Firefox Aurora 7 to focus on performance and memory!

The latest developer's build of Firefox launched today, bringing hope to the small but vocal minority of Firefox stable users who have been plagued by the browser's persistent memory and performance problems that Mozilla is not ignoring their complaints. Firefox Aurora 7 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and includes changes that Mozilla said in a blog post announcing the release will result in 30 percent less memory use "for many users."

Another big memory usage change comes to the "garbage collector" process, which, when working properly, cleans out from your system memory browser processes that are no longer running in active tabs. This, too, is expected to result in better memory management. Telemetry infrastructure has been added to Firefox in this release, so it's easier for Mozilla developers to track how their changes affect the open-source browser. Mozilla also expects people to see faster browser start-up times on all three desktop operating systems.

There are a smattering of new features included in Aurora 7. Most of these relate to support for "future-Web" technologies, and the browser includes support for a Web timing specification to measure performance of a site as it's being used; the hardware acceleration function Azure Direct2D for HTML5 Canvas; and a more elegant way to display text that has spilled out of its boundaries on a page called CSS3 Text-Overflow: ellipsis. In the new version, Firefox Sync will now synchronize bookmarks and passwords by default.

New users will be able to download Aurora 7 immediately (see links above), while existing Aurora users can force an update through Firefox's Help menu or wait for the build to be pushed to them in the next few days!

Source:  http://download.cnet.com

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AMD and Point Grey Demo High-Def Video Streaming over USB 3.0

AMD and Point Grey Find New Usage Models for SuperSpeed USB

Advanced Micro Devices, a developer of microprocessors and graphics technologies, and Point Grey, a designer of advanced digital camera products, have jointly demonstrated uncompressed streaming of high-definition video across USB 3.0 during an AMD event.

The live demonstration showcased the performance benefits of USB 3.0 by streaming uncompressed high definition (HD) 1080p60 video from Point Grey’s Flea3 digital video camera to an AMD Fusion A-series-based laptop computer. USB 3.0 offers ten times the bandwidth of USB 2.0, full duplex and asynchronous operation, and increased power delivery. The system featured A75 core-logice and A70M I/O controller with native USB 3.0 support.

“USB 3.0 enables the use of HD 1080p cameras, which means a new level of realism for video conferencing and other forms of tele-presence. Using Point Grey’s Flea3 we were able to give users insight into some of the other applications that are possible with SuperSpeed USB in addition to the high-speed data transfers with external storage devices that we have seen so far," said Godfrey Cheng, director of AMD’s client technology unit.

With its up to 5Gb/s transfer speeds, USB 3.0 will enable a number of other use cases apart from pure video streaming from external devices. The current demonstration show that AMD's implementation of SuperSpeed USB is fully functional and bring a real benefits.

"We are pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with AMD to demonstrate the benefits of USB 3.0." Point Grey demonstrated the world’s first SuperSpeed USB camera in September 2009. Since then we have witnessed widespread adoption of USB 3.0 in consumer devices and a huge groundswell of interest from both industrial and prosumer customers," said Michael Gibbons, product marketing manager at Point Grey.

Source: [by Anton Shilov] AMD Point Grey Demo High Def Video Streaming over USB 3.0

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AMD Bulldozer FX-8130P Overclocked to 5.1Ghz on Air!

AMD Bulldozer FX-8130P overclocked on Air with Noctua NH-D14

More stuff and news on OBROVSKYs Blog: http://obrovsky.blogspot.com

"The Bulldozer FX-8130P is an 8 Core/ 8 Thread Processor which comes with 8MB L3 Cache, Pricing and Info here. The guy managed to overclock the CPU to 5.1Ghz (1.596) volts with the help of Asus Crosshair V Formula motherboard along with 4Gigs of ram.

Two benchmarks were used to check the stability of the processors overclock, The max stable overclock achieved with CineBench R11.5 was 4.83Ghz (4834.2mhz) while 5.1 (5077.6mhz) with Super Pi Run. Looks like the Bulldozer are good for massive overclocking using some good heatsinks, The user used a Noctua NH-D14 heatsink to achieve those clocks however temps and benchmarks results have not been shown."

The FX-8130P has a max TDP of 125W and FX-8110 has 95W max TDP. Detailed info from the chart below:

AMD FX-8130P – 8 Core, 3.8Ghz, Max T.C 4.2Ghz, 125W (320$)
AMD FX-8110 – 8 Core, 3.6Ghz, Max T.C 4.0Ghz, 95W (290$)
AMD FX-6110 – 6 Core, Unknown, Max T.C Unknown, 95W (240$)
AMD FX-4110 – 4 Core, Unknown, Max T.C Unknown, 95W (190$)

Source: http://wccftech.com

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Radeon HD 7000 "AMD Southern Islands possible for September"

The upcoming 28nm GPUs

According to a post over at 3DCenter.org, the early version of the Catalyst 11.7 had some interesting codenames of what appears to be at least some chips in the AMD's upcoming Southern Islands GPU lineup based on the 28nm manufacturing process. The new driver lists New Zealand, Tahiti, Thames and Lombok. The next generation of the AMD's 28nm GPUs will most probably use the VLIW4 SIMD design and, if all goes well, should appear in late Q3 or early Q4 2011.

The details regarding the new GPUs are pretty scarse, but for now it looks like Tahiti is the new high-end GPU that will be available in two versions, Tahiti Pro and Tahiti XT. New Zealand will most probably end up to be a dual-GPU variant with two Tahiti GPUs. The Thames is a bit tricky as this could end up to be either a performance chip or one of the new mobile chips. In any case, the Thames should appear in three different versions, Thames LE, Thames Pro and Thames XT/GL. The Lombok code name might be a direct successor of the Barts chip but that info is still to be confirmed and should end up with at least three different versions.

We are still pretty far away from the actual release of these chips but more info should start to appear sooner than later as AMD might try to push these to the market as soon as they can to get some headstart on the competition.

Source: http://www.fudzilla.com

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(Semiaccurate) Globalfoundries testing 28nm

NVIDIA Prepares "KEPLER - 28nm" Next Generation “GTX680″

 NVIDIA Prepares 28nm Sample Chips for Next Generation “GTX680″ GPU Codenamed KEPLER



Fudzilla has got some exclusive info on Nvidia’s Next Generation GPU Architecture aka “Kepler”. According to the site, The company has already produced 28nm Samples of its new core.

The samples would be used as Entry Level Cores however come with TSMC’s High Metal gate 28nm process which could also suggest the same chips would be equipped in the rumored “GTX 680″ Graphics Cards which would be a High-End GPU. GF1x9 is the Code name being used for the chips.

The production of the chips wont start before 2H 2011 but demonstrations and architecture details of the Engineering samples would be shown off with in a few months. Global foundaries are expected to get the samples chips as early this Quarter of 2011. AMD is also preparing a revised architecture for their HD7*** Series GPU’s which you can check out here.

Keplar from Nvidia would be twice as fast as the Fermi chips and would also enhance performance per watt due to the smaller die size which would consume lesser power.


Source: http://wccftech.com

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