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Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 15-February-2008 13:38:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This entire post is thanks to Digital_Monkey!
First up, an article about the biggest tech aquisitions of the decade. Most people have never heard of the big tech companies. Hell, I've never heard of some of them. SDL? JDS Uniphase? Veritas? Aspect Development? I have no idea what they do. But you don't need to be a household name to be worth billions. Here are the 15 biggest tech deals since 1998.
Tech-Report rounded up 16 mid-range graphics cards. We are living in perhaps the most exciting time in recent history for PC graphics. What's particularly striking about this latest flurry of excitement is that it isn't tied to a new standard in performance set by high-end "halo" cards that few enthusiasts can actually afford. These cards don't incite as much geek lust as those higher up the line, but they're far more attainable and often boast a better value proposition than the latest flagships.
The Pentagon has authorised shooting down a dead satellite. That busted spy satellite that was going to fall to Earth and hopefully not kill anyone? Well, the Pentagon has decided to not let it just assume it'd land in an ocean somewhere and take matters into their own hands. That's right: they're going to blow the thing right out of the sky.
At least one analyst thinks NVIDIA might aquire AMD, despite it possibly costing them their x86 license. American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD’s x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel’s long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD’s stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD’s recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI’s recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel’s plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well.
Electronic Arts has announced Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Developed by EA Los Angeles, the same studio that handled Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3 will add co-op campaign play, new units, and a new faction to the alternate history strategy series. According to the executive producer Chris Corry, naval combat has been brought "into the heart of the game design."
Apparently GeForce 8 Cards will Gain PhysX Engine Support. During a financial call, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hseun Huang revealed that the ported engine will bring enhanced physics capabilities to all of the company's existing GeForce 8 cards, as it will be programmed in CUDA. "Finally [developers are] able to get a physics engine accelerated into a very large population of gamers," explained Huang. "[It's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes...Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA."
Tech.tm report that the Next-gen DVD format war is hampering sales, unsurprisingly. Purchasers are likely to stick with traditional DVDs and other formats until a next-gen DVD format leader emerges, according to new market research. Blu-ray and HD-DVD have been locked in mortal combat for the last year, although Sony's format appears to be moving ahead now.
Finally, here's one analyst's thoughts on next-gen gaming. Talking about EA's bullish revenue projections, Wilson let slip to Gamespot that he believes Nintendo will launch first, followed by Microsoft later in the year (no word on when the assumed PS4 will come). On the portable side, Wilson also predicts the next round of Nintendo DS and Sony PSP hardware will appear sometime in 2010, though it's not clear whether he's calling for a new chipset or just another redesign.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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