Everybody’s excited about Intel’s new 45nm chip architecture and its first iteration, the Penryns. They’re going to be in the MacBooks, they’re going to be in your desktops, they’re basically taking the joint over and everyone’s pumped. You’re probably wondering why. Isn’t it just another bump in processor speed? No, it’s a bit superior than […]

Everybody’s excited about Intel’s new 45nm chip architecture and its first iteration, the Penryns. They’re going to be in the MacBooks, they’re going to be in your desktops, they’re basically taking the joint over and everyone’s pumped. You’re probably wondering why. Isn’t it just another bump in processor speed? No, it’s a bit better than that - read on and find out why 45nm is a major step for Intel.

First, it’s important to understand what 45nm means. This new process is essentially a further miniaturization of transistor technology, which all personal chips are based on. 65nm has been the standard for a couple years now, and Intel’s chips have been, in their multitudes, based on the same base-level recipe - or rather, on the same cake mold. The various versions - mobile, desktop, server, multi-core, all have the same underlying transistor technology, but customized for different tasks. In any case, 45nm is the new basic building block they’ll be working with. We’ve been shrinking the things for years, and each shrinkage makes for improvement in several areas, the two of which you care about are:

Transistor density- Smaller transistors naturally means more of them in any given area. This means higher clock speeds at the same chip size and on the same interface. It also means they have the ability to fit more custom circuits and sub-architectures for special instructions.

Energy efficiency- Transistors leak a bit of current. A leaked electron here and there’s a pretty insignificant problem on its own, but when you’ve got 500 million transistors leaking a hundred times a second, it starts getting noticeable. A smaller and more efficient gate means that there’s less chance for electron leakage, so less power is needed for each transistor. Translation: superior battery life in laptops, lower power consumption for desktops.

There are other improvements as well: Intel is taking this opportunity to improve built-in special instructions for all kinds of basic computations. There are other sets of instructions: you may have seen “MMX” and “SSE” being mentioned before. Well, the new iteration is SSE4, and the upgrades are mainly on the raw computation side. For instance, they’ve doubled the speed of easy division, and added optimizations for vector modifications. Sounds minor, but so many CPU functions rely on derivatives of these kinds of instructions that there can be some major improvements seen. Consider the math involved in stretching a 1080p video to fit your screen, or the amount of calculation involved in ray-tracing shadows or cloth simulation. Any improvement in basic calculation snowballs into a major saving later on as long as programmers are aware of how to take advantage of the special instructions.

Another thing you’ll see is a larger L2 cache. This is used by the CPU as a sort of personal RAM supply for switching things in and out super fast without sending them all the way to your system RAM. Penryn dual core processors will have 6MB of L2 cache, 50% more than current ones, and it should be faster as well. There are even more improvements in there, but honestly some are too technical for me to even try to understand, though I trust others in their judgment that they’ll be helpful.

Basically, 45nm is a good thing, and it’s not a minor change. It’s one of the larger steps that can be taken with processors, and it has both immediate benefits and the promise of future improvement. Now, if only they’d send me a sample.

ShareThis

Via [crunchgear]

Share This

Share This

Here’s a look at the upcoming Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W300 digital camera. It’s got a 13.6-megapixel CCD imager along with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens, and a 2.7-inch LCD screen. There’s also an “extra high-speed” burst mode that can shoot three-megapixel photos at five frames per second. Coming in May for $349. ShareThis

Here’s a look at the upcoming Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W300 digital camera. It’s got a 13.6-megapixel CCD imager along with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens, and a 2.7-inch LCD screen. There’s also an “extra high-speed” burst mode that can shoot three-megapixel photos at five frames per second. Coming in May for $349.

ShareThis

Via [crunchgear]

Share This

The Sony MDR-NC500D Digital Noise Canceling Headphones cost $400. While that might seem like a lot of money, I have the ability to only recommend to you that these headphones are akin to sliding a stick of warm, melty butter into each ear — not in the sense that sticking butter in your ears would likely impede […]

The Sony MDR-NC500D Digital Noise Canceling Headphones cost $400. While that might seem like a lot of money, I have the ability to only suggest to you that these headphones are akin to sliding a stick of warm, melty butter into each ear — not in the sense that sticking butter in your ears would likely impede your hearing, but more in the sense that butter is delicious and if you could somehow replicate the taste of butter as an aural sensation, it’d perhaps be something like using these headphones.

Overview

The main feature that differentiates these headphones from other noise canceling headphones is that these ones cancel the noise digitally. Using a relatively straightforward process, there’s a little microphone built into the headphones that samples the surrounding ambient noise and creates an opposite waveform to block out that sound.

It works really well, too. I initially tested the headphones in a relatively quiet room with a ceiling fan rotating at the highest setting. The whir of the fan was masked handsomely when I put the headphones on. It actually felt kind of weird. Oh, and the airplane too. Man, are these things great on the airplane. Not until you take them off do you realize how loud those engines are. It’s nearly overwhelming to come back into audio reality after a three hour flight. I found myself sometimes wearing these without listening to any music — I just used them to block out the airplane noise.

What’s Included?

You get a lot of stuff, to be sure. There’s an overly large zip-up carrying case, a detachable headphone cord, a power adapter, another cord/adapter combo that’s juiced by two AA batteries, an old-school airplane arm rest adapter, and a small-to-large headphone jack adapter. I expected to be able to just open the box and begin playing around but I found having to sort through everything first.

The headphones have an internal lithium-ion battery that needs to be charged before the first use. Once charged, you should be able to get about 16 hours before needing to recharge. If you find yourself without access to a power outlet, you can use the included AA battery adapter to get another 12 or so hours.

Performance

As I noted, the actual noise cancellation aspect works wonderfully. There’s a “monitor” button on the side of the right earpiece that allows you to temporarily turn off the noise cancellation so you can compare the two environments. There’s also an “AI NC MODE” button that you can press that’ll cause the headphones to examine the ambient noise wherever you are and adjust accordingly. Very cool.

Listening to music sounds pretty good, although not quite as great as you might anticipate from a pair of $400 headphones. My iPod Touch sounded a bit muddy at first, with the kick drum of Fall Out Boy’s “THNKS FR TH MMRS” popping and distorting to the point that I had to change the EQ preset from Rock to Spoken Word, of all settings. It was the only one where the bass didn’t overpower everything else. Once that part was tweaked, everything sounded pretty good. Seasoned audiophiles might not be as forgiving but given how well these things block everything else out, I have the ability to let an initial EQ adjustment slide. Movies and video podcasts have sounded fine, too.

Value

This is where things might get a tiny sticky. The headphones are $400. Are they worth it? I certainly wouldn’t spend $400 on headphones even if they were actually made of real butter but I’m not that uppity about my music. I was chatting with audio expert Mike Kobrin about the headphones and mentioned that I liked them and he didn’t throw a tantrum like an audio expert would normally do if someone were to recommend that inferior headphones were, in fact, good. So that’s something.

I also tested these headphones against my Dad’s Bose noise canceling headphones which were originally offered at $400 and I found that Sony’s sounded markedly superior. I could hear an audible noise-canceling hiss from the Bose, but there’s no such hiss from the Sony headphones. It’s nearly like a sound vacuum. Like anti-sound.

So, should you pay $400? That depends. I think someone who wants to get his or her first pair of noise canceling headphones would definitely be impressed. The kind of people who don’t have a problem spending $400 on headphones, though, might not be. And they’re the ones Sony’s going to have to win over. If I were to spend $400 on these headphones, though, I’d feel like I was getting my money’s worth.

As with all audio stuff, you should definitely try a pair out first to see how you like them. They’ll be available on March 21st.

Digital Noise Canceling Headphones MDR-NC500D [SonyStyle.com]

ShareThis

Via [crunchgear]

Share This

Share This

April 15 won’t just be tax day, it’ll be the day you can pick up the DualShock 3 (rumbling PS3 controller) in the US. The controller’s already been available in Japan for months now, which means that if you’re really keen on getting vibration before your buddies, you could import it from Asia and hook it up now. If that’s too much work, $54.99 will get you one in April. [Kotaku]

Via [Gizmodo]

Share This

Share This