The biggest companies in the Augmented and Virtual Reality space are coming to Austin on March 16 for AR/VR Austin.

Attendees at AR/VR Austin will have the chance to try out the latest VR displays and controllers from Seebright, OSVR, and Sixense. AR/VR Austin is a cooperative effort by the sponsoring companies, organized by Praevidi with help from Upload and SVVR.

“Augmented and Virtual Reality are at the peak of anticipation but the most up to date technology has only been experience by a small number or developers and enthusiasts. This is an opportunity for visitors to Austin for SXSW Interactive and the Austin tech community to experience these cutting edge technologies for the first time,” said Simon Solotko, the CMO of Augmented Reality Pioneer Seebright and co-founder of Praevidi, in a statement.

The state of the art in immersive content will be on display at AR/VR Austin with demonstrations from Jaunt, Littlstar, Rewind and a host of independent content and game developers.

“The impact of Immersive content, and cinematic VR in particular, will be profound this year.  The ability to experience music, education, travel and narrative as if you were ‘there’ is a game changing event in the way people consume content,” added  Scott Brock, VP of Content at Jaunt, in a press release. “SXSW and AR/VR Austin present the perfect opportunity to meet with the creators and storytellers that will push this new medium forward and to share some of our latest work.”

Tickets are available now from Eventbright.

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So, remember when TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center) built the Stampede supercomputer using VERY preferred pricing from Intel for using Intel Xeon Phi cards back in 2012? Well, that Stampede supercomputer in conjunction with the Lonestar Supercomputer at TACC are responsible for some pretty interesting research. The TACC at the University of Texas, Austin houses many supercomputers, but the two that were utilized for this project were the Stampede and Lonestar. The team of scientists from Houston’s Methodist Research Institute (HMRI) found that Alzheimer’s disease and cancer share a pathway in gene transcription, a fundamental process of cell production and growth. They published their findings in the December 2013’th issue of the open access journal Scientific Reports by the Nature Publishing Group.

The Stampede supercomputer, Image Credit: TACC

They used the Stampede and Lonestar supercomputers at TACC to analyze and compare data collected from thousands of genes in order to narrow their search for a common signaling pathway between the two diseases. The two systems are part of TACC’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, dubbed XSEDE, which is a single virtual system that scientists use to share computing resources and much more. The research was made possible thanks to a donation from the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation which has donated tens of millions of dollars to education, health and environmental research. This includes the establishment of BRAIN center at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, which was involved with the discovery of this link between cancer and Alzheimer’s. The TT and WF Chao foundation were primarily funded by Ting Tsung Chao’s cration of Westlake Chemical [NYSE:WLK] which has revenues exceeding $3.8 billion annually and a market cap of nearly $9 billion. Family members of the Chao family are worth billions of dollars since Ting Tsung’s passing in 2008. Even so, the foundation continues to be funded by the family’s wealth and continues to do good for mankind. The research was also supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, which currently only has a $30 billion budget per year as part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Lonestar supercomputer, Image Credit: TACC

Stephen Wong, a bioengineer and medical researcher at Houston’s Methodist Research Institute said that his study was able to find a new link between Alzheimer’s disease and glioblastoma multiform, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. He said, “This is the first time people have found that at the molecular mechanism level there are linkages between the two diseases.” 

These findings contrast a 2013 study of public health in Italy and a 2012 study of public health in Taiwan that showed an inverse association between Alzheimer’s disease with cancer, making those findings possibly less relevant. Wong said, “No one understands why this link is there, in a biological sense. And that’s the reason we did this study. I think we are among the first to study it this way. Once you identify the mechanism, the particular pathway, we can use that information to design a new therapeutic strategy.”

More about these groudbreaking scientific research can be found on the TACC’s website that has a much more detailed explanation of how their research methodology was assisted by the Stampede and Lonestar supercomputers at the TACC.

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Samsung and Globalfoundries have announced a partnership to collaborate on a global scale to deliver 14nm FinFET technology to their customers. This partnership is different from the already existing Common Platform Alliance which includes Globalfoundries, Samsung and IBM, but is likely a product of that relationship considering that IBM is mostly a research fab and doesn’t really produce many commercial wafers. This 14nm FinFET collaboration is an effort by both companies to build up enough fab capacity in order to satisfy the demand of their customers on this leading-edge technology.

As you can see from the slide above Samsung and Globalfoundries’ partnership means that the two companies are able to deliver both choice, supply, compatibility and to do it all on a global scale with multiple fabs around the world. This 14nm FinFET partnership will cover both 14LPE and 14LPP processes which will allow for multiple products across the board to be manufactured with either Samsung or Globalfoundries’ 14nm FinFET. In the past, Samsung and Globalfoundries talked about how the Common Platform would enable such partnerships to occur and to be honest many didn’t believe that it would be possible, especially with Samsung being so tightlipped at the Common Platform Alliance last year.

According to Globalfoundries and Samsung, their new 14LPE 14nm process will boost performance by 20% while simultaneously delivering a 35% power savings over competitor’s 20nm solutions (clearly targeting TSMC and their 20nm here). They also compare themselves against other FinFET solutions and 20nm solutions, specifically targeting the value proposition of switching to 14nm FinFET indicating a 15% smaller chip with the switch from 20nm Planar to 14nm FinFET.

In terms of the capacity itself and the fabs capable of delivering this capacity, there will be a total of 4 fabs in 3 locations delivering this 14nm capacity to customers. Those come in the form of three Samsung fabs and one Globalfoundries fab. The locations of these fabs are actually in two countries, the US and Korea, even though Globalfoundries does have fabs in Singapore and Germany as well. However, those are not part of Globalfoundries current 14nm plans so they aren’t counted as part of the fab capacity for 14nm.

In addition to the four fabs on two continents, Samsung and Globalfoundries also talked about their expectations for 14nm FinFEt with the Design In phase already ready and a ramp of the process expected to occur by the end of 2014. They have already qualified the 14LPE process back in February and have already released the 14LPE and 14LPP PDK along with all of the libraries and IP design kits. Essentially, now is the finalization phase of various processes with certain chip designs with mass production occuring by the end of this year. What this could mean is that some of TSMC’s customers building for their 20nm process could see themselves leapfrogged by this new Samsung and Globalfoundries 14nm collaboration, especially if they can deliver enough volume to the customers that matter. Obviously, we probably won’t be seeing any 14nm products this year, but a Q1 release wouldn’t be out of the question, which could mean that we may end up seeing some products in time for MWC.

Samsung and Globalfoundries have quietly been working together to steal customers from TSMC, their biggest competitor, meanwhile Intel has been chugging away at their own 14nm process trying to maintain their foundry leadership. If Samsung and TSMC are able to deliver 14nm early enough and to fill their capacity, they could give their customers an advantage that many of them have been hoping for. Parity with Intel’s own processes. While it remains to be seen who will be utilizing Samsung and Globalfoundries 14nm processes we have already been hearing some murmurings about some large semiconductor companies exploring this new collaboration’s 14nm process. It will be interesting to see how chips built on this 14nm FinFET process will compete against Intel’s 14nm process as well as how TSMC will answer today’s announcement considering that their 20nm appears to be having some problems with some partners. We do know that there’s a good chance that a lot of TSMC’s 20nm will be occupied by Qualcomm and their new chips, but I have a feeling that 20nm will be a fairly shortlived node.

Samsung and Globalfoundries have also created a video that talks about this 14nm FinFET partnership and what it means to the companies, their partners, and the industry as a whole.

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There is just one question that keeps on flying around – with products such as Radeon 4800 series, current 7-series and upcoming 8-series chipset, platforms like Puma – why is this company so keen on invalidating engineering and marketing team’s efforts with continuous bickering and mistreatment of people that are the key drivers of progress in the company.

The original netbook... now, how exactly AMD missed to cash out on this one?

AMD is the company that launched netbook initiative with OLPC project, and then failed to lead and leave Intel with $200M extra revenue per quarter. But that’s just one example – second one is probably the automotive division, with Nvidia snapping lion’s share of upcoming high-tech interfaces inside cars – AMD was used in Ferrari’s F1 and road cars, but now Nvidia Tegra and GeForce 9 are the ones selected to power 3D interfaces inside numerous Mercs, Maseratis, Ferraris, Audis and soon, whole car lineup from VAG Group (Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Bentley and of course, groups owner Porsche).
When Nvidia snaps up x86 license (from Transmeta?) and Intel comes out with Larrabee, things are looking gloomier for AMD than they are for Nvidia or Intel. Ultimately, there is just one question: why AMD is so desperately want to be the follower, instead of leader?
Personally, I am spending all of my resources to get my company going, and people that are now in the team stride towards nothing else but greatness, to be #1, to make the difference. Time will tell will we succeed or fail, but one thing is sure – we are not building a company looking to follow others. We’re building a company looking at what our target market needs and more importantly, wants. Thus sadly, AMD cannot be our role model – far from it.

P.S. Number of good people that left AMD since the acquisition of ATi: Dave Orton, Henri Richard, Lorenzo Martone, Andrzej Bania, Peter Edinger, Dave Everitt, Suzy Pruitt, Lars Weinand, Andrea Di Giovanni and many, many others.  There are still many bright and creative people that I am talking with, but sadly, the trend is just downwards, not upwards.

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