Home » Archives for April 2009
In another press release from NAB, Nvidia has announced that the previously discussed QuadroFX4800 will now be made available to Mac users as an addon. It won’t be cheap ($1800), but will support the 3-pin 3D Stereo connector and two dual-link DVI connectors.
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac has a MSRP of $1,799 USD, and will be available starting May 2009 through Apple.com and select Apple resellers and workstation integrators. The Quadro FX 4800 for Mac will also be available through NVIDIA channel partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadteck (APAC) and Elsa (Japan).
via NVIDIA Brings Highly Acclaimed Quadro FX 4800 To MAC Market.
Hardware apple, nvidia
Some more information is coming out about Frantic Films VFX’s new Deadline product. Major new features : Support for MetaRender and a Mac OS X port.
The latest version provides support for MetaRender, the render package from IRIDAS that automates complex transcoding tasks in production pipelines and post facilities. MetaRender works across platforms and greatly simplifies the task of managing file conversions, including burning-in grading or LUTs and adding file information for viewing with digital dailies.
via Frantic Films Software Announces Deadline 3.1 | The Briefing Room.
Graphics frantic films vfx, nab
At NAB this week, Noise Industries has just released FxFactory Pro 2.0.7, with several new features and improvements:
The new FxFactory Pro 2.0.7 brings major performance enhancements to the blur and glow categories as well as three new plug-ins; PDF Animator, Perlin Noise generator and Alpha Merger. The new update is free to existing FxFactory Pro 2.x customers.
via Noise Industries Releases FxFactory Pro 2.0.7.
Graphics fxfactory, nab
As the human race progresses, so does our consumption of our resources. Have you ever stopped to consider how long a material, like Zinc, will last at our current rate? Well, Gizmodo & New Scientist have a huge infographic that showcases various minerals and how long they’ll exist at our current consumption rates.
Gizmodo – How Long Will Our World Last? (Yes, We Are Screwed) – Technology.
Science infographic
“Emotional Cartography – Technologies of the Self” is a freely downloadable collection of essays from artists, designers, psycho-geographers, cultural researchers, and more all brought together by Christian Nold to visualize intimate biometric data and emotional experiences.
Probably the best known emotion maps are the ones resulting Bio Mapping project, a community mapping project in which the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), a simple indicator of the emotional arousal, is recorded in conjunction with one’s geographical location. By combining the emotional responses of over 1,500 people over a period of 4 years, several “Emotion Maps” were generated of the city in which the participants roamed around.
Emotional Cartography: Implications of Visualizing Intimate Biometric Data – information aesthetics.
Science biomapping, cartography
Flash memory company Spansion has not had a glorious past. Cripping losses, Chapter 11, abrupt departures of the CEO and CFO, debt, delisting, lawsuits, you name it and Spansion has dealt with it. However, there’s a silver lining for Spansion as they’ve decided to introduce NOR Flash into conventional memory. Currently in a basic DIMM form factor, it boast 60x performance improvements.
The Stanford Exploration Project, the industry-funded research consortium, used it to reduce the processing time on multi-terabyte datasets and was reportedly able to visualize half-terabyte datasets on typical x86 servers for the first time. Stanford said the data reorganization step in its processing flow was cut from 22 hours to 22 minutes.
via Spansion Claims Breakthrough in Main Memory | SYS-CON INDIA.
Hardware spansion
Caustic Graphics is back in the news again, this time with a review of the CausticOne hardware from PC Perspective. Things don’t really look that good, but promise to improve in the next rev:
Early hardware dubbed CausticOne (that giant slab of silicon above) manages 3 – 5 frames-per-second in the demonstration video after the break. That’s not nearly enough for twitchy first-person shooters, but second-gen hardware due next year is looking to deliver 14 times that — plenty to get your high-reflectivity frag on.
See the demonstration video after the break.
Read more…
Hardware caustic
In the forums today we want to hear from you about what the Oracle/Sun merger means to you. Do you have Sun Hardware? Friends in Sun? Do you use Sun Products, like Solaris or Java?
Hit the forums and give us your opinions, what do you think this means for the future of Sun?
Website forum, sun
NVidia has released the OpenCL driver to developers today, in an SDK for users enrolled in the “OpenCL Early Access Program”. OpenGL is expected to replace the various GPGPU solutions currently available, like CUDA, with a uniform cross-platform API.
“The OpenCL standard was developed on NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA was the first company to demonstrate OpenCL code running on a GPU,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of technology and content at NVIDIA. “Being the first to release an OpenCL driver to developers cements NVIDIA’s leadership in GPU Computing and is another key milestone in our ongoing strategy to make the GPU the soul of the modern PC.”
via NVIDIA Releases OpenCL Driver To Developers.
Hardware cuda, nvidia, opencl
News is out that Oracle is buying Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. The acquisitions is happening through a purchase of Sun common stock for $9.50 a share.
Oracle is mostly interested in Sun’s holdings of JAVA, and probably some of the server hardware business. How does this impact us? Well, the future of products like the Sun Visualization System is uncertain, as Oracle probablyhas little to no interest in Visualization.
“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
Links covering it:
Hardware sun
VizWorld.com 
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