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SSI's rugged Spark S9T brings triple-screen computing to power-hungry road warriors (hands-on)
A portable desktop tower with three LCDs mounted on its side, you say? Why yes, there is such a thing. At Computex, we spotted SSI's camouflaged booth demoing this eccentric Spark S9T rig: a rugged ATX case sporting a handle, a keyboard with a touchpad, plus three 17.3-inch 1920 x 1080 LCD panels. As you've probably already guessed, the keyboard and the screens can be folded up for storage convenience. Let's be clear, though: you'll still need to find a wall socket to power this beastly machine, but such all-in-one solution should still appeal to video editors, military personnel, or even gamers that are regularly on the road. Alas, we couldn't get a price for single purchases, but feel free to check out the full detail over at SSI's website -- maybe a nice postcard will get you a deal. %Gallery-125379%
Matrox strikes at NAB, first to market with Thunderbolt products
Word out of NAB is that Matrox, known best for enabling day-traders to run an excessive number of monitors off a single graphics card, will be the first company to market with peripherals designed to use Thunderbolt. All the latest models of its MXO2 family of video I/O boxes will be shipping with Thunderbolt on board, while budding film makers using the current gen MXO2 devices will be able to push 10Gb worth of pixels per second by picking up an adapter. Matrox didn't announce a firm release date or price, though we expect it will fall in line with the current products, which range from $449 up to almost $2,400 for the MXO2 Rack with Matrox Max. They're not exactly must have accessories for the average user, but if you simply can't wait any longer to put those Thunderbolt ports to use, it's the only game in town.
AMD compares upcoming Llano Fusion APU with Intel Core i7, puts the heat on Sandy Bridge (video)
So far, AMD's new Fusion chips have been all about the low-end, whether you're talking in terms of price, performance or power consumption, but the company has a vision for its future that has these new Accelerated Processing Units dominating every segment of the market. In order to do that, AMD will need to overcome Intel's latest generation of mainstream processors, the Core 2011 family we're more familiar with under the Sandy Bridge codename. Before you rush past the break and watch AMD's own comparison between said Intel hardware and the forthcoming quad-core Llano APU, be aware that processor performance can rarely be generalized from a single test alone and the one we're witnessing is specifically geared to highlight the Fusion chip's strengths. All that said, the workload demonstrated by AMD -- a 3D game, HD video playback (plus post-processing on the Llano rig), Excel calculations, and some 3D modeling, all running simultaneously -- is handled most impressively by the A8-3510MX APU, which even manages to use less power than Intel's 2GHz Core i7-2630QM. See the video after the break. [Thanks, Vygantas]
Sigma finally brings 'professional grade' VXP video scaling to consumer boxes
After buying up Gennum and its VXP video processing technology back in '08, Sigma Designs has finally managed to shoehorn its "professional grade" scaling (previously sen in high priced boxes from Kaleidescape and Mark Levinson) into a chip destined for consumer set-top boxes. The SMP8910 system-on-chip claims to have enough power for all manner of over the top application or middleware, while the VXP processing cleans up video well enough for it to claim Netflix streams of higher quality than on competing hardware and reduced ghosting on 3D content. We'll need to actually see the chip at work in a Blu-ray player, IPTV box or similar device to judge its capabilities for ourselves but if it was good enough to make some people consider a $4,000 DVD player and is available for more reasonably priced applications, then we're all ears.
eASIC eDV9200 H.264 codec promises HD for all devices
We've already got HD in places that the cast of Step by Step would've sworn was never possible way back when, but eASIC is far from satisfied. To that end, it's introducing a new H.264 codec aimed to bring high-def capabilities to all manners of devices, including (but certainly not limited to) toys, baby monitors, public transportation, wireless video surveillance and wireless webcams. The highly integrated eDV9200 is said to "dramatically lower the cost of entry into the high-definition video market, enabling a new class of low-cost applications to fully leverage the benefits offered by HD technology." Best of all, these guys aren't just blowing smoke, as the chip -- which captures streaming data directly from a CMOS sensor, compresses it, and transfers it to a host system or to a variety of storage devices -- is priced at just $4.99 each in volume. HD oven timers, here we come!
