Tag: CES

Carmakers partner up with Microsoft

Posted on January 6, 2016 by - News

Vintage & Classic Car Salvage Yards and Wrecks (11)While hardware and software makers are fighting their way into smartcars, it appears that the software king of the world Microsoft is already on-board thanks to its pretty complex partner strategy.

Microsoft’s executive vice president of global business development at Microsoft Peggy Johnson claims that now that carmakers see their cars as technology platforms, and they are choosing Microsoft as their partner.

Volvo, Nissan, Harman and IAV announced new details about their partnerships with Microsoft to enhance their connected car strategies and they joined Toyota, Ford, Qoros, Delphi, and other companies already working with Microsoft, Johnson said.

Johnson said that the big idea is to bring their cars into the mobile-first, cloud-first world. Soon apparently your car will be connected to the Internet, as well as to other cars, your mobile phone and your home computer.

At CES, Volvo showcased new concepts that integrate Microsoft Band 2 with a Windows 10 smartphone and the Volvo on Call Universal App, creating new ways for customers to interact with their vehicles. From the new Microsoft Band, a Volvo owner can press and hold the action button and say, “Volvo, start the heater of my car,” among many other options.

Harman has integrated Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite capabilities into Harman infotainment systems. Drivers will be able to access Office 365 services and interact with them through intelligent personal assistant software to schedule meetings, hear and respond to important emails, and make Skype calls when in park, or when on the road in autonomous vehicles.

IAV will use Windows 10 Continuum to stream Windows 10 via a mobile device directly to a car’s dashboard, giving drivers access to Windows 10 features and apps such as Cortana, Skype for Business, Calendar, Outlook and Groove Music while the vehicle is in autonomous driving mode or parked. This integration allows drivers to use the devices they already own. Microsoft and IAV will also demo how to use Cortana Analytics and data from a vehicle’s surroundings to improve safety by anticipating and mitigating potential vehicle and pedestrian accidents.

Nissan and Vole will announce that all Nissan LEAF and Infiniti models in Europe will have Connect Telematics Systems (CTS) powered by Microsoft Azure.

Johnson claimed Automakers are choosing Vole as their connected car partner to help them transform the consumer experience with a platform for intelligent cars that complements their own strategies and ambitions.

“With this partner focus, we’re able to leverage our cloud-based intelligence technologies, productivity services and tools, and even personal assistant technologies like Cortana in a neutral manner,” she said.

“We’re able to strike the right balance between using data to create both intelligent and personal experiences, while helping maintain privacy and security. We’re able to create more natural, human computing interfaces. And, we’re able to develop and deploy secure platforms and infrastructure to enable innovation on top of existing systems,” Johnson said.

Intel’s future is drones and women

Posted on January 7, 2015 by - News

tarotreadingAt the CES show at Las Vegas this week, Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich showed off a computer built into a jacket button and a wristband that transforms into a selfie-snapping flying camera drone.

It says a lot about where Intel sees the future of computing. Gone are the days of number crunching business computers, instead the world’s chip makers are developing gadgets which are better at photographing their own users.

Already tourist destinations are full of people carrying their phones on sticks so that they can take snaps of themselves at famous monuments without needing a friend. Now it seems that Intel sees a future for machines that can take pictures of bald heads at famous monuments while at the same time navigating through a sea of Japanese drones re-enacting a narcissistic battle of Midway on the Spanish Steps.

Krzanich used most of his keynote to talk up Intel’s efforts in computerised apparel and other sensor-packed gadgets as consumers get bored with their tablets and start selling their kidneys for the next shiny thing.

Curie, a new button-sized computer for smart clothes, is due out later in 2015 and includes Bluetooth radio as well as the latest from Intel’s Quark line of low-power chips. However Krzanich did sound a little like an East End market barrow boy when he talked about “rings, bags, bracelets, pendants, and yes, even the buttons on our jackets.” They are not dodgy, not dodgy.

Intel is working with Oakley to launch a smart gadget for athletes later this year, Krzanich said. The chipmaker in December announced it was developing smart glasses with Luxottica, which owns the Oakley brand.

Krazanich also said that he was spending $300 million to get more women and minorities in the technology and the video game industries. Note that money will be spent training women and minorities, there is no guarantee that Intel or any other technology company will hire them.

Intel has a poor record of accomplishment employing women and some minorities. While it is happy to hire Chinese and Indian workers, because they are nice and cheap, only a quarter of Intel’s US employees in 2013 were women and 12 percent of its workforce were Hispanic or African American.

Last year Intel made a huge mistake by backing the misogynistic GamerGate campaign to pull advertising from gaming news sites who dared to slam sexism in the gaming industry. In the end it changed its mind and resumed advertising.

 

 

Intel shows off 14nm processor

Posted on January 6, 2015 by - News

Intel-Core-MIntel has taken the wraps off its first 14nm processor, the Core M at the CES show in Las Vegas.

The CPU is designed for the ultramobile, low-power market and is an  SoC die shrink of the existing architecture.

Where it does something interesting is on the GPU side with shedloads of improvements and advances,

The video decoder block has been beefed up with dual bit stream decoders, we are expecting to see other improvements but Intel has been quiet on exactly what it has tweaked and changed to date.

Intel does appear to have clear ground ahead of it. TSMC’s 20nm is only a slight improvement on die size and power consumption, Intel’s new Broadwell cores are 37 percent smaller.

What is odd, is that although more than half the chip seems dedicated to its GPU, Intel has made no announcement about supporting Direct X12. Nvidia and AMD has announced full DX12 support for their various current hardware,

Intel claims its new chip can boost battery life by 1.5 hours, speed video conversions, and offer a whopping 22 percent improvement to 3D performance. It has been a while that we have seen a significant productivity jump and we were not expecting to see much in the way of improved CPU performance from this chip anyway.

We are expecting Intel to announce the shipment of its Cherry Trail platform today too.  This is the  14nm Bay Trail die shrink that’s been on the roadmap for a little while and is not really news.  What is strange is how Intel has been quiet about the specifics of Cherry Trail so far. We have no benchmarks, statistics, or anything.

This is odd given Intel’s commitment to tablets and that pushing the Atom down to 14nm is a significant achievement. It should mean some performance gains and it is not clear why Chipzilla is not trumpeting it more.

Nvidia puts high-end graphics in car

Posted on January 5, 2015 by - News

indy1909Nvidia unveiled a new processor aimed at powering high-end graphics on car dashboards as well as auto-pilot systems.

Before the Consumer Electronics Show, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said the Tegra X1 chip would provide enough computing for automobiles with displays built into mirrors, dashboard, navigation systems and passenger seating.

“The future car is going to have an enormous amount of computational ability,” Huang said. “We imagine the number of displays in your car will grow very rapidly.”

The Tegra X1 has twice the performance of its predecessor, the Tegra K1, and will come out in early 2015, Nvidia said.

A platform combining two of the X1 chips can process data collected from up to 12 high-definition cameras monitoring traffic, blind spots and other safety conditions in driver assistance systems, Huang said.

The chips can help detect and read road signs, recognise pedestrians and detect braking vehicles before you do.

Nvidia has been struggling to compete against larger chipmakers like Qualcomm in smartphones and tablets and thinks that its Tegra mobile chips will be better off in cars and is already supplying companies including Audi, BMW and Tesla.

In the third quarter, revenue from Tegra chips for automobiles and mobile devices jumped 51 percent to $168 million. While this is not bad it is a Fiat 500 to Nvidia’s Mac Truck of total revenue of $1.225 billion.

 

Hard drive prices slowly returning to pre-flood levels

Posted on January 25, 2013 by - News, Opinions, Products

hddcloseupThe hard drive industry was hit hard by heavy flooding in Thailand back in 2011. Several plants, providing vital components for Seagate and Western Digital, temporarily went off line following the disaster. The shortage caused a massive surge in hard drive prices and its effects are still being felt.

Keen to provide a bit of perspective, Xbit Labs compiled an interesting chart of hard drive average selling prices, based on data from Seagate’s and Western Digital’s SEC filings over the last four years. Pre-flood average selling prices (ASPs) were between $45 and $55, but they soared to the $70 mark in Q4 2011. The recovery was painfully slow and although some rather optimistic analysts claimed the market would stabilize by mid-2012, we are still feeling the muddy aftertaste of Thai flood water.

According to the latest figures, average selling prices decreased to $62 – $63 per unit and they are still considerably higher than pre-flood prices. Prices are currently at 2008 levels, which means they are still too high for comfort. Of course, the effects of the global economic downturn and recent PC slump were not factored into 2008 pricing and ASPs should be significantly lower today, even after they are adjusted for inflation.
This is bad for consumers and system integrators alike, as they have to adjust their own margins to compensate for the higher prices.  What’s more, hard drive makers are probably not too keen to reduce their ASPs, as further cuts would negatively impact their margins while they are still reeling from flood-related losses. Western Digital CEO Stephen Milligan confirmed the company has more capacity, but it is throttling it to what it sees as demand, which is a polite way of saying WD is trying to keep prices artificially high.

It is even worse for end consumers looking to upgrade their PCs or get some cheap portable storage. Back in mid-2011, per-terabyte retail prices were at their lowest point, about €25 in European markets and a 2TB 3.5-inch drive cost roughly €50. By November 2011, per-terabyte prices hit €35 to €38 and they went on to peak at €50 to €55 by April 2012. Retail prices today are still significantly higher than in 2011 and they are in the €38 to €40 range across Europe.

Xbit also concluded that ASPs peaked in Q4 2011. In the meantime, SSD prices continued to tumble, but SSDs are still too costly to completely replace traditional hard drives. However, SSD shipments are expected to double in 2013, as they are the preferred storage option for Ultrabooks.

Hybrid drives are also entering the fray and they can be found in quite a few budget ultrathin notebooks, although their days in proper Ultrabooks are numbered. So far Seagate is the only hard drive maker to offer 2.5-inch hybrid drives in retail, but Western Digital is also entering the market and it showed off its first consumer friendly hybrid drives at CES.

Traditional hard drives are not going anywhere yet and it is evident that WD and Seagate have enough room to maintain a huge price advantage over SSDs, as they are artificially inflating prices. They can’t bridge the performance and power consumption gap, but by offering hybrid drives they can bring the best of both worlds to value-minded consumers.