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Microsoft Details Its 24-Core 'Holographic Processor' Used In HoloLens (pcworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the technical-specifications dept.

The processor powering Microsoft's HoloLens augmented reality headset has been a mystery -- until now. During the annual Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California, Microsoft revealed some juicy details about the secretive chip. PCWorld reports: "The HoloLens' HPU is a custom 28nm coprocessor designed by TSMC, The Register reports. The chip packs 24 Tensilica digital signal processor (DSP) cores. As opposed to more general-purpose CPU cores, DSPs are a specialized technology designed for rapidly processing data flowing in from the world -- a no doubt invaluable asset while rendering augmented reality environments in real time. Microsoft's HPU also contains roughly 65 million logic gates, 8MB of SDRAM, and 1GB of traditional DDR3 RAM. It draws less than 10W of power, and features PCIe and standard serial interfaces. The HPU's dedicated hardware is up to 200 times faster than performing the same calculations via software on the less-specialized 14nm Intel Cherry Trail CPU. Microsoft added custom instructions to the DSP cores that allow the HPU to churn through HoloLens-specific tasks even faster, The Register reports. The HPU can perform roughly 1 trillion calculations per second, and the data it passes to the CPU requires little additional processing."

113 comments

  1. No. No more, Microsoft. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No more of my money. Go away now. Bye bye!

    1. Re:No. No more, Microsoft. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flipping. It doesn't turn because of a Microsoft Account error.

  2. But not in the HoloLens itself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Dragging around a great big ball and chain.

  3. Re:First! by jedidiah · · Score: 0

    Sounds like silicon dedicated to do a particular task.

    That's not terribly remarkable.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. 1 trillion calculations per second by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How many of those 1 trillion calculations per second are for telemetry and serving ads?

    1. Re:1 trillion calculations per second by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      99% of them.

    2. Re:1 trillion calculations per second by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like MS have invented the true killer app for quantum computing. Nothing beats getting all the ads at the same time.

  5. Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't care what hardware you pimp, Microsoft. After your abusing everyone's privacy with your Windows 10 spyware, nothing you do matters anymore. Now go fuck yourself.

    signed
    former Microsoft fanboy

    1. Re:Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eeyup. MS has landed itself right next to Apple on my "Never Buy" list - possibly even below Apple - and I've been windows-only since 3.1.

    2. Re:Give up, Microsoft by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 2

      If you use Gmail, them MS can't read your email. The bad news is, then Google can. Or you can not trust anybody and not communicate anything incriminating over email.

    3. Re: Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If only there were an open source operating system or three with a few choices of smtp servers one could use.

    4. Re:Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, because Microsoft and Google are the only choices...for clueless people like you.

      Meanwhile I use Linux Mint, ProtonMail and Tox because what I do isn't Microsoft's or Google's business.

    5. Re:Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, Windows 10 is an amazing piece of software. It can do things that no other software has ever been able to. Namely, it actually convinced me, after 20 years of complaining about Windows, to get up off my butt and finally switch to Linux.

      (I am speaking of my metaphorical butt here, of course. I was obviously fully seated the whole time.)

    6. Re:Give up, Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how's the spam filtering working for ya?

      If you simply just don't get any welcome to the few lucky elite. I suggest posting it on as many public websites as possible and seeing how the average user loves email with shitty spam filtering.

  6. DSPs by Jfetjunky · · Score: 5, Informative

    DSPs are special processors that generally have many dedicated multiplier cores, as well as other math functions implemented directly in hardware. This allows them to do things like fixed point math operations very fast, sometimes in as little as a single digit clock cycles neglecting pipeline delays. In some cases certain math intensive functions such as video encoding/decoding are implemented directly in hardware too for the same benefits.

    1. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FPGA killed the DSP star.
      I wonder why microsoft picked obsolete tech on a cutting edge product...

    2. Re:DSPs by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      FPGA killed the DSP star. I wonder why microsoft picked obsolete tech on a cutting edge product...

      Because they are not bloody hipsters and used whatever works best rather than worrying about what hipsters thing is the new hotness?

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    3. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      let me know how you can apply a firmware update to a DSP, grandpa

    4. Re:DSPs by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      FPGA killed the DSP star.
      I wonder why microsoft picked obsolete tech on a cutting edge product...

      Sooo you don't actually know what a DSP is? Or by the sounds of it an FPGA either. But hey, by all means have an opinion on it! How embarassing.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    5. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      lots of angry grandpas on here upset that someone dares to threaten their crusty old tech...

      depending on how you use it an FPGA allows you to do signal processing like an ASIC, but fully configurable like a microcontroller. in both speed & low power, the FPGA wins hands down. in a bleeding edge product, you can change the FPGA with a firmware update, while the DSP is stuck in time. hell, you can license DSP cores to build in your FPGA.

    6. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they're smart enough to get it right the first time?

    7. Re:DSPs by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

      I think you're angry that they picked the right tool for the job and have it working as planned. But hey I guess you know more than a team of silicon engineers at a profitable company...

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    8. Re:DSPs by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Yes & No. DSPs start off as FPGAs, while they iron out all bugs, and optimize the design. That also takes care of supporting low volume business. Once the bugs are out, and production ramps up, that's when the cost savings of going from FPGA to DSP becomes significant enough to make worth doing.

      So this story just says that Microsoft is entering the semiconductor market as a fabless manufacturer. I would have hoped for them to have done this in the 90s, w/ DEC's Alpha - they would have had a complete leadership platform. This particular project looks pretty unremarkable.

    9. Re:DSPs by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Application-specific state machines can still kick ass, as long as you're going for large production series and their design can be automatic enough.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:DSPs by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Easily, using a reprogrammable memory.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    11. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most likely size, efficiency, and price. Yes you can get FPGAs with fairly large quantities of DSP elements. But a DSP oriented processor is probably physically smaller and is almost certainly more power efficient and is definitely less expensive. While FPGAs can do amazing things, dedicated silicon is usually preferable if it is available.

    12. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The primary benefit of the FPGA is that you have large numbers of add/multiply units available. If your task is well suited to massive parallelization then you can get a performance advantage from the FPGA. If your task is better suited to sequential processing then a DSP would offer better performance (typically 3-4 times the clock rate the FPGA would be capable of). If you have very limited board area the DSP is likely the better choice. And the DSP almost certainly needs less supporting hardware around it than the FPGA (power supplies, flash, ADC, etc...)

      Processors are pretty typically at least one process node ahead of the FPGA, so typically are more power efficient despite your claim of lower power with FPGA.

      Yes you can update the hardware design in the FPGA with a firmware update. But you can load new software to the DSP with a firmware update. You might have a soft processor in your FPGA design, so you would likely have to change that code too when you update the FPGA. And if you do have a soft processor then it's not going to be capable of anything like the clock speed of a dedicated silicon processor.

      When you say license DSP cores for the FPGA, I can only guess that you are talking about licensing someones IP core that performs the type of calculations you want to do. Usually this is not the highest performance way to do things. You can almost always get better performance and area usage by writing exactly the processing you need. These configurable IP cores that people sell are so generic that they can't take advantage of a given FPGAs DSP element architecture to reduce resource usage.

      It doesn't seem like you have ever worked with either of these devices, otherwise you would already know all this and would be shouting about "FPGA killing DSP". FPGAs solve a different problem than DSP processors solve (yes the FPGA can overlap into the DSP area). Use the tool you need for the job you're doing. Don't over-design your hardware.
       

    13. Re:DSPs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, did you just claim that an FPGA can beat an ASIC or a DSP in power consumption and speed in the same task hands down? It's like claiming an interpreted LISP module outperforming the compiled version.

    14. Re:DSPs by c4757p · · Score: 1

      you can change the FPGA with a firmware update, while the DSP is stuck in time.

      er, what?

      they're reprogrammable like any other commonly used, uh, programmable device.

  7. Too Many White Males by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1, Troll

    Was the line that made me opt to never buy anything Microsoft makes again. Fuck those racists.

    1. Re:Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So Speaketh Satay Nutella!

    2. Re:Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't you know, this is the new selectively racist "diversification" movement?

      You are a member of group X. Group X is over-represented. Through no fault of your own, and because there are too many people that are like you, we cannot employ you. Sorry. Go home without a job. Go home and die in poverty.

      How is this not racism? For any group of people that "require" employment to survive how is this not genocide? I keep hearing how white males are the most privileged but we're a dying race, and if we're not dying we're being bred out of existence. White male is not a cohesive group, and we don't all get together in a room to discuss how we're going to kill all the Jews. Perhaps that's our problem, we've been too nice and accommodating, but we can't talk about that.

      Fuck this world. Fuck political correctness. Vote Trump.

    3. Re:Too Many White Males by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1, Informative

      Where are all these unemployed white men you speak of?

      Not the AC, but the employment figures have been horribly misrepresented since Obama took office. They've eliminated people unemployed for more than 6 or 12 months (I forget which offhand) as "not seeking employment", they've eliminated the 18-25 age group as "students" (unless they have a job, in which case they get counted,) they've eliminated the 60+ group as "retired," anyone on disability, anyone employed for any time period (even not 40 hours/livable timespans,) and a few other gotchas. To top it all off even with all the rigging unemployment isn't at 0% or a negative percentage under that ranking system.

    4. Re:Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ANYMORE. You forgot to add the word anymore to your sentence. As in.
      We don't all get together in a room to discuss how we're going to kill all the Jews. Anymore.

    5. Re:Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To amplify NicknameUnavailable's point, the labor participation rate is historically low. There are almost 100 million people in that "not in the workforce" group that previously would have been "unemployed".

      The only thing preventing this from counting as great-depression level disaster is the fact that we are now a two income society. So one person in a family losing a job isn't the unmitigated disaster it was in the 1930's.

      If you are not among this group, they might be pretty invisible. But in my area it is hitting hard. We actually have moms with their kids panhandling at the outflow of fast food restaurants. I've been approached several times in the Panera parking lot by well-dressed women asking for a handout. There are a lot of desperate folks out there. A lot more than there have been in our lifetimes.

    6. Re:Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ANYMORE

      I never did. If you did you personally should suffer for it, not everyone sharing your skin color.

    7. Re:Too Many White Males by Desler · · Score: 2

      Not the AC, but the employment figures have been horribly misrepresented since Obama took office. They've eliminated people unemployed for more than 6 or 12 months (I forget which offhand) as "not seeking employment"

      Except that was happening long before Obama took office. They're called discouraged workers. Also, discouraged workers are tracked and their numbers are published by the Department of Labor since 1967. But don't let facts enter into your posts.

    8. Re:Too Many White Males by Desler · · Score: 1

      That 100 million contains people actually a large part of retirees. Why would my retired grandma in a nursing be considered part of the labor pool?

    9. Re:Too Many White Males by Desler · · Score: 2

      Oh and the last change to how unemployment figures were reported was in 1994. Just so you know, that's more than a decade before Obama was even a US senator. So to blame him for this is quite rich.

    10. Re:Too Many White Males by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Oh and the last change to how unemployment figures were reported was in 1994. Just so you know, that's more than a decade before Obama was even a US senator. So to blame him for this is quite rich.

      Aside from the fact that's either uninformed or a lie (it's the internet so who knows which of the two,) are you saying the Clintons are to blame?

    11. Re:Too Many White Males by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      http://www.cnsnews.com/news/ar...

      That article seems to give a detailed accounting of the numbers and what they mean. Yes it includes retired, but also it is higher than it has been in a very long time, so what does it matter? The number of retirees hasn't exploded enough to explain the rise of non participating people, it is however an indicator for the people who were cut out of the unemployment numbers because they still haven't found jobs. This article also has the numbers of people working part time who want full time jobs, which is a very disappointing number as well.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    12. Re:Too Many White Males by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Post links, not hyperbole.

  8. Microsoft? On MY face? Fuggetaboutit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nt

  9. 8MB of SDRAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    TFA notes "8MB of SRAM," which makes more sense.

    Oh great, looks like the editors are hard at work again...

  10. it's a GPU by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 0

    I've looked over all the information and I tell you with great certainty that this "HPU" is really a GPU with a few custom bits.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:it's a GPU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft made a custom ASIC that's worthy of a keynote talk at an IEEE conference.

      Your dismissal has no substance. All I see is conjecture from a layperson.

    2. Re:it's a GPU by thesupraman · · Score: 3, Informative

      FFS, god damn kids.

      it is NOTHING like a GPU.
      it is an array of DSPs. boring old DSPs.. nothing new here at all.
      quite a few of them on the same chip, but still, just DSPs. in fact quite standard DSPs.
      Which is pretty much exactly what you would expect for this application.

      Now please stop trying to impress people with 'I've looked over all the information' and go back to your madz gamerzing.

    3. Re:it's a GPU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a set of custom designed DSPs, designed to accelerate a specific set of applications.

    4. Re:it's a GPU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tensillica allows its standard DSP cores to be extended with custom instructions, we did an 8 way simd floating point multiply. You can also add GPU or DNN specific instructions or just license their HIFI3 simd instructions.

    5. Re:it's a GPU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it has holograms! Holograms are cool.

  11. Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by Luthair · · Score: 0

    Holograms - seen without the aid of special glasses or other intermediate optics.

    1. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by mark-t · · Score: 2

      That's not what makes something a hologram. There is nothing that precludes holograms from being put on glasses to effectively "overlay" on what you see. What makes a hologram distinctive is that your brain perceives it as a truly three-dimensional image. When you focus on a hologram, you are focusing at the distance of the object that is presented in the hologram, not on the surface of what the image is being made on.... like a mirror.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    2. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography
      >a hologram is a photographic recording of a light field, rather than of an image formed by a lens, and it is used to display a fully three-dimensional image of the holographed subject, which is seen without the aid of special glasses or other intermediate optics.

      http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hologram
      >a three-dimensional image reproduced from a pattern of interference produced by a split coherent beam of radiation (as a laser)

      These are holograms in the same way those handle-less segways were "hoverboards".

    3. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      As far as I can see from available information, the HoloLens has a focal distance somewhere around 2 meters away from your face.

      Whereas in a "true" hologram, you capture the interference patterns of all light rays that pass through the volume of your photo sensitive film. Shining a laser through that film will recreate light rays with the same direction and intensity. As if you were looking through a window at the original scene.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    4. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      Indeed, and that's what got me to the State Science Fair in 7th grade. Why anyone would let a 13 year-old take home an expensive laser, let them processes photographic plates in a light-sealed bathroom by themselves...lol

    5. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not what makes something a hologram.

      What makes a real hologram is that it recreates the original wavefront, so the light that hits your eye is identical (phase and aplitude) to the original, even if you move a bit.

      The ones from MS are just holow-grams...

    6. Re:Ironic, Given HoloLense Doesn't do Holograms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What makes a hologram distinctive is that your brain perceives it as a truly three-dimensional image.

      You mean like a stereoscopic image? That's not a hologram either.

  12. 24 cores, vs 256 cores Tegra X1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It does seem to be GPU cores. To put this in perspective, NVidia's top of the range mobile chip has 256 Maxwell cores. And the NVidia ones support CUDA, so it will be doing similar bulk parallel execution.

    Marketing spin aside, hopefully they simply licensed a chip and badged it, rather than waste a lot of money trying to make a custom graphics chip. That would be f**ing dumb given how competitive the graphics market is.

    1. Re:24 cores, vs 256 cores Tegra X1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kinda sad really. Microsoft took so long to get this to market, the world has left them way behind.

      If you think about the smartphone market, it has all these sensors and all that graphics already there, a faster processor, a more general processor, and real time signal processing. The plastic headsets that you can plug smartphones into have dropped in price to $6 a pop now.

      I use one with my drone for FPV (buy Litchi for Android if you have a DJI Phantom, its amazing). I can't imagine anyone would buy a Hololens when they can simply use a smartphone to do the same thing a lot cheaper on a platform they can develop for a lot easier.

      Remember Microsoft surface? The hulking great big table that came out after Apple released the iPod touch? It never took off, but the iPod/iPhone/iPad took over the market instead.

    2. Re:24 cores, vs 256 cores Tegra X1 by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      what do you mean so long to get this to market? it has been in the market for a long time now and is being used by quite a few large companies for various engineering, design and architecture work. Seems so far it is hugely successful though incredibly pricey as each device is multiple thousands of dollars..

    3. Re:24 cores, vs 256 cores Tegra X1 by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Yes, your smartphone has a ton of varied, dedicated hardware.
      Even your grandma's 1990s dumbphone does that, or a $20 DVD video player. Your smartphone has more complicated versions of both, and an image processor that makes an actual usable picture from the camera sensor, and a video encoder, and a jpeg encoder/decoder I guess, and a whole GPU on top of that.

      So Microsoft is using yet another processor for another new, separate task.
      I liken the whole thing to some kind of mobile Kinect. I think this one had a built-in DSP too.
      Not that I should particularly care. but execution, latency, robustness may make or break such things.

    4. Re:24 cores, vs 256 cores Tegra X1 by DrXym · · Score: 1
      Personally if I were designing something, be it a building, bridge, machinery plant or whatever and I wanted to view what it looked like for real, I'd find far more use in a VR headset. That would let me look at the thing in full scale, allow me to fly around and view it from other angles, play around with scenery, lighting etc. Basically I could model the thing I'm designing and where it's going to go and have full freedom to do what I want in that space.

      AR would just present some dinky version of the thing being designed fixed to a table top or similar. It might be cute but it doesn't seem as practical. It certainly seems a reach to pitch Hololens to such limited professional use and hope it will take off.

  13. Wow by DesertNomad · · Score: 1

    A teraflop in a pair of (ugly) glasses. Who woulda thunk it?

  14. Who cares? Seriously, another Microsoft story? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a boring, failing dinosaur of a company.

    Why all the shilling on this site?

    Maybe you should rename yourself, "Microdot."

    1. Re:Who cares? Seriously, another Microsoft story? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are still the dominant desktop provider, they are one of the largest server software providers, especially in enterprise and they are second only to Amazon as a cloud provider. They have a steady increasing profit. Sounds to me like you are the dinosaur that has trouble getting over your personal bias. You may not like MS but to have a tech news site that excludes them means all you have is a niche zealot site that well to be honest will be full of nothing but dinosaurs.

  15. Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... a beowulf cluster of these things!

  16. It's pretty neat by itamblyn · · Score: 1

    We have one at work and I've tried out some of the demos. It's a pretty impressive piece of kit.

  17. Awful article by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article is awful, both here on slashdot and pcworld. It shows that neither site is suitable for reporting on tech or IT journalism.

    TSM doesn't design chips, they build them. Others design the chips, hand over that design to TSMC to get actual hardware back. TheRegister correctly reports this "bult by TSMC"
    8MB SDRAM and 1GB DDR3 RAM. That is the same thing! DDR3 is a form of SDRAM and of course SDRAM makes no sense whatsoever here. Instead again, TheRegister correctly reports: 8GB SRAM, which is typically used for caching purposes: small size but fast, just like L1 to L3 caches in most/all CPUs which are also for caching.

    Neither slashdot nor pcworld senior editor can correctly transcribe a simple news tidbit from another site.

    1. Re:Awful article by prefect42 · · Score: 1

      Instead again, TheRegister correctly reports: 8GB SRAM, which is typically used for caching purposes: small size but fast, just like L1 to L3 caches in most/all CPUs which are also for caching.

      Neither slashdot nor pcworld senior editor can correctly transcribe a simple news tidbit from another site.

      I think you mean 8MB SRAM, and you can't transcribe either ;)

      --

      jh

  18. TSMC *designs* ASICs now? by gTsiros · · Score: 1

    I thought they were just a fab company :|

    --
    Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
    1. Re:TSMC *designs* ASICs now? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      I think the journalist may be mistaken. Another story I read on this said the design came from Cadence, which makes a lot more sense. Cadence sells a core that customers can further customize (using Cadence's software of course). It then can be fabbed by a place like TSMC.

  19. Cadence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cadence designs signal processors, TSMC builds them, Microsoft licenses them, nobody buys them.

    How do you sell a $3000 headset in a commodity market? FFS Microsoft, could you be any more pathetic.

    1. Re:Cadence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They seem to be selling them faster than they can make them. $3000 is cheap in the market they are selling into, this isn't for home users.

  20. Re:GOTCHA, SUCKERS! by Miamicoastguard · · Score: 1

    What was that movie with Roddy Piper?

  21. Finally!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A product with real innovation. Well done, Microsoft!

  22. Re:it's a Heterogenious Processing Unit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Basically an APU.

    https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/08/22/hololens_large.jpg

    Looks alot like AMD/Intel APUs, but anyway reminds me of the movidius myriad and TI Keystone 2.

  23. Re: GOTCHA, SUCKERS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They live.

  24. Not the future we expected by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Not the future we expected - we have "hoverboards" and "holographic displays" but they are marketing hype instead of what the words used to mean.

  25. It's not released yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No, the developer edition launched only in March of this year, the actual sale edition isn't released yet. In the meantime, my drone has a VR headset, it cost $6+ $20 for the software to fly the drone in VR. Works great to, follows your head as you turn and look up and down.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_HoloLens
    "The PRE-PRODUCTION version of HoloLens, the Development Edition, shipped on 30 March 2016, and is targeted to developers in the United States and Canada for a list price of $3,000"

    And anyone can have a VR headset if they have a phone with a gyroscope and $1, it was mainstream year before last. If the phone is a high end phone, it will be a lot faster than this Hololens too.

    http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-vr-headset.html

    "Seems so far it is hugely successful though incredibly pricey as each device is multiple thousands of dollars.."

    Samsungs new VR headset doesn't even use it, its based on their phones:
    http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/gear-vr/?cid=ppc-

    But hey, keep up the faith brother!

    1. Re:It's not released yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      tell that to all the companies that purchased and are using them. basically anyone willing to pay the development kit/partner price gets access to get these into production and have had them long before MArch 2016. I got to play with one companies demo late last year.

    2. Re:It's not released yet by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      VR =/= AR. Show me any competing device that does AR, which is displaying pictures over top of the actual background. This device does something that VR headsets cannot do.

      Last I checked, VR headsets are not see through.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  26. "Holographic" by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    So, what's a "Hologram", the word they derive the name from? Well, it's a picture that isn't really tangible, it's just a virtual picture, and in the correct light, it only appears to display something real. But that looks really convincing, despite nothing really being there.

    In one word: Vaporware.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  27. Re:GOTCHA, SUCKERS! by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    And lemme guess: Not taking your pills puts you in that "right state of mind" to see through all this?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  28. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, the $3000 Hololens that can only display a 640x480 resolution, postage stamp sized image directly in the centre of view is awesome. Who the fuck would want the affordable, high resolution, wide FOV immersion offered by crappy products like Vive and Rift?

  29. Misuse of scientific/technical words by jandersen · · Score: 1

    Maybe I'm just being oversensitive, but it begins to annoy me, the way important terms get misused and watered down by IT companies. Not long ago there was something (I have happily forgotten the details) that misused the term 'tensor' for some sort of HW or SW - it had nothing to do with the hugely important and useful mathematical tool, of course, not even in the most stretched sense; it was just "We need some snazzy word for this crap, let's call it tensor". And now "holographic processor" - I find it hard to imagine an application of holography that would justify it's use in a processor, even a graphical one.

    It may seem like a very minor problem, but I think it does some harm - when you come to learn an important topic, it is better not to come burdened with confusing misuses of the terms involved; it is hard enough to approach, say, topology, even when you have perfectly good and sensible intuitions about continuity from calculus, but at least there is some sort of "natural" bridge from continuity in the Real numbers to continuity in topological spaces.

    1. Re:Misuse of scientific/technical words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please report to room 101.
      Mr.Anderson.

    2. Re:Misuse of scientific/technical words by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      We've had our eye on you for sometime, Mr Anderson.

  30. Fft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fft ftw

  31. Re:First! by Angeret · · Score: 1

    Even MS would have to admit that 640x480 is a useless resolution for AR - how are they supposed to force you to view all their advertising if you can't make sense of it due to pixelation?

  32. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But MS version provides so much telemetry and forced update experience that it surely will be better than anything else.

  33. IVR System by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Codeot Developers have massive experience in IVR Development in any shape and size you want.. Web/Desktop/Android/IOS IVR Custom Development Is on going for various of our proud clients, dive in and have a look what an awesome power IVR have. One of Product for IVR is WP Ultimate IVR. http://codeot.com/services/wp-...

  34. Cell 2.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds slightly similar to Cell, sans the child-core local caches.

    Regardless, it does sound like nice hardware, and it is about time we start getting good processors out there for these sorts of tasks instead of being stuck at fucking sub-10.
    Multicore is far superior even for general purpose devices because you can ALWAYS split a general purposes jobs up.
    That includes every facet of the OS so they don't halt each other. (whether software itself supports it is up to the devs)

    Developers need to get off their collective asses and learn mulithreading and multicore already. IT IS TRIVIAL TO LEARN.
    It is just some extra timing and synchronization, it isn't some mystical magicks.
    It adds SO MUCH to a project they always hate themselves for not learning it sooner.
    Yes, it will not help every task, there are tasks that are serial in nature, but hey, guess what, our brains manage serial tasks in parallel as well. That is up to processor designers to figure out. (admittedly our brains are terrible at serial tasks anyway, they brute force them a million times until one is right)

    1. Re:Cell 2.0 by DrXym · · Score: 1

      The Cell was a forerunner to GPGPU computing. You wrote a "kernel" for each SPE, streamed data in and gathered data coming out. Signal processing, crypto, physics, tweening, collision detection etc. It was basically what GPUs became in due course, providing a way to do general purpose computation in parallel and faster than a CPU could do by itself.

  35. Whatever happened to Microsoft surface? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Remember that coffee table, Microsoft Surface, that they removed the branding from so it became Microsoft 'PixelSense'?

    That was 4 years ago and it seems to have been quietly left to die out of the light of failure....
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense

    Too Zune?

    1. Re:Whatever happened to Microsoft surface? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They were the stupid ones that gave two completely different product lines the exact same name.

      The reason it failed is that cheap multi-touch started hitting PCs left and right. If you can get a 27" all-in-one computer with 10-point multi-touch for under $1,000 there is no reason to spend $10,000 to solve your problem - all you need is custom mounting. The rest of the features just weren't compelling enough to spend so much more.

    2. Re:Whatever happened to Microsoft surface? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The original Surface "coffee table" technology didn't exactly die. It has just evolved from a table form factor to a whiteboard form factor...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Hub

      If you ever watch CNN (US version) they use one quite often to show visual demos of things like interactive electoral collage maps.

  36. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    that's like saying who would want a Ferrari because a Toyota Tarago can carry more people, is exponentially cheaper to buy run and insure. They are two completely fucking separate markets. HoloLens is for AR, something neither Vive or Rift are capable of doing, Vive and Rift are for VR, something HoloLens is not capable of doing.

  37. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why does a four digit ID guy need to reply to a first post so his post is higher on the page? Seriously.

  38. Re:First! by lxs · · Score: 1

    640x480 should be enough for everybody.

  39. Re:First! by lxs · · Score: 1

    You'd think that AR would need even higher resolution to look good. The generated image is always being viewed side by side with reality.

  40. see below by c4757p · · Score: 1

    The stunning amount of ignorance being displayed by the commenters here just makes me a bit sad when I remember how you people used to be. Seriously, where are you people getting the ideas that DSPs aren't reprogrammable, or that they've somehow been made obsolete by FPGAs (wtf), or that FPGAs are in any way superior for low power (wtf??) or any number of other things I'm seeing people pull out of their asses here? Fuck's sake people, know the limits of your knowledge and quit speaking outside them. It's really kind of embarrassing.

    Nice to see the editors are as bad as always though, some things never change. 8MB of SDRAM indeed.

    1. Re: see below by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This used to be the site where I would shut up, listen, and learn. I dunno why I come here these days. Habit?

  41. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it's like a Ferrari with square wheels; it'll get you there but it won't be a pleasant ride.

  42. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So the Vive is the Ferrari then? Because I'm pretty sure it has a much higher resolution and much larger FOV than that Hololens garbage.

  43. Re:First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Vive has a camera meaning it can easily be used for AR.

  44. Re:First! by peawormsworth · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't that be nice for a change?