AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough
Upcoming Kaveri processor will drink from shared-memory Holy Grail
AMD has released details on its implementation of The Next Big Thing in processor evolution, and in the process has unleashed the TNBT of acronyms: the AMD APU (CPU+GPU) HSA hUMA.
Before your eyes glaze over and you click away from this page, know that if this scheme is widely adopted, it could be of great benefit to both …
Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight
55,000 feet? Check. Break sound barrier? Check. Safe landing? Check
Finally. Sir Richard Branson's long-delayed commercial spaceliner, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, has successfully completed its first rocket-powered test flight.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on successful April 29, 2013 test flight
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during its first rocket-powered test flight (click to …
Combover King Donald Trump: 'I miss Steve Jobs'
Tim Cook wouldn't last long on All-Star Celebrity Apprentice
Never being a man to shy away from whatever current controversy might get his name into headlines*, the indefatigable Republican presidential candidate, Obama-baiting birther, and TV "personality" Donald Trump has weighed in on whether Apple should offer an iPhone with a larger display.
I have a lot of @apple stock--- and I …
Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'
Tabbed Finder windows, multiple display improvements, more
Apple's next version of OS X may provide welcome relief to users dismayed by the company's seemingly inexorable evolution from computer manufacturer to consumer-electronics company, if unnamed sources speaking to 9to5Mac are to believed.
According to those sources, OS X 10.9 – oddly codenamed "Cabernet"* in the closely guarded …
AMD posts mediocre numbers, cites 'difficult market environment'
Updated Not so bad, not so good, restructuring 'largely completed'
AMD released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2013, which bracketed the Wall Street moneymen's predictions with revenues a tad higher than forecast and the all-important earnings per share (EPS) a tad lower.*
For the quarter, AMD's EPS number came in at negative $0.19 on revenues of $1.09bn, the …
Internet Explorer makes modest gains against Google Chrome
According to the stat counters at StatCounter, that is
The browser world war, which appeared to have already been handily won by Google Chrome, is heating up again – well, "warming up" might be more accurate – with Microsoft's Internet Explorer having reversed some of its long, relatively steady decline.
A mere two years ago, Internet Explorer was the undisputed king of the browser …
ExxonMobil's oil spill rids neighborhood of 'venomous snakes'
There's a silver spin lining to every disaster
On March 29, ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline – built in the late 1940s – ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, sending at least a million liters of Canadian crude oil and water into a residential neighborhood. That's the bad news.
The good news? According to an ExxonMobil update, that crude cockup is channeling Saint Patrick, ridding …
Four Apple execs among US top five best-paid in 2012
And no, Tim Cook wasn't one of them – he earned a mere 3.2 'Ballmers'
Four the top five highest-paid executives in the S&P 500 last fiscal year were Apple senior managers – and CEO Tim Cook was not among them.
According to a Bloomberg report on Monday, Apple's board of directors are apparently quite eager to keep their top team members happy – and, more importantly, to keep them from straying off …
Dubai splurges on 700hp, 217mph Lamborghini police cruiser
Pix There's nothing quite like obscene amounts of oil revenues
The Dubai police force can expect a flood of applications to its cadet academy now that it has added a 217mph Lamborghini Aventador to its cruiser fleet.
How much did it set back Dubai's Finest to get their hands on this stylish bit of four-wheeled extravagance? It depends upon whom you believe: Sky News puts the price at £250, …
Netbooks projected to become EXTINCT by 2015
Farewell, underpowered li'l fellows, we hardly knew ye
Proving yet again that fame and fortune are fleeting – even for computer hardware – the analysts at IHS are projecting that the netbook, the New Hotness just a few short years ago, will disappear completely by 2015.
"Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually," IHS writes in an email release …
BlackBerry slams Z10 returns report as 'false and misleading'
Seeks investigations by US and Canadian securities agencies
BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins has fired back at an article in The Wall Street Journal which cites a report that returns of the Z10 are outnumbering sales – and that report was just the latest bad news for the beleaguered smartphone manufacturer.
"Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and …
Judge scolds Apple, Motorola for using court as 'business strategy'
Fed up with 'obstreperous and cantankerous conduct'
The judge responsible for the painfully complex patent litigation between Apple and Motorola Mobility has had it up to here with the legal machinations of the two companies, and has denied a request to step in and whittle the case down to a manageable size.
"Most parties that come before the Court are trying to resolve their …
Intel demos inexpensive 100Gb/sec silicon photonics chip
Breakthrough will speed system-to-system data center links
Intel has demoed what it says it "believes" is the world's only silicon photonics module that uses a hybrid silicon laser – a breakthrough that should allow such advances as vastly improved system-to-system interconnects in the data center.
The demo of the 100Gb/sec module was presented via a video during Intel CTO Justin …
Google: 'Austin is our next Fiber city.' AT&T: 'Us, too – maybe'
Big Phone horns in on Googly gigabit internet announcement
Google has officially announced what had already become an open secret: that Austin, Texas, will be its next "Google Fiber" city, where the online ad peddler will offer gigabit internet connections to homes and institutions. Soon after Google's announcement, AT&T chimed in with a copycat communiqué – albeit one with caveats. …
News Corp prez threatens to pull Fox TV off the air
Updated Miffed at court's refusal to block Aereo streaming service
In response to a New York appeals court ruling that upheld the right of media mogul Barry Diller's fledgling Aereo streaming service to continue to provide its subscribers with broadcast television content, News Corp.'s president and COO Chase Carey says he might turn Fox television into a subscription-only cable service.
"If we …
Climate change set to bumpify transatlantic flights, say researchers
Flights across the pond won't be pleasant mid-century
Rising sea levels, droughts, torrential downpours, "superstorms" – climate change has been blamed for a flood [Ahem...—Ed.] of calamities, but new research shows that an even worse global warming–induced fate might soon befall us all: an inflight glass of wine spilling onto our lap when our airliner encounters increased …
USPTO backs down on iPad mini trademark objections
'The examining attorney apologizes for any inconvenience caused'
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has withdrawn its primary objections to Apple's trademark filing for the term "iPad mini" – but Cupertino is not completely off the hook quite yet.
"Upon further review of the application, the examining attorney has determined that the following refusals issued in the initial Office …
Apple handed victory in Samsung text-selection patent case
Full ITC panel to decide in August if Sammy's kit should be banned
The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has handed Apple a preliminary victory in one of its many disputes with Samsung, ruling that the Korean electronics giant did, indeed, infringe upon a patent relating to text selection.
The patent in question, RE41,922, is entitled "Method and apparatus for providing translucent …
Android's US market share continues to slip
Don't look now, Andy, but the iPhone is gaining on you
Apple may be taking its lumps these days – what with a falling share price, pesky activist investors, troubles in China, and the like – but there's one important area in which Cupertino is steadily gaining ground: US smartphone sales.
For the past 100 months, the stat-happy analysts at comScore have been tracking mobile-device …
60-inch Apple iTV to be controlled by iRing remote?
You'll be able to buy it this year, fanbois, if analyst is correct
You may have had it up to here with reports that Apple is juuust about to release a full-on big-screen television – such rumors have been clogging the interturbes since at least 2009 – but the most recent one has a wrinkle that you, dear Reg reader, might find of interest: you'll wear its remote on your finger.
So wrote analyst …
Steve Jobs' 'spaceship' threatened by massive cost overruns
Comment Will shareholders balk at $5bn price tag? Stay tuned...
It appears that the late Steve Jobs' dream of new "spaceship" Apple headquarters is going to cost far more than the $3bn originally planned – that is, if it gets built at all.
That price tag has ballooned to $5bn, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing "five people close to the project who were not authorized to speak on the …
Obama seeks $100m to unlock your BRAIN's secrets
Forward-thinking investment or government boondoggle? We report, you decide
The Obama administration has announced a major new effort to study what the president referred to as "the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."
BRAIN Initiative infographic
Details of the White House's 'Grand Challenge'
(click to enlarge – substantially)
The private-public partnership, …
China to Apple: 'Apology accepted – but watch your step'
Mission accomplished, attack dogs called off
Proving that state-controlled media can turn on a dime when they see it to their advantage, the Chinese tabloid Global Times, a subsidiary of the Communist Party of China's People's Daily, has praised Apple CEO Tim Cook's open letter, issued Monday, in which he offered his "sincere apologies" for Apple's customer-service …
Tim Cook eats necessary crow, apologizes to China
Comment State media: Apple 'greedy' and 'incomparably arrogant'
Apple CEO Tim Cook has released an open apology to his company's Chinese customers after coming under increasing pressure from that government's propaganda machine's attacks on Cupertino's customer-service practices.
In a letter published on Apple's Chinese website (Google Translate) – and which some of The Reg's Chinese- …
Apple denied trademark protection for 'iPad mini'
Kindly – if dim – reviewer offers advice on application revision
The US Patent and Trademark Office has denied Apple's request to trademark the term "iPad mini" – but there's good reason to assume that Cupertino will overturn the decision on appeal.
The central reason for the denial is rather straightforward: that "mini" is merely identifies the original iPad's little brother as being, well, …
Jobs' first boss Nolan Bushnell: 'Steve was difficult but valuable'
'To most potential employers, he'd just seem like a jerk in bad clothing.'
Steve Jobs' first boss, Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell, has written a book in which he offers advice on how to find, hire, and retain visionary talent – even though such creative types can be as difficult to deal with as Apple's cofounder.
"The truth is that very few companies would hire Steve, even today," Bushnell writes. "Why …
Giant solar-powered aircraft to begin cross-country flight
Flyweight jumbo to soar from Silicon Valley to New York City at 70km/h, tops
The photovoltaics-powered Solar Impulse HB-SIA aircraft has arrived at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley's Moffett Field to prepare for a flight across the US.
After it has been offloaded in pieces from its Boeing 747-100 transporter, the Swiss-made HB-SIA will be reassembled in a Moffett Field hanger, then embark …
Google Street View releases devastated Fukushima town tour
Pix A trifecta of troubles: earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear cockup
Google has released Street View images of the unfortunate town of Namie-machi, Japan, which was devastated by the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the tsunami it caused, then rendered uninhabitable by the Fukushima Daichi nuclear cockup.
"Two years have passed since the disaster," the town's mayor Tamotsu Baba writes on the …
Apple files patent for iPhone with wraparound display
'Twould be a sad day for smartphone case designers
Apple, whose iPhone has been criticized for having a display that's relatively small when compared with smartphones such as the Samsung S4 and HTC One, has filed a patent application that proposes a novel solution: a display that wraps around the entire handset.
Well, not "wraps around," per se, but rather "wraps within." Patent …
Experts agree: Your next car will be smarter than you
Feature Google's dream car? Nope. Head-up displays, parking-spot search, 'platoons', and more
Forget Google's self-driving car – for a few years, at least. Today's real action in the computer-meets-car arena is in the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), as was made abundantly clear at last week's GPU Technology Conference.
"We're not going to find ourselves driving in an autonomous car tomorrow," …
Nanowires boost photovoltaics sunlight capture by 15X
Fifty-year-old theoretical solar power limit shattered
A team of European researchers has discovered that a single nanowire can concentrate the amount of solar energy delivered to a photovoltaic cell by a factor of up to 15, a breakthrough that could improve the efficiency of electricity-producing solar cells.
"Due to some unique physical light absorption properties of nanowires, …
Movie, TV ads annoying? You ain't seen nothin' yet
GTC 2013 'Don't want to watch ads? Then we'll slip 'em into the show, just for you!'
Digital-content producers, distributors, broadcasters, and advertising firms are developing new strategies about how to monetize movies and TV shows in a world in which consumers want their content for free, skip past ads on their DVRs, and despite high-profile efforts to stop them, still find piracy an attractive option.
"There …
FCC Chairman Genachowski to step down
Why? He didn't say – yet
Julius Genachowski, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, announced at a Friday-morning meeting that he will step down from his position as referee in a number of ongoing telecommunication battles, one of the hottest being internet control versus internet freedom.
"I called this all-hands meeting of FCC employees …
Nvidia and ARM: It's a parallel, parallel, parallel world
GTC 2013 Big changes coming to the CUDA programming model
Nvidia envisions a future in which ARM processors and the GPU-maker's CUDA parallel-computing platform and programming model will work together in perfect harmony, and the company has a raft of planned CUDA enhancements to not only make that coexistence seamless, but to enhance that programming environment for discrete GPUs, as …
Nvidia's 2015 Tegra ARM chip promises '100X' speed-up
GTC 2013 First 'Logan' marries CUDA, then 'Parker' moves to 64-bit Denver
Nvidia has fleshed out details about its next Tegra mobile processor, code-named Logan, and revealed that its long-running 64-bit ARM "Project Denver" effort will yield its first fruit from Logan's follow-on, code-named Parker.
"Logan has something we've been dying to bring to the world for so long," Nvidia cofounder, president …
4K video may wow vidiots, but content creators see pitfalls
GTC 2013 Skyrockets studio storage costs, strangles editing bandwidth
Don't expect ultra-high-resolution 4K video to be broadcast onto your living room wall anytime soon. According to the people responsible to building the equipment that can capture, edit, and encode 4K, there are a number of hurdles to overcome – not the least being storage requirements on the production side.
Sure, 4K displays …
BlackBerry CEO: iPhone past its prime
Aging user interface deserves 'respect' – just like your granddaddy
From BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins' point of view, Apple's iPhone is growing rather long in the tooth.
"The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about, is now five years old," Heins told The Australian Financial Review.
Not that Heins has no respect for the iPhone – it's more that …
Global warming fingered as Superstorm Sandy supersizer
Climatoboffins ponder 'freak of nature' v climate change cockup
In a caveat-laden article in the current edition of the journal Oceanography, a trio of researchers from Rutgers and Cornell Universities argue that it's an even-money bet whether last October's "Superstorm Sandy" was caused – or at least exacerbated – by disappearing summertime Arctic sea ice.
"With the increasing frequency of …
Samsung's new Galaxy S 4: iPhone assassin or Android also-ran?
Software distinguishes 'a life companion for richer, simpler life'
After weeks of hypegasmic drum-beating at a level unusual for the South Korean consumer-electronics giant, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S 4 at an embarassingly over-the-top, show-biz–infused gala on Thursday evening.
Held in New York City, the extravaganza overshadowed the fact that the Galaxy S 4 appears to be a fine Android …
Apple's marketing honcho Schiller attacks Android, Samsung
Iffy data right before Galaxy S IV intro? What a coincidence...
When a company says that it's not worried about a competitor, it's a safe bet that it's worried about a competitor. And when that company is the notoriously close-mouthed Apple and its competitor, Samsung, is about to release a new version of its successful Galaxy S smartphone, you can double-down on that bet.
"At Apple we know …
AMD releases new 'Elite' laptop chips
'Richland' APUs a step above last year's 'Trinity' – but not a giant step
AMD has released its latest A-Series laptop chips, codenamed "Richland" and replacing the "Trinity" chips released last spring.
Is it a giant leap from Trinity to Richland? Well, no, but the new chips are clearly a step forward – if, in some cases, only incrementally.
Before we dig into Richland's upgrades, a refresher course …
Enormo-display Apple iPhone prototype surfaces
'You call that a big-screen phone? This is a big-screen phone!'
For you iPhone users who drool over the large displays of such Android handsets as ZTE's 5.7-inch Grand Memo or Samsung's 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II, cast your eyes on what could have been:
Early iPhone prototype
The iPhone that could have kept RS-232 relevant for another decade (source: Ars Technica; click to enlarge)
The …
New Apple TV may hint at Apple-Samsung divorce
One shrinking chip may have growing implications
The latest iteration of the Apple TV – that "hobby" project first of Steve Jobs then later Tim Cook – includes a downsized A5 processor that may hint at progress in Cupertino's ongoing effort to distance itself from rival Samsung.
Or not.
On Sunday, MacRumors reported that they had popped open one of the new Apple TVs that were …
Google Glass to recognize you by your FASHION SENSE
'I'm not staring at your butt, my spatiogram analysis system is'
The überhyped Google Glass augmented-reality specs will take a step beyond mere facial recognition technology, and recognize you not only by your features, but by what you're wearing.
The technology to be incorporated into Google's geeky goggles is called InSight, and was developed by Srihari Nelakuditi of the University of …
Apple ordered to surrender coveted docs in iOS privacy lawsuit
'We no longer trust you,' says court
A US magistrate has ordered Apple to show in great detail how it goes about searching for documents it has been ordered to provide to plaintiffs in an ongoing personal information–slurping lawsuit, noting that he no longer trusts Cupertino's efforts to be on the up-and-up.
"Luckily for Plaintiffs, Apple has provided more than …
'We the People' seek to double NASA budget – at least
Is 1% of the total US budget too much to spend on space?
Calling all space fans: point your browser to the Obama White House's "We the People" petition website and sign onto an effort to ensure that NASA is funded to at least 1 per cent of the US annual budget.
"NASA advances our nation when well-funded;" the petition argues, "by guaranteeing that no less than 1 per cent of federal …
Intel, Apple forging chip-baking deal?
Analysis Will Intel eat ARM crow? Will Apple wound Samsung? Stay tuned...
Rumors are again swirling that Apple and Intel are in discussions about Chipzilla baking the chips Cupertino uses to power its iDevices.
"A source close to one of the companies says Intel and Apple executives have discussed the issue in the past year but no agreement has been reached," Reuters reported on Thursday.
This isn't …
ZTE to build smartphones with Intel's new 'Clover Trail+' Atom
'First we conquer Austria, then the world'
Chinese handset-maker ZTE has announced a "strategic collaboration" with Intel with the goal of creating a phone built around Chipzilla's new Atom Z2580 processor.
"The collaboration with Intel is an important part of ZTE's strategy for product development," the company wrote in its announcement, "both in terms of time-to-market …
iPhone 5S and lower-cost sibling coming this summer?
Faster processor, better camera, fingerprint sensor, same display size – maybe
The next iteration of the iPhone – likely called the iPhone 5S, according to rumor-mongers – will be released this summer and will include a fingerprint sensor, improved camera, and more-powerful processor. It will also be joined by a lower-cost, less spiffy sibling.
That's the take-away from a pair of reports on Tuesday, one …
US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas
Updated 'Increased heart rate and respiration' pollutes Washington
A Washington state representative has uncovered a previously under-reported source of greenhouse gas: huffing and puffing cyclists.
Ed Orcutt, who lists "Tax relief" at the top of his legislative priorities and who was 2000's Washington Young Republican Federation Man of the Year, emailed the owner of a Tacoma, Washington, bike …
