you can buy sells for just $10.01 more, an A6-5400K "Trinity". This APU chip consists out of two Piledriver CPU cores operating at 3.6GHz (Turbo raises that to 3.8GHz) and Radeon HD 7540D GPU (192 cores, 760MHz clock). With power consumption at 65 Watts, this $10 processor gives quite the bung for buck – especially important if you’re building a value box.

65 bucks for a processor and two games, or 65 bucks for 65 Watts of power consumption – AMD definitely knows how to round the price. If you are interested in this deal, we would advise you to "spend big" and pay 10 bucks more for A6-6440K based on Richland die: two improved Piledriver cores operate at 3.9GHz, while the GPU side of things is named Radeon HD 8470D. That’s 384 cores operating at 800MHz. That’s twice as much graphics horsepower and trust us, you need every extra pixel you can get, with both FarCry 3 and SimCity.

The main question is can AMD make a profit by selling these low-end, practically end of life processors… Inquiring minds want to know. Let’s see how things will develop on a higher margin front. In meanwhile, anyone interested to build a (Sim)City? A cute silicon-copper combo goes for ten bucks only.

The post AMD Value Bundle: Buy Games, Get a Processor for $10 appeared first on VR World.

After years of rumors about Valve Corporation making a hardware product, the company came live with the announcement of its first generation Steam Boxes. Under the name Steam Machines, the company will sample 300 enthusiasts with the first generation of Steam Machines.

This is just the second announcement of the week which started with Valve announcing the SteamOS, Linux-based operating system that targets one simple thing ? seamless gaming experience on what Valve believes to be the (gaming) platform of the future.

Third and the last announcement will come on Friday, with the physical unveil of the hardware itself. But first and foremost, if you want to be one of 300 lucky users to receive Valve?s prototype ? head over to the Eligibility Quest on Steam before October 25th and complete all the tasks at hand.

The quest is simple:

1. Join the Steam Universe Community Group
2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
3. Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven?t already)
4. Create a public Steam Community profile
5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode

From the looks of it, it seems that Valve?s solution for the future of PC gaming is actually a PC-based game console, coming to the market at the same time when both Microsoft and Sony adopted (well, Microsoft came back) to the PC architecture for their Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Valve?s approach is different and the company will use multiple manufacturers for their Steam Machine platform, in a way that is fully transparent to the consumer. We believe that the hardware specification will be flexible, starting from Steam?s fixed idea of achievable performance, and then upgrade to the hardware specification which fits your experience (1080p TV, 4K e.g. Ultra HD TV etc.). Even though no vendors are announced at this time, NVIDIA released a post on its blog, citing the following:

"Engineers from Valve and NVIDIA have spent a lot of time collaborating on a common goal for SteamOS: to deliver an open-platform gaming experience with superior performance and uncompromising visuals directly on the big screen.

NVIDIA engineers embedded at Valve collaborated on improving driver performance for OpenGL; optimizing performance on NVIDIA GPUs; and helping to port Valve?s award-winning content library to SteamOS; and tuning SteamOS to lower latency, or lag, between the controller and onscreen action."

If this is not enough, gamers and enthusiasts will also be able to build the Steam Box themselves (SteamOS powered), download the SteamOS themselves and even mod the OS, which will be released as an Open Source software.

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