Android is in a tricky spot within China. While the OS is run by practically every smartphone in China that’s not an iPhone, including of course handsets from domestic champions such as Xiaomi, the Chinese government maintains a near state of war against Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Google, with its libertarian ethos, antagonized the Chinese government when it operated in the country by refusing to comply with censorship requests. When Google left China, the Chinese government began traffic shaping its packets before outright blocking Google late last year. Now trying to use Google or things like Gmail or Google Apps is impossible in China without a VPN (and the majority of which no longer work inside the country). The majority of Android platforms used by Chinese vendors are heavily forked. While this presents its own security problems, it’s the best vendors can do to still use Android without relying on Google.

China’s government recognizes the problem and is developing its own indigenous mobile OS as a way to remove the dependence Chinese companies have on Google.

For Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) part, the company says that it will assist China in developing this platform to ensure compatibility with the Intel platform (a must considering the investments Intel is making in Chinese smartphone vendors).

“We have and continue to collaborate on indigenous platforms. We have thousands of software engineers and leadership here in China,” Intel’s Doug Fisher, the company’s Vice President General Manager, Software and Services Group, said at IDF Shenzhen 2015. “We will work with China’s government industries to ensure that we participate in the creation of an indigenous operating environment here in China.”

He said that Intel’s role with the China OS Association, the industry group working with China’s government, will be to “enable” the OS.

It will be interesting to see how close China lets Intel get to the development process of the indigenous OS. On one hand China would need to consult with Intel to ensure compatibility with its platform. On the other hand, China might not want to let Intel get too close to the platform for fear that it would lose face letting a foreign firm in to help with the heavy lifting development work – or worse plant a backdoor.

The post Intel Onboard to Support Indigenous China Mobile OS appeared first on VR World.

“Innovating together, winning together.”

That’s how Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich defined the relationship between Intel and China during the kickoff keynote of IDF Shenzhen 2015.

“Since last year, we’ve made a lot of progress together. It’s been a good year full of innovation and full of partnerships and collaborations together,” Krzanich said on stage.

Though interference from the US government may block Intel from parts of the lucrative high-performance computing market in China, on stage Krzanich said that Intel and China maintain a strong relationship and high levels of cooperation.

“The local and global impact of our 50 years of Moore’s Law innovation and 30 years of strong collaboration and winning together in China is unmatched,” said Krzanich. “Intel remains focused on delivering leadership products and technologies in traditional areas of computing, while also investing in new areas and entrepreneurs – students, makers and developers – to find and fuel future generations of innovation with China.”

Krzanich began the keynote by highlighting the how Intel met or beat its goals from last year.

In terms of Intel’s goal to hit 40 million tablets shipped with Intel silicon inside, that goal was met and exceeded as the company announced in January as Intel says it hit not only the 40 million mark, but exceeded initial estimates by hitting 46 million.

With regards to the Smart Device Innovation Fund established last year, Intel said that so far it has been “very successful” with $37 million of the $100 million fund disbursed so far. Many of the companies highlighted by Intel as recipients of the funds are relatively unknown outside of China. Eyesmart technology, Appscomm, were some of the firms highlighted by Intel.

Updates on collaboration with Rockchip

At last year’s IDF Shenzhen, Krzanich gave a first preview of SoFIA its first SoC solution with an embedded 3G baseband. SoFIA was Intel’s plan to get a foothold into the value-oriented Chinese market.

Later in the year Intel announced that it would be collaborating with China’s Rockchip to further develop SoFIA, with Rockchip taking the lead.

Rockchip CEO Min Li

On stage at IDF Shenzhen, Krzanich and Rockchip’s CEO said that they had scored hardware wins from from 20 companies, with more than 45 tablet, phablet and smartphone designs currently in development based on the Intel Atom x3 processor reference designs.

Krzanich then demonstrated the Intel Atom x3 processor in a smartphone, supporting LTE-TDD connectivity over China Mobile’s network by streaming a song from a popular Chinese music streaming service.

A new fund for makers

Following in the footsteps of the Intel Innovation Fund for smartphone and tablet vendors, Intel announced a program to accelerate the development of maker projects powered by Intel’s Galileo and Edison platforms. It’s not clear how these funds will be disbursed, but Intel said it is investing $20 million (120 million RMB) into the project.

Real Sense gets thinner and an enterprise partner

Intel’s RealSense technology has been a favourite staple of the company during its keynotes at events like IDF and Computex. While Intel has secured a handful of wins for its 3D camera, interest from vendors has otherwise been scant. One of the few wins Intel was able to secure for the technology was the Dell Venue 7000, which had many other selling points other than the inclusion of the camera.

At this year’s IDF Shenzhen Intel announced that it had developed a new version of the camera that’s thinner and lighter than the previous version.

Intel also announced that China online mega retailer JD.com would be using Intel RealSense technology in its wharehouses to organize and sort supplies into boxes.

IDF Shenzhen 2015 continues through Wednesday and Thursday in Shenzhen.

The post IDF Shenzhen 2015: Intel Celebrates 30 Years in China at IDF Shenzhen appeared first on VR World.

The 2015 Shenzhen Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) Developer Forum kicks off Tuesday, the second event Intel is hosting in the city.

Like its San Francisco counterpart, IDF Shenzhen was a very mobile-centric event. At last year’s event, Brian Krzanich, the company’s CEO, made some very aggressive promises.

But one year later, where is Intel on these promises?

40 Million Intel Tablets in 2014

Without a doubt the most aggressive promise Intel made at IDF Shenzhen 2014 was shipping 40 million Intel powered tablets in 2014.

The tablet SoC market is dominated by ARM’s (LON: ARM) silicon. To grow that much in one year would be a herculean task for any company, and many analysts thought it would be an impossible task. But in January 2015 Intel announced that it had met, and even beaten, its goal: 46 million.

But to get to that goal Intel paid a handsome cost that would be impossible for any of its competitors even consider undertaking. In its yearly earnings call in January Intel said that is mobile and communications division posted a loss of $4.21 billion for the 2014 fiscal year. Income for the division for the year was razor thin, only coming in at $202 million.

However for Intel this was total war. Posting this kind of loss was an acceptable cost for achieving victory.

This goal was intended to establish Intel Architecture in the marketplace,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said during the company’s earnings call. “We don’t need to go out and outpace the market for this year,” he continued. “A key goal for mobility is to improve profitability.”

This strategy pushed Intel’s x86 competitor out of the market entirely. Although AMD never really was a contender in the tablet space, the company decided to concede the market entirely once it realized the lengths Intel was willing to go to achieve dominance in the market.

“We’re evaluating [tablets] closely. It’s not our priority,” Kevin Lensing, senior director for mobility solutions at AMD, said in a November interview. Lensing explained that the margins just were not there for AMD to justify its attempts at entering the market, on top of Intel’s aggressive behavior.

Now that Intel has hit its goal, the question is: can it make a profit?

Intel’s $100 Million China Bet

The other big announcement from Intel at IDF Shenzhen 2014 was the establishment of a $100 million “China Smart Device Innovation Fund” and innovation center to help Chinese vendors jumpstart their mobile ambitions with Intel cash and know-how.

Tracking the deliverables surrounding this promise has been a bit tricky, as Intel’s bigger China-themed announcements this year such as the $1.5 billion investment in Tsinghua Unigroup have pushed it to the sidelines.

To date Intel has disbursed $28 million from the $100 million pot. The list of companies that have received the funds, and what projects they have used them for, has not been widely publicized.

It’s also understood that the company’s innovation center is not going as planned. Sources said Kirk Skaugen’s platform development center in Shenzhen was supposed to have 600 engineers, and to date it’s understood that there are only 150. In addition key high-level R&D personnel have returned to the United States.

What’s in store for this year?

This year’s IDF event is a much shorter affair than last year. With Intel no longer as hungry for market wins as it was last year, it’s doubtful that it will be as high profile as the year prior.

The conference’s first keynote kicks off Wednesday morning.

The post IDF Shenzhen 2015: Did Intel Keep Its Promises From Last Year? appeared first on VR World.

Japan is a major player in the high performance computing space, but it is often overlooked in favor of discussions about the latest efforts out of China and the US. While China’s national showpiece of Tianhe-2 gets its share of attention, it’s important to remember that on the Linpack Top500 list of HPC systems, within the top 20 Japan holds two positions: the fourth and 15th.

Given Japan’s industrial and scientific might as the world’s third-largest economy, it’s expected that it would also be a major

Professor Satoshi Matsuoka

HPC power. Japanese firms are fast at work designing exascale systems, and the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science, home to the world’s fourth fastest supercomputer (which held the title as fastest when it was switched on in 2011), might be home to the world’s first exascale system even before the United States.

On the sidelines of the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore, the VR World team sat down with Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, one of the leading figures in HPC in Japan to discuss the state of HPC in the country.

VR World: What is the state of Japanese supercomputing when compared to the competitive landscapes of the United States and China?

Satoshi Matsuoka: Historically, the Japanese HPC market and Japanese technology has always been fairly competitive especially in the system architecture space. US and Japan are now the two countries that are producing supercomputing platforms that are sold worldwide. What China creates is not sold to the outside market.

The Japanese market in computing has always come from the mainframe market. Hitachi, Fujitsu and NEC… they were all mainframe vendors. There were actually others but they have since moved away so there. These have always been the biggest mainframe vendors.

Fujitsu has gone the way of building their own MP piece since actually they built the first MP piece in the 90s, the AP 1000. And then they went to building its own SPARC processors so differs from Oracle, SUN and then now with the K computer [the world’s fourth fastest supercomputer].

VRW: So you would say the Fujitsu SPARC in terms of computational performance, stability for HPC, or client computing is actually ahead of Oracle’s at this point?

SM: Way ahead, yes; it is very HPC focused. So it is hard to say which one is better but for HPC, definitely Fujitsu’s [system] is better. Now looking at the hardware side, there are some advantages [over Oracle], because the Japanese vendors are focusing on building fairly special-purpose HPC hardware. They can really tailor the processors to be directed towards this specific market.

For example, the FX 100; the latest chip from Fujitsu has 34 cores.

VRW: Are you comfortable Fujitsu will continue in the medium to long-term. Are they committed to leading the industry in your mind?

SM:  Yes. They are. They have embedded the Tofu network into the latest FX 100. They were the first adopters of using HMC, the 3D stacking technology. And also they have enormously high injection bandwidth within the network, they also have RAS features [reliability, availability, and serviceability] that are extensive which makes them, in comparison to other processors, really competitive.

So it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Japanese HPC vendors to try to compete with the American counterparts because now designing these processors has become increasingly expensive. There are more transistors, now with lithography design becoming more complicated and you need more validation testing. So much of the Japanese HPC development is being funded by public money because still there are some centers that buy [the HPC systems] and also there are national projects like the K computer now post K computer project has been approved.

So this makes it very hard for the Japanese vendors. Now of course the Japanese vendors also have their own XV-6 line and so forth – Fujitsu sells XV-6 machines; so does NEC, so does Hitachi. And Hitachi has alliance with IBM now so they don’t make their own processors anymore. They work with IBM to design high-end systems.

I think the only way the Japanese vendors can survive is to – but it is my personal view – they will become more aligned with the overall, commoditization leveraging of the other markets. It is not to say they will produce something cheap. Again I will say that commoditization is about building cheap stuff. Commoditization is actually to apply the latest and greatest technologies however to be compliant with certain standards.

VRW: Thanks for your time. 

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

The post Satoshi Matsuoka Interview on state of Japan’s HPC Market appeared first on VR World.

It may come as a surprise to many that the way computers handle numbers is not very accurate. Indeed, it can be said that error is built into the very foundation of digital computers, and while the end user often does not see the result of these errors, they can be very problematic for programmers, scientists, engineers, and calculation intense industries such as money management and military operations.

At the recent Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore, computer scientist John Gustafson outlined the problems with floating points in his keynote and later in an interview. Given the complexity — and severity — of the problem, it’s worth taking a second in-depth look at the issue.

The Problem

Developer Richard Harris, who wrote a series of articles on the dangers of floating point, said in one post, “The dragon of numerical error is not often roused from his slumber, but if incautiously approached he will occasionally inflict catastrophic damage upon the unwary programmer’s calculations. So much so that some programmers, having chanced upon him in the forests of IEEE 754 floating point arithmetic, advise their fellows against travelling in that fair land.”

Because computers – which are machines of precision and exactness – are often made to deal with unprecise and inexact numbers (such as pi, and irrationals), methods must be devised to compensate for computational error, and to make the end result as close to the correct answer as possible. One solution has been devised that is still in use today: floating point. Floating point is a method similar to scientific notation, which uses a decimal point, sign bit, and a number of exact digits to represent a number.

Since The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic was published in 1985, this standard has come to dominate the mathematical methods used by hardware and software engineers for the basic operations computers perform whenever running an application. Ideally, a one-size-fits-all standard such as this one would minimize error and promote uniformity of results across a broad spectrum of hardware.

Unfortunately, this has not been the practical result. Different processors and software packages, designed to handle floating point operations, often result in slightly different answers, due to rounding errors, and differing orders of operation.

One way that programmers often compensate is to use as many digits as possible to represent a number. In modern computers, this means that 32 – 64 bits of data are almost always used to represent a single floating point number. While modern computers are also very fast at calculations, this many bits must be stored and retrieved from memory, causing significant latency in calculations.

Furthermore, due to compounding error, traditional properties of algebra – such as the commutative and associative property – do not necessarily apply to floating point operations. In other words, (a + b) + c =/= a + (b + c), nor does c * (a + b) = c*a + c*b.

In the case of floating point, using these differing approaches often yields dissimilar results.

The post The Evils of Floating Point, and the Joys of Unum appeared first on VR World.

The next big leap in scientific computing is the race to exascale, the capability for a computer to perform 1 million trillion floating-point operations per second.

The US Department of Energy, which will fund the development of such systems, has set targets of what it wants from exascale systems. It wants one available by 2018-2022 and to consume less than 20 megawatts of power.

For scientific computing having this much processing power available would mean that researchers could tackle the next big questions in science. It has been likened to the Hubble telescope, and the advantages it offered scientists in seeing far-off previously invisible stars.

But the problem is current technology is not at the level to accommodate the requirements of exascale computing. In order to reach exascale, at an efficient power and price point, new architecture will have to be developed that changes the way high performance computers compute and move data. Current generation hardware can not simply be scaled up until it reaches exascale level, the power required would simply be enormous and uneconomical.

While the US has put a great deal of resources into the necessary research required to hit exascale, in the end it may be beaten to exascale by another country.

In order to get a better understanding of what needs to happen before we reach exascale, and to get a perspective on some of the other rising powers in HPC computing, VR World spoke with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jack Dongarra who delivered a keynote at the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore on the topic.

VR World: During your keynote you mentioned the ‘exascale challenge’. In your opinion, how do we get there from here? What has to happen?

Jack Dongarra: We can’t use today’s technology to build that exascale machine. It would cost too much money, and the power requirements would be way too much. It would take 30 Tianhe-2 clusters in order to get there. We have to have some way to reduce the power and keep the cost under control.

Today, all of our machines are over-provisioned for floating-point. They have an excess floating-point capability. The real issues are related to data movement. It’s related to bandwidth. For example, you have a chip. And this chip has increasing computing capability — you put more cores on it. Those cores need data, and the data has to come in from the sides. You’ve got area that’s increasing due to the computing capability but the perimeter is not increasing to compensate for it. The number of pins limits the data that can go in. That’s the crisis we have.

That has to change. One way it changes is by doing stacking. 3D stacking is a technology that we have at our disposal now. That will allow much more information flow in a way that makes a lot more sense in terms of increasing bandwidth. We have a mechanism for doing that, so we get increased bandwidth. That bandwidth is going to help reduce [power draw] as we don’t have to move data into the chip.

The other thing that’s going to happen is that photonics is going to take over. The data is going to move not over copper lines but over optical paths. The optical paths reduce the amount of power necessary. So that’s a way to enhance the data movement, and to reduce the power consumption of these processors. The chip gets much more affordable, and we can have a chance at turning that computing capability into realized performance — which is a key thing.

In the US, I think we’ll reach exascale in 2022. 2022 is the point where the money will be in place and it’s a question of money. We could build a machine today, but it it would be too expensive. The current thinking is it will be realizable around 2020, and the US is going to be able to deploy the machine in 2022. The money won’t be in place until then, but the technology will be ready ahead of time.

VRW: What’s your take on vendors’ 3D stacking efforts so far?

JD: It’s great. It has to happen. It’s gotta be that way. It’s a natural way to move. It’s going to be the key thing in terms of performance enhancement in the next few years, and being able to effectively employ that as a device. Things look very positive.

VRW: Over the last few years we’ve witnessed China becoming a rising CPU player, with its domestic Alpha and MIPS-based CPUs. Do you have a feeling that conventional CPU vendors have over complicated things for themselves?

JD: China has an indigenous processor which may or may not come out and be deployed in a high performance machine. There are some rumors that the next big machine would be based on the ShenWei CPU. I can understand the motivation for China wanting a processor, they don’t want to dependent on Western technology for these things. There are some issues here. It’s not going to be on x86 architecture, so software will have to be re-written for this machine. Software is a big deal on these systems, but that can be overcome.

When China does deploy this wide scale, Intel will stand up and take notice. It will be a big thing, now China will be in a position to use their product and not Intel’s product. That becomes a big issue.

VRW: Do you see any emerging powers in the HPC space that are outside the traditional industrial powers of US, Japan, Europe and China?

JD: Things have been dominated by the US, followed by the European Union and Japan. China is a more recent investor in high performance computing. Then there are other countries that claim to be wanting to be involved. Korea is a country that claims to wanting to be involved. They are making noise about buying a big machine. They aren’t going to build a machine — they don’t have the processors — they are going to buy a machine from the US.

India has made claims they want to do something. Again, they aren’t going to make their machine. They are going to purchase one.

VRW: Thanks for your time.

The post Jack Dongarra on the Great Exascale Challenge and Rising HPC Powers appeared first on VR World.

Read VR World’s full interview with Prof. Jack Dongarra here. 

Countries around the world, particularly emerging markets, all would love to have a top 100 supercomputer. Being able to have a supercomputer that ranks in the top 100, or even the top 10, would be a national showpiece – a sign of technological might – and would please many of the country’s politicians.

The United States is the world’s dominate high performance computing power, as it has more supercomputers in the top 500 list than any other single country, but China would like to challenge this hegemony. After all, China has the world’s fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-2 , at the National Supercomputer Center at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.

But in an exclusive interview with VR World, Dr. Jack Dongarra of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, said that China’s HPC stature may be something of a facade. Tianhe-2, while definitely the world’s fastest supercomputer, is somewhat idle and is not being used to its full capacity.

“The real question is: what are they going to use the machine for. I question, at some level, what the Chinese are doing with these big machines,” Dongarra said. “They are are not using the accelerator part of the machine.” [48,000 Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P Accelerator cards].

“I go visit the computing facilities [in China] – and I’m not saying that they are being used for things that are secret – I’m saying that I don’t know what they are being used for,” he continued.

Dongarra explained that part of the reason why Tianhe-2 is more idle than other top supercomputers is because of the funding model China’s government provides. The government paid for the costs to develop and construct the machine, but not for its operational costs which is not the norm in the scientific computing community.

The additional difficulty might be the machine setup China decided to go with. Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) Xeon Phi hasn’t proven itself in ease of use when compared to pure CPU code or accelerated code through GPGPU accelerators such as the Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) Tesla or AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) FirePro S Series.

“They have to come up with some mechanism to pay for it,” Dongarra said. “In scientific computing we don’t pay for computing time. It’s not in the culture of how we do business. A situation where people have to pay for computing time limits the computing time being used.”

The post Jack Dongarra: China Isn’t the Emerging HPC Power You Think It Is appeared first on VR World.

To many people, the floating point–universal number debate is something extraneous: an academic issue that involves computer scientists, engineers, and hardware manufacturers.

But as John Gustafson said during his keynote at the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference on Tuesday, the inaccuracies of floating point estimates have real world implications. They can be deadly both in the real sense  — with missile defense batteries mis-calculating intercept times — or as Gustafson explained they can also lose battles in a virtual sense.

During intense battles in multiplayer games, floating point estimates would give different answers for different players. The calculation of if a players’ shot would be a lethal headshot — or a frustrating miss — would have slightly different answers on different platforms. In order to get reliable, reproducible results in the event of discrepancy the software would need to switch back to integers.

In order to have a better understanding of the benefits of unums, and the challenges of implementing them into hardware, the VR World team spoke with Gustafson on the sidelines of the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore to learn more.

The VR World team interviews Dr. Gustafson

VR World: You mentioned in your keynote that the implementation of Unum is challenging — in the words of one unnamed Intel executive ‘you can’t boil the ocean’. Why is this?

John Gustafson: What he’s saying is that you can’t change the world. All you have is IEEE floats. That’s the standard. ‘You can’t add a new number type, that’s not going to happen’ is what he said.

VRW: How would you categorize the feedback you’ve gotten from CPU vendors about implementing unums?

JG: People at AMD also didn’t get it. That was a kind of different opposition. They just didn’t see that I could save them so much power, electricity and bandwidth. Maybe it just looked too ambitious to them.

I’m not worried about what the hardware people think. I know they are going to hate it. They’ll have to build it, re-design circuits and all of that. I’m  more interested in everyone else.

VRW: What’s the cost of keeping the existing floating point system, versus implementing Unums? What’s the cost of transitioning hardware to support this, versus the cost of errors in everyday life?

JG: Remember: everything you can do with floats you can do with Unums. They are a subset. It’s a choice between one or the other; if it were I think it would never get off the ground. But if you can do everything you can do now if you have Unums, and you can also do other things, you can then incrementally work your way into them.

The other thing is right now we have to deal with at least two, or three, different precisions. Half precision is now out there. Nvidia has got the half precision out there in hardware as a native type, and single precision as well as double precision are everywhere. Quad precision is not supported by anyone’s hardware… I keep watching to see if it’s going to pop up.

But we already have to manage two, or three, different sizes.

I say replace it with one. And the hardware will let that slide continuously from all different sizes. It will simplify things so it may be cheaper and smaller on chip to do it that way then to have a bunch of single precision units and double precision units. That’s the way they do it now. They have to build separate hardware. Which is very wasteful.

The post Error-Free Computing: Unums Save Both Real and Virtual Battles appeared first on VR World.

As the processing power of the world’s fastest high-performance computers gets faster and faster, we eventually need to think about an era after the processing speed arms race, argued John Gustafson at the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore on Tuesday.

Gustafson said that the big challenge for the future of HPC is not necessarily faster processors, but more accurate processors. Using the metaphor of HPC doesn’t need a faster horse, but rather start thinking about a world “post-horse” era, Gustafson proposed moving beyond floating point rounding numbers — which he described as having become sloppy — to something called the universal number or “Unum”.

Unum, as Gustafson first proposed in his book The End of Error, is a new way to represent numbers that’s more accurate than the floating point estimate found in the IEEE 754 standard which Gustafson hopes it would ultimately replace. The IEEE 754 standard is based on the 101×10^2 floating point (which adds up to 64-bits) first introduced by L. Torres y Quevedo in Madrid in 1914.

Unums, which are 29-bits, contain metadata that allows for a longer and more in-depth answer rather than the rounding that floating point integers contain — including the overflow and underflow that goes along with it. Unums also obey algebraic laws and are safe to parallelize. With the mathematically complex problems that comes with the parallelism and sheer power found in modern HPC clusters, complex physics equations are reduced to mere “guesswork”.

The use of rounding can lead to disastrous results. Gustafson gave the example of how during the first Gulf War the 24-bit integer clock used in the Patriot missile batteries miscalculated the approach of a Scud missile by 0.34 seconds — killing 28 and injuring 100. The reason why the missile launched late is because of integer crowding. This came from the inaccuracy of the computer’s system clock due to it multiplying the time from milliseconds to seconds by multiplying 1/10. The 1/10 value was chopped after 24 decimal points. As the system had been on for 100 hours, the continued decimal chopping made the system continually less accurate. When dealing with missiles that travel hundreds of meters per second, this inaccuracy is unacceptable.

The other advantage of Unums is that due to their shorter float size, they take less external memory bandwidth to process. For a data center the largest single line item is its power bill. If power can be saved for the lowest level, for things like RAM calls, this would add up substantially in a massive data center. The US Department of Energy wants vendors to be able to produce an exascale system by 2019-2020 that uses less than 20 MW and to do this power savings has to happen everywhere.

Gustafson said that the next steps to get Unums to go “mainstream” is to convert the Mathematica C library into Unums. After that a strictly Unum compatible FPGA will need to be created. These are the first steps to the long road to a fully Unum compatible CPU.

For more on Unums, Gustafson’s book The End of Errors is worth a read.

The post Supercomputing Frontiers 2015: The 101×10^2 Problem. Solution: Unums appeared first on VR World.

Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 kicks off March 17 in Singapore and computer scientist Jack Dongarra is set to deliver one of the opening keynotes for the event, titled Current Trends in Parallel Numerical Computing and Challenges for the Future.

Dongarra is well known within academic and commercial high performance computing circles within the United States and around the world.

Dongarra did not start his academic career with the intention of numbering among the foremost supercomputer experts and innovators. Enrolling in Chicago State University in the 1960s, Dongarra majored in mathematics which he intended to teach as a subject.

But Dongarra’s career objectives soon changed after he learned about a brilliant machine that took the human error and tedium out of math altogether: the digital computer. While it was still emerging at the time as a proper tool for academia, Dongarra quickly found that 16 x 16 matrices were much harder to solve by hand than with a machine, which could do them effortlessly.
Dongarra became so proficient at programming the computer to do math problems, that he eventually changed his pursuit from mathematics to computing, and went on to get a masters in Computer Science at the Illionois Institute of Technology.

Math and computers were a harmonious mix, and at the prestigious Argonne national lab, Dongarra worked with a group to develop a software library based on the algorithms of computer scientist James Wilkinson, and the result was EISPACK, a highly influential library of matrix solving routines. Funded by the U.S Department of Defense, Dongarra went on to develop LINPACK, a similar library for numerical algebra.

Linpack went on to become a de facto benchmark for computing power, and in 1993, Dongarra began compiling the TOP500 list, which remains the most influential authority on rankings of supercomputers around the world.

Dongarra currently lives in Oak Ridge Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he works as a researcher. ORNL is home to Jaguar, the world’s second fastest supercomputer. Dongarra is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, and director of UT’s Innovative Computing Laboratory.

In the last decade, Dongarra has continued to focus on supercomputers, and more specifically, the future of exascale computing. In 2013, Dongarra received a $1 million dollar grant from the Department of Defense to work on the problem of scaling supercomputers to 1,000+ petaflops of strength.

Seeing the project as vitally important to the understanding and management of weather, climate, and other natural systems, Dongarra has worked to overcome the limitations on traditional computing which prevent them from breaking the 1,000 petaflop barrier.

While exascale computers are not yet possible, that hasn’t stopped Dongarra from planning for the future, and part of his efforts include the Parallel Runtime Scheduling and Execution Controller, or PaRSEC, a project aimed at developing algorithms and solutions to manage exascale computers when they arrive.

The expert that experts consult, arguably nobody is better qualified for the task. After receiving the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award in 2013, widely renowned “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf said of Dongarra “his innovations have contributed immensely to the steep growth of high-performance computing and its ability to illuminate a wide range of scientific questions facing our society.”

Wayne Davis, dean of the college of Engineering at The University of Tennessee remarked “it is hard to imagine what would have not been discovered without [Dongarra’s] work.”

The post Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 to Feature Acclaimed Researcher Jack Dongarra appeared first on VR World.

Singapore’s Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference starts Tuesday in the city-state, putting the regional high performance computing center in the spotlight.

Organised by Singapore’s A*STAR Computational Resource Centre, the conference will provide a vital platform for industry and academic experts to interact and explore the latest global trends and innovations in high performance computing.

Singapore has been a growing regional HPC center for the last decade, and the conference co-insides with the deployment of a 1-2 Petaflop multi-platform machine. This is the first machine of this scale in Singapore, and it’s scheduled to be deployed by the end of this year.

The conference themes include the following:

• Supercomputing applications in domains of critical impact in economic and human terms, and especially those requiring computing resources approaching Exascale;
• Big data science merging with supercomputing with associated issues of I/O, high bandwidth networking, storage, workflows and real time processing;
• Architectural complexity of Exascale systems with special focus on supercomputing interconnects, interconnect topologies and routing, and interplay of interconnect topologies with algorithmic communication patterns for both numerically intensive computations and big data; and
• Any other topic that push the boundaries of supercomputing to exascale and beyond

Jack Dongarra, Thomas Sterling and Satoshi Matsuoka are among the keynote speakers scheduled to present at the event.

The event is sponsored by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore.

Supercomputing Frontiers is expected to be the largest event of its kind organised in South East Asia, and the completely focused main session without vendor marketing presence adds to the technical and strategic value of the conference.

Supercomputing Frontiers begins Tuesday in Singapore.

The post Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 Singapore Begins March 17 appeared first on VR World.

The well-known tire company Goodyear Tire (NASDAQ: GT) unveiled a very interesting prototype at the Geneva Motor Show.

The concept behind this prototype — which is far from going into production — could radically change the way we view car tires and car travel in the future. This concept, named “BHO3” – offers the possibility of charging the batteries of electric cars by transforming the heat generated by the rolling tire into electrical energy. This means, that under certain conditions, the car’s tires could actually charge the batteries of the vehicle. While the whole technology is rather new, the concept sounds profoundly promising all together.

The role of the car tires has always been to provide the safety and performance by adding better traction. Tires also allow for a smoother ride and take the hard hits of variable driving conditions the cars may encounter. In a nutshell they are the contact surface that the car has with the road. On the other hand, the technology of the tires remained stagnant in a lot of ways. Now, with Goodyear releasing its concept tires, dedicated to charging electric vehicles, we might see a big shift of focus for this often neglected part of the automotive culture entirely.

“These concept tires re-imagine the role that tires may play in the future,” said Joe Zekoski, Goodyear’s senior vice president and Chief Technical Officer, in a statement. “We envision a future in which our products become more integrated with the vehicle and the consumer, more environmentally friendly and more versatile.”

These tires would generate electricity through the action of materials in the tires themselves, reacting to the driving surfaces it encounters. The energy is created by heat when it flexes as it rolls during normal driving conditions, creating energy that can be transformed from one state to another, providing electricity. The materials used would optimize the tire’s electricity generation capabilities as well as its rolling resistance.

While Goodyear hasn’t released that much information about this potential groundbreaking technology, it is easy to see how such a solution would benefit would be range anxious drivers and help their electric vehicles achieve better range as well. Take a look at the video we’ve added below to find out more about this revolutionary tire concept. We’re sure some high-profile car manufacturers will take a rather compelling interest in this technology as well.

Now the question is, can Goodyear make this 3D rendering a reality? Only time will tell.

The post Goodyear’s Concept Tires Could Charge Electric Vehicles In The Future 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.

We stopped by Gigabyte’s (TPE: 2376) suite at CES 2015 and got the low down on its latest and greatest products.

The company had a lot of nice systems featuring its products that were built by companies like Digital Storm, Origin, Cyberpower PC, and Cybertron PC.  There were many of its current offerings on display as well as some of the new ones like the company’s newest addition to the Brix lineup, the Brix S Broadwell.  The Brix S Broadwell features Broadwell CPUs that make the unit extremely power efficient. The brand new X99 SOC Champion features an OC socket for the CPU that allows the board to really push the NB/cache/uncore frequencies, thus delivering blistering memory and system performance.  The Asus Rampage V Extreme sure better watch out since this board is also  a cache/uncore/NB overclocking beast, and it only costs $300.

We will be following up with more insight into some of the products that Gigabyte had to show at CES 2015 in the coming days.  We will also have some pictures of the Extreme Overclocking event that it held as well.

Brix s Broadwell and the X99 SOC Champion

The Gigabyte GA-X99M-Gaming 5

The Gigabyte Brix lineup

An absolutely stunning custom build featuring an Enermax chassis and Gigabyte parts

14″ P34W Notebook

The post A Peek Inside Gigabyte’s Suite at CES 2015 appeared first on VR World.

Wearables no longer refer only to fashion on the runways of Paris. Wearables will be on parade at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, 2015. Devices that snuggle into fabrics, wrap around your wrist or stick to your tummy make people into walking displays of cutting edge technology.

When you talk about wearables, you’ll hear about MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems). One definition says: MEMS is the integration of mechanical elements, sensors, actuators, and electronics on a common silicon substrate through microfabrication technology. You can learn more at a CES Conference Track running from 9am – 4:30pm on January 6, 2015.

Early this year, one research firm noted that the global wearable technology market was $750.0 million USD in 2012 and is expected to reach $5.8 billion in 2018. Not everyone agrees. In fact, a panel of analysts will chew on that prediction in the Venetian’s Marco Polo room.

Another presentation will be about Valencell’s PerformTek, sensor technology based on more than 20 patents, that measures real-time biometric data. Tiny optomechanical sensor modules are embedded in earbuds to provide information for gaming, performance coaching, and fitness training. The blood flow, heart rate monitoring technology removes extraneous noise to provide accurate readings. The sensor module includes an optical emitter, an optical detector, specialized optomechanics, and an accelerometer. It should be interesting to hear Dr. Steven LeBoeuf, President, explain the product during the conference.

Smart watches to wearables have been providing information about our movements and our bodies. From information comes knowledge. But what good is knowledge if we don’t act upon it? That’s where Ben Waber, CEO of Sociometric Solutions comes in. He analyzes communication patterns identified by social sensing technology. Coming at it with a PhD from the Human Dynamics Group at the MIT Media Lab, Waber translates information into suggestions for improving how employees work and collaborate.

Sociometrics Dashboard graphs information for use by organizations wanting to improve employee performance.

Wearable Sociometric Badges capture face-to-face interactions and extract social signals from speech and body movement and by measuring the proximity of each individual. Waber’s talk will incorporate ideas from his book People Analytics.

Discussions will also address how OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and embedded systems integrators can take advantage of MEMS and sensors for wearable devices. A roundtable will include top executives from several companies. InvenSense pioneered the industry’s first high-volume, commercial MEMS fabless business model. Benedetto Vigna, VP from STMicroelectronics, a large semiconductor company headquartered in Switzerland, will talk about his company’s involvement. Another company on the panel, Bosch Sensortec GmbH from Kusterdingen, Germany develops and markets a wide portfolio of MEMS sensors and solutions for smart phones, tablets, wearable devices. They offer 3-axis acceleration, gyroscope and geomagnetic sensors, integrated 6- and 9-axis, environmental sensors, and software.

QuickLogic helped make WiiU Game Pad possible.

If you’ve used a WiiU Game Pad, you’ve experienced the expertise of QuickLogic an inventor of customizable semiconductor solutions for mobile and portable electronics that should have a few words about gaming. Another panelist, PNI Sensor, develops geomagnetic sensors and sensor fusion technology for consumer products, the military, and scientific organizations. Stephen Whalley, Chief Strategy Officer, MEMS Industry Group will act as moderator.

In addition to this conference track, the Wearable Tech Awards will be given out the next day on Wednesday, January 7 on the Haymarket Stage of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Ten smart products from glasses to watches, health and fitness trackers, virtual reality, and new apps will take a walk in front of the judges.

Winners of the $1.3 million in cash awards from Intel’s Make It Wearable challenge that the company threw out a year ago will be announced. The Challenge combined competition and an entrepreneurial mentorship program. The products that were considered had to be a sensor or computing device that is attached, embedded or worn on the body. It had to be based on Intel technology. Steven Holmes, Vice President – Intel New Devices Group, will speak about Smart Device Innovation.

Instead of asking What’s in Your Wallet?, the question at CES will be What are You Wearing? and that’s not referring to Armani.

The post Wearables are on Parade at CES 2015 appeared first on VR World.

On Wednesday, November 26th, Coins.PH sponsored Bitcoin 102, a small event keynoted by speakers from the cryptocurrency community, in Makati City. Attended by a mix that included startup founders, developers, finance professionals, Bitcoin users and folks curious with the technology, the talk was kenoyted by Coinspeaker editor Daniel Harrison and 37Coins co-founder Johann Barbie.

The discussions revolved around the ever-changing value of Bitcoin, and how stakeholders can address the volatility — particularly whether this can be considered a sound financial instrument. Barbie, likewise, in his capacity as co-founder and developer at crypto wallet service 37Coins, highlights how his team has explored partnerships with stakeholders in various countries and jurisdictions, in order to come at a cost-effective and multi-platform approach to wallets: by using SMS.

It’s a Cartel

One interesting thing pointed out during the discussions was that Bitcoin is rooted in a lot of ideal scenarios, but the reality is far different from how the designer originally intended it. The Blockchain supposedly democratized transactions as these are now more transparent, secure and accessible. However, the stark reality is that there the vast majority of Bitcoin and related resources are controlled by only a few. Barbie even characterizes it as effectively a cartel behavior, especially amongst those who have the resources to mine Bitcoin, and those who already have significant holdings.

According to Barbie, the people who benefit most from the upsurge in Bitcoin value are the ones who already have a lot of it in the first place.

The discussion led to startups that offered wallet services, Coins.ph and 37Coins actually being part of the group. Whilst it’s easy to dismiss these companies as part of the yet-another-bitcoin-wallet startup crowd, the fact is that these are bringing Bitcoin to the masses by offering localized services like bank transfers. 37Coins is bringing it one step further by addressing the needs of the unbanked, by enabling transfers to those who may not necessarily have savings accounts, credit/debit cards or even ordinary cash cards.

Meanwhile, in this author’s discussion with Harrison, we delved deeper into the value of Bitcoin. Harrison says that Bitcoin does not have intrinsic value as a currency. Unlike fiat currency, the value of which is usually determined by monetary authorities, “ownership” of Bitcoin means having partaken of the Blockchain and the value is determined by whatever the market dictates it. You essentially own a piece of it, but that doesn’t mean the particular piece should have a value in itself, except perhaps for the speculative value and the value determined by demand.

In the end, Harrison says Bitcoin can still be an effective instrument for investment, as part of fund managers’ portfolio, perhaps in hedging their investments. He highlights that the most loss one could get from acquiring Bitcoins is losing 100% of the acquisition cost. But the potential return can be hundredfold. And what is the best driver of upsurges in Bitcoin’s value? It’s when there is good news that precedes it, such as governments warming up to crpytocurrencies in general.

Beyond finance

The beauty of Bitcoin, from the discussions presented by the two speakers, is in how it has brought logic to finance. While Bitcoin is more popularly known as a means of virtual monetary exchange, the bigger value is in what can be done with the exchange of data and not just money. For example, money intended to finance a certain project can be earmarked for such, and other parties (such as government government or corrupt individuals) will be unable to touch it.

Bitcoin is definitely here to stay. But Harrison gives a hypothetical situation in which someone develops an altogether new version of  the Blockchain — and not just building upon the Blockchain or other existing iterations — as something that could be the end of Bitcoin. This, however, is highly unlikely, at least in the short term.

The post Bitcoin, Value and the Future of Cryptocurrencies appeared first on VR World.

UPDATE: Microsoft has officially revealed the pricing and selection of Xbox One games that are discounted on the Microsoft Store.

The deals include Wolfenstein, Watch Dogs, The Evil Within, Metro Redux and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for $25, with Shadow of Mordor and Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition priced at $40.

Starting Nov. 27, the following games will be available at a reduced cost.

• Call of Duty: Ghosts – $14.99
• Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition – $19.99
• Thief – $19.99
• Lego Movie: The Video Game – $19.99
• Lego: Marvel Super Heroes – $19.99
• Sniper Elite III – $19.99
• Watch Dogs – $24.99
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – $24.99
• The Evil Within – $24.99
• Wolfenstein: The New Order – $24.99
• Metro Redux – $24.99
• Murdered: Soul Suspect – $24.99
• Duck Dynasty – $24.99
• Ryse: Son of Rome – $29.99
• Dead Rising 3 – $29.99
• Kinect Sports Rivals – $29.99
• Forza Horizon 2 – $29.99
• Sunset Overdrive – $39.99
• Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition – $39.99
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor – $39.99

Original story is as follows.

In order to prepare gamers for the busy Black Friday holiday season, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has put together a handy list of all of the Black Friday deals on everything Xbox, including console bundles, games, accessories and LIVE memberships.

Below we have a full breakdown on the online and in-store deals that will be available on the Microsoft Store as well as retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Toys R’ Us and more.

Xbox One Console Deals

• $329 Xbox One Bundle with an extra Free Game (Titanfall, Forza Motorsport 5 or Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare) – Microsoft Store (Nov. 27 –  29)

• Xbox One Assassin’s Creed Unity Bundle for $329 – Walmart, Best Buy, Toys R’ Us, GameStop, Amazon (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Xbox One Assassin’s Creed: Unity Bundle for $329 + $50 Gift Card – Target (Nov. 27 –  29)

• Xbox One Halo: The Master Chief Collection Bundle (Halo: MCC + 12 Months Xbox LIVE + Xbox One + free game of your choice) for $379 – Walmart exclusive, online only (Nov. 27 only)

• Xbox One Assassin’s Creed: Unity Kinect Bundle for $429 – GameStop, Amazon, Target, Toys R’ Us, Walmart (Nov. 27 –  29)

• Xbox One Assassin’s Creed: Unity Kinect Bundle + Free Controller for $429 – Best Buy exclusive (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Xbox One Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 1TB Bundle for $429 – GameStop, Amazon, Toys R’ Us, Walmart

Xbox One Game Deals

Microsoft has released the games that will be available on the Microsoft Store, and for a complete listing, be sure to check above.

• Save $20 – $40 on select Xbox One Games – Best Buy, GameStop, Target (Nov. 27 – Dec. 1)
• Buy one Xbox One Game get the other -40% off – Toys R’ Us exclusive (Nov. 27 – Dec. 1)
• $15 Gift Card when purchasing the Halo: The Master Chief Collection – Target exclusive (Nov. 27 – 29)
• Forza: Game of the Year Edition for $25 – Target (Nov. 27 – 29),Walmart (Nov. 27 only)
• Dead Rising 3 for $25 – Target exclusive (Nov. 27 – 29)
• Madden NFL 15 for $35 – Walmart (Nov. 27 – 29)
• FIFA 15 for $35 – Walmart (Nov. 27 only)

Xbox Store Digital Deals are available from Nov. 25 – Dec. 1 and include discounts on the following games:

• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 -  $24.99 (-60% off)
• Angry Birds: Star Wars - $12.49 (-75% off)
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – $34.99 (-30% off)
• Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition - $34.99 (-40% off)
• Forza Motorsport 5 Car Pass - $29.99 (-25% off)
• Forza Motorsport 5: Game of the Year Edition – $29.99 (-40% off)
• Killer Instinct Ultra Edition Season 1 – $19.99 (-50% off)
• Rayman Legends – $19.99 (-50% off)
• Sniper Elite III – $29.99 (-4o% off)
• UFC - $13.20 (-67% off)
• Valiant Hearts - $7.49 (-50% off)
• Warframe: 75 Platinum – $3.49 (-33% off)
• Warframe: 170 Platinum – $6.49 (-33% off)
• Warframe: 370 Platinum – $13.49 (-33% off)
• Warframe: 1000 Platinum+Mods – $33.49 (-33% off)
• Warframe: 2100 Platinum + Mods – $66.99 (-33% off)
• Warframe: 3210 Platinum + Mods – $99.99 (-33% off)

(Photo via: Sharq Controllers)

Xbox One Controller Deals

• Save $10 on any wireless Xbox One controller – Microsoft Store (Nov. 27 – Dec. 3)

• Save $15 on any wireless Xbox One controller – GameStop (Nov. 27 – Dec.1 )

• Xbox One Wireless Controller for $39 – Walmart (Nov. 27 – Dec. 1), Best Buy, Target (Nov. 27 – 29)

Xbox 360 Console Deals

• Xbox 360 console for $129 + Forza Horizon 2 or Titanfall for free – Microsoft Store (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Xbox 360 4GB with Kinect Bundle for $179.99 – Target (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Xbox 360 500GB Call of Duty Bundle for $199 (Call of Duty: Ghosts & Black Ops II) – GameStop (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Xbox 360 4GB console for $99 – Walmart (Nov. 27 only)

Xbox 360 Game Deals

The following Xbox 360 games are discounted on the Xbox Games Store until further notice:

• Max Payne 3 – $4.99
• Max Payne 3 Rockstar Pass – $3.74
• Soul Calibur V – $3.74
• Borderlands – $4.99
• Borderlands 2 – $4.99
• Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition – $19.99
• L.A. Noire – $7.49
• Red Dead Redemption – $7.49
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – $19.99
• Titanfall Season Pass – $6.24
• Brothers – $4.94
• Gears of War 3 – $4.99
• Gears of War 2 – $4.99
• Battleblock Theater – $7.49
• State of Decay – $6.59
• Batman Arkham City – $4.99
• Injustice: Gods Among Us – $4.99
• Skyrim – $9.99
• Sniper Elite 3 – $23.99
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – $2.99
• Hitman: Absolution – $4.99
• Mirror’s Edge – $2.99
• Crysis – $2.99
• Ultra Street Fighter IV – $9.99
• DBZ: Battle of Z – $15.99
• Valiant Hearts – $7.49
• Trials Fusion – $9.99
• P4A – $14.99
• Magic 2015 – $4.99
• Gears of War – $4.94
• Gears of War 3: RAAm’s Shadow: Pack 2 – $4.99
• Gears of War 3: Season Pass – $7.49
• Gears of War 3: Lancer Complete Launch Collection Skin – $4.99
• Gears of War 3: Weapon Skin Collection – $9.98
• Prototype 2 – $9.99
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – $14.99
• Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad – $3.29
• Bullestorm – $2.99
• Burnout Paradise – $2.99
• Fight Night Champion – $2.99
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit – $2.99
• Skate. – $2.99
• Skate 2 – $2.99
• Skate 3 – $3.99
• Hitman HD Pack – $4.99
• Just Cause 2 – $4.94
• Bully Scholarship Edition – $3.74
• Midnight Club: LA – $3.74

Gold Membership Deals

• 12 Months Gold for $49.99, 3 Months of Gold for $14.99* – Microsoft Store (Nov. 27 – Dec. 1), *Best Buy (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Save $10 on 12-Month Xbox LIVE Gold membership – GameStop (Nov. 27 – 29)

• Save 50% on 3-Month Xbox LIVE Gold (digital code) – Walmart, Target (Nov. 27 – Dec. 1)

The post Black Friday 2014: Xbox Deals, Sales And Discounts appeared first on VR World.

San Diego LAN (SanDiegoLAN.net) is hosting a 3 day/ 2 night event in Southern San Diego, CA trying to help reinvigorate the San Diego LAN scene.

The LAN will feature League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Call of Duty 4 (Original Modern Warfare), Blur, Nazi Zombies and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

During off-tournament times, they will also have a lobby for people to hang out, play other games be they PC or other platforms. There will also be opportunities to watch streams together and get to know other gamers in the San Diego area. They will also have some demos running including an Oculus Rift for anyone to try out that hasn’t had a chance to so far.

There is enough seating for almost 100 attendees and with a 125 Mbps internet connection for outside network connections and a dedicated gigabit LAN. They will also be casting League of Legends and Starcraft matches live on Twitch.

The event’s sponsors are: Thermaltake, InWin, CPU Magazine and RIOT Games, who will be providing Riot Points for League of Legends winners.

More information can be found on www.SanDiegoLAN.net/LANAThon.html and entry fee is $15 per person, which helps cover the costs of the event including Pizza on Saturday night and a raffle ticket for prizes.

The post San Diego LAN-A-THON This Weekend appeared first on VR World.

GameStop’s Black Friday circular has been leaked ahead of schedule, revealing a swath of savings across console bundles, games and accessories.

Notable deals include a $399 PlayStation 4 bundle with GTA V and The Last of Us; Remastered, and an Assassin’s Creed: Unity Xbox One bundle for $329. If you’ve scaned other Black Friday deals you’ll notice these offers aren’t much different, but GameStop does have some great deals on games.

Destiny has been price-slashed to $49.99, and you can pick up Monolith’s fantastically-fun fantasy slasher Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor for just $30.

The Evil Within and Sleeping Dogs on Xbox One are also $30, along with Battlefield 4 on PS4 and Xbox One.

SEGA’s immensely creepy Alien: Isolation can be had for $40, with Killzone Shadow Fall, Knack, and Infamous: Second Son discounted to $21.99.

Polk Audio’s 4Shot Headphones for Xbox One have been reduced by a whopping $100, selling for just $59.99 during the promo. Xbox One and PS4 controllers are $15 off at $44.99, and Xbox LIVE Gold is just $49.99.

Other hardware includes Sony’s PlayStation Camera peripheral for just $39.99. All Mc Farlane Toys–those loveable ultra-realistic poseables–will be discounted to $9.99, so stock up some Master Chiefs with you can!

There’s a catch to these savings, though: the offers appear to be all doorbusters. According to the ad, the sales are only available from Nov. 28 – 30, so you should probably expect picked-through inventory and lines of people.

So far H.H. Gregg’s Black Friday deal is the best for Xbox One’s and PS4’s; using the online code OVERNIGHT11, you can snag an Xbox One AC: Unity bundle for just $312, or the limited edition Destiny PS4 bundle with The Last of Us: Remastered for just $444.

Thanks, BF Ads.

The post GameStop's Black Friday Sale Ads Leaked appeared first on VR World.