Bigfoot Networks may not be a household name among general PC consumers, but in hardcore gaming circles the company's gaming network cards have earned a solid reputation, including the company's latest effort, the Killer 2100. Unlike "dumb" NICs that cause "huge, unpredictable latency spikes" during gameplay, Bigfoot states that the Killer 2100 "has latency in microseconds" thanks to its NPU (Net work Processing Unit) that offloads game data from the CPU and Windows. The card evidently impressed Alienware enough for the game system builder to announce in mid-August that it's offering the Killer 2100 in Aurora, Aurora ALX, Area- 51, and Area51 ALX systems. Alienware's Frank Azor stated the NI C-system combo "represents a lethal combination-maximizing performance for more frags, faster leveling, and higher scores.
You know about Moore's Law and the power-consumption, programming, and architectural roadblocks making it more difficult to double the number of transistors on an integrated circuit approximately every two years. So does DARPA. Thus, the agency recently announced a UHPC (Ubiquitous High Performance Computing) program that "directly addresses major priorities expressed by President Obama's 'Strategy for American Innovation,'" including the exascale supercomputing Century Grand Challenge, energy-efficient computing, and worker productivity. With the goal to "reinvent computing," UHPC will involve developing "radically new computer architectures and programming models that deliver 100 to 1,000 times more performance" but are easier to program than present systems. Intel, Nvidia, MIT, and Sandia National Laboratory have been tabbed to build UHPC prototypes by 2018.
Samsung's BD-C8000 ($499.99) may very well be the "world's first portable Blu-ray player with 3D capability," but don't get too excited just yet. Although the netbook-Iooking BD-C8000 will give you 1080P HD video on its 1O.3-inch screen, what it won't give you is 3D viewing while on the go. For that ability, you'll need to connect the player (HDMI 1.4a integrated) to a 3DTV. On the plus side, the BD-C8000 does build in Wi-Fi and is Netflix-ready. It also includes 1GB built-in storage and access to the various goodies that make up Samsung Apps (YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Pandora, etc.). Battery life, meanwhile, is rated at three hours .
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