Upgrade of 5G iPod to 240GB now possible

Still working on additional iPod models

Still running out of storage on your 5th generation iPod? The modders at Rapid Repair have just the ticket for you, with the announcement that they have been successful at upgrading the 5G iPod to a whopping 240GB of storage.

According to Rapid Repair CEO Ben Levy, “The mod is actually very simple on the 5th generation iPod.” The upgrade uses the Toshiba MK2431 hard drive to expand 5G iPod to 240GB.

Right now the Toshiba hard drive is only compatible with the 5G iPod, but the company is working hard to mod the iPod Video, iPod Classic, and the second generation Zune to be able to add these to the list of units that are compatible with the 240GB upgrade. The only problem may be with the almost $250 price of the MK2431GAH hard drive required for the upgrade.

You can learn more here

Sony denies rumors of Intel Larrabee in PlayStation 4

Best work of fiction since The Lord of the Rings

This week, the Inquirer published an exclusive report based on conversations with unnamed Sony representatives at CES, claiming that Nvidia would be entirely out of the picture in all upcoming next generation consoles. Overall, claims were made stating that Intel's forthcoming Larrabee would be the general purpose GPU to power Sony's PlayStation 4 in the next gen console war.

"The nice Sony engineering lady at CES told us that Intel essentially bought the win, a theoretically good architecture, no imminent threats of going bust, and not being hated by Sony all contributed too. With a couple of deliverables satisfied, the PS4 GPU belongs to Intel."  The report continued: "Yeah, Intel won the PS4 GPU, no shock considering how much they needed a console win to get people coding for Larrabee."

Fortunately, Sony Computer Entertainment has moved quickly to deny this latest rumor that Intel will be producing the GPU for the PlayStation 4. To further correct the given claims, TechRadar spoke with a Sony Computer Entertainment Europe representative who clearly stated, "it's nonsense, and is quite possibly the best work of fiction I've read, since Lord of the Rings."

On another note, the report even stated that the next gen consoles "will likely have a CPU which we know nothing about"and would "seem to be leaning towards x86" all while claiming this to be solid information. 

All in all, we'll let the rumor mill have a swing at this one. The only speculation we are going to give at this point is the idea that Sony might very well choose to implement the OpenGL 3.0 specification in its next gen console for the new texture compression algorithms and full frame buffer object functionality, not to mention 32-bit floating-point textures. We hope some kind of general purpose GPU functionality will also be included, although we are left waiting in anticipation with the rest of the world for much more needed concrete evidence.

Exploding cellphone kills man

 

A Chinese man has died after his cellphone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, China, died after he put a new battery in his phone, the UK's Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

According to the local Chinese daily Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on January 30 at 19:30.

An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his cellphone.

Chinese authorities have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery.

Local reports said that this was the ninth recorded cellphone explosion in China since 2002.

In the most high profile recent incident, in June 2007, a 22-year-old welder, Xiao Jinpeng, died from chest wounds when his cellphone exploded while he was at work at an iron mill in Gansu province.

A local government inquiry found that the mobile phone battery had exploded due to the heat of the iron mill.

Lithium batteries are widely used in mobile phones - but if they are overcharged or exposed to heat, the inflammable liquid inside can explode, the Daily Mail reports.

Motorola and Nokia, two of the world's biggest mobile phone makers, denied links to the distributors of problem batteries in China, suggesting they were counterfeit.

After the latest incident, the Shin Min Daily News published advice for consumers on how to avoid mobile phone explosions. The tips included:

- Always use original batteries. Be sure that batteries by the manufacturer are meant for your mobile phone.

- Never modify your phone

- Do not expose your cellphone to high temperatures, and avoid exposing it to direct sunlight

- Avoid long phone conversations

- Do not make or answer calls when the phone is charging

- Try to keep your phone in a bag instead of in a pocket

- Do not use damaged batteries

IBM to build massive 20 Petaflop supercomputer for NNSA

What happens in the supercomputer world is a seemingly distant topic for most of us, yet it impacts all of us in many ways through new opportunities for scientists and hopefully accelerated research results.  Recent advances in supercomputing are simply breathtaking, and the computing power they'll soon possess is awe-inspiring.


The most recent list of the Top 500 supercomputers, published in November 2008, included the first ever Petaflop systems - capable of performing more than 1 quadrillion floating point operations per second. Now we hear that the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has ordered a supercomputer that will be able to deliver 20 times that performance by 2012.

The new supercomputer, called Sequoia, will be installed at the site of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in stages necessary to reach its maximum processing power in three years. The first portion of it, called Dawn, is currently being installed and is expected to deliver about 500 TFlops during Q1 2009. While Dawn is based on currently available processors, Sequoia will be built on future IBM BlueGene technology.

When completed, the supercomputer will have 1.6 Petabytes of memory, 96 racks, 98,304 compute nodes, and 1.6 million cores. IBM promises Sequoia will be 160 times more power efficient than ASC Purple and 17 times more so than BlueGene/L - both previously installed supercomputers at LLNL.

BlueGene/L is currently listed as the world’s fourth fastest supercomputer with a maximum performance of 596 TFlops. The system was upgraded in 2007 and 2008 to 106,496 PowerPC 440 (700 MHz) processors with 212,992 cores.

IBM said its performance is comparable to the world’s population (6.7 billion people) working together on a calculation 24 hours per day and 365 days a year using a hand calculator: However, it would take all of us 320 years to achieve what Sequoia can do in just one hour.

In theory the projected 20 PFlops will offer a 50x improvement in predicting earthquakes and a 40x improvement in predicting weather - allowing forecasters to predict local weather events that affect areas 100 meters to one kilometer in size, which is a significant improvement over their current ten-kilometer ability.

As far as earthquakes are concerned, the possibilities such a new system offers are fascinating: We recently ran a story on the work being done by the Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAE) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the impact such research has on people living in areas threatened by earthquakes - down to even predicting which houses may be destroyed and which may not.

Imagine the possibilities of continued, affordable supercomputer growth. What a fascinating time we live in.

Samsung hints to DDR4 with first validated 40 nm DRAM

Samsung today announced that it has developed and validated its first 40 nm DRAM chip, which are expected to consume 30% less power than current 50nm modules, and is an important step toward DDR4 development.


The 40 nm 1 Gb memory component, which will be used in a 1 GB 800 Mb/s DDR2 module for notebooks (SODIMM), has been validated for Intel's GM45 chipset platform, Samsung said. The company is also developing a 2 Gb version, which should be ready for mass-production by the end of the year.

Compared to the current 50 nm memory, Samsung believes that it will be able to accelerate the time-to-market of new memory devices by 50% and increase productivity by 60%. The 40 nm memory modules are expected to consume 30% less power than current devices. 

Perhaps most interesting, Samsung noted that the 40 nm node marks a "a significant step" toward the development of "ultra-high performance DRAM technologies," such as DDR4. The company did not provide further details, however, but we have heard from industry sources that DDR4 should not be expected to surface before 2012.

Core i7 isn't selling well

Platform too expensive? Core i7 is definitely the fastest CPU on the block, but when it comes to sales, it is not doing particularly well. Despite the fact that the cheaper Core i7 920 sells for a reasonable €260 for a 2.66GHz quad-core, motherboard and memory prices are the reason why customers shy away from this platform.  Core 2 Quad is still performing quite well, and the motherboards are cheaper, not to mention the memory and most of the customers even today tend to go for a Core 2 Quad rather than a Core i7.  This surely has something to do with the economy, as nowadays the cheapest X58 motherboard sells for a reasonable €177 or more, but the guys who are selling these CPUs confirmed several times that Core i7 is not a top seller.