The new year of 2012 is finally here, but that doesn’t stop the news from flowing. The tech industry is always changing, and there’s plenty of stuff to write about and report. With that in mind, here are the most important news in the tech world that happened during the last week (or should I say, last year :-)?):
Intel’s Medfield tablet prototype has been spotted and tested in the wild
Intel’s new Medfield x86 tablet prototype has been spotted in the wild, and according to the reviewer, who acquired the unique slate for just $50, the device is very well made and very fast, as well. It seems that Intel has perfected their x86 ultra low power processors for tablets and smartphones, so who knows, maybe 2012 will be the year when x86 finally breaks into the affordable tablets market, competing with the new quad core ARM processors?
Elpida starts shipping the new Wide IO Mobile RAM for tablets and smartphones
The processor usually gets all the attention when it comes to performance, however one of the most important things that affect the performance of a smartphone, tablet or laptop is the memory – even the fastest DDR3 memory is almost a bottleneck in modern systems, and even more so on mobile devices. Elpida promises to change that with their new Wide IO Mobile RAM, which use a 512 bit data width, making it up to 10 times faster than current mobile ultra-low voltage chips. Devices using this type of RAM will get the best of both worlds – fast transfer speeds and low power consumption, which is exactly what tablets and smartphones need right now.
T-Platforms is building a new ten petaflops supercomputer in Moscow
The Russian company T-Platforms announced that they will be building a new 10 petaflop supercomputer for the Moscow State University, bringing it up to par with the leading institutions in the world (the computer will be the second fastest in the world, after Japan’s 10.51 petaflops K Computer). The nodes will be built using Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors, which are already produced at their factories and going out to computer manufacturers, and NVidia’s new Kepler GPU coprocessors, which would make the computer very versatile in what data it can process.
The Retina display for the iPad 3 is almost confirmed thanks to leaked photos
A few new photos of the purported Retina display for the iPad 3 have leaked on a Korean forum, and it looks like Apple will really be coming out with a new high resolution screen for their next tablet. Unlike the previous model, which features two ribbons for the video transfer, the new display has three ribbons, meaning it has double the transfer rate capability – it’s highly likely that we’ll see a beautiful 2048×1536 pixels display on the iPad 3, especially when the competition is already far ahead of Apple in this area.
The Samsung Galaxy Note is coming to AT&T
The Samsung Galaxy Note, which has already sold over 1 million units worldwide despite not yet being officially released in Europe and the US (same story as with the successful Galaxy S2 smartphone), is finally confirmed to be coming to AT&T in the US, with a small redesign on the outside (4 touch buttons instead of the normal three – standard fare for US-bound Samsung phones). This is good news not only for US buyers, but also for Europeans – it’s much easier to import a GSM device from North America than from South Korea.
Sure enough, we’ll be back with a weekly recap of the most important news in the industry next week, so stay tuned and don’t forget to subscribe to Gadgetmania.com!
