Gizmodo: quad

AMD Athlon II X4 620: Four Cores for $99

Danny Allen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:20:00 EDT

AMD's new Athlon II X4 chips are like a Phenom II minus the L3 cache. But they're super-cheap: $99 (2.6GHz-620), and $122 (2.8Ghz-630). Also looks like they hold their own against the $150 Core 2 Quad 8200: [Maximum PC]

Samsung Says Phooey to 1080p, Goes 4x Better with Quad HD

Charlie White — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:46:17 EST

After boring us to tears with matters of little import at a jam-packed press event at CES, behind the scenes, Samsung was prepping the real stuff. Top of the list: A Quad HD TV with a rez of 3840x2160, twice as sharp vertically and horizontally as today's best 1080p sets.

We'd like to take a look at such video, but too bad there's no broadcaster or disc that can play back such a torrent of data.

What about playing that kind of video from a PC? Wow, would that be sharp, or what? It's not up to that stratospheric Super Hi-Vision's 7680x4320, but halfway there would do, and perhaps be close to practical within the next decade. We'll be on the lookout for Samsung's Quad HD on the show floor and in the back rooms, so stay tuned. [PC World]

Samsung Quad Pen Concept Transfers Air Scribbling in Perpetuity

AddyDugdale — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:34:48 EDT

A pen that lets you write anything anywhere and then transfer it to your computer has been developed by Samsung. Situated in the nib of the Quad pen is an electronic sensor which records its movements and saves it onto a tiny memory chip in the barrel, meaning that, should inspiration strike while you wander lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er — yeah, you get my drift — you can run to the nearest daffodil and jot down whatever it was you wanted, thus saving your work for posterity on the chip. I love this idea, but I know that it won't work for me as my handwriting is so pants — I mean, if I can't even master my digital signature at the supermarket, what hope is there for me writing my best-selling bonkbuster novel on a daffodil? [Korea TImes via UberGizmo]

Intel Shipping Less Power-Hungry Quad Core Xeons

Charlie White — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:29:18 EDT

When Intel released its Xeon 5100 processors last summer, they were already faster, cooler and more efficient than their predecessors, and now Intel's doing it again with even more-efficient quad core processors that rolled out yesterday. The company's 5300 series server chips were already 50% more efficient than those 5100 dual-core Xeons from last summer, and now Intel says its Xeon L5320 and L5310 use between 35 and 60% less electricity than its existing 5300 series quad core processors, which suck up 80 and 120 watts.

The L5320 and L5310 Xeons, running at 1.86GHz and 1.6GHz respectively, probably won't be the ones showing up on those Apple machines that are said to be debuting on April 15 in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention. Hey, Macs use Xeons, don't they? Will these Xeons be part and parcel of the fabled "OctoMac?"

Nah. The processors in the OctoMac will eventually be the higher-end 3.0GHz version of the quad core Xeon that Intel revealed last week, saying they'll be shipping later this year. Those are the chips the speed freaks will use, users who don't care so much about energy efficiency and care everything about the fastest processors available.

In the meantime, maybe Apple will make do with a pair of the existing Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors, which we're using right here on a PC and can attest to their already-blazing speed and serious video rendering capabilities.

Either way, we just got our invite to the big Apple unveiling in Sleazetown, and will be positioned right up front to let you know what happens. – Charlie White

More efficient quad-core Xeons [Macworld]

CMO: 1080p is For Punks, We Got Quad HD

Louis Ramirez — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:04:16 EDT

We're barely seeing 1080p content and yet the guys over at Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) have already made plans for a 47-inch Quad high-definition display. Quad HD would dwarf today's 1080p (1,920x1,080) sets with a 3,840x2,160 resolution (1440p). CMO's 47-inch LCD panel, which is said to be slated for the second quarter of 2007, would carry a 1,500:1 contrast ratio, dual-link DVI, and HDMI 1.3. And of course the all too sexy 1440p resolution. As for us, we'll stick with our 1080p set for now, thanks. (Even if it's still at the store and not in our living room). – Louis Ramirez

DigitTimes Displays [via Engadget HD]

Mad Hatter's Quad Core 2 Duo Server Goes Sixteen Ways

Brian Lam — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:00:27 EDT

This one goes out to all my IT homies.

A Gizmodo reader just sent this screen shot in of task manager running on a server he built for work. It runs 4 processors, that have 2 cores each, with each of those cores hyperthreaded. So...That shows up in Windows as 16 procs. I'll stand back and let the man speak for himself:

Dell PE6800, Quad Processor Dual Core w/Hyperthreading running Win2003-R2 Enterprise. Windows sees all that processor goodness as 16 separate processors. The onboard 26GB of RAM and 3TB of local storage round out this sweet server. Price ? $25k-ish. It's going to be a kickass SQL server machine.

We asked him to send us a picture of it loaded. Since it was a preproduction server, he had to run some apps. Namely, "defrag, scandisk /f, virus scan on all fixed disks, and finally a five minute CPU stress/reliability test" Click to the jump to see how the monster fared.

Swimmingly, I'd say!

Azul to Launch 48-Core Vega 2 Processor

Charlie White — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:39:39 EST

We've reported about dual-core and even quad-core processors, and now the pissing contest takes a geometric leap with whippersnapper startup Azul announcing plans to stoke its nex-gen Vega 2 64-bit chip with 48, count 'em, 48 cores.

Azul has made quite a splash in Silicon Valley with its first-generation Azul Compute Appliance (pictured here), a network-attached processing system that accelerates Java and lots of other stuff using the first Azul 64-bit processor packing 24 cores on board. Azul's CTO says system performance of the Vega 2 will be more than double that of its predecessor. This we gotta see.

Azul to go 48-core with Vega 2 [The Inquirer]