Monday May 26, 2008

- The combo Blu-Ray to take over the computers - Lionel - 18:24:29

Source : Digitimes

Now that the war Blu-ray vs HD-DVD is finished, the manufacturers of optical devices dream only of seeing the market of the blue laser developing so that they will be able to raise their margins that have become practically non-existent on DVD engravers.
The same applies with the manufacturers of computers that want to also pack their offers with Blu-ray products.
Since engravers, and the virgin media, are too expensive, the must-have item in midrange market is occupied by combo, able to read the BD but also to engrave CDs and DVDs.
The mass production of these products and their integration should be done starting from the third quarter of this year.
If all of industry launches out on this market segment, Apple will not have any other choice but to follow. It would thus not be surprising that the next generation of MacBook Pro is equipped with combo Blu-ray with perhaps in option of the engravers. Mac Pro should be also right there, at least so that the professionals can backup or manufacture film masters assembled on his machine. Note that will be needed imperatively once that Apple proposes a new range of HDCP compatible screens. All the portables are on the other hand already compatible with this HDCP protection.

[translation by crispin]

- Samsung: 200 MB/s for a 256 GB SSD - Lionel - 11:00:54

Source : TGdaily

Samsung might have shaken the SSD market with its last announcement. The company claims to have assembled a 256 GB SSD able to deliver unreachable reading and writing speed of respectively 200 MB/S and 160 MB/S.

Such a beast should be available by the end of the year, and will nevertheless be based on MLC memory despite this type of chips is slower than the SLC normally used in flash drive and current SSD. There is no further detail regarding the technology breakthrough completed by Samsung R&D team to achieve such transfer speed. One can imagine that Samsung uses a specific cache level, or a controller able to mimic a RAID-like system to split data over several chips. With such data rate, this drive available in 1.8 and 2.5" in SATA format could simply free notebooks of their usual bottleneck, aka the access and speed of their local storage unit. Even some desktop could benefit from such speed.

As we originally predicted it, the PATA Zif interface used for the SSD in the MacBook air by Apple is probably EOL, and will most likely be replaced by a SATA port.

[translation by Linathael]

- Intel GMA X4500: Power Inside - Lionel - 11:00:07

Several websites report tests performed with samples of the future Intel mobile architecture known as Centrino 2, which will feature a new shared-memory graphical chipset, the GMA X4500.
As expected based on previous announcement made by Intel, the GMA X4500 is truly a huge evolution. This new graphical chipset is simply 50% faster than the current X3100 while drivers are not optimized yet, while the current clock frequency is rather low.
If we are far from having the same performance level than high-end dedicated GPU, it might compete with entry level models from AMD and NVidia. For sure, next generation MacBook will benefit from such technology improvement.


[translation by Linathael]

- Apple Placed its NAND Flash Order - Lionel - 10:59:36

Source : Digitimes

With months of delay compared to its normal schedule, Apple finally placed its NAND flash order to Samsung.

Despite expectations, this order did not massively decrease the stock level, and NAND Flash price remains extremely low. Apple's order will start shipping in June and July, right on time to sustain or allow the mass production of the new iPhone 3G and the new models of iPod Shuffle, Nano and Touch.

[translation by Linathael]

- Next Photoshop Version to Benefit from GPU Acceleration - Eric - 10:58:59

If SSD mass adoption will be the next revolution for the compute market, the next one could be an even bigger jump and will mark the use of GPU in raw processing. All GPU manufacturers, including Intel with its Larrabee project are on track for it. As usual, only the first tests will indicate if results are as high as expectation, but first results seem be more than impressive. It should at least massively improve image rendering as well as video display.

Adobe perfectly understands it, and already announced that the next generation of its famous Creative Suite, and in particular Photoshop, will be coded to benefit from graphical and physical engines available from the GPU to speed up image rendering and editing. However, to translated this project into reality, it is not going to be easy as there is no unified and/or platform independent systems. In addition to support all acceleration potential from all GPU manufacturers, Adobe will have to integrate all available engine... as performance gain will not be the same from one GPU to another.

One can fear that the gap between the PC and the Mac version becomes even bigger, as the current Mac version does not feature 64bits support, whereas the PC does… Currently, GPU manufacturers seem to favor only Windows compatibility and support. Not so much surprising when one look at what speed Apple release drivers updates for the GPU used in all Mac models, without mentioning that it is far from being optimized drivers in all cases…

For sure, Apple will have to switch gear and either open Mac-dedicated GPU drivers development to third parties (mostly AMD and NVidia), and further invest resources to really deliver drivers which can really compete with their corresponding DirextX or PC version ; especially for the Pro market in which Apple hold several niches. It does not help to offer Pro users top notch and well designed photo and video rendering/editing applications if one can NOT benefit from improved GPU raw power coming along with better/faster graphic card generation. No one needs to buy a new Mac Pro to simply get faster 3D rendering, the eight available cores are already not used in most cases, but needs for optimized drivers and last generation top-notch GPUs are really high from Pro users as well as Prosumers.

- An all-in-one chip for Blu-ray readers - Lionel - 07:35:39

Source : CDR Info

Panasonic announces the development of the first all-in-one chip able to control the main functions of a Blu-ray reader, control of the laser diode to decoding of the vidéos and the management of the essential Ethernet for the compatibility with the DB profiles 2.0.
It thus plays the role currently allotted to two distinct controllers and makes it possible to reduce the expenses inherent in the wiring of the electronic cards but also makes it possible to reduce the power consumption.
The first samples of this product will arrive in June, Panasonic hopes for a massive sell to equip the next generation of readers.
With the standardisation of this type of product, one should see significantly lowering the price of the readers used in the living room, where currently the price is much nearer to that of a mini computer than a DVD reader.

[translation by crispin]