Haswell-E to offer DDR4 support, up to eight cores in 2014

Leaked slides suggest that Intel‘s Haswell-E will ship in the back half of 2014, with support for the nascent DDR4 standard, 40 lanes of PCI-Express 3.0 connectivity (likely in an x16/x16/x8 configuration), and, in a first for Intel, up to octal-core CPUs.

This feature set would make Haswell-E a major upgrade to the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E, due later this year. That chip is expected to serve as a drop-in replacement for Sandy Bridge-E, which debuted in 2011 along with the X79 chipset. The X79 chipset is already showing its age, with just two USB 3.0 ports and inconsistent support for PCIe 3.0 (Intel’s own motherboards don’t support PCIe 3.0 on X79, and the company claims that this is an unofficial mode). Wellsburg will solve this rather neatly.

The question of value is going to be particularly interesting in this context. In heavily multithreaded scenarios, an eight-core chip is obviously going to outperform a six-core flavor. If Intel holds clock speeds constant between IVB-E and Haswell-E, we can expect a performance gain of up to 40% in heavily-threaded tests. That assumes Haswell’s IPC improvements average out to 5% over IVB and a 33% gain in performance due to the additional cores.

That, combined with official PCIe 3.0 support, is nothing to sneeze at. As for DDR4, that’s more of a wash.

DDR4: The “4″ means faster — sorta. Kinda.

DDR4 has been ramping for several years, mostly behind the scenes (read our article on thestate of DDR4). It’s scheduled to debut in servers first and it makes sense that Intel would debut it with Haswell-E — the “E” family of processors are derived from server silicon.

Compared to DDR3, DDR4 offers lower power consumption and higher transfer rates. Unlike DDR3, it makes major changes to the internal RAM topology. Where DDR3 used a multi-drop bus that allowed multiple DIMMs to sit on the same memory channel, DDR4 virtually requires the use of a point-to-point bus with a maximum of one DIMM per RAM channel.

That would leave dual-channel systems limited to two DIMMs, with quad-channel systems limited to four. While that’s not an impossible solution, it would further inflate the cost of moving to DDR4, given that RAM manufacturers tend to charge premiums for both new RAM technologies and higher capacity DIMMs. It would also require SoC developers to build wider RAM interfaces if they wanted to address more than a single DRAM chip.

The solution may be to adopt load-reduced DIMMs, or LR-DIMMs. LR-DIMMs use an on-package buffer to re-drive the data signal to all attached chips. This significantly increases potential RAM density and reduces cost. Unfortunately, this type of configuration adds additional memory latency — and DDR4 latencies are already expected to be higher than their DDR3 counterparts.

The figures above are given in clock cycles, not nanoseconds, which means that there’s crossover at a certain point — 5 clock cycles at 3200MHz is less latency than four clock cycles at 2133MHz. At the same speed, however, DDR3 will have lower latency than DDR4. Keep in mind, the graph above shows the relationship between DDR3 and DDR4 withoutusing LRDIMMs, which add their own 2-3 cycles of latency.

Since desktop workloads are far more sensitive to latency than bandwidth, DDR4 likely won’t offer much benefit here until clock speeds rise well above 2133MHz. That doesn’t make DDR4 a bad thing, most memory standards launch at rough parity with the product they replace, but it means users shouldn’t look to the new memory to provide an immediate performance boost over the old.

Overall, Haswell-E will be a significant step forward in total desktop performance and a moderate improvement on total platform capabilities. If you’re a high-end enthusiast whose been waiting for faster desktop hardware, it’ll scratch that particular itch — but you’ll have to wait another 15 months or so to test it.

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Researchers overcome show-stopping problems with ferroelectric RAM

Over the past five years, NAND flash has gone from an exceedingly expensive storage solution that only a handful of customers could afford to a mainstream product used by millions of high-speed storage devices. This shift has been great for consumers and materially impacted the performance of even older systems, but NAND flash has long-term scaling and reliability issues. Researchers across the world have continued searching for alternative storage mediums that can store data for longer periods of time and use less power to perform read/write sequences.

One of these alternatives is called Ferroelectric RAM, or FeRAM for short. Like DRAM, FeRAM changes state when an electrical charge is applied. The difference between the two is that DRAM has to be continually recharged — FeRAM doesn’t. Applying an electrical field to an FeRAM cell causes a shift in the structure’s polarity that remains until another field is applied. FeRAM is faster than NAND flash and draws less power for write cycles — but up until now, there’s always been a major catch.

The only way to read FeRAM cell states is to force the cells into one position (0 or 1) and take note of how the polarity in each cell shifted. If data is stored in an array as 0,0,1,1,1, and an electrical field is applied to change all the cells to read “0,” only the last three cell values will change — but the act of reading the data destroys the stored value. There’s no such thing as a “read” cycle using conventional FeRAM, just read-write cycles. This slows system performance and impacts overall reliability.

Now, a research team from UC Berkeley has demonstrated a type of FeRAM that avoids the destructive read problem. FeRAM built from bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) exhibits an unusual property — it gives off voltage when struck by light. Critically, the voltage values released depend on the polarity of the cell. If a cell with a “0″ value releases a voltage of x and a cell with a “1″ value releases a voltage of y, it’s possible to read the stored values without needing to rewrite them afterwards.

According to the research team, it takes roughly 10 nanoseconds to perform read/write operations from this type of FeRAM at 3.3V. NAND Flash takes significantly longer (how long depends on the type of NAND) and draws 10-15V for the same operation. That’s a definite advantage for FeRAM — if certain other roadblocks can be conquered. The authors acknowledge that building FeRAM cells with non-destructive read capability requires that each cell be illuminated with its own light source. These prototype tests were conducted on cell arrays a full 10 micrometers in size — that’s the equivalent of 10,000 nanometers. Current NAND flash is being built at ~20nm.

Storage densities, in other words, remain an enormous problem. It’s not clear if that’s a problem that FeRAM can overcome; materials tend to lose ferroelectric properties at small sizes and any optical array for non-destructive reads would need to scale to equivalent nanometer size. The research team at UC Berkeley used an array of light to illuminate more than one cell at a time, which also improves power efficiency — individual light sources would inevitably add to the power cost of read/write operations.

Why it matters

NAND flash is running out of steam. Manufacturers have begun adopting “soft” product labels; denoting a product line as being built on “1X” rather than a hard process node due to scaling concerns. Sandisk recently acknowledged that its “1Y” flash, for example, is built on the same node as “1X.” As we’ve discussed before, this isn’t a problem unique to any manufacturer; it’s a fundamental problem with the laws of physics. As we approach atomic scales, the difficulty of building a CMOS transistor skyrockets and the value of new nodes plunges.

3D NAND is seen as a way to improve chip densities and drive lower prices without necessarily moving to new process nodes. GlobalFoundries and TSMC are both moving to blended process nodes that pair 20nm front-ends with lower-node backend work. But in the long run, we need different structures that can continue scaling where conventional silicon is failing. Ferroelectric RAM may or may not prove to be a successor to flash memory, but the ongoing work in these areas is what will ultimately enable post-CMOS scaling.

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Xbox One: The wobbly third leg of Microsoft’s non-desktop trifecta

With the complete hardware, services, and pricing unveiled for theXbox One at E3, we now have the totality of Microsoft’s “next-generation” consumer-oriented lineup: Windows 8 on the desktop, laptop, and tablet, Windows Phone 8 on the smartphone, and Xbox One in the living room. On paper, this trifecta, seamlessly connected via Microsoft Account, SkyDrive, and Xbox Live, is almost perfect. In reality, though, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Where did it all go wrong for Microsoft?

From an objective standpoint, all of Microsoft’s new-for-2013 offerings — Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the Xbox One — are perfect. Windows 8 capitalizes on the slow death of the desktop and the rush towards mobile; Xbox One is a powerful and feature-rich games console that could dominate the living room; and Windows Phone 8 is a sharp and savvy smartphone OS that ties everything together, while on the move or as a second screen. As a tech writer and a self-confessed life-long Microsoft fan, I have never been more excited about Microsoft’s future than over the last two years of covering Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the “Xbox 720“.

From a subjective standpoint, though, each of Microsoft’s new offerings is intrinsically flawed and bogged down by crippling policy decisions no doubt handed down from Microsoft’s besuited higher echelons. Windows 8 and 8.1, despite “responding to customer feedback,” still forces users to use the Metro interface, even when a touchscreen isn’t present. Windows Phone 8 is one of Microsoft’s most polished products, but a smartphone OS is only as strong as its app ecosystem, and due to its minuscule market share WP8 still lacks the ecosystem to pull consumers away from iOS and Android — an unfortunate Catch-22 if I ever saw one. The Xbox One, depending on your point of view, is either an awesome all-in-one living room box that plays games, or an awful DRM-restricted games machine that acts as an HDMI passthrough for your cable box — the very same thing that the tried-and-failed Google TV attempted to do.

How did Microsoft manage to take three exciting, technologically advanced products and turn them into mediocre, humdrum devices that have had all of the fun and adventure sucked out of them?

Windows 3.0

A history lesson

For the past 20 years, Microsoft hasn’t done much more than double, triple, and quadruple down on the desktop ecosystem. Since the launch and success of Windows 3, almost all of Microsoft’s decisions have revolved around the maximizing of Windows-derived profits. The success of Office, one of Microsoft’s most profitable divisions, is entirely underpinned by Windows’ 95%+ desktop penetration — ditto the Server division. It’s even possible to draw a link from Windows’s dominance in the desktop market, to DirectX and PC gaming, to the Xbox.

To be honest, at the time, this all made perfect sense. Windows, Office, and Server were, and are, monumentally large profit drivers. But if technology has taught us anything it’s that nothing lasts forever — especially business models predicated on a large, bulky form factor that is virtually guaranteed to go the way of the dodo as technology advances. If anything, Microsoft has done incredibly well to maintain the desktop-dominated status quo for as long as it has.

Now, though, with tablets and smartphones exploding much faster than anyone could’ve anticipated, Microsoft is forced to adapt. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are so different from their predecessors. The Xbox One isn’t that different, but it’s about as far from the Xbox 360 as Microsoft could get without completely redefining the games console paradigm. On paper, these massive changes all make sense, and if they were executed properly they really could give Microsoft the beachhead in the mobile market that it so desperately needs.

Gutless equivocation

Unfortunately, such changes simply can’t be easily made by a large multinational bureaucracy that generally works with three-year product cycles, rather than 12 months. From a strictly fiscal and pleasing-the-stock-holders point of view, too, Microsoft can’t just kill off the desktop. As it stands, Microsoft is massively profitable and will be for years to come. But at the same time, Microsoft knows that it must change now or face being squeezed out of the market by iOS, Android, and other upstarts. Faced with such a dilemma, Microsoft hedged its bets and created Windows 8, a Frankensteinian operating system that is the jack of all trades but the master of none.

Where does Microsoft go from here? It’s not too late for Windows 8, especially with Windows 8.1 coming up. If Windows 8 is a success, then there might be a knock-on effect that finally gets Windows Phone 8 off the ground. Finally, if the Xbox One works, it could be the perfect centerpiece of a new, non-desktop-oriented Windows ecosystem. That’s a lot of ifs, though, and given how wobbly the Xbox One looks in comparison to the PS4, and WP8′s consistently ailing market share, I think Microsoft has a rough few years ahead.

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RoboRoach Kickstarter project will bring cyborg insects to the masses

The guys at BackyardBrains certainly have a sense of humor. They know that their work, which focuses on reading and manipulating the brain waves of insects, can be seen as anything from cruel to frivolous. Their new Kickstarter project addresses this right out of the gate: are they putting men on Mars, or curing cancer? No, they’re just letting kids and adults drive real, live cockroaches around like remote control cars. Some people say it’s unethical to do use a living creature this way. Their response?Nah.

RoboRoach is a new Kickstarter project that aims to take the now months-old idea of a remote controlled cockroach (ancient, by today’s standards) and put it in the hands of the public. All you’ll need, they say, is their small kit, a live cockroach, and some time. The smallest investment to actually get you a kit is $100, though the actual retail version could vary from this somewhat. I can’t envision a future in which this does not pass its rather paltry $10,000 funding goal, so if you think you’ll buy one of these you probably want to jump on board now, if only for the swag that comes with it.

The system will work thanks to a set of small electrodes placed inside the insect’s antennae. This is the only vague part of the project, since BackyardBrains states that inserting the electrodes will require a short surgery under anesthesia — yet they don’t seem to offer this service themselves. Such delicate work would seem to require more than just an electrode plus “time,” but the team is clearly very dedicated to bringing accessible experiments to a general audience. The procedure is presumably easy enough for anyone to perform.

The electrode device has a small, attached port that sits on the roach’s back; when you wish to drive it around, you simply attach the other major component of the RoboRoach kit: a backpack unit that does all the actual sending, receiving, and interpreting of signals. Grab your roach, plug it in, and away you go.

The cockroach is controlled with an app, available for iOS and Android, which sends the backpack your simple input commands. The technology takes advantage of the fact that cockroaches use their antennae for direct physical sensing of their environment. When the backpack sends the proper signal to the antennae, the roach gets the feeling that it has just bumped into wall on the appropriate side — and so, it turns.

This is a fairly crude form of control, but it does work. The technique, called microstimulation, apparently causes no pain, and the roach can even learn to ignore it, given enough time. BackyardBrains claims that cockroaches have a known fear response which they do not display when receiving the backpack commands. No word on whether they display it during or after their surgery, however.

View the official Kickstarter video.

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Apple’s iOS 7 makes a bold move for the car dash, seeks to replace in-car infotainment

Apple’s new iOS 7 and the revamped Siri voice assistant announced Monday are poised to make big inroads into car dashboards. Your iPhone could be the navigation system for a low-cost car and bypass the pricey in-car navigation and infotainment systems of costlier vehicles. A dozen automakers say they plan to support the new features of iOS 7, particularly Siri Eyes Free. You use the press-to-talk button on the steering wheel and integrated microphone to communicate with your iPhone. Your iPhone screen is blanked and a replica is displayed on the car’s center stack LCD display. More automakers are building in LCD displays even when the cars don’t come with on-board navigation.

Maps and navigation would be the first apps to be ported to the car. For the best user experience, the in-car display might be slightly different than just an iPhone display rendered larger. Other apps might include texts and emails that could be be read aloud or shown on-screen. But if they’re displayed on-screen, then Apple and phone makers get caught up in the question of what should be on the center stack LCD and what’s too distracting. As if Apple hasn’t had enough run-ins with federal regulators already.

For car buyers,  it’s a mostly-win situation… near-term. For automakers, they’ll need to install LCD displays (at a manufacturing cost of about $100), but many do already. High-end cars may still have integrated navigation and infotainment, but on lower-end cars control may be ceded to Apple and other smartphone-makers. It’s unlikely automakers would sign exclusionary deals that would, say, include Apple and cut out Android. The iPhone is the single best-selling phone, but Android phones as a group outsell Apple and in some ways lead Apple in in-car functionality.

Car owners would get more up-to-date applications and phone-based navigation wouldn’t be so expensive. You might pay $10 a year for navigation; if you buy an update disc or SD card for your in-car system, that could be $200. Today, what’s installed in your car at the factory is pretty much what you have to live with for the life of the car. The updates are just that: map updates and software enhancements, not completely new versions of the navigation system. With the life of the average car now at a dozen years, you could be staring at the same clunky built-in nav system in 2025, or you could be running iOS 17.

The automakers on-board with iOS 7

Many automakers have signed on but not all. Several revealed themselves Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The most significant non-signers include Ford/Lincoln, whose Sync system ironically was the first to make heavy use of connected smartphones, Toyota/Lexus, and Chrysler. Those pledged to Siri Eyes Free are:

• Acura
• BMW
• Chevrolet
• Ferrari
• Honda
• Hyundai
• Infiniti
• Jaguar
• Kia
• Opel (Europe)
• Mercedes-Benz
• Nissan
• Volvo

Each automaker has to work out how one press-to-talk button on the steering wheel can be used by both the car’s voice recognition system and Siri. Most commonly, a short press sends the voice command to the car, a long press sends the command to Siri and Eyes Free.

What Apple doesn’t display on the center stack could be off-limits

No good deed goes unpunished, right? If you drink the Eyes Free Kool-Aid, know this: As Eyes Free works currently, some of your apps are shown on-screen, not all. But if the phone app is not Eyes Free approved, it’s also Hands Off. The controls and display on the iPhone are disabled so you can’t muck around with other apps. You shouldn’t be running a video on the center stack display, obviously. But say you wanted to check weather at your destination or the departure gate for your flight, and it’s not an app that works through Eyes Free. Then you’re out of luck, unless you disconnect Eyes Free and your connected smartphone is just a smartphone sitting on the center console. The biggest issue will be whether texts and the first lines of e-mails can be displayed.

Another issue for users is to see how Apple treats apps in a category. Right now, if you want to run an iPhone navigation app, it’s easier to access and issue commands to Apple Maps than to Google Maps, MotionX, Telenav, or AT&T/Verizon Navigator.

Have automakers run up the white flag?

Longer term, iOS 7 and a reinvigorated Siri could be a bad sign for automakers. It could mean the automakers are admitting they just can’t keep up with mobile infotainment technology and they’ll return to the nuts and bolts of car-building: safety, efficiency, comfort.

There still is good reason for automakers to stay involved: When an automaker builds in a data cellphone for telematics and automated crash notification, it uses an antenna that works farther in the boondocks that the best smartphone. When a high-end car incorporates a $2,000 navigation system, there’s incentive to make the center stack display 10 inches diagonal, not just 6 or 7 inches. Audi with its photorealistic maps shows what’s possible when spending extra money for good navigation on a good car.

If Eyes Free gets more iPhones connected to cars, iPhone entertainment apps such as iTunes streaming, Pandora, MOG, Spotify, iHeartRadio and others will gain more traction. SiriusXM satellite radio gets squeezed further.

Chevrolet BringGo: glimpse of the future

General Motors’ Chevrolet division already does some of what Apple announced this week. Using the Chevrolet MyLink infotainment interface, you can use an iPhone and BringGo software (formerly GoGo Link) from Engis Technologies ($50) to run navigation on the car phone, display the moving map on the car display, and issue commands through the touchscreen and center stack buttons. It’s on the Chevrolet Spark subcompact and Chevrolet Sonic compact cars. It’s a great idea that shows signs of incomplete execution: While BringGo gets you where you’re going, the software is not leading-edge, the displayed maps are sometimes hard to read, and one of the initial platform cars, the Spark, is underwhelming.

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Google Glass teardown: Futuristic on the outside, thoroughly underwhelming on the inside

In something of a political statement towards Google Glass’s potential privacy pitfalls, two engineers have violated the privacy of Google’s augmented reality specs and completed the first ever teardown. Despite Glass’s futuristic appearance, its internals surprisingly rather contemporary: There’s a standard TI OMAP4430 SoC, 16GB of flash, some DRAM, and a rather poky 570 mAh lithium-polymer battery. The display, which is just a few millimeters across but packs in a resolution of 640×360, is perhaps the most exciting piece of hardware revealed by the teardown. For more details, read on.

The teardown, performed by Scott Torborg and Star Simpson, was surprisingly easy. Unlike some modern products, which are held together with glue (such as the MacBook Pro with Retina display), Google Glass only really required a Torx screwdriver and some delicate spudger work. Torborg and Simpson were able to reassemble their Glass afterward, though considerable cosmetic damage remained. This might sound positive from a user-serviceability standpoint, but sadly the piece that’s most likely to require replacement — the battery — is impossible to remove without causing permanent cosmetic damage.

Google Glass is essentially separated into three distinct regions: The behind-the-ear battery, the main computer in the middle, and the display assembly at the front. A single Torx screw releases the main computer and display assembly from the Glass chassis/frame. Inside the main pod is a Synaptics touchpad, and under that is the main logic board, featuring an OMAP4430 SoC, 16GB of Sandisk NAND flash, and what appears to be a 1GB Elpida DRAM chip. The OMAP4430 is a fairly standard, circa-2011 dual-Cortex-A9 SoC based on the 45nm process. Its performance won’t blow you away, but it’s more than enough to drive Google Glass. A flexible PCB/ribbon connects the main computer to the behind-the-ear battery and the display assembly.

The display assembly is a single PCB with a tiny 640×360 LCD screen mounted directly on it; for scale, the coin in the above picture is a US dime, which is 18mm in diameter. The actual output from the display, though, is a lot larger than a few millimeters and appears to hover a few feet away from your face. To do this, the output from the screen — which actually faces forwards — is bent through a few angles using optical waveguides, similar to the method employed by projection TVs and old arcade games.

To access the battery, Torborg and Simpson again had to use destructive force to peel back the plastic. Google Glass is powered by a single-cell lithium-polymer battery rated at 2.1 watt-hours (570 mAh). The Galaxy S4, by comparison, has a 2,600 mAh battery, which explains why Google Glass’s battery life is so short.

Finally, rounding out Glass’s hardware, there’s a nine-axis InvenSense MPU-9150 inertial sensor, a controller for the Synaptics touchpad, a fairly mundane 5-megapixel camera, and between the main computer and battery pod there’s a bone conduction speaker (pictured above).

All in all, Google has done a fine job of integrating all of these components into an attractive chassis, but it’s clear from the short battery life that the underlying tech just isn’t good enough. The good news is that it shouldn’t be too hard to upgrade the internals, and moving to a newer 28nm or 22nm SoC could result in significant battery life gains. Really, though, what Google and the rest of the wearable computer industry really needs is a breakthrough in battery technology — and, as we know from experience, revolutionary battery technologies are few and far between.

Now read: Google Glass: Why are we so excited about a glorified camcorder?

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AMD unveils world’s first 5GHz CPU

In a desperate ploy to stay relevant, AMD has announced the first commercially available CPU to hit 5GHz: the FX-9590. Like its flagship predecessor, the FX-8350, the new chip features four Piledriver modules, which roughly equates to eight cores. For those of you who can’t afford the FX-9590, AMD is also releasing the FX-9370, which is identical except for a slightly lower clock of 4.7GHz. Both chips are unlocked for further overclocking.

Before you get too excited, though, we should warn you that AMD — as usual, when it comes to performance — isn’t being entirely honest about the FX-9590′s 5GHz claim to fame. 5GHz is the chip’s Turbo Core speed, not the base clock. AMD hasn’t even announced the base clock speed, leaving us to guess (it’s probably around 4.3GHz). In reality, 5GHz will probably only be obtainable when there’s plenty of thermal overhead, and not for extended periods of time; if you were hoping to build a render farm out of eight-core monsters that are stuck at 5GHz, you will be disappointed.

AMD, which announced the FX-9590 and 9370 at E3, is framing these two chips as the ultimate gaming companion. “At E3 this week, AMD demonstrated why it is at the core of gaming,” says AMD vice president Bernd Lienhard. “The new FX 5 GHz processor is an emphatic performance statement to the most demanding gamers seeking ultra-high resolution experiences.” In reality, of course, the single-threaded (and multi-threaded) performance of Ivy Bridge and Haswell make Intel a better choice for gaming. (See our Haswell review.) The one exception, as always, is if you’re trying to build a rig on a budget — we don’t have a price yet, but it’ll probably be around $300, or a little less than the top-of-the-range Core i7-4770K.

The bigger story here is that AMD has released the first commercial CPU to hit 5GHz, with a standard heatsink and fan (fun fact: AMD also produced the first 1GHz chip, way back in 2000). Piledriver was always built with high clock speeds in mind (See: AMD’s FX-8350 analyzed: Does Piledriver deliver where Bulldozer fell short?), but 5GHz is still rather impressive. AMD may have made some tweaks to the architecture reach 5GHz, but in all likelihood this is probably just the result of improved yields from GlobalFoundries’ 32nm SoI process, which is finally reaching maturity. This correlates nicely with AMD’s recently released Richland APUs, which feature Piledriver-based CPUs capable of 5GHz overclocks.

The FX-9590 and FX-9370, both of which are Socket AM3+ Vishera CPUs, will be released “this summer.” No word on pricing yet, but they will probably be priced just below Intel’s chips. It’s also worth noting that process maturity doesn’t override physics: At 5GHz, the FX-9590 will have an utterly monstrous TDP, probably in the 200W region.

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Transparent graphene-based display could enable contact lens computers

Augmented reality generated in the form of a contact lens, with embedded pixels, would have many advantages over a glasses-based design. Many companies are currently working on ways to build curved LCDs, or even flexible LCDs, that could be embedded into a contact. Unless you want a full-scale bionic vision implant which sends the data to the lens, a stand-alone LCD is not going to cut it. A group of researchers from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Korea are now working on a solution to this this problem — the contact lens computer.

The Ulsan researchers had previously worked in an area seemingly unrelated to display technology. Their claim to fame was a graphene-based “nanoplatelet” material that was stable and conductive enough to act as a fuel cell cathode. These nanoplatelets could be separated into individual sheets by a process called ball milling. On larger scales, ball milling is typically used to uniformly grind powders with a small agitated ball bouncing around inside a closed vessel. Inside a mini ball mill, graphene can be mixed with various halogens, like chlorine or bromine, which then creep in between the graphene sheets to make a robust material.

The researchers were able to build miniature inorganic LEDs by connecting the graphene sheets together with silver nanowires into a hybrid structure. The flexible silver nanowires enabled the hybrid strucuture to maintain its high conductivity even when bent. The most important factor for using the hybrid graphene in a contact lens-based computer is its high transparency. Other transparent materials like indium tine oxide (ITO) become much less conductive when bent. When the hybrid LEDs were embedded into a regular soft contact and tested in a rabbit no ill effects were observed.

At this point the contact developed by the researchers is really just a single pixel display, but the goal of the effort is to build a device that can do everything that something likeGoogle Glass can do. There are many forms a contact computer might take. Embedding all that hardware inside a transparent device is currently impossible. One shortcut might be to use a tether for power and communications, although that probably wouldn’t be too comfortable. Wireless options have already been developed, at least in crude form, and may ultimately be the way to go. Once the device is powered and connected, we might imagine some of the rudimentary essentials such a device might do. At a minimum, one task might be to maintain the display settings to locally to match the changing optics of the eye as they search for some stability in a detached and partially artificial world.

We might imagine three regimes of function for the lens: Off, mixed AR mode, and perhaps even a full-on mode. For the on mode, the display could initially adopt the old-fashioned workstation terminal motif of a fully dark field display with green characters. Alternatively, the device could present an artificial neutral white field and cast the visuals upon that. Either way, the normal cues for the adaptive eye responses, like pupillary constriction and accommodation of the lens, will need to be given some consideration. The eye (and retina) will no doubt adapt to whatever the display gives it, but to remain comfortable and non-fatiguing over any appreciable time, these natural responses can not be ignored.

In the absence of any proper real-world cues from other senses, like hearing and balance, disorientation and nausea could also become an issue as the AR portion subsumes an ever increasing portion of the visual space. Building a true contact lens computer is therefore a little more complicated than just a few pixels or even a full display, but already we have seen significant progress.

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PS4 price, hardware specs, and games detailed: The anti-Xbox One

At long last, we finally know everything about Microsoft and Sony’s upcoming eighth-generation consoles: the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Both console makers employed an interesting strategy of drip-feeding us information in the build-up to the final unveil, desperately trying to one-up each other and have the final word. After months of posturing, Microsoft finally wrapped up its offering yesterday, leaving it to Sony to throw the last punch during its E3 keynote — and it was one hell of a swing, smacking the Xbox One straight in the gut: the PS4 will not be always-online, will allow you to freely trade your games, and will cost just $400. In short, it seems like the PS4 now has a sizable lead over the Xbox One. Read on for our full analysis of the PS4′s price, hardware, software, connectivity, and games.

Price

The Sony PS4 will be priced at $399, €399, £349, (the PS4 pre-order is available now) and will be released “this holiday season.” We already know that the Xbox One will be released in November, and it’s very likely that the PS4 will be available around the same time. The PS4′s $400 price point versus Microsoft’s $500 Xbox One (preorder) is a huge win for Sony — and, funnily enough, the exact reverse of the Xbox 360 ($400) and PS3 ($500). The price is even more impressive when you factor in that, unlike last generation, neither console is being sold at a loss (though the profit margins are probably very, very small at this point).

While it might seem that the PS4 massively undercuts the Xbox One, it’s important to remember that Microsoft’s console comes bundled with the new Kinect — so you do get something for your extra $100.

Hardware

After one press conference where Sony didn’t show us the console at all, and then a blurry 30-second video to keep us on the edge of our seats, Sony has finally shown us what the PS4 actually looks like. As you can see above, the PS4 actually looks a lot a rhomboid version of the Xbox One, or perhaps an evil Wii. We don’t have the exact dimensions yet, but it looked pretty big on stage at E3. Our guess is that both the Xbox One and PS4 will look good under your TV, at roughly the same width as your Blu-ray player.

Inside the PS4 is, essentially, a specialized mid-range gaming PC. There’s an 8-core AMD Jaguar/Kabini x86-64 CPU, a Radeon 7870-derived GPU with 18 compute units (vs. Xbox One’s 12 CUs), and 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM. The only standout feature here is the RAM, which provides both the CPU and GPU with 176GB/sec of unified (shared) memory. As always, though, it’s unfair to directly compare a console’s hardware with the PC equivalent — in reality, once developers write code that specifically targets the PS4′s hardware, we should see performance and visuals that compare to your top-end gaming PC. (Read: Xbox One vs. PS4 vs. PC: How the hardware specs compare.)

On the back of the PS4, there’s simply an HDMI out, Aux socket, Gigabit Ethernet socket, and an S/PDIF optical audio out. There are two USB connectors on the front, too. This is in stark comparison to the Xbox One, which has a ton of connectors — including an HDMI in. In short, the PS4 will not be an all-in-one living room media center like the Xbox One. The PS4 also has 802.11 WiFi built in, but unlike the Xbox One it will use Bluetooth instead of WiFi Direct to connect to the gamepads.

Games & DRM

The biggest difference between the PS4 and the Xbox One are the games and DRM. On the games front, it seems the PS4 only has a handful of exclusives: Final Fantasy 15, Kingdom Hearts 3, and a new franchise called The Order. The Xbox One, on the other hand, has more than a dozen exclusive titles. All told, there are apparently 140 games currently in development for the PS4, with 40 of those including “experiences” that are exclusive to the PS4. Experiences is Sony’s way of saying that the PS4 will have lots of exclusive betas and DLCs, but not many exclusive games. As far as we can tell, all of the usual franchises will be available on both the PS4 and Xbox One — Grand Theft Auto 5, Assassin’s Creed, NBA, Elder Scrolls, and so on.

Perhaps more important than exclusive titles, though, is the PS4′s complete lack of DRM. Any game discs that you buy for the PS4 are yours, and can be traded or shared in whatever way you wish. This is in contrast to the Xbox One, which allows publishers to control how its games are resold.

On the flip side, though, the PS4 does require PlayStation Plus if you wish to play multiplayer games online — just like the Xbox 360 and One with Xbox Live Gold.

Controllers

One of the biggest differences between the PS4 and Xbox One are the control mechanisms. Whereas every Xbox One ships with a Kinect, and refuses to work unless the Kinect is plugged in, the PS4 appears to have no such gesture or voice controls. Instead, the PS4 ships with a sensor bar that tracks a light on the back of each DualShock 4 controller, and each controller has its own built-in touchpad. For more info, including all of the new additions to the DualShock 4 controller, read our story on how the Xbox One and PS4 controllers stack up.

Software and connectivity

The one area that we still don’t know a lot about is the PS4′s software. We know that there will be an extensive social interface, allowing you to capture, share, and stream videos of your gameplay directly from the PS4, but beyond that Sony hasn’t really shown us anything.

Connectivity-wise, the PS4 will not regularly connect to the internet to check on your game licenses, and you will be able to use your console offline for as long as you want. This is in stark contrast to the Xbox One’s 24-hour check-in requirement. If you can’t afford an internet connection, or you regularly take your console offline (to your cabin in the woods), the PS4 is for you.

Like the Xbox One and SmartGlass, the PS4 will also allow you to use your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet as a second screen. Exact details on what you can do with the second screen are unknown, but it’s probably the same deal as the Xbox one: Inventory management, interacting with your friends, mini-games, and so on.

The anti-Xbox

At this point, it’s clear that Sony has played its hand to perfection. It waited for Microsoft to skewer itself with the always-on DRM debacle, and then it came through with a console that gives gamers complete ownership of their games. (See: Microsoft: Xbox One will be always-online, publishers can disable game trade-ins.) It let Microsoft lead with a high $500 price point, and then came in at $400. Perhaps most importantly, though, Sony has built a games console, while the Xbox One is — in Microsoft’s own words — an all-in-one media center that also plays games.

Whether Sony’s anti-Xbox maneuver will work out or not remains to be seen. With no DRM and a lower price point, core gamers will almost certainly flock to the PS4. With its multimedia tie-ins and gesture/voice controls, the mass market will probably go for the Xbox One. With such a massive divergence between the two consoles, the eighth generation of consoles will play out very interestingly indeed.

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Apple’s WWDC 2013: iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks debut (updated live blog)

Today’s the big day for Apple fans. After months of almost complete silence, Cupertino is primed to release some big details about the future of its products at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). We’re bound to find out more about iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9, but hopefully we’ll see much more announced publicly.

[12:30PM ET] The ever-popular Apple rumor mill has everything from iRadio to the iWatch to the iPad 5 launching today, but that’s mostly wishful thinking. This is a developersconference, so we can expect the vast majority of the announcements to be directly related to new software and APIs. If there are any hardware announcements, we can expect them to be small-scale like a Haswell MacBook refresh.

No matter what Apple actually decides to shows on stage, we’re in for some exciting news today. We’ll be updating this post as new information is announced, so keep checking back for the latest details directly from Apple.

[12:55PM ET] Apple’s video stream is live. We’re currently listening to some hot jams and watching countless tech journalists take photos. It’s almost time for the keynote.

[01:10PM ET] After a short intro video, Tim Cook takes the stage to much applause. He opens with a bit of bragging about how big WDDC is. It’s the biggest developer conference in the world, and two-thirds of attendees are first-timers. Impressively, tickets sold out in just 71 seconds.

Apple retail stores see a million daily visitors now. That’s no surprise since Apple now has 407 brick and mortar stores in 14 countries. Meanwhile, the iOS App Store is about to reach its fifth birthday, and it just recently reach 50 billion downloads. It has 900,000 apps, 375,00 apps customized for iPads, and over 575,000,000 accounts. More importantly, Apple has paid developers 10 billion dollars to date — three times more than all other platforms combined.

[01:15PM ET] The folks at Anki come up on stage, and they show off their brand new Anki Drive product. These tiny self-driving toy cars use low-power Bluetooth to let the Anki iOS app serve and the AI for the navigation. It’s neat, but pretty nerdy stuff. Just right for a developer conference. This is a kind of augmented reality that is taken much farther than previous attempts. This is real-world video gaming live on display.

[01:30PM ET] Wow! The Mac now has 72 million users. Over the last five years, it has seen 100% growth. Mountain Lion shipped 28 million copies, and has reached 35% penetration. Cook then takes a moment to slyly mention Windows 8′s measly 5% penetration of the PC market.

Apple was running out of cat names, so it’s punching the eject button. Now, we have a new Mac OS X naming convention: California-based names. What’s the next Mac OS X name? OS X Sea Lion? Just kidding! It’s OS X Mavericks. It’s no OS X Grumpy Cat, but we’ll all survive.

In OS X Mavericks, we can expect a tabbed Finder, file tagging, and better multi-screen support. That’s right! The menu bar and dock now work across all of your displays. More importantly, you can now make an app fullscreen on one display while maintaining full access to your desktop on the other screen. These are big improvements, and it’s shocking how long it’s taken for Apple to implement these features. Don’t have a second monitor? No problem. Now, TVs connected to an Apple TV will function as a full-fledged secondary monitor.

[01:40PM ET] Now, we’re talking the underlying tech in OS X Mavericks. The big head-lining features are Compressed Memory, App Nap, OpenGL 4, and Timer Coalescing. The goal in these features is, obviously, to increase performance and reduce battery life. On the same hardware, Mavericks has 1.4 times better responsiveness under load than does Mountain Lion. Even SSD users will see better performance.

[01:50PM ET] 1.5 billion devices use WebKit now, and obviously Safari is benefitting from the huge support. The Nitro JavaScript engine has been improved for better performance and less power usage, but that’s not the only big update. The UI has been redone as well. With the new Safari, the home page has been updated with a really neat side bar. Your bookmarks and Reading List are both available, but now shared links from Twitter and LinkedIn are both automatically populated as well.

[02:00PM ET] OS X Mavericks also ships with iCloud Keychain — taking on LastPass and 1Password directly. Hopefully, it has a better uptime than Apple’s other online products.

The system notifications have been completely revamped as well. Notifications are no longer static. Right from the notification pop-up, you can reply to messages or answer a FaceTime call. Notifications will now show up on the lock screen, and it now auto-updates App Store apps in the background. Finally, system notifications don’t suck anymore.

No more leather UI in the Calendar. Take that, Scott Forstall! Maps makes its way to OS X, finally, and it syncs up with iOS as well. In addition, iBooks is coming to the Mac. It’s a bit depressing how long it takes Apple to push these features to OS X after their initial iOS release. iBooks is three years old now — it’s embarassing.

The OS X Mavericks beta starts today for paid developers, and OS X Mavericks will make its way to the public later this autumn.

[02:05PM ET] New hardware! The new 11-inch MacBook Air now lasts 9 hours on a single charge, and the 13-inch model will last upwards of 12 hours. Part of the increased battery life is due to the addition of 802.11ac support in these new models. Of course, this means there is a new AirPort Extreme with 802.11ac functionality to go with it.

Finally, we get to see the next Mac Pro. It’s a shiny black cylinder, and it looks really superb. It’s rocking a new Intel Xenon CPU — 2x faster than the previous gen, and it ships with 1866MHZ RAM. The flash storage is 2.5x faster than previous options. Unsurprisingly, it comes with Thunderbolt 2 support, so external devices will enjoy 20Gbps connection. Dual graphics cards (2.5x faster last-gen) will now come standard with the new Mac Pro. It will even support 3 separate 4K monitors. All of this comes in at one-eighth of the volume of the previous Mac Pro. This is an amazing jump forward for professional Mac users.

It sports HDMI out, gigabit ethernet, tons of USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports. This is all wonderful, but we won’t get to see it until later this year. It will be made in America, though.

[02:15PM ET] iWork for iCloud now allows document editing in the web browser. IE, Chrome, and Safari are supported, and it’s available today for paid developers. The public will get access later this year.

[02:25PM ET] Now, it’s onto iOS. Tim Cook brags a bit about how much more people use iOS devices compared to competitors. More people browse the web and buy products with iOS devices than Windows Phone, Android, and Blackberry.

That’s not the end of the Android-bashing, though. Cook is going for Android’s jugular. 93% of iOS users are on the latest version. In comparison, Android is still widely splintered. Ouch.

iOS 7 is official, and now we get to watch a video featuring the notoriously sage-shy Jony Ive. Turns out, everything is far from flat.

[02:30PM ET] Instead of just copying the Metro UI, this looks like a whole new take on the classic iOS look. For example, as you tilt the iPhone, the internal sensors allow for the screen to simulate 3D-like visual shift. This is the opposite of what most rumors implied.

That said, the rumor mill got something right: Skeuomorphism is all gone. Now more wood, leather, or felt. This current team sure is sticking it to now-forgotten Forstall iOS design aesthetic. That said, it seems they are going very heavy on animation — everything you do is animated. It demos well, but let’s hope it doesn’t bog down the phone.

[02:40PM ET] Now, we’re onto new features. First off, it’s control center. Just swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and you get your settings. It even works on the lock screen.

All apps will be able to multitask now, but we’re supposedly still going to retain superb battery life. It will do background app updates based solely on your usage patterns. Push notifications will now work as a trigger, so any app generating a notification will automatically be updated by the time you launch it.

Safari is getting an update with better tabs, iCloud Keychain support, parental controls, unified search, and a new fullscreen mode. Just like Safari on OS X Mavericks, it has a unified and infinitely-scrolling view of bookmarks, Reading List, and shared links. Better yet, we’re no longer limited to only 8 tabs.

[02:50PM ET] Just like the rumors promised, AirDrop is now built-in to iOS 7. It’s system-wide, so any app can share files. It’ll work on the iPhone 5, 5th-gen iPod Touch, iPad Mini, and 4th-gen iPad.

The camera and photo apps have gotten a complete overhaul. Fan of Instagram’s filters? Well, now you can take photos with live filters. Better, the Photos app will automatically organize and display your photos for you. No more scrolling through thousands of photos in a line.

Siri has a new voice. No, wait, TWO new voices. English, French, and German will get access to both male and female voices in iOS 7. It will also sport Twitter, Wikipedia, and Bing integration right out of the box. Siri will also serve as the core of Apple’s new service called “iOS in the car.” Starting in 2014, over 10 car makers will be integrating iOS and Siri support directly into their vehicles.

[03:00PM ET] The App Store is getting much more than a face-lift. New features include “Apps near me” and “Age range” search criteria, but the biggest feature is the inclusion of background updating. No more manual updates! Hallelujah.

Worried about jerks stealing your iPhone? Now, Activation Lock will keep thieves from using stolen iOS devices even if the device is completely wiped. Once the “Lost or Stolen” switch is flipped, you’ll need to enter your iCloud username and password to use the device.

iTunes Radio is a Pandora-like listening experience launching soon. It’s free with ads to all users, but iTunes Match subscribers will get ad-free access. It works on iOS devices, Macs, and Apple TVs. It’s US-only to start, but more countries are coming.

Other iOS 7-exclusive features include notification syncing, Weibo integration, per-app VPN settings, and call/message blocking. The iOS 7 beta for the iPhone is available to paid developers today, the iPad beta will come later, and the public will get iOS 7 this autumn.

[Image credit: Apple, PCMag Live]

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