Hasta La Gadget!

Last week, you probably noticed new computers from Dell, Gateway and others using a brand new, bizarre-sounding chip from Intel: the Core i7. You might have even seen some benchmarks and features showing that this is a real beast of processor. Well, we’re pretty excited about the Core i7, so here’s a quick guide to why it’s so awesome:

Hokay, so the way Intel develops chips is on what it calls the “tick-tock cycle”. The “tick” is the improvement of its current microarchitecture, mainly shrinking it down to make it more energy efficient, along with other tweaks. As you now can guess, the “tock” indicates the launch of a totally new microarchitecture.

Penryn, for instance, was the tick to the Core 2’s tock, shrinking it down from a 65-nanometer process to 45nm. Core i7 is a tock, using a completely new microarchitecture codenamed Nehalem. Core i7 Nehalem is actually a dramatic step forward, remedying several lingering Intel architecture deficiencies that AMD actually had them beat on years ago. So, here are four things that specifically make the new chip awesome:

Bye Bye Front-Side Bus
The ancient front-side bus setup has long been a drag on Intel’s chips, and they’re finally ditching it. The FSB essentially carried data between the CPU and memory controller hub (which is also out the window, more on that in a sec), but that didn’t work so well when you started talking buckets of cores. In its place is a new tech called QuickPath Interconnect that’ll make the old bottlenecks history and running tons of cores even better. QPI uses direct point-to-point connections that have a bandwidth of about 25GB/s, way faster than what FSB could offer. The downside is that it requires a new QPI-friendly motherboard. This concept is kind of cribbed from AMD, whose HyperTransport has been doing something similar for a longass time.

Integrated Memory Controller and Triple-Channel Memory
You might notice a pattern that a lot of Nehalem’s performance boosts have to do with better access to memory and fatter bandwidth. Yet another tech that AMD held over Intel’s head for years is an integrated memory controller, which Core i7 finally uses. Basically this just means that the memory controller is on the same die as the CPU, cutting down memory latency. Before, with Intel chips, communication had to take place across the front-side bus, making stuff slooooow. The last memory bonus is that Core i7 supports triple-channel memory. Right now, you’re probably on a computer using dual-channel memory (in English, I mean that it uses RAM sticks in sets of two). Core i7 will make three sticks of RAM the new standard—so keep an eye out for plenty of 6GB and 12GB systems running around.

The Return of Hyper-Threading
Intel abandoned Hyper-Threading after the Pentium 4, but it’s back in Core i7 (and Atom, but really, psh). Basically, it’s a parallel-processing tech that runs multiple threads simultaneously. In English, it divvies up tasks so they can be crunched by a processor simultaneously, instead of one after the other. It short, it makes video encoding and other parallel-friendly processes run faster. We’re interested to see what kind of gains this will produce in tandem with programs coded to take advantage of threading, not to mention the next great operating systems, Snow Leopard and Windows 7, which will supposedly make better use of multiple cores and parallel processing than current OSes.

Built-In Power Management and Overclocking
Core i7 is pretty much a beast already, but whereas Intel used to say that overclocking was bad for your processor, now with the Core i7, it’s built right in. The Core i7 is really aggressive with power management, more so than Core 2, so it’ll sip juice when it’s not busy, and then crank the power when it needs it. In the BIOS now, you can set it to overclock the CPU in certain situations, and customize that by thermal ratings so it won’t overheat.

So yeah, Core i7 gets our engines running, and we’re not even chip nerds. (Honest!) Sadly though, right now there are just a few Core i7 chips available, and they’re all for desktops. There’s not much of a downside for portables—save for the need for new motherboards and the DDR3 RAM already used by premium laptops—but before you see it in a Dell XPS notebook or MacBook Pro, you’re going to see it in a lot of desktop gaming and graphics-intensive systems. Laptops probably won’t appear until way into next year, but we think they’ll be well worth the wait.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about chips, Pringles or the Hillary Swank movie The Core to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

Most home robots available currently are designed for one specific use, like the iRobot Roomba for vacuuming, the WowWee Rovio for mobile surveillance or the Scooba for mopping floors.

Now, two students at the Louisiana State University’s department of computer science have created a prototype robot that can be fully customizable and used for multiple tasks such as lawn mowing and surveillance among others.

“What is most impressive about this robot is that it is
multi-functional and no one else is currently designing
multi-functional robots,” said S.S. Iyengar, chair of the computer science department at the university in a statement.

LSU’s robot called AgBot is solar powered and can move at up to six miles per hour for at least four hours.The robot comes with Bluetooth and GPS system that makes it easy to navigate.

In its avatar as a lawn care machine, it can be fitted with a seed dispenser and a fertilizer tank.

The robot is also equipped with a night vision camera positioned atop a 360
degree swivel, a high-frequency alarm system and advanced motion
detector.

So in its surveillance mode, if the AgBot detects motion it can sound an alarm, photograph the intruder and email the picture.

The ultimate goal for the AgBot is to be completely customizable. With minor adjustments, the robot can support five or six different
applications including picking up mail, say the students.

Here’s the video showing the AgBot at work.

Photo: Louisiana State University

Sure, these chess sets aren’t quite as neat as the vertical Tri-D chess in Star Trek, but by turning the game through 90 degrees and hanging it on the wall they do turn it into a sort of art masterpiece. That’d be assuming you play well—with my playing style it’d be more like a kid’s painting disaster. Still, toppling your king from the board in resignation does get an extra kind of fatal symbolism. The choice of wood is customizable, and they cost upwards of $100. [Straightupchess via Neatorama]

Okay, any talk that consistency in Apple’s approval process for the App Store has improved definitely has to be put on hold at this point; first we had that BdEmailer situation that duplicates functionality (albeit shoddily) of the iPhone’s own email capabilities, and now we have official confirmation that Google did a no-no when it slipped its voice-powered search through the checkpoint. The problem is that enabling the automatic voice detection requires use of an undocumented API call for the proximity sensor that Apple neither guarantees nor approves use of, meaning firmware updates can break it at will. In and of itself, that’s not a huge indiscretion on Google’s part since they’re probably committed to keeping it up-to-date, but the real issue is that this violates an explicit rule of the App Store that bans the use of undocumented calls. Apple, guys, seriously: if you want to be jerks about what gets through and what doesn’t, fine — but at least do it consistently so it doesn’t look like you’re favoring companies run by members of your own executive board (or in the case of BdEmailer, companies that are doing a bang-up job of making your own products look better).

[Via mocoNews]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Confirmed: Google was naughty, broke App Store rules with iPhone app originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The trail of evidence pointing to a D3x unveiling by Nikon next month has gotten pretty solid in the last few weeks. Nikon Rumors rounds it all up, and it’s fairly convincing forensic scene. Update: The D3x is on Nikon’s site!

Besides the firmware for the long-rumored 24-megapixel full-frame DSLR popping up way back in April, Nikon’s scheduled several worldwide events for Dec. 1, a bunch of accessories makers have had products “designed” for a D3x, and topping the list, the D3 itself has gotten cheap, coming down to about $4200. Plus, some retailers are saying couldn’t place D3 orders anymore. Or maybe this is all crap and Nikon is just going to reveal they’ve replaced Rudolph’s nose with a 24MP camera for live Santa vision. [Nikon Rumors]