Though some critics love to knock PCs as dinosaurs, laptops and desktops have gotten sexier, faster and even smarter. For every blue screen of death, there are droves of technological enhancements driving PCs into the era of virtual reality, 4K video and 5G connectivity. Here are the top 10 PC technology and trends to watch next year.VR PCs on your head
Intel/IDGNS
An Intel employee demonstrates the company's Project Alloy headset on stage during IDF 2016 in San Francisco on August 16, 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's sending a strong message: You don't need high-end hardware to plug most VR headsets into PCs.The company has established an amazingly modest set of minimum hardware requirements for upcoming VR headsets to be used with PCs. Microsoft believes mixed reality is the future of computing and wants to bring VR as many PCs as possible.The requirements for Windows 10 PCs for tethered VR headsets do not apply to fully integrated headset computers like Microsoft's HoloLens. Companies like Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo plan to come out with headset accessories for PCs, and Microsoft has said prices for those VR headsets would start at US$299.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last Wednesday was historic for Qualcomm. In one day, the company jumped beyond its comfort zone of mobile chips and entered the PC and server markets.With the expansion, Qualcomm now has chips for most computing products. It wants to outcompete even Intel, which dominates in PCs and servers but gave up on markets like smartphone CPUs earlier this year.Qualcomm on Wednesday announced its Centriq 2400 server chips, which started shipping to test customers. Later that day, Microsoft revealed that first PCs based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chip would come next year. The chip will also be used in high-end smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Virtual reality is emerging as a computing category just like PCs and mobile devices, and VR headset shipments are booming.As Sony's PlayStation VR beat out the more expensive HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, VR headset shipments totaled around 2 million this year, according to research firm Canalys. That is fast growth for a market that was in its infancy last year.Canalys' estimates mainly include head-mounted displays with screens. It excludes headsets without displays such as Google's Daydream View or Samsung's Gear VR, which are shells in which mobile devices need to be attached for VR. The shipment estimates also do not include devices like Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro mobile device, which offers blended reality directly on the screen of mobile devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's Surface Hub large-screen PC isn't your regular computer, and it takes a bit of practice to fully exploit it. With that in mind, Microsoft is starting a program in which users can try the Surface Hub for 30 days before buying it.No such program is offered for other Surface devices. The supersized Surface Hub -- which comes in screen sizes of 55-inch and 84-inches, is mostly designed as a centerpiece for conference rooms to be used for video conferencing, collaboration, and digital whiteboarding.The Surface Hub is off to a fast start, said Julia Atalla, senior director of the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft. The company has 600 Hub customers and expects more than 2,000 customers by the end of the year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel and Microsoft are working on technology allowing you to shout out commands to Cortana or activate a Windows 10 PC from sleep mode without being all that close to it.The chipmaker is working with Microsoft to add "far-field speech recognition" technology, where one can shout out Cortana commands to a Windows PC from longer distances."Soon, you’ll be able to speak to your PC from a distance and access all of your information on the device and in the cloud," Navin Shenoy is senior vice president and general manager for the Client Computing Group for Intel, said in a blog entry this week. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD has called its latest Crimson edition the GPU software update of the year and rightfully so. Called Crimson ReLive, it squeezes more horsepower out of the latest Polaris and older Fury GPUs and makes gaming and VR experiences more compelling.
The Crimson ReLive edition is a must-have for AMD GPU owners. Prominent games like Batman Arkham Knight and Deus Ex: Mankind will look and perform better, and VR images will look much sharper on headsets.
There are many new features in Crimson ReLive. An interesting feature is Radeon Chill, which keeps the GPU cool by cutting down on the excessive frame rate in games. Essentially, it analyzes the performance of games and adjusts the frame rate without affecting a game's visuals and performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows is the indisputable platform of choice for gaming and VR, but Linux is catching up fast as graphics companies ramp up driver and hardware support for the OS.AMD is showing more love for Linux than ever before. The company on Thursday announced some hardware and driver updates that will strengthen gaming and VR on the OS.The biggest news is AMD's support for FreeSync on Linux PCs. FreeSync can improve the rendition of games and high-definition video by allowing GPUs to communicate directly with displays, reducing image stutter and lag time. Images are drawn up on the screen while they are being rendered in GPUs.This is the first time AMD is bringing FreeSync support to Linux. It was earlier available only on Windows PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How do mobile devices keep get faster, thinner, and more power efficient? It's thanks to the quick advances in chip manufacturing, which help churn out smaller chips packed with new features.The next round of premium smartphones early next year could feature chips like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, made using the latest, 10-nanometer process.Continuing with the famous Moore's Law observation, it's likely that two years after that, smartphones will get even faster and smaller chips will be made using a 7-nanometer process.On Monday, ARM, with its chip designs in most smartphones, said it is working with prominent chip manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) to make 7-nm chips. ARM shared intellectual property for its 7-nm designs, allowing chips to be designed for manufacturing in TSMC's factories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After more than half a decade in the making, ARM server chips should have struck gold by now, but they haven't. ARM servers were projected to be approaching a double-digit server market share, but they still are virtually non-existent.Keeping market realities in mind, Qualcomm earlier this year said it would take a wait-and-watch approach before making a splash with its ARM server chips. While ARM servers adoption has been poor, Qualcomm decided to go ahead and launch the chips.In the making for two years, Qualcomm's Centriq 2400 server chips have 48 cores and are now being sent as samples to companies. Volume shipments of the chips will start in the second half next year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With its enormous capacity, a new 14TB drive from Western Digital is unlike any seen before and is now being shipped to customers for testing.It's the highest-capacity hard drive developed yet, beating 12TB hard drives from WD and Seagate. It's a larger capacity version of the 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 PMR hard drive, which also is shipping for testing.Hard drives ruled when it came to capacity, but this year were overtaken by flash-based SSDs. The 14TB drive, though setting a record for hard drives, comes nowhere close in capacity to Seagate's 60TB SSD, which was shown at the Flash Memory Summit in August.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With its enormous capacity, a new 14TB drive from Western Digital is unlike any seen before and is now being shipped to customers for testing.It's the highest-capacity hard drive developed yet, beating 12TB hard drives from WD and Seagate. It's a larger capacity version of the 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 PMR hard drive, which also is shipping for testing.Hard drives ruled when it came to capacity, but this year were overtaken by flash-based SSDs. The 14TB drive, though setting a record for hard drives, comes nowhere close in capacity to Seagate's 60TB SSD, which was shown at the Flash Memory Summit in August.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's a lot of excitement about Intel's superfast Optane SSDs, but products won't be on shelves this year as the chipmaker had earlier promised.Intel is currently making Optane in a factory in China, and production will "ramp" up next year, said Stacy Smith, executive vice president of manufacturing, operations, and sales at Intel.Smith declined to comment on when Optane products will hit the market, maintaining a consistent pattern of silence among Intel executives on the topic. He spoke at the Credit Suisse 20th Annual Technology, Media, and Telecom conference in Scottsdale, Arizona this week.Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said sample Optane products will ship to more testers next year, and that "it’s really a 2018 ramp for that product," according to a transcript of an October earnings call, posted on Seeking Alpha.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple said it took "courage" to remove the audio jack port from the iPhone 7 and replace it with wireless audio. Microsoft hasn't yet mustered the courage to cut the aging port.Microsoft has retained the headphone jack as a minimum hardware requirement for Windows 10 Mobile smartphones. The company declined to comment if it would make the headphone jack an optional port.The headphone jack port isn't a requirement for other Windows devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets, or IoT devices.Apple gave several reasons for removing the port, saying it was old technology, and it blocked the integration of newer technologies in the already compact iPhone 7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Users have praised the performance of Apple's A10 Fusion chip in the iPhone 7, but its underlying graphics architecture may not be so new after all.The GPU in the iPhone 7 uses a custom version of the PowerVR GT7600 GPU, which is based on the same graphics processor architecture as in last year's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, according to an analysis by The Linley Group, which specializes in semiconductors.Apple has claimed that the A10 Fusion CPU is two times faster than its predecessor, the A9, and the GPU about 50 percent faster.Benchmarking has revealed a mixed bag for A10 Fusion GPU's performance, according to the analyst firm. Some benchmarks supported Apple's GPU performance gain claims, and others fell way off. But the high levels of GPU performance are only temporary.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon is bringing a bit of its AWS magic to devices and board computers with its Greengrass IoT service, which will help boost offline data collection and analysis.The goal of Greengrass, an AWS software tool, is to make IoT devices and maker boards smarter. Even underpowered devices collecting data won't be "dumb" anymore, Amazon says.Amazon has kept in mind that smart devices can't always be connected to the cloud for data analysis, and Greengrass brings some AWS software tools to devices to aid in better collection and analysis of data.Developer boards are strongly tied to cloud services, which add more functionality to smart devices. Data collected from sensors are typically dispatched and collected in the cloud, where it can be analyzed and can define the next steps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For once, there will be a ceasefire in the war between major chip architectures x86, ARM and Power9, which will all be used in a supercomputer being built in Barcelona.The MareNostrum 4 is being built by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and will have three clusters, each of which will house Intel x86, ARM and Power9 chips. Those clusters will be linked to form a supercomputer that will deliver up to 13.7 petaflops of performance.All three architectures have never been implemented together in a supercomputer, let alone PCs or servers. It raises questions on how the architectures will interoperate.The three chip architectures are fundamentally different. An application written to take advantage of a specific architecture won't work on another, but server architectures are changing so different types of systems can coexist. Linux supports x86, ARM and Power, so it's possible to write applications to work across architectures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Five years ago, then Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker was derided for an abrupt plan to spin off the PC division from the mothership. It happened anyway in 2015, when the idea seemed more logical.The spin-off led to the creation of HP, which focuses on PCs and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which focuses on enterprise hardware and the cloud. Now a year after the split, the companies are still trying to shed off the rust as they try to stand on their own legs.Growing pains have afflicted both companies as they try to find their identities. HP and HPE both had to change their business focuses and also shed excess fat, announcing layoffs last month within days of each other.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Raspberry Pi 3 today has only Wi-Fi connectivity, but soon it will also be able to handle low-throughput cellular communications and let users control devices over long distances.Altair has completed testing of its ALT1160 Category 1 LTE chip on Raspberry Pi, and is now making it available, a company representative said. That's significant, as it will bring much-needed, long-range communications to the popular board computer.The LTE chip is ready for sale by Altair and its partners, a company representative said. The chip will be included in various third-party add-on LTE expansion boards and sensor modules for Raspberry Pi; otherwise, Altair will take volume orders for the chip. Each chip will cost roughly $15 to $20, though prices are coming down, said Eran Eshed, co-founder of Altair. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Raspberry Pi 3 today has only Wi-Fi connectivity, but soon it will also be able to handle low-throughput cellular communications and let users control devices over long distances.Altair has completed testing of its ALT1160 Category 1 LTE chip on Raspberry Pi, and is now making it available, a company representative said. That's significant, as it will bring much-needed, long-range communications to the popular board computer.The LTE chip is ready for sale by Altair and its partners, a company representative said. The chip will be included in various third-party add-on LTE expansion boards and sensor modules for Raspberry Pi; otherwise, Altair will take volume orders for the chip. Each chip will cost roughly $15 to $20, though prices are coming down, said Eran Eshed, co-founder of Altair. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Agam Shah