Category: Hardware

Will Thunderbolt make user upgradeable external graphic solutions a reality?

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Let’s face it, no traditional hard drive will ever saturate Thunderbolt’s 10 Gbps bandwidth (1.25 GB/s throughput). Even a solid state drive will have a hard time doing it. That’s why the new LaCie Thunderbolt offering is a pair of SSDs in RAID 0. Because anything less is not enough to show end users the difference. 

So setting that aside. What could be an immediate use of Thunderbolt that we can take advantage of? NVIDIA and AMD take note: external video card solutions. 

We have seen them before. Proprietary solutions of external video adapters for notebooks. None of them really materialized or caught much fan-fare. Well I don’t see why they would, they’re expensive and often are restricted to certain manufacturers. 

AMD has attempted this once before, but it was still a proprietary solution. Their solution is still active and provides a much more handsome 4 GB/s. That translates to a bandwidth of 32 Gbps. 

Intel’s plan for Thunderbolt is to eventually reach 100 Gbps. 100 Gbps bandwidth = 12.5 GB/s. Remember, Intel’s figures are not theoretical, these are not the peak transfer speeds. This is the actual sustainable transfer speed. If AMD’s solution work with 4 GB/s throughput, what can they do with 12.5 GB/s throughput? 

This is the dream device: Enclosure that can house an enthusiast class video card using Thunderbolt as the interface. 

Make it, and people will buy. 

2011 MacBook Pro configurations carry an AMD Radeon HD 6750 1GB

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It’s actually pretty awesome. The Radeon HD 6750 that is. 480 unified processors, 1GB of VRAM. This card is superior than any previous discrete GPU offerings Apple has ever made. You pay for it though, the cheapest configuration that carry this GPU is the 2nd 15-inch MacBook Pro priced at C$2,249. Canada is still $50 more than the US even though the loonie is on par, what gives Apple? Many other retailers have adopted parity pricing, I don’t see why you should remain so special. 

The specifications are more than typical Apple’s moderate bumps. For 2011 Apple added Thunderbolt (Intel’s Light Peak, now officially called the Thunderbolt) which carries bi-directional 10 Gbps. This port is going to change a lot of things, and Intel is pitting it directly at USB 3.0 standard. Intel has not adopted USB 3.0 on its own motherboards since it finalized. Today we know why, the Thunderbolt effectively doubles the raw throughput of USB 3.0, and is bi-directional. It can also be used to carry more than just data, audio and video signals are supported. Intel will be adding fiber optics within the decade to also allow the port to support bandwidths up to 100 Gbps. 

Also new to MacBook Pros are standard quad-core Intel Core i7 processors on the 15″ and 17″ models. The 13″ received the Core i5 dual-cores. This is an improvement across the board, and everyone saw it coming. Intel refreshes their platform every year and a few months later Apple, and every other hardware manufacturer adopts it. No big deal, 2011 MBPs use Sandy Bridge, just Google it and see what’s new. 

NVIDIA enters the CPU market

There’s been talks about NVIDIA creating SoCs for a while now. A lot of rumours on the web about a NVIDIA-VIA merger so that NVIDIA can acquire the licenses for x86 CPUs to compete with Intel and AMD. NVIDIA denied all rumours about a possible alliance with VIA.

At CES 2011 NVIDIA announced plans to launch ARM based CPUs. With Microsoft pledging Windows development support for ARM CPUs, this may just work. 

Tegra 2 has a lot of hype to live up for. 

Amazon Kindle 3 beats Harry Potter as bestselling in Amazon history

So why is this a big deal?

Amazon is a pretty damn big operation. Serving Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and China with regional websites as well as shipping to many other destinations from their .com domain, Amazon commands a healthy chunk of the worldwide online spending. 

Bloomberg estimates 8 million Kindle 3 units shipped in 2010. Compared to just 2.8 million in 2009, Amazon got a winner. 

And me? Well I’m just glad we can look toward a greener Earth. 

The press release hit it home: 

Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions. They report preferring Kindle for reading because it weighs less, eliminates battery anxiety with its month-long battery life, and has the advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display that reduces eye-strain, doesn’t interfere with sleep patterns at bedtime, and works outside in direct sunlight, an important consideration especially for vacation reading. Kindle’s $139 price point is a key factor — it’s low enough that people don’t have to choose.

Why is there no 16GB iPod touch?

Does this make any sense to you? The new iPod touch will come in 3 sizes: 8GB, 32GB, and 64GB. But at $229, why would anybody even buy the 8GB? And where is the 16GB? What’s with the huge gap? Why even make the 8GB in the first place?!

It should have been 16GB, 32GB and 64GB at those prices. Come on Apple, the new enclosure can’t cost that much!