Author: kenmay

AMD’s next laptop processor is mostly about battery life

Intel isn’t the only chip giant championing battery life over performance this year. AMD has revealed Carrizo , a processor range that’s focused heavily on extending the running time of performance-oriented laptops. While there will be double-digit boosts to speed, there’s no doubt that efficiency is the bigger deal here. The new core architecture (Excavator) is just 5 percent faster than its Kaveri ancestor, but it chews up 40 percent less energy at the same clock rate — even the graphics cores use 20 percent less juice. Not that this is the only real trick up AMD’s sleeve. Carrizo is the first processor to meet the completed Heterogeneous System Architecture spec, which lets both the CPU and its integrated graphics share memory. That lets some tasks finish faster than they would otherwise (since you don’t need as many instructions), and it could provide a swift kick to both performance and battery life in the right conditions. You’ll also find dedicated H.265 video decoding, so this should be a good match for all the low-bandwidth 4K videos you’ll stream in the future. The new chip is pretty promising as a result. With that said, its creator will undoubtedly be racing against time. Carrizo is expected to reach shipping PCs in the second quarter of the year, or close to Intel’s mid-year target for its quad-core Broadwell processors. You may find shiny new AMD and Intel chips in PCs at around the same time — that’s good news if you’re a speed junkie, but it’s not much help to AMD’s bottom line . Filed under: Desktops , Laptops , AMD Comments Via: PCWorld Source: AMD

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AMD’s next laptop processor is mostly about battery life

Republicans Back Down, FCC To Enforce Net Neutrality Rules

An anonymous reader writes: Republican resistance has ended for the FCC’s plans to regulate the internet as a public utility. FCC commissioners are working out the final details, and they’re expected to approve the plan themselves on Thursday. “The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good…. In addition, it would ban the intentional slowing of the Internet for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers. The plan would also give the F.C.C. the power to step in if unforeseen impediments are thrown up by the handful of giant companies that run many of the country’s broadband and wireless networks.” Dave Steer of the Mozilla Foundation said, “We’ve been outspent, outlobbied. We were going up against the second-biggest corporate lobby in D.C., and it looks like we’ve won.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Republicans Back Down, FCC To Enforce Net Neutrality Rules

London’s used coffee beans power buildings and transport

Add / Remove Among the many alternatives, energy produced from waste products remains one of the most ecologically sound methods for creating power. We have already seen used ground coffee converted into fertilizer by Espressogrow , and now Bio-Bean are a UK based start-up turning the used beans from London’s many coffee shops into green energy. In London alone, coffee shops and instant coffee factories produce over 200,000 tonnes of coffee waste per year. Bio-Bean collects these waste coffee grounds from coffee shops, roasteries and freeze-dried coffee facilities and transport them to their local processing plant, where they can be recycled and turned into biofuel. The process is far more ecologically sound than other traditional disposal procedures, such as dumping the ground in landfill, which releases harmful green house gases into the atmosphere. Bio-Bean process the waste into two advanced carbon-neutral Biofuel products — biomass pellets and biodiesel — which they sell to London businesses to power buildings and transport, reducing landfill waste, fossil fuels and methane production. The products are carbon-neutral because they make use of an existing source material, as opposed to biofuel produced from crops such as corn ethanol, which take away land from food production. Converting ground coffee beans into energy isn’t an entirely new idea, but the scale of the operation means it could have a far greater impact than earlier schemes. Are there other waste products created in the food industry which could be recycled by other businesses? Website: www.bio-bean.com Contact: info@bio-bean.com

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London’s used coffee beans power buildings and transport

Ex-Sheriff Invents a Bullet-Dampening Device

In science fiction, people can set their laser guns to “Stun.” With a flick of a switch, Captain Kirk can opt to fire nonlethal rounds. Real-life police have no such option. While beanbag guns exist, it’s hardly practical for cops to carry both of them around, and they cannot be expected to know which one they’ll need at any given moment. As a result, when being approached by a threat who will not comply, their only option is to fire a lethal bullet at the target. An unnamed, retired sheriff found this problem vexing, and “did not like the fact that people were being shot when the officers do have time (to consider options) but they had no other option than lethal force, ” Christian Ellis told CNN. Ellis is the CEO of a company called Alternative Ballistics, and they have spent nearly a decade bringing that sheriff’s subsequent invention to market. What the sheriff came up with is a small product, called “The Alternative, ” that can be quickly snapped onto the end of a pistol. When he then pulls the trigger, the bullet slams into a larger projectile on the end of the barrel, with plenty ’nuff force to carry both of them to the target. But the larger secondary projectile slows the speed and spreads the force over a greater area—in other words, it does not penetrate. “It’s gonna feel like you had a professional baseball player hit you in the chest with a hammer, so it is going to hurt, ” Ellis explains. But the thinking is that you will survive, bullethole-free. Here’s how it works: Obviously testing will be needed, as there are many hurdles to clear: Realistically speaking, can an officer break this out in time? Is there room for yet another item to hang from an officer’s belt? How will the training be handled? So while we don’t say this is the magic bullet, if you’ll pardon the pun, to solve unnecessary shooting deaths, we do appreciate the fact that at least someone, somewhere is trying to apply design to the problem. Because we’re damn sure not able to work it out between us as humans.

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Ex-Sheriff Invents a Bullet-Dampening Device

AMD Unveils Carrizo APU With Excavator Core Architecture

MojoKid writes: AMD just unveiled new details about their upcoming Carrizo APU architecture. The company is claiming the processor, which is still built on Global Foundries’ 28nm 28SHP node like its predecessor, will nonetheless deliver big advances in both performance and efficiency. When it was first announced, AMD detailed support for next generation Radeon Graphics (DX12, Mantle, and Dual Graphics support), H.265 decoding, full HSA 1.0 support, and ARM Trustzone compatibility. But perhaps one of the biggest advantages of Carrizo is the fact that the APU and Southbridge are now incorporated into the same die; not just two separates dies built into and MCM package. This not only improves performance, but also allows the Southbridge to take advantage of the 28SHP process rather than older, more power-hungry 45nm or 65nm process nodes. In addition, the Excavator cores used in Carrizo have switched from a High Performance Library (HPL) to a High Density Library (HDL) design. This allows for a reduction in the die area taken up by the processing cores (23 percent, according to AMD). This allows Carrizo to pack in 29 percent more transistors (3.1 billion versus 2.3 billion in Kaveri) in a die size that is only marginally larger (250mm2 for Carrizo versus 245mm2 for Kaveri). When all is said and done, AMD is claiming a 5 percent IPC boost for Carrizo and a 40 percent overall reduction in power usage. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD Unveils Carrizo APU With Excavator Core Architecture