David Lidsky's Blog, page 4654

Intel's New CPU Chip Is More Super Than Yours, With 50 Cores Aboard

Intel revealed a few details about a new chip the other day--not surprising news, you may think, as Intel's been doing lots of future-facing PR recently. But this chip is different, super in fact: It's got 50-CPU cores on a single slice of silicon.

This is Intel's first proper production run of a many-cores device, since its earlier efforts at a 48-core Single Chip Cloud computer were shelved. The new chip, codenamed Knight's Corner, actually one-ups this design with 50 minuscule processing...

Infographic of the Day: The World's Supercomputing Superpowers

Everything you ever wanted to know about the world's supercomputers, in a single interactive chart by the BBC.

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Today sees the release of the Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, and the BBC has collapsed all that data in one handy infographic.

The results are shown in a treemap--the size of each box shows the relative speed of each supercomputer, and you can mouse over each one to get more details. What's more, you can look at the map from lots of different views. Above, the...

Infographic Eye Candy: Nikes That Mark Your Marathon Progress

Designer Michael Robinson points out the we can now collect all sorts of data while we run, thanks to pedometers and heart-rate monitors. But we don't usually make that data public.

So he designed a pair of Nike marathon spikes with 26 lights in them: For every mile you run, a light turns on, creating what's essentially an infographic of the wearer's progress in a marathon.

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Robinson's project is a conceptual one-off--but it's got company. In advance of the London Design...

BP's Latest Attempt to Slow Down the Oil Spill: A Containment Dome...Again

Another day, another piece of news about how BP plans to heroically stop the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This time around, the oil company is cutting and capping the leaking well head with an overhead containment dome. Underwater robots can be seen in the live spill cam (below) sawing off the well's broken riser pipe.

For those who haven't followed the increasingly harrowing drama of the spill, BP's last attempt at using a containment dome failed when...

Sustainable Landscape Project Takes Root

Greener pastures for a Super Bowl village, a black history museum, and a wealth of other land developments in the United States and beyond

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A Super Bowl village, a black history museum, and a Thom Mayne house in New Orleans have absolutely nothing in common except this:
They've signed on to become some of the greenest landscapes in the
country.

More to the point, they're among 175 pilot projects worldwide to enlist in the Sustainable Sites Initiative, a new rating
system for...

Loopt Aims at Being the Digital Loyalty Card for Everything

Loopt, tired of falling into the shadow of location games like Foursquare and Gowalla, has just upped its ante. A lot. It's releasing Loopt Star, a rewards scheme that basically turns it into a store loyalty card, stored electronically on your iPhone.

Loopt, if you remember, was playing in this check-in/service review/social network space from pretty early on. Recently, though, the limelight has shifted away from Loopt onto Foursquare and Gowalla, thanks to Foursquare's big-name advertising

BP Oil Disaster in Pictures: Memorial Day 2010, Grand Isle, Louisiana

Grand Isle, Louisiana, is ground zero for the BP Oil leak, the worst in U.S. history. Here's how residents and visitors to the beach town spent memorial day as military workers and BP contractors fought back the crude and tar balls washing up on shore.

Display Wars: Pixel QI Improves its Tech, E-ink Teases its Future E-Reader Screens

Apple's IPS LCD display tech may be the bees knees of current tablet screens, but there're rivals out there, such as the Kindle's e-ink system. There's also Pixel Qi, which is a daylight-viewable LCD alternative -- and it's just got lots better. 

The folks at Liliputing had a peek at some example hardware with the new Qi screens at Computex and learned that the scientists in white coats have been busy refining the technology. Pixel Qi is almost a halfway house between e-ink's excellent...

Loopt Aims at Being The Digital Loyalty Card for Everything

Loopt, tired of falling into the shadow of location games like Foursquare and Gowalla, has just upped its ante. A lot. It's releasing Loopt Star, a rewards scheme that basically turns it into a store loyalty card, stored electronically on your iPhone.

Loopt, if you remember, was playing in this check-in/service review/social network space from pretty early on. Recently, though, the limelight has shifted away from Loopt onto Foursquare and Gowalla, thanks to Foursquare's big-name advertising

Zipcar Whizzing Toward an IPO

Zipcar is going public. The car-sharing firm led by Scott Griffith that lets you "borrow" one of its 6,500 vehicles for as little as an hour at a time, has filed a registration statement with the SEC for an IPO. Last month, the firm implemented a $70
million ABS program in order to fund further expansion of its fleet.
The proceeds from the IPO will be used in part to pay off some of its
debt while it continues to grow.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the service is available in 71...