X-Mass

Having problems with Nvidia SLI in August 2015? GeForce Hotfix driver 355.80 https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3738

Nantero Exits Stealth: Using Carbon Nanotubes for Non-Volatile Memory with DRAM Performance & Unlimited Enduranceby Kristian Vättö on June 11, 2015 12:35 PM EST http://www.anandtech.com/show/9314/nantero-exits-stealth-using-carbon-nanotubes-for-nonvolatile-memory-with-dram-performance-unlimited-endurance Synopsis - NRAM = (the speed of DRAM + storage capabilities of NAND) with Higher Density than NAND or DRAM, unlimited 3D stacks and MLC capabilities, 100 billion write cycles, 1000 years storage at 85C. It can be manufactured in standard CMOS facilities. The IP licensed to anyone. Scheduled to arrive 2017/18. Result - No difference between memory and storage - Imagine the possibilities: What sort of graphics you can have with the entire game loaded onto latest Nvidia/AMD card instead or 6, 8 or 12GB of memory on board? Instant on computers, that cannot lose your data unless specifically wiped? Completely new orders of computing that are currently to expensive/impossible to build Excerpts from articl "The way NRAM works is in fact relatively simple. Essentially there are two nanotubes, which have low resistance when in physical contact and high resistance when separated. The amount of resistance then determines whether the cell is considered to be programmed as ‘0’ or ‘1’. Program operation (or “SET” as Nantero calls it) works by applying a voltage on one of the nanotubes, which will then attract the other nanotube and create a bond. The SET operation is very fast and takes only picoseconds, which is on par with or better than DRAM latency. The bond is kept in tact by Van der Waal's interactions and is practically immortal with data retention terms even in 300°C is over ten years. In an erase operation (or RESET as Nantero calls it) the voltage is simply applied in the other direction, which will “heat up” (given the scale it’s more like vibration) the nanotube contacts and cause them to separate. Given that carbon nanotubes are one of the strongest materials in the world, the write/erase endurance is practically infinite as independent university study has shown Nantero’s NRAM technology to have over 1011 P/E cycles (for your information, 1011 translates to 100 billion)." "The other great news is that carbon nanotubes are extremely small. One nanotube can have a diameter of only 2nm and the pitch between the two nanotubes in off-state can be an even tinier 1nm, so the technology has potential to scale below 5nm. NRAM can also scale vertically, or go 3D, and since the cell structure and manufacturing process are both quite simple, 3D stacking should, in theory, be much easier compared to what 3D NAND is today with no need for high aspect ratio etching as an example. The Manufacturing ProcessThe process of making an NRAM wafer starts by taking a normal CMOS wafer with the normal cell select and array line circuitry, which is then spin coated with carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are grown from iron that would normally contaminate a clean room, thus Nantero had to develop a patented process that creates ‘pure’ carbon nanotubes with less than one out of billion particles being foreign (the standard for the highest quality clean rooms). Nantero has worked hard in the past two years to bring the cost of carbon nanotubes down and currently the company says that the nanotubes have a negligible impact on chip cost, meaning making NRAM isn't inherently more expensive than any other semiconductor." "With the nanotubes on the wafer, the top electrode is deposited on top of the nanotubes, followed by the photoresist, which is then patterned using a single mask. Finally the wafer is etched to cut the nanotubes into smaller pieces (i.e. more memory cells) and that’s it in a nutshell. Obviously there are other general semiconductor processing steps involved, but those are the same for all memory technologies, so the fundamental process of manufacturing NRAM isn’t that complex. All that is needed is a normal CMOS fab because the NRAM process requires no special or additional tools." "Fortunately, NRAM isn’t just a technology that exists on paper. Nantero’s NRAM process has already been installed in seven production CMOS fabs ranging from 20nm to 250nm and limited production has been taking place for several years now, although only in small few megabit capacities. As a matter of fact, Nantero completed a successful space test with NASA on Space Shuttle Atlantis back in 2009 where NRAM operated without any shielding throughout the trip without any errors despite the intense radiation, because as I mentioned earlier, the nanotube bonds are practically unbreakable and are not affected by heat, magnetism, radiation and the like. Nantero’s Business Plan: Bringing NRAM to EveryoneBecause Nantero is an IP licensing company, it relies solely on its partners for production. It's a logical strategy because a decent sized fab requires an investment in the order of billions of dollars and in the end the company would have to compete against Intel, Samsung and the rest of the semiconductor giants. Actual end products will be sold under the manufacturer's brand (e.g. Intel), so you won't see any Nantero branded products on the market. Nantero isn't disclosing any of its partners at this point as most of them are still developing products that have the potential for higher volume production. While Nantero has its own chip team that is developing high capacity (several gigabits) dies, every partner is also doing its own work to implement NRAM at a larger scale, which makes sense given that the big semiconductor companies have far more resources and are familiar with high capacity memory devices. Aside from semiconductor companies, Nantero has also partnered with several more consumer-facing companies to develop concepts and products around NRAM technology. Since NRAM provides the same level of performance as DRAM but is non-volatile, NRAM could open the doors for products that aren't achievable (at least properly) with today's NAND and DRAM technology. As examples Nantero mentions 3D smartphones and commercial 3D printers (although to be frank both already exist to some extent), but practically anything that's handicapped by IO performance and volatility can be fixed with NRAM in the future." " Since it will take several years before NRAM is even close to modern NAND capacities, Nantero has a three step strategy of bringing NRAM to the market. In the first step Nantero is simply offering a class of memory (both standalone and embedded) that has DRAM's performance characteristics and NAND's non-volatility. Technically that means NRAM is competing against current MRAM and ReRAM products for a specialized niche market that really needs high performance and non-volatility. The consumer market is obviously not one of those and even for the enterprise NRAM is likely too small capacity and expensive, but the industrial and especially space/military applications should benefit from NRAM despite the high initial cost. The next step is to grow NRAM to gigabit-class capacities and offer a non-volatile alternative to DRAM. Going to gigabit-class certainly opens the doors for NRAM as a mainstream memory because it could be used for a variety of caching applications that benefit from non-volatility (SSDs with their DRAM caches for NAND mapping table are a prime example). Tape out of first gigabit NRAM wafers is still about 18 months away, so I would expect to see something shipping perhaps in late 2017 or 2018. The final step, of course, is a terabit-class die to replace NAND (FYI, Samsung is projecting 1Tbit NAND die in 2017). Achieving that requires work on both lithography scaling and 3D integration technologies because such a high capacity die is only economical with either multiple layers or advanced lithography, or both. NRAM also has the potential to operate in MLC mode for further density improvements, but for now Nantero is focusing on scaling NRAM down and adding layers through 3D to increase density. Once the work on those two is done and has been implemented to a production fab, Nantero will start commercializing NRAM MLC technology, but that is likely at least several years away. Final WordsThe announcement is intriguing to say the least. From a technology standpoint NRAM sounds very exciting because it's effectively bringing us non-volatile DRAM performance, and better yet the cell design is scalable whereas DRAM has major struggles going below 20nm. I like the fact that Nantero has decided to go with IP licensing model because it means that NRAM is a technology available to everyone. The reason why DRAM and NAND are where they are today is because there are multiple companies producing them, resulting in competition with billions of R&D dollars. I wonder if any of the big semiconductor companies has partnered with Nantero yet. Most of them have been tight-lipped about their post-NAND plans, but maybe Nantero's announcement will sooner than later force the companies to talk about their strategies. Obviously a lot depends on how far 3D NAND can efficiently scale, but from what I have heard the transition to next generation memory technologies should begin around 2020. The future of memory isn't here yet, but it's certainly getting closer and it will be interesting to see what technology ends up taking the crown."

from http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/29/googles-project-vault-is-a-secure-computing-environment-on-a-micro-sd-card-for-any-platform/#.cedavt:RY2J Posted 16 hours agoby Darrell Etherington @etherington Not mentioned in mega list below Project Vault is a secure computer contained entirely on a micro SD sized device. Google’s ATAP said the micro SD format made sense because there’s already advanced security features on your phone, contained in the SIM card, which protects the things important to carriers. Vault is designed to be an equivalent, but designed to project a user’s important content. They went with the micro SD form factor so that they could have more data throughput to project video, and they wanted storage (Vault has 4GB of data storage on board) and they wanted modularity, so you could take it wherever you wanted. Onboard the Vault itself is an ARM processor running ARTOS, a secure operating system focused on privacy and data security. It also has anNFC chip and an antenna (for proving that you are in control and that it’s correctly authorized). Finally, there’s a suite of cryptographic services, including hashing, signing, batch encryption and a hardware random number generator. Vault provides two-factor auth in a way that’s easy enough for anyone to use, and developers don’t have to do anything to get stuff ready to work with it – the system sees it as generic storage device with a standard file system. Said file system includes just two files, one for read and one for write, that any app has to go through in order to communicate with Vault. This also means that it works with any operating system, including Android, Windows, OS X and Linux, since essentially it’s just a generic storage device to the host computer or phone. Today, ATAP is releasing the open source development kit so that people can understand and test it prior to it going live. They’ve also built an enterprise-targeted first product version that’s being used internally at Google right now, and there are plans to eventually make consumer-focused hardware, too. In a demo, ATAP showed how Vault could be used to secure a chat conversation. Once the Vault micro SD is installed, the chat application just opens the virtualized two-file system with the read/write I/O. Vault takes care of encrypting the message and then sending it though as cypher text. The phones automatically decrypt the conversation, but never actually see any keys or algorithms on either end.

http://www.oled-info.com/ignis-announces-true-vision-technology-worlds-first-hdr-mobile-display IGNIS Innovation announced that they have developed the world's first HDR mobile display. The so-called True Vision Display features a high contrast ratio, high frame rate, wide color gamut and high color precision and bit-depth. It's also very bright as required for HDR. CSOT 5.5-inch MaxLife AMOLED prototype Ignis will unveil their new display at SID's DisplayWeek 2015 next month, so we'll get more details. In the meantime, Ignis told us that this is a 5.5" HD AMOLED display that is extremely bright indeed at 1,500 nits (the Galaxy S6, for example, has a maximum brightness of 784 nits). The new display uses Ignis' MaxLife compensation driving scheme which enables high yields, low cost, low-power consumption, and long life time. Interestingly, last year Ignis announced that it is going to collaborate with Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) to develop a 5.5" HD AMOLED MaxLife Lite LTPS panel (you can see the panel above). Maybe the new 5.5" HD HDR AMOLED is the result of this partnership? Ignis has been developing its MaxLife technology for years. Back in 2011 RiT collaborated with Ignis to develop a-Si based AMOLEDs, and even showed some very nice prototypes, but this never materialized into commercialization. Hopefully the CSOT development will fare better. In December 2013, Ignis announced that started shipping 55" OLED TV evaluation samples to display makers to test their MaxLife compensation technology.

mine is pretty quiet - its all about balancing fan vs temperature as usual (EK Full motherboard watercooled ROG Impact+4790K+EK watercooled GTX980) 16GB G.Skill. EK reservoir, dual pumps, thick radiator, SFXL 500W, short cables, dust filters, extra sound proofing, originally dual 730 256GB in raid 0 upgraded to generic 2x1TB in raid 0) - its a bugger of a build though!

there getting a steady 150-200K per episode that is a LOT of eyeballs - if each episode is costing them say 20 hours of work per episode plus costs then that's about $750 inc costs that ,means it costing them half a cent a view to produce. US prime time is about 9 million views and each spot costs about $110K, so 9,000,000/60 = 150K i.e. same view rate at CSF, a thirty second spot is 110K/60=18K ok but say advertisers don't get 30 secs, say the advertiser only get 10 secs, that's still 6k for 10 secs of 150K views. So if LMG were charging $1.2K for a 10 second spot it would still be 1/5th of what national TV charges. Like I said it doesn't make sense - I'm not blaming anyone at LMG for this, I suspect its lack of communication and insight by the intermediaries between IP producers and advertisers but the question is how to deliver. Btw getting sponsorship for nerf guns from hasbro would come through PR not advertising, which quite often seem to have entirely different reporting structures in larger companies. ref: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/list-of-top-20-prime-time-shows-in-nielsen-ratings/ http://www.adweek.com/news/television/their-prime-broadcast-spot-costs-soar-132805

its not about normal vs abnormal - its common vs uncommon

you misunderstand me - I have a handle on an ITX SG13 as used by Linus and Luke the OP for this thread You as you said are talking about the larger MATX SG12 - which was way to big for the application I needed Also the handle on the SG12 is fixed whilst the handle on my SG13 is removable And I not seen anyone else doing this, despite what I am doing can be done by anyone for very little cost! thanks

yes I have a coming out story but it was very very long time ago - I came out at school in the 1970's - but I guess I have been repeatedly coming ever since then as well. I've been an activist for nearly 40 years now, and I was running a computer games company over 30 years ago!

thanks for the bump!!! Oh and I'm a dyke! Oh and part of the trans community as in people who challenge 'traditional' assumptions about gender. I don't know why the OP put it down as transexual - as LGBT was always supposed to be about inclusion of the entire trans community not just transexuals. I know being Loud vs steath is scary but i know a whole bunch of transexual people who are totally out as bi or gay but are seemingly totally stealth about being trans once they have got through the mill. Having said that with the way some people can be on the net I can understand - but you only get equality by challenging people to recognise that you exist. I know being a warrior is scary, and it takes real guts to be the point of the spear, but if hadn't been for the trans community the LGB community probably still would be in the closet and stonewall would never have happened (the early gay rights groups such as mattachine society, and the Daughters of Bilitis were largely funded by trans people.) and stone wall was all about trans people taking back our community from the abuse of the police. The sad thing is that the Police seemingly never changed or recognised their institutional homo/bi/transphobia, along with being institutionally racist/sexist/abelist and probably classist as can be seen in the police now finally being charged for murdering people, after years of getting away with it.

because they are not smaller if you look at the litres they are actually larger!

But that's an matx rig - I have a removable handle on top of my SG13 - I frankly amazed that nobody else seems to use them on small rigs. If they are strong enough to carry 100Kg of glass then any computer rig is nothing

sorry I missed that - it really stayed at 400W? I have to go back and look, I haven't actually tracked what my actual usage is, i just tried to shape it so that I could use the SFXL I actually bought a seasonic platinum fan less before buying the SFXL, but that was two cases before. As I said I had practically the first SG13 in Europe shipped to me the day they got their container shipped into silverstone - I had been expecting to be using an SG05 - hence the SFXL.

Its really annoying I bought my kit before asrock brought out their X99 based motherboard, so I am now running a Z97 ROG Impact + 4970 (originally it was going to be a Z97I but then I got teh impact sufficiently cheap on ebay to swap). I kept looking and looking last year but there were no X99 series but its interesting your choices where your choices are both similar and different from mine. We both built into SG13's - I had practically the first unit into Europe shipped direct from silverstone, Titan X wasn't available so I used a 980, I also went with 2 730 SSD's albeit they have subsequently swapped from Raid 0 256GB drives to slower Raid 0 1TB drives, and I'm still going to have to jump through so crazy hoops to get to USB 3.1 - as opposed to having on motherboard. There is no way that I could afford to to go to with a 5960X I would have gone with the 5820K simply because with I don't need the extra lanes, since even with the GPU taking 16 that still leaves enough for M.2. gen 3. I was looking at the specs for Vulcan and I took a guess that DX12 might support grouped GPU's http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/BUILD-2015-Final-DirectX-12-Revealthus I looked to to see if I could run a second GPU via the M.2 - so far not tried this yet and obviously it will need to be bodged in (and watercooled as there is NO space) The Key difference between your and my build is that you watercooled the CPU whilst I'm watercooling everything so EK ROG impact + EK 980 kit. The other is that you use long modcables where I used silverstone short cables As for PSU I went with a silverstone SFXL unit to get back the space i needed for the huge bloody radiator I have installed. Obviously since your running a titan and 5960X a full sized ATX PSU is the only real option to be honest its nice to know that that is a future option Its its interesting that you ghettoed the SSD's in the same way i did except I went ahead and placed them on the side of the PSU - I couldn't place them on top as it was the exit for the fan As you point out it all fits in a backpack - which was a key criteria for me - it had to be able to be entirely portable and go into someone's home, so I am using an S.O.Tech Mission pack (MPX) to carry the SG13 and its Go Bag (MGB) for the Oculus DX2 Yes a DX2! The whole point of the rig was to build a portable Oculus Rig! When I started the project 6 months ago I was trying to predict what the minimum requirements for CV1 would be*. The actual aim of the build was to build a counselling tool for PTSD and CPTSD, specifically for a friend who is so traumatised that to try and help heal them, is critical - typically more people suicide out after a war than die in it. A lot of wounded warriors use games such as project reality to help manage the post war blues and if I interested if games like squad or amma could be used as vectors for help. Squad is based on Unreal engine, so VR support could be included, although I suspect specialised maps will need to be built - as I said this is an issue for research and for treatment. In a perfect world I would also have a roll up wizdish (the technology the Omni ripped off for their device) or ideally a virtuix solution but that's not even an option yet and may never be. Honestly if cost wasn't an issue I would happily switch to X99, but I was locked in prior to Cebit, but this was a test to see if it was possible and if this does prove useful in helping people heal then I would certainly follow your route next time. The simple reality is that I don't have your resources, and access to support from manufacturers etc! I'm disabled myself and most of the parts are actually second hand or bought at the lowest cost on ebay, as I simply couldn't afford to do it the right way, but as i have said building this tool was critical. I kept meaning to do a video about this, if just to inspire others but now you've done it - and the quality of your production is so much higher than I can achieve *. PS. I still think 970 is low ball and CV1 is really aimed at people buying Pascal and Volta. At this point the vive seems likely to be a better choice for me given its designed for stand up use and thus a wizdish/virtuix type a solution might be possible to be hacked but that's for much much later. I would happily buy a vive right now but I'm not a 'real' a FT developer so I don't have early access.

first off - Channel Super Fun is NOT a tech site, it not a geeky lifestyle site, I'm sure LMG could create any number of subchannels that appealed to hardware manufactures, CSF seems a distinct play to broaden their appeal to a new audience. Actually, I am hoping for a rather more detailed discussion, around for example advertising sales. Some of LMG's advertisers clearly come through their PR contacts - a good example of this is JJ and especially FractalJosh all of whom do wonderful jobs of community building and I love the adverts FractalJosh was using and long may Fractal continue. A second source of Advertising seems to be where companies have targeted this community and everybody seems to go to the same group of advertisers. Is this because everyone is using the same sales agents? Jayz2cents has spoken about being given a long list of people who would like to advertise with him but choosing to only work with a few of them. Obviously there is also some affiliate marketing cross-over, but all the companies seem smaller and I am wondering why that is. is it because larger corporations such as Monster or Red Bull or Unilever don't know that they can advertise direct with particular companies. Is it because a fear of youtube shutting people out because sector advertising and small advertising such as dollar shave club are fine but say Unilever advertising Axe/Lynx isn't. This seems more likely as whilst Intel does hardware product advertising, we don't see more corporate advertising from the likes of Microsoft, Lenovo, or IBM I just don't know enough about the relationship youtube has with it IP producers, other than seemingly recreating the same dynamic that movie/music distribution has had with their IP, that of exploitation! It seems like platforms such as youtube, facebook etc seemed doomed to repeat the same bullshit public face: about how our employees/content producers/suppliers are at the heart of our company, when behind the scenes its about maximising profits, treating them mean and forcing down costs where ever is possible. There does seem to be this big disconnect between companies and IP companies. When one reads resources like marketing week, they are all about CRM and Marketing Research, but they repeatedly go back to the same large scale sale spaces such as google or facebook or AOL (who own Huffington Post btw), red bull has in the past seemed to be willing to target smaller groups but again the focus is on sports marketing as a vector for sale. Like i said based on what advertisers say what their seeking - men in their twenties and teenagers, CSF falls neatly into that target area - it should be a cash cow but isn't and I would be interested in any analysis, beyond platitudes. Perhaps this isn't the forum for these sort of discussions but if not; do the geek sites have a space where the issues that effect them all are discussed? I remember Linus mentioning how when he started LMG he thought that it was like highlander rather than recognising that a rising tide not only raises everyone's boats but that community building between sites increased the market share for everyone. Just as the more retailers specialising in a certain area such as gentlemen outfitters, or medical practice or electronics the more it becomes a loci that attracts customers in from further afield