The World's Most Powerful Desktop PC-Sized Supercomputer [Supercomputers]

Six NVIDIA GTX295 dual-GPU cards and one GTX275 single-GPU card add up to a 'massive 12TFLOPS of computing power,' and they fit into the Fastra II's desktop computer-sized case making it smaller and more powerful than the first Fastra supercomputer.
Coming out of the Vision Lab at the University of Antwerp, the FASTRA II is based on gaming hardware and designed with tomography, 'a technique used in medical scanners to create three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients,' in mind. The Vision Lab team began building the FASTRA and the FASTRA II because tomographical image reconstruction can take up to weeks on an ordinary computer, but in the end they produced this reasonably small 6000 Euro supercomputer. Not too shabby for something that was mainly intended to reduce their processing times.
[Gizmodo via Fastra(Kjoost)]

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Nvidia Fermi Next-Gen Graphics Architecture Has 512 Cores for Radioactively Melting Faces [Graphics Cards]

Fermi is Nvidia's new GPU architecture that's going to be the basis for all of its upcoming graphics cards. With 512 cores and 3 billion transistors, it will nuke Crysis.
The architecture really is a huge leap forward, according to people who've gone through it in-depth. Interestingly, the huge focus for Fermi is GPU computing. The first actual goods coming out using Fermi should be the GT300 series cards, which, besides the 512 cores sorted into 16 streaming processors with 32 cores each, uses a brand new GDDR5 memory setup.
PC Perspective has an epic write-up breaking down Fermi in detail that's worth a whirl, and of course Nvidia's got lots of fluff themselves all about Fermi. Strangely, they don't explain the name, which sounds like a sad little poodle. [Gizmodo via Nvidia, PC Perspective, Anandtech]

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Nvidia's Android Tablet: Okay, I Could Want This [Nvidia]

A rounded, plasticky take on the iPad. That's how Nvidia's latest Android tablet prototype struck me. It's pretty nice. But not as nice as the inside.

Inside this 8.9-inch tablet, you see, is Nvidia's Tegra 2, the heart of which is a dual core ARM Cortex A9—a chip that's a generation ahead of the silicon the iPad's A4 is based on—meaning this thing will zooooom. It's also got a gig of RAM (the iPad's biggest technical limitation now is its puny amount of RAM), two USB ports, and a front-facing camera.

Given that both of the units we handled were running just one app each—pretty snazzy looking games—it's hard to tell what it'll be like to use generally, like with the front-facing camera and how the widescreen aspect ratio feels outside of a game, but the games did feel and look great, as you'd expect from the kind of horsepower inside. I wish the screen, which is capacitive for multitouchness, wasn't quite as glossy as the iPad though. Oh well.

None of the devs who had one at their disposal knew when the tablet would actually be coming out, only that it would, one day. It's no Adam, but it's like actually here, almost.
[Gizmodo]

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Nvidia GF100 512-Core Monster Graphics Card Previewed: Goodbye, Eyeballs [Graphics Cards]

The curtain's been dropped on much of Nvidia's upcoming Fermi-based graphics cards, and the five-hundred-and-twelve-core GF100 looks like a behemoth, indeed. A completely overhauled architecture is all about three things: scalability, parallelism, and geometry. Oh, and ripping your eyeballs out.
Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, HotHardware and others go pretty deep on the new architecture, which is now eminently scalable. Here's the overall structure of the GF100, which should give you an idea of the scalability—the GF100 is made up of four graphics processing clusters (GPC), themselves composed of four streaming multiprocessors (which are made up of 32 CUDA cores and texture units) and a raster engine:

To go deeper on architecture, you're better off reading the 10-page reports from any of the sites linked above, but bottom line, Tom's Hardware is predicting something like double the performance of Nvidia's current GTX 285. Anandtech also points out that Nvidia's geometry performance only went 3x between the NV30 engine in the ancient GeForce FX 5800 and current GT200 in the GTX 280, but the Fermi-based GF100 has 8x the geometry performance of the GT200. The endgame being that ' it allows them to take the same assets from the same games as AMD and generate something that will look better. With more geometry power, NVIDIA can use tessellation and displacement mapping to generate more complex characters, objects, and scenery than AMD can at the same level of performance.'
There is a cost. Even though it's at the 40nm process, those 3 billion transistors are going to run hot, and the GF100 maybe the hottest single-card GPU ever. It's also not going to be cheap. At all.
[Gizmodo via Tom's Hardware, Anandtech]

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NVIDIA unveils the next generation Tegra processor

NVIDIA unveiled the next generation of its Tegra mobile processor at CES yesterday, promising to deliver tablets, smartbooks and smartphones with a blazing web browsing experience, HD video, Flash 10 support and multi-day battery life. Rather than go on and on, we will simply let the Tegra 250 specs speak for themselves:

• The world’s first dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU running up to 1GHz
• Eight independent processors to handle web browsing, HD video encode and decode and mobile 3D gaming
• 10x faster than the processors used in smartphones today, and up to 4x the performance of the previous generation Tegra processor
• Advanced TSMC 40nm process with active power management to provide amazing battery life (140 hours audio and over 16 hours of HD video playback) despite being always-on and always-connected
• Support for 3D touchscreen user interfaces
• Up to 1080p video encode/decode and support for HD Web streaming formats and complete HW accelerated HD multimedia engine for visually stunning movie playback
• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 acceleration for streaming video and 3D mobile games
• Resolutions ranging from four-to-eight times that of smartphones
• Form factors and screen sizes ranging from 5-15 inches

This second iteration of the Tegra mobile chipset is in the production stage with a development kit ready and waiting for eager programmers to build applications for this next generation in mobile computing. While you wait for those drool-worthy mobile devices to emerge, you can check out a 3D gaming demo showcasing the prowess of the Tegra 250 chipset. And oh yeah, remember that the video blow is from a mobile device, not an Xbox 360.



[BGR]

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Dell Alienware M11X Is Their First Ultraportable Gaming Netbook [Laptops]

Alienware no longer means 'bulky gaming PC.' Dell's new Alienware has an 11 inch display and looks like a netbook!

• 6 1/2 hours of battery life (battery mode)
• 2 hours of "intense gaming"
• that gaming mode will come courtesy of a faster NVIDIA GPU, which you can switch to in seconds and which does not require a restart or logging out
• Video out via DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA
• 3D mark scores in 6-7k range
• 50FPS Crysis, 30FPS Call of Duty on High Settings
• Under $1000 (later this year, we believe)
[Gizmodo]

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