NVidia’s General Manager of MCP Business Drew Henry held an interview with Digitimes magazine in which they discuss the absence of a 512-core Fermi card, the results of the initial benchmarks, and if DRAM price inflation will impact upcoming produce prices. Along the way, they push for details on the reports of poor yields out of TSMC.
TSMC’s yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.
Linden Labs has just released the economic results from the first quarter of 2010, and the results are astounding. The biggest number is a 30% increase year-to-year in User-to-User transactions, totalling US$160 Million . Add in xStreet sales of US$2.3Million, an 82% increase over last year and 24% increase over last quarter, and an all-time high of unique users at 826,214. What’s leading to the new buzz? Several things actually:
The popularity of the world-wide blockbuster movie Avatar had a positive impact on the quarter. The movie made the concept of an avatar understood around the world, and introduced the word “avatar” into common usage. In addition, the success of the 3D effects in the film, supported by the advent of 3D televisions and the increase in theatrical venues and releases capable of displaying 3D content, have created a halo effect around 3D immersion. As a result, searches and organic traffic to Second Life web properties increased in the quarter.
In addition, Valentines Day was the single largest day ever on the Xstreet marketplace, and several new programs from Linden to attract users (affiliate programs, advertising, and new engagement campaigns). Things are looking good for Second Life.
It’s been several months since we brought you the travesty of the “US Counterinsurgency Diagram”, that has recently resurfaced as a great example of Bad Vis, but now it’s being used as a weapon against the military’s increased reliance on the scourge of presentation people everywhere: Microsoft PowerPoint. Military commanders are increasingly spending hours a day creating these presentations, and they don’t enjoy it. When asked:
Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.
Arguing that presentations unrealistically simplify the information and disguise complexities under simplistic bullet-points, I find this description incredibly accurate of my own experiences:
Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”
Take a look at a proposed Fortune magazine cover, and see how many financial jokes are in there. Can you find Helicopter Ben Bernanke dumping money into the economy? How about the proverbial slow boat to China? Can you find the houses that are underwater in their mortgages? How about the survivalists who expected this Great Recession to turn into a Depression and thus stocked up on food, water, and ammo. Take a closer look and you will see the FDIC closing banks, the United States Treasury being raided, the Tea Party blowing off steam with an elephant (Republican) tea kettle, and Detroit being pictured as a pile of wrecked cars.
There are a few things I did not understand while looking at the cover, such as the guy on a hill doing a painting just east of Hollywood. Overall though, I love this cover, and I wish Fortune had gone with it.
Chris Ware is a graphic artist with a specific style and a very specific point of view. He was asked to create a cover for the May issue of Fortune, specifically about the Fortune 500.
Surprise! Fortune rejected the cover. (What a bunch of wimps!)
NVidia has posted a short case study on how Prime Focus used the Quadro hardware to accelerate the 3D Conversion of “Clash of the Titans”. The movie was shot in traditional 2D, and then postprocessed (some would say rather poorly, unfortunateyl) into 3D by various studies. With the amount of footage to convert and the short timeframe, speed was of huge important, and Prime Focus was able to leverage GPGPU on Quadro card to accelerate their View-D process significantly.
Prime Focus set up a pipeline to enable 3D SDI video routing for workstations equipped with Quadro professional graphics solutions. The facility’s 3D playback systems could route streams of 3D content to three different projection rooms in the facility at any given time. The team used IRIDAS Framecycler to playback review files and conform reels. IRIDAS is a company that pioneered the first, real-time color grading solution released based on NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics, and was one of the first systems to provide real-time debayering as well as Stereo 3D support. Having Framecycler accelerated for NVIDIA Quadro, the team at Prime Focus was able to make convergence and parallax adjustments on the fly to reflect director and artist review input.
So, was the effort to convert worth it all?
The designer of the Prime Focus 3D projection pipeline, Sean Konrad, explained, “With the NVIDIA Quadro SDI platform, while clients were reviewing in one room, we could have internal stereographers review shots on another projector in a different room. We could simultaneously set convergence and make adjustments while an editor worked on conforming shots in another screening room. The NVIDIA-based pipeline allowed us to do a lot of multitasking throughout the facility — this was absolutely critical, since we were pushing about 20 minutes of stereo shots through the pipeline every day.”
The Planck telescope, launched into orbit in 2009, orbits the earth looking at the Cosmic microwave background radiation. The telescope is surveying the sky, viewing electromagnetic radiation ranging from the infrared to the microwaves.
Recently, NASA released some images from the Planck telescope that focused on the region of Orion. The image to the right shows the familiar Orion Nebula, but in a different way than we are accustomed to looking at it. Notice the large arc of red. Astronomers think that is the shock wave from a star that went supernova approximately two million years ago. The arc is now approximately 300 light-years across.
The picture shows light resulting from two different types of radiation. At the lowest frequencies, Planck primarily maps emission from ionized gas heated by newly formed hot stars. At higher frequencies, Planck maps the meager heat emitted by extremely cold dust. This can reveal the coldest cores in the clouds, which are approaching the final stages of collapse, before they are reborn as full-fledged stars.
Lockheed Martin has posted a YouTube video (Shown above) of their VRSIL, Virtual Reality Systems Integration Lab, that allows product testing in virtual environments with coupled simulation and visualization.
Lockheed Martin’s Virtual Reality Systems Integration Lab (VRSIL) can rapidly perform product testing in custom, realistic virtual environments, saving development costs by improving product prototypes on the spot and quickly progressing to new testing phases, ultimately improving the affordability of the system.
The VRSILs unique capabilities include models and simulation systems, real-time visualizations, human-in-the-loop/human factor experiments, and post-processed visuals for analysis and marketing.
It’s difficult to tell what, if anything, in the video actually comes from the VRSIL and isn’t just conceptual 3dsMax renderings (I love the firing soldier with “Animation Test” plastered vertically on the left side), but the idea is interesting.
This week’s “Resource Of the Week” is the fantastic “3D Movie Making: Stereoscopic Digital Cinema from Script to Screen” by Bernard Mendiburu. With 3D movies becoming more popular, more and more amateurs and professionals are experimenting with the technology and finding many questions along the way. Recently recommended by 3d World as a great place to start for their Sony Stereoscopic competition, we’ve made it our recommended book of the week.
Hollywood is going 3D! Join the revolution with this primer to all of the essential skills for live action 3D, from preproduction through distribution. 3D perception and science is presented in an accessible way that provides the principles of Stereoscopic vision you need to make the transition from the 2D world. Tools of the trade are enumerated with an eye on current constraints and what is coming down the pike to smooth the way. Step-by-step instructions detail how 3D processes affect every stage of the production including screenwriting, art direction, principle photography, editing, visual effects and distribution. The companion DVD includes an array of 2D and 3D images that demonstrate concepts and techniques, 3D movie shorts that showcase alternative techniques, After Effects project files to explore and manipulate for effect, and a resource list of software tools and tutorials that demonstrate techniques.
This book, and many others, is available in the VizWorld Store.
China has been using technology that is called “The Great Firewall” to limit the information that its citizens can receive. This firewall blocks such sensitive topics like democracy. VisualEconomics has published an infographic on the censorship laws in China, and how it affects the people of China.
If you think the FCC is bad, take a look at some of China’s censorship policies. What’s next, burning books?
Just how much power do you consume with your computing equipment? Computers, routers, print servers, gaming consoles, all of it consumes power constantly, and most of it is so far removed from our consciousness that we pay it no attention. A new infographic at IAmGreen, from the folks at Infographicworld, attempts to compile some statistics about the environmental impact of our computing addiction. Some figures:
The average desktop computer consumes enough electricity to produce roughly 4.5lbs of CO2.
Over 1 Billion Computers in use WorldWide, set to double by 2014
In a single working day (9 to 5), computers consume 1.7 Million Megawatts.
Manufacturing of new computers this year will require 25 Million Tons of Fossil Fuels.
NVidia’s General Manager of MCP Business Drew Henry held an interview with Digitimes magazine in which they discuss the absence of a 512-core Fermi card, the results of the initial benchmarks, and if DRAM price inflation will impact upcoming produce prices. Along the way, they push for details on the reports of poor yields out of TSMC.
Linden Labs has just released the economic results from the first quarter of 2010, and the results are astounding. The biggest number is a 30% increase year-to-year in User-to-User transactions, totalling US$160 Million . Add in xStreet sales of US$2.3Million, an 82% increase over last year and 24% increase over last quarter, and an all-time high of unique users at 826,214. What’s leading to the new buzz? Several things actually:
NVidia has posted a short case study on how Prime Focus used the Quadro hardware to accelerate the 3D Conversion of “Clash of the Titans”. The movie was shot in traditional 2D, and then postprocessed (some would say rather poorly, unfortunateyl) into 3D by various studies. With the amount of footage to convert and the short timeframe, speed was of huge important, and Prime Focus was able to leverage GPGPU on Quadro card to accelerate their View-D process significantly.
Just how much power do you consume with your computing equipment? Computers, routers, print servers, gaming consoles, all of it consumes power constantly, and most of it is so far removed from our consciousness that we pay it no attention. A new infographic at IAmGreen, from the folks at Infographicworld, attempts to compile some statistics about the environmental impact of our computing addiction. Some figures:
VizWorld.com 
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