News for Friday, 13 June 2008

One of the future developments for 3D game rendering should be the use of physics engines in order to provide an even more realistic experience. At the beginning, small start-up have developed new technology and dedicated rendering engines, but they have been rapidly acquired by larger companies, such as PhysX now belonging to NVidia, while Havok is now own by Intel which aims to include it in its Larrabee project. AMD recently decided to adopt Intel's Havok too. Of course such collaboration between both CPU founders will lead to mutual benefits. AMD gets something to work on, it marginalizes NVidia’s solutions, while providing a new tool for Intel for negotiating about SLI licensing and other on-going disputes.

Many of us have discovered photo via a Polaroid camera, allowing you to get a paper print in less than 1 minute. Of course today with the digital photo era, the company has been in serious trouble, as today one can immediately watch on a small LCD display the result of a shoot.
However, Polaroid is back with an interesting product, an ultra compact printer delivering 5 x 7.6 cm photo. One can use it with any mobile phone or digital camera.

This printer is using a new technology called "Zink", standing for "Zero Ink". There is no ink cartridge, neither ribbons nor toner. The printing process is now radically simple, you just need to add paper. However, it is a special material composed of cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded in a sandwich between a protective polymer overcoat layer outside and a base support. The printer uses heat to activate and colorize these dye crystals, leading to the generation of a colorful photo. The current cost is evaluated at 0.30 € per photo, but it might drop depending on a large adoption by customers.
For additional information about this Polaroid technology, please visit: http://www.zink.com/

While the current second evolution of PCI Express just started to arrive on our motherboard, we are already hearing about its successor, aka PCI Express 3.0.
As usual, this new evolution will double transfer speed to 500 Mo/s per lane, so a 16x channel PCI Express 3.0 could deliver up to 8 GB/s. In order to think of the growing requirement of energy of our graphic cards, the new specification will allow 300-watt power supply while providing three-slot of dedicated space for giving enough room to install huge cooling system on those hot GPU.
PCI Express 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with PCI Express 2.0 as the connector will remain the same, only the electrical specifications should be different. The first motherboard to feature such PCIe 3.0 slot should hit the market in H2 2010.

It is via its official blog that Intel decided to answer criticisms about its delay in releasing USB 3.0 host controller specifications.
As we mentioned it previously, the USB 3.0 specification is defined by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group (including HP, Intel, MSFT, NEC, NXP, and TI). since November 2007, 180 USB 3.0 contributors, among them AMD and NVidia, have joined the USB 3.0 Promoter Group to help finalizing the USB 3.0 specification.
On its side, Intel is developing a host controller specification, something slightly different and conducted on Intel's initiative:

In parallel, but separately; Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology. Think of the host controller spec as a ‘Dummies Guide’ to building a USB 3.0 compatible piece of silicon; it is NOT the USB 3.0 specification itself. The industry is keen to get this guide as it will allow them to build USB 3.0 compatible circuits without repeating the massive investment undertaken by Intel.....
Intel plans to make this spec available early in second half of 2008 with a no-royalty licensing obligation (Basically: free, gratis, unpaid, zero dollars, free of charge, at no cost, on the house).

As a blog usually allows you to be rather sarcastic, when compared to official Press Release, for sure AMD and NVidia might not find Nick Knupffer's answer so appropriate. Nevertheless, according to his post, both USB 3.0 specification as well as controller spec should be available by mid-2008, so let's say during the summer. For sure, AMD and NVidia might not wait for so long to provide an answer.

Orange has finally updated its web pages on the iPhone
http://iphone.orange.fr/
It is possible to register to receive information of the arrival of the iPhone. However there is an annoying thing, it is absolutely necessary to agree to receive advertisement emails from the company (this is normal under these conditions) but also of its partners, which is at the limit of legality and will allow them to make an interesting data base that they will be able to resell.

We have just had confirmation. Orange will offer the purchase of a 3G iPhone to those already owning the first model.
We do not know the details yet of this offer, but it will be revealed at the time of the launch of the 3G iPhone in July.
Note: it will only be accessible to those who bought an iPhone at the full price. This offer will not be available for those who bought a discounted iPhone, well, at least not initially.

Optimized exclusively for Apple Mac® Pro systems, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC edition can help drive productivity with built-in 256-bit 512MB GDDR4 frame buffer memory and 320 stream processors to deliver maximum performance for graphics-intensive applications such as 3D modeling, animation and games. Users also can expand visual workspace using twin dual-link DVI ports to connect two 30” Apple Cinema HD displays®.
With a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of USD $219, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition is scheduled to be available late June at leading Mac retailers world-wide.

One can be fairly certain this card will find the way on The Apple Store eventually, both standalone and BTO. More detail of the card can be found here.
[Update]
OWC has the card on pre-order at USD $217.99. It is just shy away of the proposed MSRP. Let's hope that Apple Educational Store can bring us the card at a much lower cost.
[Update 2]
Oliver B. has provided Xlr8yourmac a review of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition. It appears that for non-gaming, the performance is stella; as for gaming, it trails the GeForce 8800 GT. Click the above review link for the details.

Apple Updates (June 12th 2008)

Xsan 1.4.2 Uninstaller
This uninstaller will remove Xsan from your computer. It will also remove the Xsan Admin application and documentation files.
Xsan 1.4.2 Filesystem Update
The Xsan 1.4.2 update addresses numerous issues related to overall reliability, usability and compatibility. .
Xsan 1.4.2 Admin Update
The Xsan 1.4.2 update addresses numerous issues related to overall reliability, usability and compatibility.

For more details on the above, click here.

iWork '08 Demo
Streamlined word processing, stunning presentations and now spreadsheets. Work wonders, without the work.

To learn more about Apple's iWork, click here.