How Games Are Driving a Mobile Graphics Revolution
4:19 AM
Since Apple opened its App Store in 2008, catering to the needs of gamers has been increasingly important for mobile-device makers. While the iPhone was not designed primarily for games, they soon dominated the best-selling app charts, a pattern that was duplicated on Android devices and looks set to repeat with Windows phones. Qualcomm, a major manufacturer of chipsets for mobile devices, estimates that 60 percent of smart-phone users regularly play games on the devices.
Consequently, chip makers have been competing to provide mobile-device manufacturers with better and better graphics capabilities by means of dedicated processors that are now among the devices' most complex and powerful subsystems. Painting hundreds of thousands of pixels at a time, these graphics processors don't just display two-dimensional icons, pictures, and video but can render the complex 3-D environments of many modern video games—calculating, for example, how a sunbeam will reflect off a tattered flag as it flutters in a breeze.
Qualcomm spent $65 million in 2009 to buy the handset graphics operations of Advanced Micro Devices, which were originally part of ATI Technologies, an early leader in graphics processors for personal computers. ARM, which designs the general-purpose processor cores that power most of the world's smart phones, has been placing increasing emphasis on its Mali family of graphics processors, the first versions of which were announced in 2007. The overarching importance of graphics has even allowed Nvidia, which created the first commercial graphics processing unit in 1999 for the personal-computer games market, to enter the market with an eight-core graphics processor and a dual-core general-purpose processor bundled on the same chip. "The catalyst was Apple's iPhone," says Matt Wuebbling, director of product marketing for Nvidia. "It showcased a mobile device that is purely display based." That is, it relies on a graphical interface for all interactions with the user.
One of the biggest challenges companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia faced as they developed graphics processors for mobile devices was to provide advanced processing without draining a battery within 20 minutes. While graphics cards for personal computers often required beefed-up power supplies and cooling fans, Qualcomm calculates that its latest chips render a scene nearly as complex as those found in desktop computer games but use less than 1 percent as much energy as a desktop graphics processor.
Indeed, as mobile graphics power increases, growing numbers of users are likely to play some of their favorite mobile games on their big-screen TVs, by hooking up the handsets through a cable. In terms of the graphic capabilities available, says Wuebbling, "on the mobile side, for gaming, we're where PCs were 10 years ago."
Source - http://www.technologyreview.com/business/39038/?p1=BI
Core vs CPU vs Socket vs Chip vs Processor Difference Comparison
5:34 PM
Since the advent of multi-core technology such as dual-cores and quad-cores there is confusion regarding what a microprocessor consists of and what is the correct terminology. Here we analyze and compare core vs cpu vs socket vs chip vs processor to define what each of these components or term represent.
Cores
Since standard microprocessors are starting to hit the heat barrier, switching and leakage power of several transistor chips are so large that cooling becomes a primary engineering effort and a commercial concern (Note: For a given semiconductor process technology, power dissipation of a modern CPU is proportional to the third power of clock frequency). On the other hand, the necessity of an ever-increasing clock frequency is driven by the insight that architectural advances and growing cache sizes alone will not be sufficient to keep up. Processor vendors therefore started looking for a way out of this power-performance dilemma in the form of multicore designs. Essentially a core comprises of a logical execution unit containing an L1 cache and functional units. Cores can independently execute process threads.
Chips or Microprocessor or CPU
A chip or CPU chip refers to the actual integrated circuit (IC) on a computer. A chip mainly refers to execution unit that can be a single core technology or a multicore technology.
Sockets
The socket refers to a physical connector equipped with leads or pins on a computer motherboard that accepts a single physical chip. Many motherboards can have multiple sockets that can in turn accept multi-core chips. Typical desktop PCs have a single socket, while standard servers use two to four sockets that share the same memory.
Processor
The term processor defines a logical execution unit or a physical chip. A multi-core chip may have several cores. In case of multi-core technology, the term processor is quite context sensitive and is mainly ambiguous when describing large multi-core systems. A processor could describe either a single execution core or a single physical multicore chip. The context of use will define the meaning of the term.
Core vs CPU vs Socket vs Chip vs Processor
To get a quick understanding remember that a socket is actually what the CPU chip is connected into via pins and leads and in common language it refers to the chip itself. A core is a full blown CPU sitting on the chip. Basically single socket (chip) may have 1 (one), 2 (two) or 4 (four) cores on it.
How do you get a blog ?
5:30 PM
What is a Blog ?
Nowadays almost everyone has it or has heard of the notion of it. Many individuals who are not tech savvy do not totally understand what it is or how to get one. First, let me explain what it really is. Blog is short for “Web log” which means a log that you maintain on the internet for everyone to access. Today we all live in digital age and if you have a hobby, talent, idea that you want to share with everybody online then you can start blog. Getting one is not difficult at all. There are quite a few options for that. Some are paid options while many are free and few could actually make money for you. Once you create your own blog, it is even easier to maintain it. If you have basic Microsoft word skills then you could easily post your content on it (or as everyone calls it “posts”).
How to get it
Decide why do you want one
Here are questions that can help you decide:
- Do you want to pursue blogging as just a hobby ?
- Do you want to make money online ?
Answer to these questions will help decide how do you proceed next. If you just want to pursue blogging as a hobby and do not care about money (just in it for the fame!) then you are in luck as far as the blogging platform options are concerned. If you are in it for the money but do not want to spend money upfront then your options reduce quite a lot. But if you are open to spending some money upfront then you have a whole lot of options. These options could include paying for service online for a blogging platform or paying hosting fees and setting up your own blog from scratch (this last option might need you to be technically savvy and if you are already technically good then you probably don’t even need to read the rest of the article. You have what it takes to figure it out!).
Decide where you want to publish
After you have figured out why you need it, go through the list of the blogging platforms and decide which one meets the requirements. Here is the list of the few platforms.
A) WordPress (wordpress.com or wordpress.org ): This is probably most famous among all the platforms available. Some of the top sites use WordPress to run their blog. There are currently two flavors for it. As option one you can get this blog at wordpress.com for free or as second option you can download the platform from wordpress.org and host it on your own. The first option is good for beginners however it provides limited support. For example you can neither add custom plug-in to increase functionality/flexibility of your blog nor can you put up advertisements unless you switch to paid service. You can register here for a blog if you are just in it for fun not money or flexibility. Teknocrat is built using self installed wordpress platform.
B) Blogger (Blogger) : This is a service from Google. You can get it free at blogger.com. This platform allows you to add plug-in, put advertisements and get free hosting without any charges. However there are few pitfalls. You cannot move/export the content out easily to another blog in case you want to move to another platform in future. Number of plug-ins are also quite limited.
C) TypePad (Typepad): TypePad is a feature rich blogging platform that comes at a price. You can sign up free for trial period of 14 days but after that it is a minimum of $8.95/month.
There are a lot more platforms that you can consider but these are top three today. You can do a simple search to get the list of rest of the blogging platforms.
Get your identity
Now you need to get an email address that will be used as your digital identity. Pick an email address and then register it at Gravatar (Gravatar). This gives you a global avatar/identity that you can use to login and post comments on other blogs.
Share it
Now the most important aspect. You got it, so flaunt it!. Share you blog with everyone! Put it out there by sending the link to friends.
Source - http://www.teknocrat.com/how-do-you-get-a-blog.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
