Intel Hits 50 Gbps Throughput With Photonics [Lightspeed]

When we last left the intrepid research scientists at Intel, they had managed to hit 40Gbps throughput using something called the Avalanche Photodetector. It’s been two years since that report (yeah, this has been in development for a while), and the gang at Intel have not been idle, let me tell you. They’ve managed to improve the field of photonics to achieve throughput of 50 Gbps! While not as much of an advance as one might like to see in two years, this is still a respectable achievement.

Here’s an explanatory video showing what exactly is going on.



People are talking about this like it’s some breakthrough that just happened, but it’s been in the works for years now, and is far from hitting the streets. Even Light Peak, Intel’s new high-speed standard aimed at consumers, isn’t ready for use yet.

We’ll let you know when this one is fully baked. Probably about two years from now.

[TechCrunch]

Fastest Electric Motorcycle in the World is Racing Today [Electric Vehicle]

Electric motorcycles are getting better all the time, but this MotoCzysz E1pc represents a giant leap into the future. Even though it looks like multiple rows of batteries with two wheels on either side, it's the most advanced motorcycle in the world.

You're looking at lots of batteries there, 10 times the capacity of the Toyota Prius, giving this crotch rocket enough power to blast it to 140 mph, way beyond the next-fastest electric motorcycle.

Today, the E1pc Digital Superbike undertakes its supreme test, the Isle of Man TT 2010 motorcycle race, 'designed to break motorcycles and its riders.' Here's a video preview of one of its test runs:



[DVICE]

Google Chrome Speed Tests as Seen by Google [Video]

Google showing off there speed tests for Chromes latest beta. They have so much time to play around. I wish I had their time. Or money.

Intel predicts Light Peak to replace USB 3.0 [Light Peak]

Intel pundit Kevin Kahn predicted that Light Peak may overtake USB 3.0 before it even starts. The 10Gbps standard is poised to become the mainstream technology as soon as 2011, beating the technology it’s intended to replace to the mainstream.

While Light Peak is currently considered to work with USB 3.0, the sure blazing speed could serve to make it become the standard before the older technology has a chance to take off. Mr. Kahn stated that Light Peak will become available to PC manufacturers later this year, and shipping in early 2011.

[CrunchGear via Electronista]

IBM's 100Ghz Graphene Transistor Might Replace Silicon Someday [Ibm]

We know graphene is tough stuff, but Big Blue's discovering the substance makes a great transistor too, to the tune of a record-setting 100GHz.
You see, the 100Ghz graphene transistor IBM was crowing about this week is already much, much faster than a comparably sized silicon one. Current 'state-of-the-art' silicon maxes out at 40Ghz. But better still, IBM created the graphene screamer using existing silicon fabrication methods. No new gear necessary!

However, as is commonplace with these types of stories, graphene transistors—at least ones deployed widely in everyday computing—are still a ways away. IBM researchers, why must you tease us so?
[Gizmodo via IBM via Engadget]

The Fastest Train in the World [Trains]

The fastest commercial train in the world is now fully armed and operational.
Developed with Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom, the new train swooshes across the red land at 245mph (394km/h). The service covers 663 miles (1,068 kilometers) at an average of 217mph (350km/h), which means it's the fastest train in operation in the world according to China's railways ministry. It's part of the network of 42 high-speed lines that will be finished by 2012. If you have never tried these amazing trains in Europe or Japan, imagine going from New York to Chicago in just a bit over three hours, no absurd controls, no waits, no taxis needed.
The new Chinese high-speed lines will increase their total network from 53,437 miles to 74,564 miles. That's still smaller than the US railway system which, by contrast, only has one single 'high-speed' line, bridging the 456 miles that separate Boston with New York at a whooping 70mph average, totaling seven hours. Don't take that line, folks. It will liquify your brain.
[Gizmodo via Time of India]

This Car Will Run at 1,000mph [Cars]

Bloodhound is a car being designed to run at a swooshing one thousand miles-per-hour. That's 1,609 km/h, which is way faster than the speed of sound. As the video shows, it'll have more thrust than the Eurofighter combat jet:
Of course, the car has yet to be built, let alone break that record. But the effort is quite serious, these people are not amateur, and they have serious sponsors. It will use one EJ200 jet like the one used by the Eurofighter—hopefully a real one, unlike the one I got into at Dubai two years ago—alonside a one 18" hybrid rocket, and a V12 piston engines. The 6500-kilogram Bloodhound—which is being built in Bristol—will have a 47,000lbs trust, with a top speed of 1050mph.

The driver will be former RAF Wing Comander Andy Green, who broke the landspeed record in 1997.
[Gizmodo via Bloodhound via Techradar]

Casio's Exilim EX-FH25: 40fps High-Speed Burst Shooting at 9-Megapixels [Digital Cameras]

You might remember Casio's EX-FC100 and EX-FH20 as two Exilims capable of 1000fps slow-mo video. Both 9.1-megapixel cameras are getting a 10-megapixel CMOS sensor, and the FH25 (a 20x superzoom) does 40fps high-speed bursts at 9-megapixels (up from seven).
Everything else on the EX-FH25 looks to be the same. Similarly, the EX-FC150 will keep its 5x optical zoom, and sensor-shift image stabilization. Both cameras will continue to do 720p video at 30fps.
The new models arrive in Japan on November 27th; we'll keep you posted on their U.S pricing and availability. [Akihabara News: EX-FX25 | EX-FX150]

[Gizmodo]

AMD Phenom II Breaks 7GHz Barrier [Amd]

7.08GHz. That's the record-shattering speed an AMD Phenom II processor was overclocked to using a massive amount of liquid helium. You can watch the whole process in this documentary video set to one kickass soundtrack.
[Gizmodo via Crunchgear]

A 2x Faster Web

From Google's Chromium Blog:

Today we'd like to share with the web community information about SPDY, pronounced 'SPeeDY', an early-stage research project that is part of our effort to make the web faster. SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.

We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.

So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster. There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.

For those of you who would like to learn more and hopefully contribute to our experiment, we invite you to review our early stage documentation, look at our current code and provide feedback through the Chromium Google Group.

Posted by Mike Belshe, Software Engineer and Roberto Peon, Software Engineer

This post is cross-posted at the Google Research Blog

[Chromium Blog]

I Never Thought Water Drops Looked Like This [SloMo]

I'm mindboggled, in fact, my whole mind is a bag of beans after watching this high speed video of water drops falling. It's unbelievable how high speed photography can change your perception of the world.
There's nothing special in this video. No special water or additives. It's just that the world gets absolutely crazy at 2,000 frames per second. Surface tension is surprisingly stong though.
[Gizmodo]

Lexar announces new 600x Compact Flash cards

Lexar announced their new 600x compact flash cards today. It’s not unexpected that the faster speed memory cards are coming out, given the UDMA requirements of cameras like the Canon 7D.
The new Lexar cards have a amazing 90MB/s transfer rate when used in a device that supports the new UDMA 6 protocol. This is particularly important for the generation of cameras that shoot video, since the write speed is critical when you are shooting in HD.
The new cards are available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes. The 8GB and 16GB cards are available now, the 32GB should be available in November. The 8GB version sells for $149, the 16GB version sells for $249. There isn’t any pricing available for 32GB version, but you can safely assume it will not be cheap.
You can read the press release here.
[CrunchGear]

Robot arms demonstrate their physical aptitude again, this time with Fanta

It’s not enough that they make ramen, juggle, and play catch — now robot arms need to play with their food? This robot arm on the right is teasing the one on the left. Want a Fanta? You can’t have one! Your feeble manipulator navigates this six-pack in vain.

These feats are child’s play for a robot designed for precision maneuvers. Just picture this, now: instead of a six-pack, it’s navigating the smoking rubble of one of humanity’s underground hiding places — you know, after the Robocalypse. A fraction of a second after it bursts into the room, it inputs the locations of all the faces, programs a path for its rapid-fire laser cannon, and…. boom, headshots.

[CrunchGear via BotJunkie and Gizmodo]

Eco-Macho: Germany debuts e2 electric car of the future

The Tesla electric car is officially passé now that we have the e2 electric sports car from e-Wolf coming in 2011. The vehicle features a 544 horsepower electric engine, a battery that will last for 186 miles, and a top speed of 155 miles per hour.

What makes the e2 even more attractive is that it will take just 30 minutes to power up to a full electric charge. According to the company the car will be able to hit 60 miles per hour in just 4 seconds. The era of eco-macho is upon us, now it's all just a waiting game.

[DVICE via AutoBlog]

Intel Light Peak Optical Tech Achieves Insane 10Gb/s Speeds [Intel]

Today at IDF, Intel unveiled Light Peak technology, a plan for an extremely high-speed optical cable they hope will land on consumer products in 2010. Imagine transferring an entire Blu-Ray disk in 30 seconds. And that's just the beginning.
In Intel's words:

Existing electrical cable technology in mainstream computing devices is approaching practical limits for speed and length, due to electro-magnetic interference (EMI) and other issues. However, optical technology, used extensively in data centers and telecom communications, does not have these limitations since it transmits data using light instead of electricity. Light Peak brings this optical technology to mainstream computing and consumer electronic devices in a cost-effective manner.

Light Peak delivers 10Gb/s speeds right now, and could conceivably go as fast as 100Gb/s within a decade or so. Those kinds of speeds are even sustained over a 100-meter distance, which is really impressive. Intel is currently working with hardware manufacturers (computers, handhelds, etc) to try to get the optical tech onto devices sometime in 2010. [Gizmodo via Intel]