Hasta La Gadget!

Yes, that’s right, just “Venue,” not Venue Pro — and from a glance, it looks to us like this might be the new name for the Thunder Android phone we played with a little while ago judging by this FCC filing that just crossed the wires. As far as we can tell, this thing is basically a carbon copy of the Venue Pro, except it’s running Android instead of Windows Phone 7 and drops the sliding portrait keyboard in favor of a full-touch setup. Notably, the curved glass 4.1-inch AMOLED display carries over, so that should make the design nerds in the audience swoon a bit. Additionally, turns out there’s a Bluetooth SIG certification under the same model name — V03B — that confirms the display’s specs and the fact that it’s a “smartphone” (whew!). Stay tuned on this one — something tells us we won’t be waiting terribly long for an announce.

Dell Venue hits the FCC: is this the Thunder’s new name? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nook Color processor revealed: ARM Cortex A8-based TI OMAP3621 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This year, for the first time ever, Mercedes-Benz designers participated at the Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge, and the results were pretty crazy. The company fielded three different concepts, including a two-wheeled electric Maybach and a carbon fiber Smart car literally knit together by high tech robots.

But Mercedes’ most unique contribution was the Biome concept: a vehicle that’s grown from seeds. The seeds are genetically engineered so that they can be tailored to each customers individual preferences, and are nurtured at Mercedes run nurseries until they become fully grown vehicles. You can check out a gallery of some of these futuristic designs, from Mercedes and others, over at Wired’s Autopia blog.

Add the ‘made in China’ tag to yet another gadget: the world’s fastest supercomputer. China says it has the most powerful computing system — a machine called Tianhe-1A.

The supercomputer uses 7,168 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs (graphics processing units) and 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs and is capable of clocking 2.507 petaflops or 2,507 trillion floating point calculations per second.

The Tianhe-1A will take the top spot from the U.S. Cray XT5 aka ‘Jaguar’ that’s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The Jaguar can clock 1.759 petaflops and is built using 37,376 AMD processors.

The Tianhe-1A is interesting because it combines CPU and GPUs — much like desktop PCs — to create the world’s most powerful machine. In fact, Nvidia, claims if its GPUs weren’t used, then it would have taken 50,000 CPUs and twice as much floor space to create a comparable computer.

The Tianhe-1A was designed by the National University of Defense Technology in China and will be operated as an open access system for large scientific computations.

The use of GPUs in high performance computing is on the rise. Once seen in PCs used largely for multimedia and gaming, GPU-based computing has become more popular among researchers for its ability to offer raw computing power. While CPU are critical to a PC for their ability to interact with the different computing elements such as memory and disk drives, GPUs can perform specialized tasks especially related to graphics and visual computations that working in tandem with CPUs can speed up computing.

The CPU-GPU combination also helps keep up power efficiency. The system consumes 4.04 megawatts, three times less than what it would have if it were built entirely with CPUs, claims Nvidia.

Overall, the Tianhe-1A is a computing monster. It has 262 terabytes of memory and is housed in 140 refrigerator-sized cabinets.

See Also:

• Sony’s PS3 Update Could Affect Supercomputer Users
• Android Phones Can Substitute for Supercomputers
• How to Upgrade a Supercomputer, 37376 Chips at a Time
• Toshiba Crams Supercomputer Guts Into 3-D, Web TV
• Microsoft, Cray Unleash $25K Supercomputer
• Water-Cooled Supercomputer Doubles as Dorm Space Heater

Photo: Nvidia

Finally, a green innovation in the ever-stagnant field of toilet paper. Kimberly-Clark has announced a new line of toilet paper that eliminates the cardboard tube. Not only does this eliminate potential waste–since people no longer have to toss the tube–but it also means that the entire roll is usable, with no glue stuck on the final piece.

The company says that there are 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced in the U.S. on an annual basis, which results in 160 billion tons of trash, since many users simply toss the tubes instead of recycling them. The tubeless rolls are still able to fit over a standard toilet paper spindle, and use a patented winding technology to make them as round as possible. KImberly-Clark says that the technology may soon be used for paper towels as well.

Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper will soon be available in the North Eastern United States, before spreading to additional territories as well.

Via USA Today.