Hasta La Gadget!

For all the money and effort poured into supercomputers, their lifespans can be brutally short. See IBM’s Roadrunner as a textbook example: the 116,640-core cluster was smashing records just five years ago, and yet it’s already considered so behind the times that Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking it out of action today. Don’t mourn too much for the one-time legend, however. The blend of Opteron and Cell processors proved instrumental to understanding energy flow in weapons while also advancing the studies of HIV, nanowires and the known universe. Roadrunner should even be useful in its last gasps, as researchers will have a month to experiment with the system’s data routing and OS memory compression before it’s dismantled in earnest. It’s true that the supercomputer has been eclipsed by cheaper, faster or greener competitors, including its reborn Cray arch-nemesis — but there’s no question that we’ll have learned from Roadrunner’s brief moment in the spotlight.

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Via: NBC

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory

We’ve looked intensely at the outside of the redesigned PlayStation 3 ever since it was unveiled in Tokyo last month. Getting a look inside has proven unusually tougher, but French YouTube member K0st3yr has volunteered to do what few gamers dare and tear down Sony’s updated console. As we’ve quickly learned, Sony hasn’t chosen to radically rework the insides like Microsoft did with the slim Xbox 360. The Cell processor and its RSX graphics companion are still separate parts, and a similar power supply capacity suggests that neither of the main chips has been built on a more efficient manufacturing process. Instead, it’s everything else that has been given the shuffle: a smaller Blu-ray drive and more clever overall construction appear to be the tickets to the 20 percent volume reduction compared to the last model. While the revealed internals might be disappointments to those who were hoping the PS3’s possible sendoff would involve more of a bang than a whimper, they do hint that Sony might have breathing room if it wants to advance the design any further. Just have some popcorn and a grasp of French on hand if you’d like to have a peek at the three-part video dissection found after the break.

Update: Not to be outdone, iFixit has conducted its own teardown. There aren’t any shockers in the mix beyond improved repairability, but you’ll find many of the components given their exact names as well as more explanations of what’s been changed to shrink the PS3 a second time.

Continue reading Sony’s 2012 PlayStation torn down, shows its evolved roots (update: another teardown)

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Sony’s 2012 PlayStation torn down, shows its evolved roots (update: another teardown) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Believe it or not, EV battery life is still something of a Pandora’s Box, even for automakers: they can tell you the battery pack’s current and voltage, but not how it’s really performing under pressure. Ford, GE and the University of Michigan are uniting to unlock that mystery through a new ARPA-E project. In its role, GE is developing a minuscule sensor array that will track the nuances of battery cells that existing technology misses; it will promptly hand the baton to researchers at the University of Michigan, who plan to both prove that GE’s data is on the mark as well as develop tricks for predicting behavior. Ford handles the last mile, almost literally: it’s planning to fit the GE sensor technology to one of its cars and test in a more realistic environment. Before you fantasize about knowing the lifespan of your Focus Electric’s battery down to the minute, however, the new alliance is stressing that it’s only just getting started — there’s another three years and $3.1 million to go before the project wraps up. If all goes according to plan, though, we’ll have electric cars and plug-in hybrids that can not only tell when they’ve seen better days but can eke out extra miles through smarter battery designs.

Continue reading Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road

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Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It might shock you to hear that nobody has ever developed a complete computational model of a living cell. That’s because, despite their diminutive size, their internal processes are extremely complex—but now a team of Stanford engineers has succeeded where others have failed. More »

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