Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Virgin's coconut-powered 747 completes first flight

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/241144194/

Finally, mankind has the answer to that eternal question, how many coconuts does it take to go from London to Amsterdam? The answer: 150,000 -- converted into biofuel and poured into a special 747, of course. Virgin Atlantic completed its first biofuel tests yesterday with solid results, using a mix of 20 percent coconut oil and 80 percent jet fuel to power a 747 -- a first for the airline industry. There's still a long way to go, of course -- only one of the jet's four tanks carried the alternative fuel, and even Richard Branson admits that giant coconut plantations devoted to airline fuel probably aren't workable -- but despite harsh criticism from skeptics, it's still an impressive achievement. Branson says that although this test didn't use a viable fuel, it's a landmark proof-of-concept -- and that next-generation biofuels made from algae may one day power all our aircraft. Sure, that'd be nice, but we'll stick with tiki-power -- anyone have a drink umbrella?

[Via The Register]

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Intel Planning 6-Core "Dunnington" Microprocessor [Rumor]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/240032222/intel-planning-6+core-dunnington-microprocessor

Dunnington%20GI.jpg According to the chaps at the Eclipse Developer's Journal (EDJ), Intel is planning a six-core microprocessor, which will go by the Dunnington moniker.

The six-core beast will be succeeded by the even meatier, Nehalem micro-architecture, which will support greater than eight cores. The work regarding the Dunnington project is still under wraps, but our friends at EDJ insist Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year—we'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments. [EDJ via The Inquirer]

Wiperless Windshield Concept Brings Minimalism to Your Vehicle [Concepts]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/240463121/wiperless-windshield-concept-brings-minimalism-to-your-vehicle

Hidra%20Concept%20GI.jpg Leonardo Fioravanti of the awesome vehicle design house, Pininfarina has put together a prototype car, called Hidra, which has a windshield that negates the necessity for conventional wipers. The design relies on aerodynamics and surface treatment alone, which will supposedly be enough to keep a fly-away tree branch from obscuring your line of vision. The chemical treatments applied are where the autonomous cleaning action really happens, and they actually sound quite interesting.

The first layer deals with the sun and water; it prevents harmful rays entering and has hydrophobic properties, ensuring water is repelled away. The second layer incorporates nano dust, and the treatment gives the screen the ability to "push" dirt away to the edges of the glass surface, which in turn relies on the third layer; a receptor surface that alerts the nano dusted glass to do its self-cleaning business when grime is detected. Finally, an electrically conductive material is applied, which passes on electricity to power the entire mechanism.

Apparently, this could be mainstream in five years, but for us it makes more problems than it appears to solve; e.g. Would it really remove our aforementioned fly-away tee branch? Would we receive an electric shock if we touched it whilst it was cleaning? What does it do with the dirt at the edges of the windshield? Why doesn't someone make a fully functioning Millennium Falcon? So many questions, so few physical windscreen wipers on the Hidra concept car. [Sparking Tech; la Repubblica]

Green Freedom turns the air's CO2 into auto-powering fuel

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/239965554/

Tired of the air not doing enough for you? Well, a new project called Green Freedom -- headed up by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory -- seeks to improve air's contribution to our planet. The new technology would provide a method of extracting CO2 from the air and then converting the gas into fuel for cars or airplanes -- thus creating a renewable energy source. The process uses a form of electrochemical separation to siphon juice out of the typically non-partying carbon dioxide, yet has a low environmental impact with a small waste-stream output. The plan calls for the use of existing plants, which will stem the need to build new facilities, enabling the environmental footprint to remain relatively small. Clearly, it's not being put into general practice yet, but it's a hopeful taste of things to come.

[Via Inhabitat]

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Movies on a flash drive not apt to boom anytime soon

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240121919/

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Earlier this month, we disagreed that HD movie downloads would trump HD DVD / Blu-ray disc purchases in the not-too-distant future, and now we've got yet another clever alternative on deck that just doesn't have the makings of a winner. While it seems that consumers still prefer something tangible when purchasing movies, we can't help but agree that flicks on flash drives just wouldn't work. Aside from the prohibitive cost to pop out a standard DVD on a flash chip versus a disc, the idea of having customers flock to some sort of movie download kiosk to refill memory cards with new releases just seems absurd. Sure, we understand how this could sound marginally appealing from the sidelines, but we just can't imagine all those DVD cases at your favorite big box retailer getting swapped out with movie-filled SDHC cards anytime soon.

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Samsung puts the kibosh on SSD reliability worries

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240181088/

Filed under: Storage

If you're one of the (apparently) many out there scared half to death not over what's residing in your closet at night, but that your recently purchased SSD will wear itself out in no time flat, here's a little reassurance. According to Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, a flash device rated at 100,000 write cycles can write 100,000 times "to every single (memory) cell within the device," and of course, it won't continuously write to the same cell over and over thanks to a process dubbed wear leveling. In case you still needed a tad more evidence, he also stated that "a pattern could be perpetually repeated in which a 64GB SSD is completely filled with data, erased, filled again, then erased again every hour of every day for years, and the user still wouldn't reach the theoretical write limit." So, now that we've had that cleared up, why not tell us more about those 250GB MLC-based SSDs that could land before 2009 dawns?

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Exascale computing: it's the new terascale

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240306495/

Filed under: Desktops

Anybody remember when a gigaflop was a big deal? Oh, how far we've come. Researchers are now talking about exascale computing, which means systems that can handle a million trillion calculations per second. To put that in perspective, IBM's BlueGene/L (pictured), the fastest machine running, has a peak performance of 596 teraflops. A petaflop is 1000 times faster than a teraflop, and an exaflop is 1000 times faster than a petaflop. Yeah, that's a lot of flops. Right now researchers are sorting out the most preliminary of groundwork, such as how do you get data to tens of thousands of processors at a time for crunching, but we're sure before a few decades are up they'll finally have built a machine that is powerful enough to cure all human diseases -- or, you know, maybe even play Crysis at 60fps.

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MetaRam aims to bump RAM capacity by 4x overnight

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240712957/

Filed under: Desktops

We're not sure what whacky voodoo snakeoil these MetaRam people are peddling, but the company's got some high profile behind it (like Intel, for one), is being led by former AMD CTO Fred Weber, has appears to have some potentially revolutionary RAM quadrupling technology. Claiming to have leapfrogged current RAM technology by 2-4 years, MetaRam uses a specialized "MetaSDRAM" chipset that effectively bonds and addresses four cheap 1Gb DRAM chips as one, tricking any machine's memory controller into using it as a 4x capacity DIMM. Since a 1Gb chip is apparently far less expensive than a 2Gb chip, MetaRam devices can multiply capacity at prices far lower than their competition; the company claims it'll be shipping in machines in the first quarter of this year, and Hynix has already announced their own 2-rank 8GB DDR2 RDIMMs for the second half.

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Fujitsu MHZ2 BT: the latest 500GB 2.5-inch laptop drive

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/240733784/

Filed under: Laptops, Storage

Solid state is still what gets our motors purring, but 500GB of storage in your laptop isn't anything to scoff at, either. Fujitsu's new MHZ2 BT is the second drive to hit the half-terabyte mark, but just like the Hitachi 500 gigger it's a non-standard height (12.5mm), meaning you won't be able to slap it in most laptops or enclosures -- unless you're willing to shave out an extra ~3mm of surrounding matter. Expect 'em out in May.

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