That is the "wireless PS3 visual transmitter"; sure, it's not the coolest looking device we have ever posted pictures of here, but the technology is impressive.  I actually think this is appealing in the time where services like OnLive and OTOY are gaining steam. 

Regardless of whether or not this is useful for anything other than potty-gaming, there is a video we have posted below.

Well, as the holiday approached and then passed us by, the news does not appear to be getting any better for NVIDIA.  This story on Semiaccurate claims that NVIDIA has *ahem* lowered the number of shader processors on the architecture from 512 to 448 - a drop of nearly 15% of the compute power of the GPU.  The SA article quotes from a Tesla product PDF that mentions the shader count and shader speed (1.4 GHz) along with a board power listing of 225 watts.  Consider that the last 10% of any GPU/CPUs performance costs well more than 10% of the total power, had NVIDIA wanted to keep the 64 shaders it is apparently dropping on these first products it would easily be 260+ watt card!

We are also hearing news that the GPU is being delayed once again into March of 2010 - this is a quite a bit later than the initial November 2009 release planned during the summer.  Another potential time frame was even said to be at next month's Consumer Electronics Show but that also appears to be out.    

You can be sure we'll be asking the tough questions at CES in just a week or so to get some more answers; if not from NVIDIA then from anyone that will talk. 

UPDATE 12/30/09

Last night I had a conversation with someone from NVIDIA that wanted to dispute some of the claims in our story as well as put in their view on some of the issues at work here.  First, NVIDIA wanted to say that there has been "no change" in their relationship with Oak Ridge Labs and the use of Fermi in the organizations upcoming supercomputing product.  NVIDIA pointed me to this story that claims to have spoken with representatives from Oak Ridge:


While that isn't the most forthcoming quote from the computing legends, I guess it's something.  What we don't know is that if any of the behind-the-scenes details have changed since the initial announcement back in the fall.  Obviously neither company would really come out and say if something totally off the wall had been discovered and instead they would work through the issues behind the scenes.  That leaves me with a he-said he-said debate but hey, that's all we can report on.

As for the part of our story about the slightly less powerful Fermi GPU that was announced and discussed at this past week's supercomputing convention, NVIDIA's reps wanted to clearly point out that there is NOT a direct correlation between the consumer GeForce products and the either the Quadro or Tesla lines of professional cards.  That is clearly the case where the Quadro line seemed to take forever to integrate the GT200 products to any successful degree.  The Tesla SKUs are much more complicated and NVIDIA points out that all they have done is disclose one or two upcoming SKUs, not the whole lineup.  I was "guaranteed" that there would be more SKUs "with 512 shaders."

NVIDIA also specifically stated that the GF100 products that are due out next year are not going to be the same as the Tesla products discussed at the supercomputing conference and that "there will be 512 (shader) parts on both sides."  What would be different between the two products would be WHEN the 512 options were introduced.  It sure seemed like NVIDIA was trying to say that they would have a consumer-based 512 shader GF100 part when the GeForce lineup is revealed without just telling us. 


The NVIDIA rep also took issue with us calling Fermi products late; company CEO Huang stated on a November 7th conference call that Fermi would be available in Q1 2010.  Obviously March 2010, as the rumors suggest, are in Q1 2010, if just barely.  So sure, we have to give NVIDIA credit that PUBLICLY they have been saying all the right things since November about the product release.  Of course, the original goal for Fermi's launch was in late September at the NVIDIA-hosted GPU Technology Conference.  Instead, we were treated to an architectural overview of the technology that left us drooling quite a bit.  Unofficially, at the show, I heard from several people that the goal was to have Fermi available for CES. 

Well, with that show just 7 days away, and the March 2010 rumors circulating, that obviously isn't going to happen.  So while publicly, and to investors (which is what matters most to NVIDIA), Fermi has only been delayed once.  But for me, it has been delayed at least once more. 

So while NVIDIA wants to refute the three main claims of our original story (Oak Ridge fail, shader count fail and delay fail), I think there are lot of questions that need to be addressed before we'll get the truth.  Unfortunately we'll never know for sure what happened internally with Oak Ridge and NVIDIA (could be nothing, could be major) or how much internal struggle and delay there was at NVIDIA with the Fermi release dates.  We will know for sure (hopefully by March 2010) whether or not NVIDIA can deliver the 512 shader processors they promised us in September. 

The A330ION takes the dual-core Atom 330 processor running at 1.6 GHz and combines it with the NVIDIA ION chipset and a dual-channel memory bus to create probably the fastest Atom-based system you can find today.  The motherboard also includes a full-size PCIe x16 slot should you want a better graphics card (debatable value to that though) or another accessory in the system as well as a pair of powered eSATA connections on the back panel. 


The system has support for VGA, HDMI and DVI displays even has some BIOS features for modest overclocking if you are into that kind of thing.  Four standard SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 channel audio round out the feature set for the board.  It will be available right after CES thought I don't know the pricing on it.

The best part about all of this?  The estimated price has it just under $1500!

Sorry; I couldn't be that creative this year!  ;)

The MSI Wind U135 seen here has been previewed by the fine folks at engadget with very similar specs: Atom N450 processor, Windows 7 starter, 1GB of memory, 250GB hard drive, etc.  It is still a 10-in display but the resolution is only 1024x600 compared to the higher resolution screen in the Dell above.

If you have a Summit drive you can get all the details and instructions for this upgrade right here!  Happy holidays!

The lower power consumption of the Pine Trail platform is impressive so you should be able to build a completely silent PC using this motherboard as the core.  Of course with the new Pineview processors the ECS TIGT-I motherboard includes an integrated DDR2 memory controller and the "new" Intel 3150 graphics solution directly on the CPU die. 

The motherboard form factor fits into the mini-ITX specifications measuring just 170x170mm.

No word on pricing or availability yet though; we'll keep you posted.

Here you can see Jimmy holding the device - all that was really mentioned about it was that it was an Android-based device that was obviously used a touch screen and had at least WiFi on-board.  It looks like it could be a 7-in or so screen.  Other than that, it was on-screen for all of about 30 seconds.

We have included a list of specs provided by Slashgear below, but check out this summary of the device:



Very impressive!  As for battery life, Slashgear reports that you can expect 48 hours of standby power and as much as 16 hours of browsing the web between recharges.  All of this goodness isn't powered by Windows or Mac but rather by a slightly modified version of the Google Android OS.

These new processors will have two different dies - the smaller one is a dual-core HyperThreaded CPU while the larger holds the integrated memory controller and integrated graphics technology.  What impact integrated graphics will have on power consumption and how much of a different moving the memory controller AWAY from the CPU by one hop will make will all be revealed in our review on January 7th.