22 Megapixel Gesture-Driven Display Debuts

Students from the University of Tromso, Norway, recently demoed a 22 megapixel display (7168 x 3072) powered by 28 projectors working in tandem. While huge displays aren't exactly new, the students' gesture-sensing prototype is.

While the team advertises their prototype as a multi-"touch" (with the quotations) display capable of letting users zoom and pan through a 13.3 gigapixel image, their setup is more accurately described as a gesture-driven interface, probably the biggest so far.16 cameras work together to isolate gestures on the display's 2D plane. They can also sense the size of the gesturing appendage—the system knows if the user is using the tip of their fingers, the palm, or even their head to point. Audio sensors watch out for snaps that are the signal to zoom in or out of the workspace. View the system on YouTube.

The potential for this massive gesture-driven interface is, if you will, huge. While browsing through a super-large image makes good use of the system, there are other possibilities. What about browsing through a real-time video of an entire city district, or viewing large digitized documents? In any case, the team have already tried out Quake 3 Arena and the first Homeworld on their system. Let's hope and see if the Tromso team can release more demo videos—and take steps to adapt their system for corporate or recreational purposes. More details are available here.

The 'Unhackable' Swiss Army Knife USB Stick

Nothing in the world is unhackable, right? Right. But Victorinox, the company behind the Swiss Army Knife, claims that it has the most unhackable USB solution right now.

In fact, the company held a launch event in London where it would give a £100,000 (nearly US$150,000) prize to hackers if they could break into it during the two hours the event lasted, but the USB hardware held its ground.
The Victorinox Secure is a USB stick that's built into a Swiss Army Knife and it uses several layers of security. One step is fingerprint identification that's attached to a thermal sensor – so that the finger alone, detached from the body, will still not give access to the memory stick’s contents.
The Secure features MKI’s Schnuffi Platform Single Chip Technology, which makes it possible to operate with no external and accessible lines between the different coding/security steps, as on multi-chip solutions. Victorinox says this makes cracking the hardware impossible.
For those looking to get right to the hardware itself, the Secure has also been made tamper-proof. Any attempt to forcibly open it triggers a self-destruct mechanism that irrevocably burns its CPU and memory chip. 
The Secure Pro is available in three different sizes, ranging from 8GB to 32GB RRP £50 ($75) - £180 ($270) and features:
- Removable USB flash drive
- Biometric fingerprint recognition technology
- LED Mini White Light
- Retractable Ball Point Pen
- Blade
- Scissors
- Nail File with
- Screwdriver
- Key ring

EVGA will have SuperClocked GTX 480 version

As you could see from various reviews over the Internet, the GTX 480 packs quite a punch under its cooler with five heatpipes and as it supports voltage adjustments, it is no surprise that EVGA is working on the SuperClocked and even some other factory overclocked versions of the same card.

The Newegg.com has listed the EVGA SuperClocked Geforce GTX 480 card, and was even kind enough to post a full specification list including all the clocks. As you already know, the reference card works at 700MHz for the GPU, 1401MHz for Shaders or GPU CUDA cores as Nvidia calls them these day and 924MHz (3696MHz effective) for the 1536MB of GDDR5 memory.

As with all previous generations, EVGA is apparently going to do factory overclocked card, and according to Newegg.com listing, the SuperClocked version works, or to be precise, is overclocked to 725MHz for the GPU, 1450MHz for Shaders and 950MHz (3800MHz effective) for the same 1536MB of GDDR5 memory. EVGA didn't change the reference cooler as we guess that there is no point in it since Nvidia obviously have done a great job with it, despite the fact that it is noisy.

As you can see in our review, the reference card from Nvidia came with Samsung's memory rated to work at 1250MHz (5000MHz effective), but we still don't know which boards did partners get and if they use the same memory there is definitely still more room for overclocking.

You can find the EVGA SuperClocked card listed here with a US $529.99 price tag. Of course, the card is listed as "out of stock" so be patient till April 12th.

Redmond leaks 64GB Zune HD

Microsoft has leaked a new version of its Tegra-based Zune HD, this time with 64GB of storage.

The company's Zune website clearly lists the 'Zune HD 64', but as there was no formal announcement, we still don't know the price or availability date.

You can find it here, provided Microsoft doesn't take it off the site.

AMD readies new 45W Athlon IIs

AMD will soon roll out a couple of new energy efficient dual-core Athlon II X2 processors. The company currently offers two Regor-based parts with a 45W TDP, the 2.8GHz 240e and the 2.7GHz 235e.

The new 250e is clocked at 3GHz, while the 245e runs at 2.9GHz, which sounds nice considering the low TDP. Mind you, it is possible that the CPUs are based on the new C3 stepping, but at press time we are unable to confirm this.

In addition to the Athlons, AMD will also introduce two new single-core Semprons based on the Sargas core. We mentioned these 45W parts a while back. The Sempron 145 is clocked at 2.7GHz and it will be accompanied by the Sempron 180, but we still don't know its exact clock.

CoolIT's Omni A.L.C. to have plates for Fermi

Announced and presented back at CES 2010, CoolIT's Omni ALC will also have support for upcoming GTX 400 series FErmi GPUs as well. The main advantage of Omni ALC is that it can basically support any graphics card thanks to its "interposer plate" which is changeable and unique to each graphics card.

The Omni A.L.C. will support both the GTX 480 and the GTX 470 as it is only a matter of creating a plate for each one. The Omni A.L.C. comes with ceramic bearing CFF1 pump and will be available with either 120mm and 240mm radiator, depending on how much cooling power do you actually need or how many cards do you plan to cool with Omni.

The Omni A.L.C. will also use CoolIT's latest ESP (Extra Sensory Peripherals) wireless technology so it will be compatible with CoolIT's Maestor software and USB wireless controller.

The price hasn't been announced as Omni A.L.C. will have a different price that will depend on the GPU, or to be precise, on the interposer plate.

Shamino pushes GTX 480 to 1165MHz

Overclocking legend Peter Tan aka Shamino has managed to overclock Nvidia's GTX 480 to 1165MHz with the help of some LN2 and nerves of steel.

As you probably know by now, the GTX 480 is reference clocked at 700MHz. The GTX 480 is not what we'd call overclocking friendly. It's rather hot and under load it consumes more power than the Large Hadron Collider, but Shamino still managed to pull off a 66 percent overclock.

The test rig, powered by an oveclocked Xeon E5640 at 4GHz, scored P29686 in 3DMark Vantage. You can check out the thread here.

Maingear adds GTX 400 to its Shift system

Maingear has announced that its SHIFT "super computer" is now available with both GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards in single, SLI and triple-SLI options.

According to Maingear, they are able to run triple-SLI without using any fancy water cooling setup thanks to the unique design of the SHIFT. Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of Maingear Computers added that Fermi is the GPU technology for which SHIFT was designed, and thanks to the heat-stack vertical design, GTX 480 and GTX 470 are able to stay at reasonable temperatures even in triple-SLI setups.

Some European GTX 480 prices fixed

Alternate.de and some other European retailers/e-tailers have finally fixed some prices and are now listing Leadtek's and MSI's GTX 480 cards for €479.

In addition to Alternate.de listings, our price search engine has also shown a Point Of View GTX 480 listed in the UK for £428.86 inc. VAT, which converts to €476.30. This is currently the cheapest listed GTX 480 card but it is only available for pre-order.

According to our info, the prices should fall down to €479 when the card become available during week of April 12th, but for now e-tailers/retailers are just trying to get as much cash from GTX 400 series hype and some are even asking over €550 for GTX 480 card.

NEW VERSION OF GPUZ FOR FERMI CARDS

TechPowerUp have released the new v0.4.0 version of GPU-Z graphics card information and monitoring tool. The main update is the support for Nvidia's Geforce GTX 400 series.

The new version of the tool adds support for Nvida's Fermi GTX 480 and GTX 470 GPUs, voltage monitoring for HD 5750, HD 5830 and HD 5870 Lightning cards and even support for Intel's Pineview.

Other noted features and fixes include a fix for double memory clock on Nvidia cards without GDDR5 memory and rounding errors on RV7xx and Evergreen fan monitoring code, add tooltip translations for Albanian and Chinese Traditional as well as a fix that uses GB instead of GiB for memory bandwidth calculation.

The new version of the GPU-Z v0.4.0 can be found here.

AMD intros 12-core Magny Cours series

AMD has officially introduced the Opteron 6000 series, based on the 12-core Magny Cours architecture.

The chips pack 12 cores and 12MB of L3 cache and DDR3 support. We already mentioned several Opteron 6000 parts, but it's still worth noting the slowest version will run at 1.7GHz with and that it will draw just 65W of power. AMD will offer several processors in the 1.7GHz to 2.3GHz clock range, but even the fastest one will consume just 105W.

AMD claims that the 2.2GHz Opteron 6174 will outpace Intel's 3.3GHz six-core Xeon 5680 without breaking a sweat. However, Intel is expected to release Nehalem EX chips in a matter of days, so AMD's lead could be short lived. However, AMD could still do well, as its CPUs are expected to be somewhat cheaper than Intel's.

AMD teams up with Acer

AMD has signed a deal to flog its server chips on Acer machines.

Acer will build machines based on the 6000 series of Opteron processors that AMD introduced today. Both sides are hoping to kick start their server offerings and fight off an attack from Intel.

Gianluca Degliesposti, an Acer vice president in charge of developing its server business said there wasn't a better moment for us to jump into the market. AMD’s new server-chip design, Magny-Cours, is the company’s first major push to recover ground. Acer is trying to do what it did in the laptop and desktop PCs market.

The products will be cheap and cheerful based around servers that use two chips. Acer entered the server market in December with computers using Intel chips. It has switched to AMD so it could offer customers machines with more memory.