When I gushed about the 3DS earlier this month, talking about how it will probably be the best handheld Nintendo's ever made, and how some of the innovations within it were 'huge', I had no idea Sony would be announcing their Next Generation Portable so soon after. Yes, January just wasn't crazy enough with new announcements and developments, between 50,000 tablets shown off, most with Tegra 2, NVIDIA's Project Denver, Windows 8's ARM support, AMD's CEO leaving, NVIDIA and Intel's settlement, Sandy Bridge's launch, OCZ leaving the RAM market, new cellphones, gaming news, and tons and tons of other shit too numerous to be counted...no, we had to close this phenomenal month with the friggin PSP2 unveiling.
This was one of the first unveils I was actually present for (online at least) when it happened live, and let me tell you, it's pretty exciting to be there right when something like that occurs. Technically the name hasn't been finalized yet, instead referred to as the NGP by most circles, but I refuse to use that, preferring the more universally recognized acronym. Rumors leading up to the PSP2's announcement really started several years ago, but as these things tend to do, the accuracy much improved as time approached the supposed due date. Just a couple days before the announcement, a spec list showed up with some pretty ridiculous suggestions, but it turns out, almost all of it has been shown to be true. The PSP2 is pretty much a gadget fan's wishlist brought to life.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sandy Meh
As expected, Sandy Bridge launched this month, among a flurry of revelatory announcements, news, and rumors within various areas of the tech industry. Sandy Bridge's launch is preceded by much expectation, amidst a string of products made in recent years by a company known for delivering on such expectations. In many ways Sandy Bridge continues on that legacy, but in many ways, it's largely forgettable, certainly the most forgettable since the Core 2 generation first launched.
As a new generation, you expect new features and a new architecture to be introduced, much like the Core 2 was a complete change in philosophy from the Pentium 4, and the first-gen Core i7 was a complete change in cache memory hierarchy, and the first to bring the northbridge on die for a consumer Intel chip. So what does Sandy Bridge bring? Improved IGP and an integrated video encoder. Granted, there are a lot more low-level stuff, but none of them are really revolutionary like the last two generations, and as far as the end-user is concerned, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff to be had. Of course, at some point you have to expect the advances to slow down. There were a lot of big-ticket items Intel needed to get out of the way in the move away from P4, and in the competition against AMD. AMD rarely had the performance crown, but there were plenty of enviable innovations under their heatspreaders, and for the most part, Intel's been spending the last four years copying those ideas while also making them perform at a benchmark level.
As a new generation, you expect new features and a new architecture to be introduced, much like the Core 2 was a complete change in philosophy from the Pentium 4, and the first-gen Core i7 was a complete change in cache memory hierarchy, and the first to bring the northbridge on die for a consumer Intel chip. So what does Sandy Bridge bring? Improved IGP and an integrated video encoder. Granted, there are a lot more low-level stuff, but none of them are really revolutionary like the last two generations, and as far as the end-user is concerned, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff to be had. Of course, at some point you have to expect the advances to slow down. There were a lot of big-ticket items Intel needed to get out of the way in the move away from P4, and in the competition against AMD. AMD rarely had the performance crown, but there were plenty of enviable innovations under their heatspreaders, and for the most part, Intel's been spending the last four years copying those ideas while also making them perform at a benchmark level.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
ARMed for a Revolution
Back in 2009 I first wrote about ARM in a rambling I titled ARM's Ascension in which I talked about the rising aspirations and potential of ARM processors in the general computing field. A lot of what I said still rings true, and a lot of what seemed apparent in the future of the market back then is now known to not be true anymore. Smartbooks were prototyped many times, but never made it into shipping products. Instead what happened was the iPad.
iPad ended up doing exactly what many other Apple products have done in the past. When Apple entered the portable media player market, it flourished. When they entered the smartphone market, it flourished. Now that they've entered the tablet market, or maybe better said, initialized the tablet market, that market is set to flourish also. At the forefront of this new emerging form factor is ARM. No matter what SoC your product is using, be it Apple A4, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Hummingbird, or NVIDIA Tegra 2, ARM lies in the center of it. From the get-go it seems ARM has an iron grip on the market, leaving competitors, namely Intel, with a cliff face of an uphill climb if they want in on it.
iPad ended up doing exactly what many other Apple products have done in the past. When Apple entered the portable media player market, it flourished. When they entered the smartphone market, it flourished. Now that they've entered the tablet market, or maybe better said, initialized the tablet market, that market is set to flourish also. At the forefront of this new emerging form factor is ARM. No matter what SoC your product is using, be it Apple A4, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Hummingbird, or NVIDIA Tegra 2, ARM lies in the center of it. From the get-go it seems ARM has an iron grip on the market, leaving competitors, namely Intel, with a cliff face of an uphill climb if they want in on it.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Into another dimension
How do you like the new décor? Nifty eh?
It's 2011, and everyone's getting ready for one of the most awesome years in years to hit them in the face. As a PC gamer, I'm looking forward to things like Rage, Crysis 2, and lest I forget....fuckin Duke Nukem Forever. But the biggest gaming event this year in my book is outside the PC space. It's the 3DS.
It's 2011, and everyone's getting ready for one of the most awesome years in years to hit them in the face. As a PC gamer, I'm looking forward to things like Rage, Crysis 2, and lest I forget....fuckin Duke Nukem Forever. But the biggest gaming event this year in my book is outside the PC space. It's the 3DS.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)