Technology

Commercial Light Field Camera launches

Submitted by algorhythmic on Thu, 20/10/2011 - 21:55

Lytro has released their light field camera, where you can set the focus AFTER taking the photos. The camera records light as more than a single-valued pixel - it records intensity as well as the vector direction of the light. Focusing is done on the software rather than the optics, giving it a lot more data than traditional photos. This holds the potential for faster photo taking as well as improved low light performance (however, the company doesn't seem to have demonstrated low light performance yet).

Tags: 
technology

Plethora of mobile processors announced at Computex

Submitted by algorhythmic on Sat, 04/06/2011 - 02:02

Texas Instruments has announced the OMAP4470, the newest addition to the OMAP 4 series. It has a bit of an unusual configuration - 2 ARM Cortex-A9 MPcores, and 2 Cortex-M3 cores. The A9 cores are intended for the heavy-duty processing duties, while the M3 cores come in useful for lightweight, battery-sipping tasks.

Tags: 
technology

Intel shows off Oak Trail based devices

Submitted by algorhythmic on Wed, 01/06/2011 - 00:17

Intel and several device manufacturers have shown off mobile devices based on Intel's next-generation Atom processor, codenamed Oak Trail. Computex 2011 in Taiwan has seen a plethora of tablet computers showing off Android, MeeGo and Windows 7 operating systems. Currently, Windows 7 can only run on Intel processors. However, the explosion of Android devices has left the desktop CPU giant playing catch-up to players like NVidia (who introduced the Tegra series), Texas Instruments (OMAP series) and other companies who manufacture ARM-based SOCs.

Tags: 
electronics
technology

Improved bandwidth management techniques boost multi-core processor performance

Submitted by algorhythmic on Sat, 28/05/2011 - 23:25

Researchers at the North Carolina State University have developed improved multi-core chip performance through improved data pre-fetching techniques, showing up to a 40 percent performance improvement over multi-core chips that do not prefetch data at all. These techniques are a combination of bandwidth partitioning and hardware pre-fetching methods. One of the methods mentioned is dynamic bandwidth partitioning, which allocates variable bandwith as each core requires.

Tags: 
technology