November 24 2009
End of the line for IBM’s Cell
November 22 2009
Hacked Darwin kernel available for 10.6.2 on Atom netbooks
November 20 2009
Apple fourth best among build quality study for portables
November 20 2009
Apple Fourth Best Among Build Quality Study For Portables
SquareTrade, Inc., a company that offers extended warranties on all sorts of consumer electronics, has published a study on laptop longevity based on 30,000 costumer experiences. The numbers show that Apple is fourth in terms of reliability, as machines from the Cupertino company suffered a smidgen over 10 percent failure rate over a two-year period and an estimated 17.4 percent rate over three years. Asus, Toshiba, and Sony all had lower two-year and estimated three-year failure rates, with Asus taking the top spot at just under 10 percent over two years and an estimated 15.6 percent over three.
The statistics relevant to our interests are based on laptops that failed due to “natural causes”—not machines that were accidentally damaged. These numbers are broken up among nine different manufactures, all of which had a sample size of at least 1,000 units. Although Apple isn’t on top, it can at least look at Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Gateway, and HP as companies that provide inferior quality laptops. While Dell was less than one percentage point above Apple on the three-year estimated statistics, Hewlett Packard had an estimated failure rate over of over 25 percent over three years.
November 19 2009
IBM makes supercomputer significantly smarter than cat
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IBM have presented at paper at the SC09 supercomputing conference describing a milestone in cognitive computing: the group’s massively parallel cortical simulator, C2, now has the ability to simulate a brain with about 4.5 percent the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, and significantly more brain capacity than a cat.
November 17 2009
Cray rides AMD’s Opteron to top of supercomputer list
You might think that Cray, the company whose name has practically been synonymous with “supercomputer” three decades, would be a regular fixture at the top of the Top 500 Supercomputer List. But you’d be mistaken. Today’s first-place win by Cray marks the company’s debut in the top slot—at long last, after 34 lists, Cray won.
November 16 2009
Ars Technica Holiday Gift Guide 2009
Geeks, technophiles, early adopters, giant nerds—these are hard people to shop for, because by definition they’re always more up on the latest and greatest than their peers. That’s why every year at Christmas time, loved ones and significant others struggle to find gifts for that special geek that fit the following three criteria: 1) they want it, 2) they don’t already have it, and 3) it won’t break the bank if you buy it for them. And, every year, the Ars Technica Holiday Gift Guide is here to help.
November 16 2009
Now that AMD and Intel have settled, the fight really begins
This past Friday, Intel and AMD announced a settlement in their acrimonious antitrust dispute, with AMD clearly coming out on top to the tune of $1.25 billion in cash and a host of concessions. Both companies hosted conference calls that Friday morning, and later in the day the released excerpts from the agreement that makes up the non-cash portion of the deal, in which Intel agrees to a number of conditions that should make life much easier for AMD and its fab spinoff, GlobalFoundries.
