Fun Stuff > CLIKC
The future! (wouldn't that be nice?)
est:
This is the future hardware tech thread. I had an idea to hijack the 3d modelled face thread, but this seems like a nicer way to do this.
Was just reading about Jeff Han's presentation at nvision (here: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/08/26/jeff-han-gets-all-minority-report-on-us-at-nvision/1). I know that he has given this kind of demo before, but the product is looking slicker than ever, so it is an exciting clip to watch. MS are touting multi-touch capabilities with Windows 7 (or Vista R2 if you prefer) so that they can get their "Surface" bullshit going into the commercial market. To be honest I am not so crash-hot on their version. From what I have seen of it it feels like a watered-down half-measure with useless shiny things added.
Intel are entering the SSD field in a big way http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39025/98/ and I think that within a year or so SSDs will be at mainstream prices. This is pretty exciting because for the last umpteen squillion years mechanical drives have been the only way to go. With the heat being turned up people like WD are already pushing their mechanical drives into new performance territory, ramping up the speed of the next-gen Velociraptor to 15k rpm instead of 10k. I am hoping for a "format war" of sorts, but seeing as they all connect to your pc via a SATA cable there is no major detriment to the consumer.
I fucking hate the name, but the Intel Core i7 (formerly Nehalem) is looking interesting but not as interesting as it first seemed. When I first read about it it was all about "oh, massive amounts of cores, by golly we sure are gonna be bristling with dicks" or something. Now I read that it's gonna launch with 4 cores plus HT making it 8 logical cores. Ho fucking hum. You've added HT to a Core 2 Quad. Congratulation. I am still excited about the steps that come after that, but it's still a little bit of a disappointment to be honest.
The thing that I am the most excited about though is that there is finally the beginnings of a DIY laptop option coming out - http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2328318,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 Antec are planning to release a range of laptop parts based on Intel's idea of a Common Building Block spec. I have been waiting for this kind of thing for a very long time, and although it's an OEM-only type dealio for now I am pretty sure that the concept will become popular enough to leak into home-based DIY by the time I need to buy my next laptop. The thought of a purpose-built, customisable, upgradeable laptop is quite exciting, because I am generally not very pleased with many of the generic laptop options around.
I will probably talk about these in more detail later after I get some work done. I am also interested in AMD Fusion, Intel's SoC tech, the next gen of Atom (dual core) and VIA's nano2 platform. What upcoming things are you guys getting excited about? Do you have anything else you want to discuss about the things I mentioned?
KvP:
Oh man, DIY lappies. That would be so great. I really don't like the laptops they have on market now, but then, I guess a more powerful computer that I'd really like presents its problems. There's a reason they don't really make gaming laptop rigs. Minimal circulation, and lots of parts that get hotter than a volcano's tit. But still, it's a nice development. Maybe we'll be able to build a laptop that can last more than a few years!
And it's nice that you started your own thread because hijacking my CG face thread would've been a total dick move, what with it being my special day. I would totally be cross with you. Not really.
Catfish_Man:
--- Quote from: est on 26 Aug 2008, 17:23 ---I fucking hate the name, but the Intel Core i7 (formerly Nehalem) is looking interesting but not as interesting as it first seemed. When I first read about it it was all about "oh, massive amounts of cores, by golly we sure are gonna be bristling with dicks" or something. Now I read that it's gonna launch with 4 cores plus HT making it 8 logical cores. Ho fucking hum. You've added HT to a Core 2 Quad. Congratulation. I am still excited about the steps that come after that, but it's still a little bit of a disappointment to be honest.
--- End quote ---
Nah, it's more interesting than that. The "un-core" (Intel's phrase) parts of it are pretty dramatically different. QPI, on-chip memory controllers, L3 cache. If I'm doing my math right it's got ~50GB/sec aggregate IO bandwidth, which is pretty mindblowing for consumer-ish gear.
What I am curious about, though, is Intel's Larrabee GPU thing. The quote here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/874006404931 from Pat Gelsinger is... pretty damn aggressive. Maybe I'm just gullible, but I don't think they'd be talking that big if they didn't think they had something neat.
Statik:
--- Quote from: KvP on 26 Aug 2008, 17:48 ---There's a reason they don't really make gaming laptop rigs.
--- End quote ---
Um, what?
Dell, Alienware, Toshiba, Gateway, and many others make gaming oriented laptops. They have downsides, like lacking the ability to significantly upgrade them, and their size and weight, and they tend to have a shorter battery life, but they do exist.
KvP:
Well yeah, I've seen the adverts for such things, but they don't really seem like a wise investment. If you're going to spend that much you might as well get a desktop rig that will actually last.
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