Ferra Tech

AMD FX-8150 is Coming Now

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:28:00 +0000

AMD FX-8150 is Coming Now - AMD is kick starting the new FX lineup with seven processors, including 8-, 6- and 4-core models. The flagship processor is the FX-8150, which features a base frequency of 3.6GHz with a Turbo Core clock of 3.9GHz and a Max Turbo speed of 4.2GHz. Before delving any deeper, let us explain what the Turbo Core and Max Turbo frequencies mean.

AMD's Turbo Core technology has been enhanced for FX processors to include a new mode that boosts all Cores when there's enough thermal headroom. This allows new highly threaded scenarios to take advantage of the extra frequency. AMD Power Manager inside the CPU monitors the processor states as seen below.

The Max Turbo mode is activated on lightly threaded applications by increasing frequency on half the cores. AMD has enhanced the highest clock level of its Turbo Core Technology to remain in a higher frequency state than in previous AMD Phenom II Processors. The result is better performance in single and lightly threaded applications.

Turbo Core and Max Turbo are present on all core configurations (again, the FX series is comprised of 8-, 6- and 4-core chips). The 3.6GHz FX-8150 carries 8-cores, has a 125-watt TDP, and an 8MB L2 + 8MB L3 cache, which is standard across all 8-core FX parts. The flagship octo-core processor is accompanied by the 3.1GHz FX-8120 and 2.8GHz FX-8100.

AMD has set the FX-8150's MSRP at $245, which is only slightly more than the Core i5-2500K's asking price, while it is considerably lower than the Core i7-2600K. The FX-8120 is even more affordable than the i5-2500K at $205.

Along with the three 8-core processors, AMD has launched a single 6-core chip known as the FX-6100, which comes clocked at 3.3GHz with a Turbo Core frequency of 3.6GHz and a Max Turbo of 3.9GHz. While the L3 cache remains the same at 8MB, the L2 cache has been reduced to 6MB, as 1MB is allocated per core. The FX-6100 is only $175, which seems like an incredible bargain considering the Phenom II X6 1100T is currently $190.

Lastly, there are three 4-core models: the FX-4170, FX-B4150 and FX-4100. All of the quad-core CPUs have 4MB L2 cache with 8MB L3 cache. The FX-4170 is the highest clocked Bulldozer chip with a standard frequency of 4.2GHz, however, Turbo Core is disabled and the Max Turbo frequency is just 100MHz above the base clock.

Salt Can Increase Hard Drive Capacity

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:55:00 +0000

Salt Can Increase Hard Drive Capacity - Researchers in Singapore have discovered a way to increase hard drive capacity by as much as six times the current limit using sodium chloride, otherwise known as table salt. Joel Yang from Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) is credited with the finding.

Wired.co.uk describes the process of how a current hard drive works. The spinning magnetic platters are covered with randomly dispersed nanoscopic grains that work in clumps of 10 to form one bit. Yang’s idea is to get rid of the random clumps and instead make slightly larger grains in a regular pattern that each store one bit.

"It's like packing your clothes in your suitcase when you travel," a spokesperson for IMRE said. "The neater you pack them the more you can carry."

Yang discovered that when he added sodium chloride to the developer solution, he could produce nanostructures with a much higher resolution. These nanostructures are produced by an e-beam lithography process on the platter.

The higher resolution structures allow for much more data to be stored per square inch. A typical current-generation hard drive can hold up to 500GB of data per square inch. This new method has been demoed at 1.9TB per square inch. Moving forward, capacities of up to 3.3TB per square inch are possible.

The discovery could be significant but one must wonder if it will have much relevance as flash memory slowly overtakes the storage industry. Solid state drives are significantly faster than traditional spinning hard drives but capacity and pricing still remain an issue for most.

5 Ways to Make Your Computer Faster

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:14:00 +0000

5 Ways to Make Your Computer Faster - There are times when your computer could perform slower than normal, while there are times you could just get frustrated and pissed off. Slow computer performance can also alter your productivity output and leave you performing lesser than you would on a normal day.

Your computer isn’t running at the same speed it was when you got it new because a lot of changes have happened between that space of time and now. The more applications, files and folders and even the new documents you create everyday have their impact in making your computer running slow. Following are some ways to quickly recover the normal speed of your computer.

Remove Spyware and Protect your Computer against Viruses

The first thing you should diagnose your slow computer for is virus infection. Viruses can come into your computer so far there is a contact between your computer and other computers – this can also be through the internet.

To battle virus infection, you must have a reliable antivirus program installed on your computer. This antivirus program must be kept up to date, regularly. The most important thing in having an antivirus program is keeping it updated regularly. With my computer which I use for my blog that talks about discounts for weight watchers and bistro md coupon, I have made it a point of duty to see that my antivirus program is of the latest version and I don’t miss an update.

Make access to data easy for your computer

When accessing data on your computer’s hard disk becomes difficult for your system it will result in your computer performing slow. The data on your computer’s hard drive may become cluttered and result in causing your computer to become slow in performance.

In essence, your data are getting cluttered because your hard disk is fragmenting them. To make accessing data on your computer’s hard drive easy for your computer you’ll have to run disk defragmenter on your system regularly. If you use your computer every day, you should defragment your hard disk once every week.

Free up disk space

Another thing you should do to make your computer perform faster is to free up disk space. Over time, you must have saved a lot of files on your hard drive and if you do not remove the ones that are no-longer useful to you, your system will continue to perform slowly.

Start sorting out the important files on your computer from the files you no longer need. Keep you important documents in specified folders to save them from mixing up with old and unused files so that you can easily remove the ones you no longer need from your computer.

Clear up Temporary Internet Files

Temporary internet files are, perhaps, the major elements that contribute to your computer being slow in performance. Clear the temporary internet files your web browsers must have saved on your computer’s hard disk to save more disk space.

You can also limit the amount of your hard disk space your cache will be using to a very minimal amount. This will eradicate every possibility of your temporary internet files taking up too much of your hard disk space. As you can see in the image below, I limit the amount of space my internet cache will be using to 1024MB or 1gb which is still far from the 175MB my cache has used.

One Smart Phone With Two Personalities

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:35:00 +0000

One Smart Phone With Two Personalities - AT&T, the second largest wireless carrier in the U.S., and Qualcomm, which dominates the market for smart-phone processors, want to give your phone a split identity. The companies are separately adopting technology that can make a smart phone secure enough to keep IT bosses happy, but open enough to allow its owner to install apps or surf the Web.

AT&T will release its version of the technology, called Toggle, for Android phones this year. Someone using a device with Toggle installed taps the home button twice to flip between personal and work modes. The personal mode behaves like a regular phone and is fully under the user's control. The work mode looks like a separate phone with its own desktop and suite of apps and is secured by a password. Its functionality is constrained by a company's IT policy; all data stored or created under the work mode, whether e-mail, contacts, or Web downloads, is encrypted and can be remotely wiped if a phone is lost or stolen.

"People want to use their own smart phones and tablets for work, but that practice can create major headaches for businesses' IT departments," says Chris Hill, part of AT&T's Advanced Mobility Solutions group. "Toggle helps resolve the issue in a simple, affordable manner."

The smart phone boom triggered by Apple's iPhone has caused a sharp increase in the number of people using personal mobile gadgets at work, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD. Newer devices made the standard-issue corporate BlackBerry look clunky, and come with apps that can aid productivity.

AT&T's Toggle is a rebranding of technology developed by Enterproid, a startup based in New York, which launched the technology in a closed beta trial earlier this year. Enterproid is also continuing to develop its own product, says cofounder Alexander Trewby. Android users can sign up to use Enterproid, which is currently free.

Trewby and colleagues are also working with chipmaker Qualcomm, which has made changes to forthcoming phone and tablet processor designs to better support Enterproid's approach. "We will be integrated with their Snapdragon line of processors so we can store the encryption keys that secure our data in the silicon," explains Trewby. That addresses a vulnerability where data could be stolen from a phone in work mode if an attacker gained root access to a phone and extracted Enterproid or Toggle encryption keys that are currently stored in the phone's memory. Storing those keys in a device's processor instead makes such an attack much more difficult, says Trewby, who notes it is even enough to satisfy military organizations.

Smart-Phone App Tracks Heart Rate

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:21:00 +0000

Smart-Phone App Tracks Heart Rate - A new smart-phone app can take your pulse and measure your breathing simply by detecting subtle changes in skin color. All you need to do is hold an index finger over a smart phone's video camera for a few minutes.

Earlier this year, researchers from MIT's Media Lab showed that a computer could reliably measure heart rate using just a mirror and a webcam. The new app was created by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute seeking to create smart-phone applications that can record basic health information without the need for external sensors, which can be expensive and unwieldy.

When the researchers compared the app with more standard tools for measuring heart and respiratory rates, such as the electrocardiograph and the pulse oximeter, the readings were almost identical. The results will be published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering later this fall.

Ki Chon, a biomedical engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the lead researcher on the study, envisions the technology helping the elderly monitor their vital signs at home or in assisted living facilities. "The app seems to work on the earlobe, too, so the phone could even measure heart rate as people talk on the phone," he says.

Chon and his colleagues are also collaborating with clinicians at UMass Memorial Medical Center, using the app to monitor patients with atrial fibrillation, a relatively common abnormal heart rhythm that increases a person's risk of stroke. They're starting with patients who have already been diagnosed with the disorder, but David McManus, the lead clinician involved, says that the app may also help identify it, particularly in people who experience problems only periodically.

Instead of waiting for symptoms to appear again, patients could use the app to keep a daily record of their heart rhythm, which they could either send to their doctor or bring to their next appointment. "This could be a tremendously powerful tool for monitoring arrhythmia," McManus says. "There's no added hardware, and it makes use of a device that a lot of folks have."

The tricky part for Chon and his team will be getting the app to work on different types of smart phones. The app relies on a combination of green light emitted by the video camera and white light from the flash, and these components vary slightly from phone to phone. Their proof-of-concept study was done on a Motorola Droid. The researchers plan to do more testing before making the app available for download. They're also testing a smart phone's ability to measure blood loss, which could help patients and even ambulance crews in emergencies.

New Google Smart Phone Recognizes Your Face

noreply@blogger.com (Ferra Tech) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:06:00 +0000

New Google Smart Phone Recognizes Your Face - In Hong Kong today, Google and Samsung introduced a new smart phone and operating system that could represent a potential rival for Apple's new iPhone 4S.

Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, which will go on sale next month, will be the most advanced smart phone from the Korean giant. It will also be the first phone to run Google's latest operating system, Android 4.0, also known as "Ice Cream Sandwich," following alphabetically from the earlier Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

The hardware includes a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor, a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display at 1280 by 720 resolution, a five-megapixel camera, HD 1080-pixel video, with one gigabyte of RAM and 16 gigabytes or 32 gigabytes internal memory. Depending on the region, it will support LTE or HSPA+, two 4G mobile communications standards. It has Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, as well as near field communication for payments and data sharing.

As for Android 4.0, rather a lot has been done to enhance the operating system. Google's Android director of user experience, Matias Duarte, showed off some of the new features. He began with the design of the new typeface, called Roboto. This is a sans-serif font that was specifically designed for small screens and to make it easier for the user to read text.

One of the most talked about features of Apple's iPhone 4S is the voice-operated personal assistant, Siri. At the Hong Kong event, Duarte demonstrated text-to-type by talking into the Galaxy Nexus to send a text message: "Hey, man. I'd love to talk right now, but I'm a little bit busy. I'll catch up with you later period, smiley-face," with which the sentence ended with just that: a period and then a smiley face. The crowd of journalists gave him an ovation for that.

His attempt to show that Face Unlock, which is supposed to unlock the phone when it recognizes the user's face, did not fare quite so well. His partner tried to unlock the phone but failed, which is what was expected. When Duarte then put his face up to the camera, it still did not recognize him. He put that down to the "bright makeup" he needed for the event.