Who knew a table could be so awesome??

This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. It's Microsoft Surface. OK, so the name isn't all that cool, but that's exactly what it is. A surface. It can take the place of any surface. A table, a desk, a counter-top in a store. It responds to touch, can sense items laid on it, and best of all, it can sense multiple touches and items at once, unlike a traditional touchscreen, which can only sense one. Beyond that, it's kinda hard to explain. You really just have to visit the Microsoft Surface website to check it out.

Toshiba and AMD: Together at last

Toshiba, the 4th largest manufacturer of laptop PCs in the world, announced earlier this week that it would begin purchasing AMD CPUs to put in their laptop computers. Toshiba says it plans on putting AMD CPUs in about 20% of its laptop lineup. This breaks many years of exclusivity to Intel by Toshiba, which is a great thing for everyone. Intel's current Core 2 Duo processors may be faster right at the moment, but AMDs Turion chips have been show to be more energy efficient and create less heat, which is great for laptops especially. And competition is never a bad thing, especially in an oligopoly like the CPU industry. Toshiba plans to have several models with AMD processors out this summer. Systems with AMD chips sell for up to $82 less, on average, than a comparable model with an Intel chip.

Source: ZDNet

Dell goes retail!

Those of us with an above average interest in computing will most likely make weird faces at you if you ask one of us our opinion on buying a Dell. It's true, we're not big fans. They use cheap components, have completely inadequate tech support (if you can even get someone who speaks passable english), and their advertisements are deceptive to say the least.

So who would make a great partner for Dell's first venture into the retail world?? None other than.... Wal-Mart!! That's right. Dell announced Thursday that it would start selling PCs via America's #1 retailer in June. Starting June 10th, Wal-Mart will start carrying 2 models of Dell's Dimension desktop computers for under $700 bundled with accessories. Dell has been selling computers for 23 years, none of which have been through retail stores. This is probably in response to losing the top spot as the world's #1 computer manufacturer to Hewlett Packard last year. Hewlett Packard has been very aggressive in its retail sales through stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, and Wal-Mart as well. And it might have something to do with HP's decent tech support and customer service. I think a lot of people have finally thrown in the towel on dealing with Dell and moved on to greener pastures. Maybe this is exactly what Dell needs to regain the top spot though. Only time can tell...

Phenom, Fusion and Stars! Oh my!!

The folks from AMD have recently released new names for upcoming projects they're working on: the AMD Phenom processor, the new Stars CPU naming, and the Fusion platform.

First off, we have the new Phenom CPU. This is simply AMD's replacement for the Athlon name on their high end desktop CPUs. Instead of the Athlon X2, X4, and Athlon FX, we'll now have the Phenom X2 and X4, and Phenom FX. The Athlon and Sempron names will stay where they are on the mid-range and low end respectively. The Phenom name should start coming on packages when the Agena (aka Barcelona) core CPUs start shipping later this year. It's gonna take this geek a little time to get used to saying he has an AMD Phenom CPU now... AMD also announced a new naming standard for all their processors. No longer will you have to tell everyone you have an AMD Athlon (or Phenom) X2 4400+ 1MB L2 Toledo core. According to Dailytech, it will be more like "Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 45W 1MB L2 Brisbane" to "AMD BE-2400." For more info on the full lineup of Phenom CPUs, check out this article from Anandtech.

Stars, on the other hand, is a much wider name change. The last several generations of AMD CPU cores have all had city names. Barcelona, Winchester, Windsor, Brisbane, Venice, etc... Now AMD is switching to star names for its CPU cores. Agena, Kuma, Rana, and Spica are among the first. Pretty cool, eh? But that's not all. With the new names comes new technology too. The Stars CPUs will incorporate the new HyperTransport 3.0 technology, replacing HyperTransport 1.0. HT 3.0 will still be backwards compatible with HT 1.0. HT 3.0 should provide about double the memory bandwidth of HT 1.0, and will also allow the integrated memory controller and CPU to run at different frequencies. This should provide a great deal better performance with new PCI-Express 2.0 and multi-CPU systems in the near future. Stars processors will also introduce a 128-bit floating point unit for each core of the CPU, and support for DDR2-1066 RAM. Also supported are SSE4A instruction sets. Another big new feature is the addition of a shared L3 cache on Agena and Kuma core CPUs. All Stars CPUs will be compatible with both socket AM2+ and AM2.

While Phenom and Stars are changes that will be made in the next year or so, Fusion is a way off, but no less exciting. Fusion, at it's core, is the combination of CPU and GPU onto a single processing chip, for massive processing power. GPUs currently have tremendous parellel processing power, which, along with the ability to generate realistic 3d images, gives them incredible floating point processing capabilities, which goes largely unexploited. CPUs on the other hand, handle data sequentially. GPUs are good at handling certain types of data that CPUs are rather slow at, and vice versa. Fusion aims to combine them, to create a chip that can handle all types of data, and handle it at speeds unheard of today. But, the success of this depends on software support of the system, among other things. Just like 64-bit CPUs today, which have largely gone unsupported by the software industry, Fusion may not gain their support either. If it does not, then it will merely be a CPU, with an integrated graphics processor built onto the same chip. The GPU will not be used to its full capability for running programs where massive parallel processing is ideal. It will stay much as it is today. A 3d rendering chip. This is seen by much of the industry as a big gamble by AMD. Will it pay off? Who knows. It certainly looks like the next logical step in technology to me though.

If you'd like to read more about Fusion, read these stories at TGDaily, and Anandtech.

Laptop hard drives get another boost

Fujitsu announced today that they are in the process of developing a 250GB 2.5" hard drive for laptops. The drive should be available in the 2nd quarter of this year. Fujitsi released in March the world's first 160GB 2.5" 7200 RPM hard drive. Exciting stuff for mobile users! More info here.

ATI X2900XT out finally!!

At long last, ATI's R600 GPU has hit the market in the form of the X2900XT! As of right now, Ewiz.com is the only etailer I can find carrying it. With 512MB of GDDR3 RAM onboard, a core clock of 750mhz, and RAM speeds hitting 1.65ghz, it looks pretty impressive. Preliminary benchmarks put it fairly even with the Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX, but I haven't seen any official benchmarks yet. The main addition to the X2K line is the addition of DirectX10 compatibility. It's sitting at $410 per card tonight, but should drop fairly soon. That's all I have for right now. Hopefully some official benchmarks will surface soon. Goodnight folks!


edit: The official name for this card is not X2900XT. It is in fact the HD 2900XT.

20 inch HP gaming laptop???

That's right... a 20" laptop. Can this even be considered a laptop? Who in their right mind would lug this thing around? Dell's 20" XPS laptop weighs in at 20 lbs!! For the sake of lumbars and shoulders everywhere, I hope this thing is lighter, but I highly doubt it. I hope it at least delivers on the promise of being a gaming machine. It's not on the market yet, but it's coming. Check it out here on Engadget.

Update: Dailytech.com has some new information on this monster. Apparently weighing in at 12 pounds, it should come equipped with a Core 2 Duo CPU, a Geforce Go 8000 series GPU, 4 speakers plus subwoofer, and the new Intel integrated Draft-N wireless adapter. All on the new Intel Santa Rosa platform. It also has a built in media remote, tv tuner, and HDMI output port. Wow. This will be way out of my price range, but a geek can still drool over things he will never possess...

Fun links for the week

Hello again fellow silicon junkies! I know I've been away for a while, but life is sort of hectic right now. Working a lot, and finals are coming up next week. I've also been taking my first plunges into the world of Linux and open source software, on top of having some cooling problems with my own PC, which I'm trying to get figured out by the time summer comes full force. Anyway, I have some links you all might find amusing or useful. Enjoy!

1. The Hamster Shredder (No, not for shredding hamsters!)

2. The USB Beverage Cooler

a. Variation on the theme, from a hardcore DIY'er.

3. HP gives odd recommendations for taking awesome pictures...

4. Someone has been smoking something green, and it wasn't a tree.

5. Nifty idea for a case fan.

6. Funny but true article about a hated word for us IT folks!

7. Ever wonder how CPUs and other PC components are made?

8. Best graphics cards for the money: May 2007

9. Gadgets for Mother's Day!!!

That's all for today folks. Hope that slakes your thirst for odd tech tidbits for a bit. I'll be back soon after finals are over with my first Project Silicon original! Project Silicon Guides: Cleaning Your PC. This is Jordan for Project Silicon. Until next time, keep on geekin out!