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Archive for Hardware
 

University research dollars poured into developing a Holodeck

February 12, 2013 Alan Hardware, Science & Space, Software No comments It may seem like this would be an early April Fool’s joke, but the image above shows serious research in action. [Ben Lang] recently had the chance to interview the director of a program that wants to make the Holodeck a reality. The core goal of the research — called Project Holodeck — is to develop an affordable multi-player virtual reality experience outside of the laboratory. We’ve heard speculation that Sony and Microsoft will release their next-gen systems in 2013; we’d rather wait for this to hit the market.

[Nathan Burba] is the director of the program. It’s part of the University of Southern California Games Institute and brings together students of Interactive Media, Cinema Arts, and Engineering. The hardware worn by each player is shown off at the beginning of the video after the break. Most of the components are commercially available (a Lenovo laptop worn in the backpack, PlayStation controllers, etc.) but the stereoscopic display which gives each eye its own 90-degree view was developed specifically for the project.

After seeing the in-game rendered footage we can’t help but think of playing some Minecraft with this equipment. We just need some type of omni-directional treadmill because our living room floor space is very limited.

via University research dollars poured into developing a Holodeck.


SGI and NASA ready most powerful Linux computer ever

August 27, 2007 Alan Hardware, Linux/Unix No comments

Kinda old, but forgot to post it. Now this is a Linux machine I really drool over.

NASA has selected an SGI Altix supercomputer to help it meet future high-performance computing requirements. The new system will be the first supercomputer to operate 2,048 processor cores and 4TB of memory under control of one Linux kernel, creating the world’s largest single-kernel Linux system, NASA and SGI announced this week.

Driven by 1,024 Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors, the new system will generate 13.1 TFLOPs (Teraflops, or trillions of calculations per second) of compute power. Based hundreds of computer “blades” that each sport a pair of dual-core processors, the system provides an extremely high density of compute power per square foot, enabling NASA to pack more computing power into its supercomputing center. NASA also acquired an ultra-dense 240TB SGI InfiniteStorage 10000 system to efficiently handle the massive data storage requirements.


Hitachi’s Terabyte HD

August 19, 2007 Alan Hardware, Tech & Net News No comments

Maybe not precisely a TB, but close enough.. I still want one!

IMAGINE ONE THOUSAND thousand thousand thousand bytes. A terabyte, if you will. But more than just that—a milestone in storage capacity that hard drive manufacturers have been chasing for years. After more than a decade of living in a world of gigabytes, the bar has finally been raised by Hitachi’s terabyte-capacity Deskstar 7K1000.

Being first to the terabyte mark gives Hitachi bragging rights, and more importantly, the ability to offer single-drive storage capacity 33% greater than that of its competitors. Hitachi isn’t banking on capacity alone, though. The 7K1000 is also outfitted with a whopping 32MB of cache—double what you get with other 3.5″ hard drives. Couple that extra cache with 200GB platters that have the highest areal density of any drive on the market, and the 7K1000’s performance could impress as much as its capacity.

Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive – The Tech Report – Page 1

Simulated Parallel Earth

July 3, 2007 Alan Hardware, Tech & Net News No comments

Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale | The Register

Comcast reveal Superfast Modem

May 15, 2007 Alan Hardware, Tech & Net News No comments

LAS VEGAS – Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today’s standard cable modems.

The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network already is capable of providing 100 mbps, and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.

The technology, called -DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry’s research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity. The lab said last month it expected manufacturers to begin submitting modems for certification by year’s end.

Rocky Mountain News – Comcast modem faster than a runaway train

IBM Uses Self-Assembling Material in Chip Advance

May 6, 2007 Alan Hardware, Tech & Net News No comments

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—IBM has developed a way to make microchips run up to one-third faster or use 15 percent less power by using an exotic material that “self-assembles” in a similar way to a seashell or snowflake.

The computer services and technology company said the new process allows the wiring on a chip to be insulated with vacuum, replacing the glass-like substances used for decades but which have become less effective as chips steadily shrink.

It is the latest achievement for IBM researchers, who have announced a number of advances in recent months allowing chips to get smaller despite challenges posed by physical laws at those tiny dimensions.

“This is one of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve seen in the last decade,” said John Kelly, International Business Machines Corp.’s senior vice president of technology and intellectual property.

“The holy grail of insulators is to use vacuum … and we’ve broken the code on how to do this,” Kelly said.

The technique works by coating a silicon wafer with a layer of a special polymer that when baked, naturally forms trillions of uniformly tiny holes just 20 nanometers, or millionth of a millimeter, across.

The resulting pattern is used to create the copper wiring on top of a chip and the insulating gaps that let electricity flow smoothly. A similar process is seen in nature during the formation of snowflakes, tooth enamel and seashells, IBM said.


New Toys Read Brain Waves

May 2, 2007 Alan Gaming, Hardware, Tech & Net News No comments

Technology from NeuroSky and other startups could make video games more mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but their thoughts.

Adding biofeedback to “Tiger Woods PGA Tour,” for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put. In the popular action game “Grand Theft Auto,” players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.

NeuroSky’s prototype measures a person’s baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.

The technology is similar to more sensitive, expensive equipment that athletes use to achieve peak performance. Koo Hyoung Lee, a NeuroSky co-founder from South Korea, used biofeedback to improve concentration and relaxation techniques for members of his country’s Olympic archery team.

“Most physical games are really mental games,” said Lee, also chief technology officer at San Jose-based NeuroSky, a 12-employee company founded in 1999. “You must maintain attention at very high levels to succeed. This technology makes toys and video games more lifelike.”

Boosters say toys with even the most basic brain wave-reading technology — scheduled to debut later this year — could boost mental focus and help kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and mood disorders.

The basis of many brain wave-reading games is electroencephalography, or EEG, the measurement of the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp. EEG has been a mainstay of psychiatry for decades.

An EEG headset in a research hospital may have 100 or more electrodes that attach to the scalp with a conductive gel. It could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

But the price and size of EEG hardware is shrinking. NeuroSky’s “dry-active” sensors don’t require gel, are the size of a thumbnail, and could be put into a headset that retails for as little as $20, said NeuroSky CEO Stanley Yang.

Discovery Channel :: News – Animals :: New Toys Read Brain Waves
