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arcticstoat writes "NVidia has revealed that it's considering porting its PhysX API to OpenCL to allow PhysX GPU-acceleration on competitors' graphics cards as well. At the moment, a GPU needs to support NVidia's CUDA technology in order to accelerate PhysX on the GPU, and ATI has so far declined NVidia's offer to get CUDA working on ATI GPUs. NVidia's director of product management for PhysX, Nadeem Mohammad, said, 'In the future it's a possibility that we could use OpenCL' for PhysX, adding, 'If we start using OpenCL, then there's a chance that the features would work on ATI, but I have no idea what the performance would be like.'"

arcticstoat writes "A new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons it's uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that 'enables your CPU/GPU to shade with rasterization-like efficiency.' The new chip basically off-loads ray tracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray-traced scene much more quickly. Caustic's management team isn't afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing. 'Some technology vendors claim to have solved the accelerated ray tracing problem by using traditional algorithms along with GPU hardware,' says Caustic. However, the company adds that 'if you've ever seen them demo their solutions you'll notice that while results may be fast — the image quality is underwhelming, far below the quality that ray tracing is known for.' According to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can't be accelerated on a standard GPU because it can't process incoherent rays in hardware. Conversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOne 'thrives in incoherent ray tracing situations: encouraging the use of multiple secondary rays per pixel.' The company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL, which will feature Caustic's unique ray tracing extensions."

arcticstoat writes with a snippet from bit-tech.com; musician Matthew Applegate "plans on assembling a virtual orchestra of 20 retired relics of computing at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The choice of venue will even allow Applegate to feature the infamous Colossus Mark 2 computer in the event, which was used for code-breaking in World War II and was recently reconstructed at Bletchley Park in 2007. ... A wide selection of computing fossils be used in Applegate's final musical presentation, which is called 'Obsolete?' This includes the Elliot 803 (a 1960s machine with 4KB of memory), the aforementioned Colossus Mark 2, a Bunsviga adding machine (pictured) and a punch card machine. As well as this, there are also some machines that will look nostalgically familiar to kids who grew up with the home computer generation, including a BBC Micro, an Atari 800XL, a Dragon 32 and an Amstrad CPC464." The article's list of the members of this "orchestra" makes an interesting checklist of computer hardware history.

arcticstoat writes "Intel has surprised the industry by announcing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Taiwanese silicon chip maker TSMC to manufacture Atom CPUs. Although TSMC is already employed by AMD, Nvidia and VIA to make chips, it's not often you see Intel requiring the services of a third fabrication party. Under the MOU, Intel agrees to port its Atom CPU technology to TSMC, which includes Intel's processes, intellectual properties, libraries and design flows relating to the processor. This will effectively allow other customers of TSMC to easily build Atom-based products similarly to how they might use an ARM processor in their own designs. However, Intel says that it will still pick the specific market segments and products that TSMC will go after, which will include system-on-chip products, as well as netbooks, nettops and embedded platforms."

arcticstoat writes "Warner Bros has revealed that it plans to advertise its forthcoming shooter, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, via a clowder of black cats roaming the streets of London on the game's launch day on Friday 13th. Branded a 'cat-vertising campaign', the scheme will see the specially trained black moggies sporting F.E.A.R. 2 cat clothing. The idea, according to Warner Bros, is that the creepy kitties will 'capture the attention of superstitious passers-by,' as Friday 13th is famous for its supposed bad luck and a black cat crossing your path was listed at number 5 in a recent survey of Britain's superstitions and signs of bad luck."

arcticstoat writes to tell us that despite a poor economic climate, AMD is moving forward with a new processor socket launch, although they are trying to make it as upgrade-friendly as possible. "As you probably already know from the AM3 motherboards that have already been announced, AM3 is AMD's first foray into DDR3 memory support. As Phenom CPUs have integrated memory controllers, it's more accurate to say that it's the new range of Phenom II CPUs (see below) that are DDR3-compatible. However, the new DDR3-compatible Phenom II range is also compatible with DDR2 memory. As the new CPUs and the new AM3 socket are pin-compatible with the current AM2+ socket, you can put a new AM3-compatible CPU into an existing AM2+ motherboard. This means that you can upgrade your CPU now without needing to change your motherboard or buy pricey new DDR3 memory."

arcticstoat writes "Just a few months after The Khronos Group unveiled the Open GL 3.0 spec last year, AMD has included full support for the new API in its first WHQL driver of 2009 — Catalyst 9.1. OpenGL 3.0 requires DirectX 10-level hardware, such as AMD's Radeon HD series of GPUs. However, unlike Direct3D 10, OpenGL 3.0's features can be enabled on both Windows XP and Vista, as well as Linux and Mac OS, which could be a bonus for game developers looking for a broad base of customers. The Khronos Group claims that OpenGL 3.0 has a 'rough feature parity' with Direct3D 10, and it provides Shader Model 4.0 support, including features such as the Geometry Shader. The Khronos Group also says that the new API will interoperate with the GPGPU API OpenCL, which could allow OpenGL 3.0 to compete with the Compute Shader promised in Microsoft's DirectX 11 API."

arcticstoat writes "Following last year's reports of a scheme to 'ban' pirates from the Internet via ISPs in the UK, it looks as though the UK government has now decided to back down on the plan, saying that it hopes it won't have to apply 'the heavy hand of legislation'. The UK's Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy, said that 'I'm not sure it's actually going to be possible,' as a result of the complexities of enforcing such legislation. Lammy also revealed that he had a different opinion on file sharers than many people in the music industry. He pointed out that there's a big difference between organized counterfeiting gangs and 'younger people not quite buying into the system'. He added that 'we can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms. People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap — there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television.'"

arcticstoat writes "AMD is planning to use over 1,000 Radeon HD 4870 GPUs to create a supercomputer capable of processing one petaflop, which the company says will make 'cloud' computing a reality. When it's built later this year, the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse for a variety of people, from gamers to 3D animators. The company claims that it could 'deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser.' The idea is that the Fusion Render Cloud will do all the hard work, so all you need is a machine capable of playing back the results, saving battery life and the need for ever greater processing power. AMD also says that the supercomputer will 'enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.' Meanwhile, game developers would be able to use the supercomputer to quickly develop games, and also 'serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail.' The supercomputer will be powered by OTOY software, which allows you to render 3D visuals in your browser via streaming, compressed online data."

arcticstoat writes to tell us that despite the many game download sites already available, another one has decided to give it a go; only this time, with a twist. UK-based Game Domain International is launching their AWOMO service that will allow you to play the game before it's done downloading. As an added incentive to get people to sign up, you can try out the beta now and get Rome: Total War for free. "The trick, according to GDI, is its 'unique technology' that 'lets you start playing before the game has finished downloading, meaning you can be up and running, jumping and fragging in minutes rather than hours.' Although some other download services allow you to start playing a game before it's fully downloaded, you usually still have to download a big chunk of data before you can start, and GDI reckons that it's cracked this problem. According to GDI, AWOMO takes a look at your PC's spec and connection speed, and then hooks you up with a sufficient buffer to stop your game stalling during gameplay. The company is confident that 'the delivery system accurately predicts the data you require next and ensures it's already there waiting before you need it.'"

arcticstoat writes "After dishing out a few copies of the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to select customers in October, Microsoft has now decided to let the general public get their hands on the beta of the service pack, starting from tomorrow. The beta of the service pack will be made available via Microsoft's Customer Preview Program on 4 December, and it includes all the updates since Service Pack 1, as well as a few other bits and pieces. Most notably, Microsoft says that Service Pack 2 'improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode,' and adds the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ID strings for VIA's Nano CPU and support for the exFAT file system for large flash devices."

arcticstoat writes "In what could be seen as an easy answer to the Vista-capable debacle, Microsoft has introduced a 'fully conformant software rasterizer' called WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) 10, which does away with the need for a dedicated hardware 3D accelerator altogether. Microsoft says that WARP 10 will support all the features and precision requirements of Direct3D 10 and 10.1, as well as up to 8x multi-sampled anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and all optional texture formats. The minimum CPU spec needed is just 800MHz, and it doesn't even need MMX or SSE, although it will work much quicker on multi-core CPUs with SSE 4.1. Of course, software rendering on a single desktop CPU isn't going to be able to compete with decent dedicated 3D graphics cards when it comes to high-end games, but Microsoft has released some interesting benchmarks that show the system to be quicker than Intel's current integrated DirectX 10 graphics. Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel's DirectX 10 integrated graphics."

arcticstoat writes "Game developer Rockstar has revealed that the forthcoming PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will feature the controversial SecuROM 7 DRM system. Unlike some of EA's recent titles, such as Spore and Mass Effect, GTA IV won't limit the number of times that you can install the game, although SecuROM will be impossible to remove without leaving 'some traces' on your PC. Anyone hoping to avoid SecuROM by downloading the game form Steam will also be disappointed, as Rockstar says that all versions of the game will feature SecuROM, including digital versions online. On the plus side, Rockstar says that it's 'working with SecuROM to post information on our support pages regarding how to remove these inactive traces of the program for users who wish to do so.' Has Rockstar gotten a better balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here?"

arcticstoat writes "The wait for AMD's next-gen CPUs is finally over, as the company has now officially launched its first 45nm 'Shanghai' Opteron chips for servers and workstations. 'AMD's move to a 45nm process relies on immersion lithography, where a refractive fluid fills the gap between the lens and the wafer, which AMD says will result in 'dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.' It's also enabled AMD to increase the maximum clock speed of the Opterons from 2.3GHz with the Barcelona core to 2.7GHz with the Shanghai core. Shanghai chips also feature more cache than their predecessors, with 6MB of Level 3 cache bumping the total up to 8MB, and the chips share the same cache architecture as Barcelona CPUs, with a shared pool of Level 3 cache and an individual allocation of Level 2 cache for each core.'"

arcticstoat writes "Supreme Commander 2 has now been officially announced, but with a surprise publishing partner on board — Square Enix. Gas Powered Games' original RTS game and its expansion pack, Forged Alliance, were published by THQ, who is no stranger to the RTS genre, but Square Enix has previously specialized in Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Explaining the move, Square Enix said in a statement that it 'has previously worked exclusively with Japanese development companies, so the decision to form strategic partnerships with developers located outside of Japan serves as a new cornerstone of its strategy to create games targeted primarily at consumers in Europe and North America. Additionally, Square Enix Group's foray into the real-time strategy genre is a significant expansion of its product lineup.'"

arcticstoat writes "Asus' budget motherboard wing, ASRock, claims that it's found a way to load a clean boot of Windows from a full shut down in just four seconds, using its new Instant Boot technology. The technology takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows respectively. However, by calling them at different times in the boot-up and shutdown process, Instant Boot enables you to boot up to your Windows desktop in three to four seconds, even after a proper shut down. Two modes are available; Fast mode, which uses S3 and boots up in around four seconds, and Regular Mode, which uses S4 and apparently takes between 20 and 22 seconds to boot. The advantage of Instant Boot when compared with normal Sleep and Hibernation modes is that you get the advantage of a clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls 'accumulated garbage data,' and you also get the security of knowing that you won't lose any data if there's a power cut and you lose AC power. There's also a video of it in action at the link above."

arcticstoat writes to mention that Toshiba's latest line of high-powered laptops has three GPUs included. Both the Qosmio X305-Q706 and Q708 come with an integrated GeForce 9400M for day-to-day processing tasks but have a pair of GeForce 9800Ms in SLI that kick in when you need the extra horsepower. "The [Qosmio] X305-Q706 costs $1,999 US (£1,257) in the US, although we haven't seen any UK pricing on the laptops yet. The system comes with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 and 4GB of RAM, while the costlier X305-Q708 comes with a quad-core 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 CPU."

arcticstoat writes "With all the controversy surrounding DRM in games at the moment, one games store has decided to buck the trend, proudly proclaiming that all its games are DRM-free. First announced back in July, Good Old Games is now in the public beta stage, which means that anyone can now access the site's archive of classic PC games, and you can do what you want with your game when you've bought it, too. 'You won't find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do,' says the site. 'Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.'" In related news, Stardock, the company responsible for the Gamer's Bill of Rights, is apparently working on a new copy-protection solution that will be friendlier to consumers than current schemes.

arcticstoat writes "If you've played Bioshock, you'll know it can be a tough choice deciding whether you're going to kill the cute (yet evil looking) Little Sisters and extract their ADAM, or let them live. Your choice even affects whether you're given one of three possible endings of the game, and their story will now continue to be told in the sequel. 2K Games has just released a trailer for the new game, showing what appears to be a grown up Little Sister, still clutching a toy, while the city structure of Rapture springs up around her. No gameplay is shown, but it does give a hint as to what the game will be about, and it looks as though the game may take you onto dry land." Gamespot initially confirmed the trailer's authenticity after it was leaked last week. A representative from 2K Games also mentioned Bioshock 2 was "destined for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC platforms."

arcticstoat points out an article at Custom PC, according to which: "Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti-Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. ... As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it's taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn't messing about when it says 'global' either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China." Interestingly enough, unauthorized copies of Vista might not be harming the company all that much: reader twitter was among several to contribute links to a related story at Computer World which highlights Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton's acknowledgement that pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007.

arcticstoat writes "It's sometimes easy to forget that the PC graphics market isn't owned by ATI and Nvidia, and the company that first gave us 3D acceleration, S3, is very much still around. So much so, in fact, that it's now even developed its own GPGPU technology. S3 claims that its Chrome 400 chips can accelerate gaming physics, HD video transcoding/encoding and photo enhancement. To demonstrate the latter, S3 has released a free download called S3FotoPro, which enhances color clarity and reduces haze in photos. However, the company hasn't yet revealed whether it plans to support OpenCL in the future." The Tech Report also points out that this could allow S3's parent company, VIA, to compete with Intel and AMD in graphics processing technology.

arcticstoat writes "If you thought that EA might have been humbled by the massive Internet backlash against its use of SecuROM in its recent games, then you'd be wrong. Speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, EA's CEO John Riccitiello claimed that the whole issue had been blown out of all proportion. 'We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,' claimed Riccitiello, 'but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.'"

arcticstoat writes "Overclockers looking to bolster their new Nehalem CPUs with overclocked memory may be disappointed. Intel is telling motherboard manufacturers not to encourage people to push the voltage of their DIMMs beyond 1.65V, as anything higher could damage the CPU. This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."

arcticstoat writes with an excerpt from Custom PC: "After developing a brand new CPU architecture from the ground-up, you'd expect that Toshiba, Sony and IBM would have more uses for the Cell architecture than the PlayStation 3, and Toshiba has been quick to make use of the architecture's HD video transcoding abilities in its new Qosimo laptops. However, Leadtek is now taking Toshiba's efforts a step further by putting the chip onto a PCI-E card for desktop PCs. The WinFast PxVC1100 is based on Toshiba's SpursEngine SE1000 processor, which is a cut-down version of the Cell chip. The SpursEngine chip features four SPEs (synergistic processing elements) based on 128-bit RISC cores, along with H.264 and MPEG-2 codecs, but it doesn't contain its own CPU as the chip in the PS3 does. The chip is capable of encoding and decoding H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video streams in hardware."

arcticstoat writes to report that Nvidia has offered up a settlement for the GPU price-fixing case. As a part of the settlement Nvidia would be required to pay $850,000 into a fund projected to hit $1.7 million (supposedly AMD/ATI would make up the other half). The antitrust case indicated that Nvidia and ATI worked together in order to 'fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize prices of GPUs sold in the US.'"

arcticstoat writes "After giving up on the CPU manufacturing business in 2005, low-power CPU designer Transmeta has announced that it's up for sale. In a statement, the processor company that brought us the mobile Crusoe and Efficeon series of CPUs said that it has 'initiated a process to seek a potential sale of the Company.' The announcement came straight after Transmeta reached a legal agreement with Intel over Transmeta's intellectual property and patents, which includes Intel making a one-off payment of $91.5 million US to Transmeta before the end of this month, as well as annual payments of $20 million US every year from 2009 through 2013."

arcticstoat writes "GPU computing has just taken a major step into the world of mainstream software development, as Adobe has now released a GPU-accelerated version of its Creative Suite, comprising Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro. Both Premiere Pro and After Effects only support GPU features on Nvidia's professional range of Quadro GPUs, but Photoshop CS4 allows GPU acceleration on any mainstream GPU that supports Shader Model 3.0 (such as Nvidia's GeForce 6200 series of GPUs). Built on OpenGL, Photoshop CS4's GPU features allow real-time rotation of images and accelerated zooming and panning. As well as this, Photoshop CS4 also uses the GPU for anti-aliasing on text and objects, and it can tap the GPU for brushstroke previews, HDR tone mapping and colour conversion."

arcticstoat writes "Microsoft has said that it plans to remove a lot of the standard apps from Windows 7 in order to make the new OS 'cleaner.' Among the apps for the chop are Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, which will no longer be included with the operating system as standard. Instead, equivalent versions of the apps will be available from Microsoft's Windows Live download service as optional free downloads, much like the new BETA versions of the apps that Windows Live offers today." Meanwhile, jammag writes that "tech pundit Mike Elgan posits that the rushed-to-market Windows 7 — due in 2010, now being beta released this October — may in fact merely be Vista with new packaging.

arcticstoat writes to tell us that in the wake of their largely unsuccessful Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign Microsoft is setting their sights directly on recent Apple ads by featuring the "I'm a PC" character in their new advertising campaign. "He then follows this with another phrase, such as 'and I've been made into a stereotype' before the advert shifts to a range of people performing a diverse assortment of jobs, all of which also say they're a PC. Among those featured are astronaut Bernard Harris, as well as religious author Deepak Chopra and 'Desperate Housewives' actress Eva Longoria. The ad also features a wide range of anonymous people, including a shark diver, a teacher and a guy with a beard."

arcticstoat writes "Today marks fifty years since the first integrated circuit, or microchip, was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958. The original chip might not be much to look at, but then Texas Instruments admits that Kilby often remarked that if he'd known he'd be showing the first working integrated circuit for the next 40-plus years, he would've 'prettied it up a little.' The integrated circuit itself was housed in a germanium strip on a glass slide, and it measured 7/16in by 1/16in. With protruding wires, and just containing a single transistor, some resistors and a capacitor, it's a primitive chip by today's standards, but it worked and successfully produced a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen at the demo. Technology hasn't been the same since."

arcticstoat writes "Are you the USB keymaster? You could be soon if you pick up PNY's new 2GB USB flashdrive, which comes pre-loaded with Ghostbusters. A spokesperson for PNY explained that it comes with a form of DRM that prevents you from copying the movie. 'They have DRM protection,' explained the spokesperson, 'so customers can download the movie onto their laptop or PC if they wish, but they have to have the USB drive plugged in to watch the movie, as the DRM is locked in the USB drive.' The music industry has been playing around with USB flash drives for a few years now, but it hasn't been a massive success yet; will USB movies fare any better?"