German PC component maker be quiet! announces the Dark Rock Slim-- a CPU cooler the company describes as "perfect for high-end builds with limited space" thanks to compact construction promising not to block memory slots.

The Dark Rock Slim measures 72 x 127 x 159.4mm, meaning it requires a chassis with clearance of 160mm or more. It features a cooling block with airflow-optimised cooling fins to increase air circulation, and further improves on heat transfer through a black coating with ceramic particles and four 6mm copper heatpipes. The top cover is in brushed aluminium with a diamond cut finish.

Cooler Master announces a self-explanatory range of 120mm fans-- the Square Fan (SF) series, featuring the square SF120R RGB and SF120R ARGB, together with a larger, rectangular option, the SF360R ARGB.

The SF120R RGB and SF120R ARGB are based around a square 120mm design. The two fans are essentially identical, aside from the ARGB model adding addressable RGB LED lighting. Thus, the SF120R RGB is compatible with standard 3-pin fan headers, while the ARGB variant requires 2 cables, one for connecting to a 4-pin addressable RGB header and the other for connecting to a 4-pin fan header. Both fans support PWM, with variable speeds of 650 to 2000 RPM, and include rubber pads at each mounting point to reduce vibrations.

Gigabyte launches the Aorus ACT800-- a tower CPU cooler featuring a conventional aluminium fin-stack tower-type heatsink ventilated by two pre-installed custom-design fans in a push-pull arrangement.

Reaching inside the aluminium fans are six direct contact nickel-plated copper heatpipes. A plastic shroud covers the fans and the top of the cooler. The top features an RGB-lit Aorus logo and a temperature/RPM reader, and the fans are also full RGB. All lighting can, of course, be synchronised via Gigabyte motherboard software.

EKWB announces the EK-Annihilator Pro-- a high-end water block designed for use with Intel Xeon W processors and the LGA3647 socket available in two flavours, Narrow ILM and Square ILM (Independent Loading Mechanism).

The water blocks feature a machined copper base treated with nickel electroplating. The top is made of black POM acetal, while the hold-down brackets are in stainless steel. A total of 9 water ports (x3 standard G1/4" ports on top and x6 G1/8" threaded ports on the sides) allows compatibility with both taller and lower-profile cooling solutions.

Intel releases details on the graphics capabilities tucked inside the 4th Core CPU generation (aka "Haswell")-- now with three graphics tiers named Intel HD 5000, Iris and Iris Pro.

The previous Core chip generation ships with two flavours of graphics, Intel HD 4000 and HD 3000.

With Haswell, Ultrabooks carrying 15W U-series CPUs get the updated HD 5000 graphics. Laptops using 28W U-series chips get Iris, which Intel claims is up to x2 faster than HD Graphics.

The more powerful H- and R-series laptop chips (47-55W) pack Iris Pro graphics with embedded DRAM.  M- and K-series laptop CPUs also get the Iris Pro option.

Intel HD 5000, Iris and Iris Pro leverage on Direct X 11.1, OpenGL 4 and OpenCL 1.2 technologies, with "enhanced" 4K output and a 3-screen collage mode.

AMD, ARM, Imagination, MediaTek and Texas Instruments team up in a collective effort against the mighty Intel-- the HSA Foundation, a non-profit alliance formed around the mysterious art of "Heterogeneous System Architecture."

After all, as the old saying goes, "the enemies of my enemy are my friends." Or is that "the enemy of Intel is my friend"?

What is Heterogeneous System Architecture (aka HSA)? It is a fairly old concept, actually. Heterogeneous-- or hybrid-- processors use all chip components (such as CPUs and GPUs) as co-processors of a "parallel computing engine."

This directly opposes the way current processors work, where all components act as solo units on specialised tasks.

Calling it "a new class of accelerated processor that combines more compute capabilities than any processor in the history of computing," AMD launches its Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units.

These APUs incorporate – in a single die design – multi-core CPU (x86) technology, a discrete-level graphics and parallel processing engine for DirectX 11, a dedicated high-def video acceleration block, and a high-speed bus (speeds data across the differing types of processor cores within the desi Continue reading...

Open Source clearly works for software. So why not a hardware approach?

The design for the palm-sized Arduino, a microcontroller board, is online for anybody to build and sell knockoffs.

Yet Smart Projects SNC from Scarmagno, Italy (a 2-person firm) will sell at least 60,000 of the microcontrollers at $30 a piece (up from 34,000 last year). Owner Gianluca Martino says he has to contract out production to keep up with growth.

And some other makers pay royalties to carry the Arduino name. Continue reading...