Posts Tagged chip

Getting more and more excited for AMD’s Fusion APU’s in 2011

Nov 28

Posted by admin in Technology | No Comments

I’ve been putting off upgrading my laptop for 2 years now in anticipation of the new line of Fusion APU’s from AMD to be released in 2011. While Intel may have won my heart in the desktop market, pioneering one of the most important advances in transitors since their invention decades ago AMD is positioned to win my heart in the mobile market by boldly combining the CPU and the GPU into one of the most beautiful love childs this industry has seen. Keep in mind we aren’t talking about an integrated graphics solution such as Intels abysmal GMA series, we are talking about about the culmination of ATI’s merger with AMD to create a whole new kind of processing unit, a hybrid of the two (if you don’t have nerd chills yet you should probably see a doctor). To put it in perspective, think of fitting Nvidia’s Ion 2 graphic core into Intel’s dual core Atom die, while using less silicon and shrinking the package size

What we are seeing out of testing is performance comparable to dual core intel chips, much much higher 3D performance with power consumption dropping by up to 40%.. What can you do with a 40% increase in your battery life? Pretty damn exciting isn’t it?

I must say that after the revelation of Intel’s abhorrent business practices in connection with dell showing how intel is basically using their size to ensure AMD never has a fair competitive advantage in the market I am hoping with all my heart that AMD just takes intel to the fucking cleaners on this and starts to mop the floor with them in the netbook and notebook market. I for one will be out there supporting this beautiful piece of innovation. It almost makes me excited to know that these fusion APU’s will be powering the next generation of apple products, almost but not quite enough to get me over the feeling that putting these chips in macs soils them in the most disgusting and repulsive of ways. But whatever, if it helps them get a foot hold so be it, and seeing as they’ve released open source drivers already for us Linux geeks I’m tickled pink!

Some great articles I’ve read recently that will fill you in on all the juicy(and technical) details of the beautiful birthing that is about to take place.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-fusion-brazos-zacate,2786.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion

http://gigaom.com/apple/amd-fusion-processors-coming-to-future-apple-computers/

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15484

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/11/23/amds-llano-has-breakthrough/

Tags: amd, apple, apu, ati, chip, fusion, mac, netbook, power

Another step taken towards creating a synthetic brain

Mar 25

Posted by admin in Inspiring, Science, Technology | No Comments

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22339/?a=f

I imagine it is because the final episode of Battlestar is very fresh in my head but the increasing advancement towards a synthetic brain is looking eerily predicted by that show. On one side we have IBM creating software to mimic the workings of a brain, and on the other side we have an international team of european scientists recreating the physical hardware of a brain on a chip.. What happens when both of these projects merge?

This is where it really gets scary though:

“The advantage of this hardwired approach, as opposed to a simulation, Karlheinz continues, is that it allows researchers to recreate the brain-like structure in a way that is truly parallel. Getting simulations to run in real time requires huge amounts of computing power. Plus, physical models are able to run much faster and are more scalable. In fact, the current prototype can operate about 100,000 times faster than a real human brain. “We can simulate a day in a second,” says Karlheinz.

Take a long hard minute to think about the implications of that statement. ‘We can simulate a day in a second’ . If we as a species, in our relative technological infancy are already glimpsing at technology where we can create a synthetic human brain that can simulate an entire day in one second, what does that imply? Again keep in mind we are in our technological infancy, in 20-40 years this technology will no doubt be realized and probably be millions times more powerful than today, meaning we could simulate a lifetime in a second. You have now created a nearly infinitely powerful brain and could live aeons out in a matter of minutes, you have in essence created a god in it’s own universe. It then becomes time to start asking ourselves if we are simply 1 second being lived out in one of these infinite brains.

Tags: artificial intelligence, blue brain, chip, neurons, synthetic brain