Jon Peddie Blogs

Quadrillions and Quadrillions of Cycles

Posted by Jon Peddie on July 24th 2010 | Discuss (0)
Categories: Blogs, Engineering and Development
Tags: rendering, processors, cloud computing,

The number of processors, both x86 and GPU, available for rendering has been increasing exponentially. Rendering is one of the applications that can soak up all the cycles that are available to it, which is an example of Peddie’s first law – In computer graphics, too much is not enough. We looked at the installed base of x86 and GPU processors, applied a factor for the average number of cores and developed the following chart. Cores alone don’t tell the whole story, the real measure is how millions of operations per second can the processor execute. A general figure of merit…

The New Visualization

Posted by Jon Peddie on July 10th 2010 | Discuss (0)
Categories: Blogs, VIZ-SIM
Tags: nvidia ati amd radeon eyefinity quadro 3d surround evans & sutherland add-in-boards large scale visualization

In order to design automobiles, airplanes, search for oil (or contain it), and examine artifacts like a 2000-year-old mummy, large scale visualization systems are needed.Visualization system can mean different things to different people so a little definition is required to avoid confusion and controversy.I make a distinction between large-scale and localized visualization systems. A localized system, by my definition, is a single monitor used by an investigator and may be shown to colleagues, on occasion. Visualization systems employing voxels for medical research is a typical example, as are individual product lifecycle management (PLM) visualization systems. Visualization systems are also often confused…

Nintendo goes with DMP for S3D graphics engine

Posted by Jon Peddie on June 20th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, Engineering and Development
Tags: nintendo, 3ds, 3d, gaming, stereographic, autostereoscopic

Today, DMP announced in Japan that Nintendo has adopted DMP OpenGL ES 1.1 compliant PICA200 for the 3DS. The new Nintendo 3DS is an amazing little device. The DS has already been a beloved machine attracting over 100 million users since 2004. Not many products (that I can think of, at least) can match that volume of enthusiasm or the customer base. And it’s self perpetuating because the installed base attracts developers which create new games which attracts new consumers – it is a perfect ecosystem. Nintendo has experimented with S3D for years, starting with the Nintendo Virtual Boy monochrome system, and…

The business plan:  selling the entrepreneurial idea

Posted by Andy Marken on May 23rd 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, General Interest
Tags:

With an estimated $800+ billion in funding available for the entrepreneur annually (even in bad times), you may think that venture capital and R&D partnership firms would be falling over each other to fund the latest wave of scientific and technological proposals. Wrong. Venture capital companies such as R&D Funding Corp., Early Stages Co., Mayfield Fund, Asset Management, and others receive an average of 100 technology and service/support proposals each month, even when the economy is “less than desirable.” Unfortunately, instead of paving the way for funding, the proposals are often more detrimental than helpful. The sad truth is that the…

A New Model Cometh

Posted by Ted Pollak on April 29th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, Games
Tags: gaming ea mmog battlefield bad company 2 subscription model

One of the biggest challenges for PC gaming is the revenue and refresh models. When I refer to refresh model I am talking about creating sequels. Often there is so much pressure to crank out another version of the game that sequels can end up deflating the franchise and ultimately hurting the game. Generally MMOG’s avoid this phenomenon because they add content along the way. This refreshes the franchise without forcing the gamer to the cash register for a new base software package. This is a better model and the only time the gamer should be forced to the cash register…

TV revolutions; the struggle continues

Posted by Kathleen Maher on April 28th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, The Market
Tags: nvidia gaming s3d lenticular 3d autostereoscopic ip tv 3d tv 3d glasses

Revolutions always take a long time. It’s the shooting and fighting part that goes fast. At NAB it looks like we’re just winding up the shooting and fighting part for S3D but that doesn’t mean we know who wins. Clearly, obviously, and totally for sure man, 3D is going to be a fact of life in the movie theaters and it’ll certainly be a novelty for home movies and sports. But, the thing is, TV watching is mutating so fast that we’re not so sure what people will be watching in 2015 and what they’ll be watching it on. We participated…

Playing with six monitors—is that a “full deck?”

Posted by Jon Peddie on March 8th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, Content Creation
Tags: ati amd multi-monitor eyefinity mt. tiburon testing

Here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs we’re testing a lot of stuff as usual. However, the one system that will get a lot of attention from us and our readers is the six-headed ATI-based EyeFinity. The system consists of six 22-inch 1920 x 1080 displays - yes, that’s 5760 x 2160 resolution in a 3 x 2 array 61 x 24 inches, backed up by a 2GB GDDR5 graphics board, running on a 3.7GHz 4GB RAM, SSD, Nehalem system, with of course, great sound. When the system is first brought to life it is six duplicate displays The next step is…

Jon’s tortuous path to the iPhone

Posted by Jon Peddie on February 11th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, General Interest
Tags:

I proudly consider myself a geek and an early adopter. When the slick N95 from Nokia first came out I knew I had to have one. The unit wasn’t yet available in the United States, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for me. My colleague and longtime friend’s daughter in England works for Vodafone and Vodafone was the carrier that was offering the N95.I had long used two mobile phones, one for the US and one for rest of the world because the US had been so late to adopt the higher-speed digital systems like GSM and 3G. The…

First thoughts on CES and tablets

Posted by Kathleen Maher on January 10th 2010 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, The Market
Tags: nvidia apple marvell ces tablets asus entourage ebooks publishing

CES has dawned bright and clear. The crowds have come and there is interest in buying – or at least that’s how it’s looking now. Plenty of news is coming out of CES, but in the PC world, tablets are consuming the attention of the buyers in the aisles as well as reporters, and we’re pretty fascinated as well. For the past couple of years, Amazon and Sony have helped make a convincing case for the eBook as people are not only buying the devices, they’re downloading and reading more as well. In fact, according to a December report from the…

So long 2009, don’t let the door hit you in the behind

Posted by Kathleen Maher on December 15th 2009 | Permalink
Categories: Blogs, General Interest
Tags:

To put together this list of notable events for 2009, I went back over old issues to see what we were talking about. What struck me besides the fact that a lot of really great stuff actually happened was that you can almost hear a continuous whine through the copy (mostly mine)—I’m tired, I don’t want to do this any more, when is it going to get better?  In the future, would you please tell me to just shut up and get on with it? I’d appreciate it. The thing is, it really wasn’t such a bad year in terms of…